So You Think You Can Dance

Copyright 2015

Art Rosch

            "What's wrong with kids today?"

            This lament has been uttered by every generation  since Adam and Eve discovered they were pregnant a second time.

            So....what IS wrong with kids these days?

           They feel as if they have no future.  The last few extant generations simply don't.  Futures come in handy when you feel as though the world will be unrecognizable before you've grown up.  As a child of The Mushroom Cloud I know what that feels like, that amputation of the future. It made me really angry.  My friends and I were more likely to commit petty crimes and indulge in drugs.  Without a future, why bother?  Why work hard in school?  Why cultivate disciplines, interests, social connections?  The oceans are rising and will drown your block or your whole neighborhood.  The coolest animals will be extinct.  No elephants, no polar bears.  What kind of future is that?

            Then I discovered a TV show called "So You Think You Can Dance".  You can knock me over with what these kids are doing!  Their bodies must be INCREDIBLY strong and flexible.  These kids are doing the impossible!  Has the human race mutated?  Do we have extra joints, super-human muscle memory? Who ARE these people?

            They're just kids.  Their secret is that they found a passion, something that interested them so much that they said "fuck it" to the absence of the future and decided to live for this thing called Dance.  It was better than being a thug.  Thugs are mean, WAY mean and being mean doesn't feel very good.  Not as good as practicing B-moves, Krumping, flapping, sapping, tapping, robot-twitching, water-waving, learning your body's capabilities and stretching them further, further, further!

            This is IT!  Sometimes it's called ART.  Don't be embarrassed by the word ART.  It's cool to do ART.  It's okay.  Even if it's gay it doesn't matter.  Nobody cares about gay any more.  You can be gay, you can change from man to woman or woman to man, nobody cares!  If you want to know where it is, where the cutting edge in creativity can be found these days you can see it on "So You Think You Can Dance".  The judges aren't scary.  They aren't there to cut you down.  They want to show you The Future.  Word up, Bro.  There IS a future.  Nobody can stop it.  It takes some work.  Everything good takes work. Making a future is hard work.  It's not like it used to be, when the Future was going to happen no matter what.  Now it takes a little faith and a lot of work, but it's there: you... DO...Have...A...Future.  Do you want it to kick you in the nuts or do you want to dance with it?

            When has anyone given a shit about choreoraphy?  Are you kidding?  Corey-who?  Shazam!  Choreographers are the composers of Dance.  They arrange the time-space-music continuum in which Dance exists.  On the TV show they are not only given credit, they are like stars!  Now I know the work of Tice Diorio, Mia Michaels, Sonya Tayeh, "Nappytab", Stacey Tookey and Travis Wall.  Choreographers come from the elder population of dancers.  They still dance but they are the keepers of the flame, the mentors of the seventeen through twenty two year old dancers who are living the dreams.

            I'm not sure there is any more difficult art form than what is now appearing as Dance.  It's not enough to specialize.  You can't be a ballroom dancer, a hip-hopper or a Broadway hoofer.  One of the messages of So You Think You Can Dance is that you must be trained in ALL the dance styles.  Choreographers wont' hire you if you don't know all the styles of dance. Choreographers are the Gate Keepers, the bosses, the ones who hire dancers.  Get tight with the choreographers who work at SYTYCD and you will be employed for years to come. In time, you will become a choreographer.

            The most amazing thing about the dance numbers on this show is their purity.  We're not seeing arrangements for pop superstars.  We're not seeing choreography for Taylor Swift or Michael Jackson (RIP).  These dance routines are created for the television audience.  For US!  Sometimes magic happens on that stage.  Those of you who watch the show know what I mean.  In ten years time this show has lifted the art of Dance so that each season is more amazing than the last.  The mutations continue.  Evolution is visible year to year.  Dancers get more flexible, their muscle memories become more detailed, malleable, imprintable.  This happens in front of our eyes.  Sure, it's a TV contest show aimed at a teenage demographic.  That's how things work.  Consider the difference between the egregious karaoke of American Idol and the drama and high art of So You Think You Can Dance.  Big difference, yeah?

            Big big difference.

Oprah And The Selling of Dream Fulfillment Technology

Oprah and The Selling of Dream Fulfillment Technology

            Every time I go to the supermarket I see "O" magazine displayed at the checkout stand and every issue of "O" magazine has a photo of Oprah Winfrey on its cover.  There is something disturbing about a person who puts herself on the cover of her own magazine month after month.  She can do what she wants with it, but we know what Oprah looks like by now and I feel a little embarrassed for her.  She could give us inspiring landscape photos or images of other worthy people.  Instead, we get a simple complacent message:"Look at me!  I'm Oprah.  I'm still young, slim and beautiful."  Even though she's not.

            If it's wisdom that I seek from the pages of "O" magazine, I would as soon discuss life with a REAL funky old black broad than with this promoter of the so-called Ideal Life.

            It takes only a brief glimpse at the titles of the articles to make me feel utterly shitty about myself.  I'm not losing weight.  I'm not making more money. I'm not getting younger.  My libido is vanishing.  My dreams haven't been fulfilled.  

            This last item, about dream fulfillment, is an arrow pointing into the center of Oprah's empire.  This uber-wealthy celebrity is selling what I call DREAM FULFILLMENT TECHNOLOGY.  She has become  rich and powerful peddling this stuff and the irony of it is this: there is no such thing as DREAM FULFILLMENT TECHNOLOGY.  There are various tools to help us cope better with life's stresses.  There are psychotherapy, meditation, exercise, nutrition and a raft of spiritual practices.  None of these, however, guarantees that dreams will come true.  Only a very few people, lucky or possessing a certain kind of karma, get to live their dreams.  The rest of us must accept the lives we have been dealt.  Life is sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a nightmare and occasionally a dream.

            The problem with dreams is that  one can dream the wrong dream.  Watch any episode of "American Idol" to witness inept dreamers.  The depth of people's belief in themselves is shockingly at odds with their lack of talent.  Dreams are, by their nature, elusive.  If people are willing to commit decades of their lives to pursuing a goal, it might be wise to let the process of pursuit become the defining reality.  If you do a thing and you love doing it, stay with that love and don't be distracted by some end point called Success.  That way, when dreams fail to materialize, the disappointment does not become bitterness.  If a dream IS fulfilled, then there must be a new dream, and yet another in an infinite progression of dreams.  Such is the stuff of being alive.  The world itself is a dream.

            Oprah is but one of many thousands of merchants of Fulfillment.  They thrive in hard times and these are hard times.  I want to go "tut tut" and say "Shame on you for exploiting the frustration and gullibility of your clients."              

          It seems to me that the big-time sellers of Dream Fulfillment Technology are making a lot more money than their customers. That's why the cover of "O" magazine gives me the creeps.

        I realize that Oprah has supported many great causes, given a host of writers their defining break and has represented a general movement towards positive awareness.  It's the cult of personality that bothers me.  I wouldn't be surprised at the establishment of a Dalai-lama style lineage so that in a thousand years we may be addressing the Fourteenth Oprah as she descends from her hover-carpet to bless the multitudes.  I hope that she will be a crotchety old black broad with a whip-sharp tongue and no patience for fools.

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Hell On Wheels: A Review of the AMC epic Western

Anson Mount: The Glare

            "Hell On Wheels" is the name of the shanty town at the end of the railroad tracks. It's 1868 and The Union Pacific is spear-heading construction of the rails using teams of newly freed blacks and Irish laborers. The "town", a hodge podge of tents and important wooden buildings like the saloon, the casino and the whore house, get up and move every couple of months as the tracks continue their extension across Nebraska.  Coming East from California is the Central Pacific's railroad.  It is being built by an army of Chinese workers.  They have already crossed the Sierra Nevada and are headed for the Rocky Mountains.  Railroad men of various ethnic identities are digging, tunneling, blasting, dying and being ruthlessly exploited by a small cadre of robber barons who pull strings from distant offices in St. Louis, Chicago, Washington D.C. and New York City.

            Nearer to hand are a tier of middle managers working from Denver and Omaha.  At the very tip of the spear, right where the tracks are being laid into the mud and rock, is Cullen Bohannan.  He is played with great conviction by actor Anson Mount.  Bohannan is at various times Chief Engineer, common laborer, independent contractor and Head Of Railroad Police for the Union Pacific.  His knowledge and drive make him indispensable to builders of railroads.

            Bohannon was a Colonel in the Confederate Army.  While he was fighting battles distant from home, his family was murdered by pillaging Yankee soldiers.  Bohannon has a long and violent history.  He has a rage for revenge and a relentless drive to build railroad tracks better and faster than the competition.  This obsession with the track is Cullen's way of sublimating his grief and wrath.

            Here you have the setting for an epic Western television series.  "Hell On Wheels" is uneven but when it's good it's fantastic.  Even when it's not good it's not bad.  It's just slow and a bit broad, with bouts of over-acting and a little taste of corn.  Much of this over-acting is done by veteran actor Colm Meany, who plays Charles Durant, the putative owner of the Union Pacific.  I use the word putative because in the course of the plot, ownership of rail stocks switches hands, and is otherwise manipulated without scruples.  Colm Meany's Durant is a smarmy con man and ruthless survivor whose railroad is the object of numerous baits and switches, shell games, pyramid schemes and hand-buzzer jokes.  He can simultaneously occupy a jail cell and rule a business empire.  He's a man who wears a fine frock coat and beaver hat but he doesn't mind walking in the mud and he'll pick up a rifle or pistol if the occasion calls for it.  Overdone?  Yes, but entertaining as hell. 

Colm Meany's Durant: always a scumbag,occasionally an ally

            Anson Mount is an actor well suited to play a Western Hero.  He's got one of those faces that wears a look of passionate indifference.  This only sounds paradoxical until you see how he has mastered the skank-eye glare with which he regards his enemies.  He has murdered those Yankees directly responsible for killing his family.  He drinks, gambles and whores with the ruck and muck yet he earns their absolute loyalty because he gets the railroad built.  He is fair with his men.  He does the same work.  He is right where the track ends, where it is being built yet another mile across the plains and headed towards the mountains.  He wears a gun belt, jeans, boots, a leather vest and a straight brimmed black hat.

            "Hell On Wheels" is gripping.  It has a raft of finely crafted villains.  "The Swede" is a murderous yet subtle psychopath who never seems to die.  Just when we think he's been disposed of, he reappears.  Our celebration has been premature.  Hang him, burn him alive, throw him off a bridge, run him through with a spear: the monster keeps returning, with his huge eyes and his way of saying "mm.hmm" with his finger tapping his cheek.

The Swede cleaning off the gore

Swede, aka Thor Gundersen, a very scary man

            This is testament to the power of the series' dramatic engine.  A drama is only as good as its villains.  "Hell On Wheels" provides us with a lot of villains, and no two are alike.  We are disturbingly drawn by these evil characters into dark places of the human soul.  Our nerves are grinding, our teeth crunching as we wait for the awful monsters to meet justice.  We NEED that emotional release.  We can't wait for The Swede, or Durant, or Governor Jack Campbell, or smirking Sidney Snow to get what they deserve.  We wait with our breath held, wanting to squash those bastards into the puke and piss of Main Street Hell On Wheels.  The story runners keep us hanging on, coming back for more.  Some day Cullen Bohannon will draw his long pistol, fix his skank-eye glare of steely calm on his target and blow the fucker to pieces!
           I give "Hell On Wheels" four muskrats, one for each of the seasons so far produced.  There is a fifth and final season coming this year.  Perhaps The Swede will be diced, sliced, sauteed, pureed, dried and ground into powder, then released into the vortex of an EF Five Tornado, to be absolutely sure that he doesn't turn up somewhere else.  If he had been with The Donner Party he would have walked grinning down the Western Slope all chubby and with grease dripping from his lips.

Saving Grace: A Review of the TV Series

This image beautifully captures the character of Detective Grace Hanadarko

  Holly Hunter has never been on my radar before I saw her in the role of detective Grace Hanadarko in the series, "Saving Grace".  

          The cop show genre is tired. There are so many redundant procedurals about catching bad guys.  Do we need another one?  "Saving Grace" is distinctive because its premise is hewn out of a metaphysical absurdity.  It takes this crazy premise and carries it with gusto through three seasons.  That's an achievement worth noting.

            The premise, (we can even call it a gimmick) is simple enough.  Detective Hanadarko is driving drunk, speeding in her unwashed Porsche 911 down a dark deserted street when she hits and kills a man who has appeared as if from nowhere.

            She leans over the body and wails, "Oh God, Oh God, what have I done?  Please help me!"

            Suddenly the man is gone, there's no blood on the concrete, no damage to her car.  It's as if it never happened.

            Grace has experienced an intervention.  The agent of this intervention is an Angel, literally an Angel, with retractable wings, shaggy grey hair and a weathered face that is full of kindness.  His name is Earl and his function is to serve as a "Last Chance Angel".  Does Grace believe this?  Of course not.  Earl whisks her to a promontory at the Grand Canyon, performs a few other casual miracles and returns her to the site of the accident. 

            Saving Grace is set in Oklahoma City.  We are never allowed to forget that the bombing of The Murrah Building is for Oklahomans an equivalent to 9/11 for most other Americans.  Everyone in the The Violent Crimes Unit  lost a loved one or a friend in that heinous crime and it is still very much alive in  Oklahoma culture.  
          The Violent Crimes Unit is filled with unruly cops, all of whom are either having sex with Grace, will have sex with Grace, or want to have sex with Grace.  For Hunter this is a great role, a vehicle for her acting chops and she inhabits the character effortlessly and with total conviction. She has  a distinctive way of speaking, as if she is whistling through the side of her mouth.  I don't think this is an affectation.  It may be more of a symptom, but that's none of my business.  It doesn't harm Hunter's effectiveness.

            Hunter is a tiny person.  She is like a petite thoroughbred race horse, every muscle rippling with purpose.  She moves with sexy arrogance, tossing her mane of hair with a trademark twitch, striding through the world in her hippie clothes and cowboy boots.  As Grace she is a very naughty girl, a sex addict, an alcoholic, a disturber-of-shit.  It's amazing that she hasn't been fired but she's always teetering on the brink of disaster with Internal Affairs.  Her raunchy provocation keeps the cops in her unit in a pheromone ferment.  She's having an affair with her partner/cop.  This is flirting with personal and professional suicide.  Cop/Partner/Boyfriend is jealous of every other cop who might have been or will be involved with Grace, hence the constant outbreak of boyish fistfights in the squad's office.  Fortunately for Grace, the unit is commanded by a loyal friend, Captain Kate Perry, played with assurance by Lorraine Toussaint.

            The series begins with an adequate episode. It works well enough to keep me around to see more.  It gains momentum and the characters emerge in ways that are appealing.   The Violent Crimes Unit is a family.  It behaves dysfunctionally but one thing can be said: these are not corrupt cops.  They may be drunk, jealous, their personal lives in chaos, but these cops aren't dirty.  They are very good at their jobs. In spite of their screwy milieu, they solve crimes.

            Leon Rippy, playing Earl, The Last Chance Angel, is a pillar in the structure of the story arc.  He pushes no religious agenda, he's strictly non-denominational. 

            It's easy to see that the cast and crew of "Saving Grace" had a wonderful time working on the project.  When such chemistry evolves in a film or TV series, it's palpable and it makes the viewing that much more rewarding.  I enjoyed "Saving Grace" for its sense of family, for the obvious devotion that the characters had for one another, for Earl's angelic mischief.  There's a lot of good stuff here. 

          I give it four muskrats.  It's really a three and a half muskrat series but I'll throw in another half because there's so much worthless crap around.  And there's Laura SanGiacomo. She plays the most adorable forensic coroner working in the TV/Cop world.

Leon Rippy as Earl, The Last Chance Angel

A Review of My Soon-to-be Published Novel

John Coltrane

I began writing CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST MAN thirty years ago.  I acquired a high profile literary agent named Scott Meredith, thanks to the sale of a short story to Playboy Magazine.  The story won Playboy's Best Story Award for the year.  It seemed that I was shot out of a rocket; my career was launched and I had editors at Meredith's agency helping me with CONFESSIONS etc. In spite of this stroke of amazing fortune, that was not my best year.  It was almost my worst.  I had big problems, personal problems.  The editor helped me with the book, but I was not yet mature as a writer.  The book required that I trace the lives of characters across fifty years.  I was barely over twenty years old. Then Scott Meredith passed away and so did my opportunity.

I continued writing and finished CONFESSIONS and other projects.  When I started passing CONFESSIONS around to literary agents the landscape of publishing had changed.  The era of vampires and tycoon-erotica had taken hold.  I heard this phrase hundreds of times: "While your writing is excellent, I find that I haven't fallen in love with your book and I'm afraid I'll have to pass."

There are so many people writing so many books these days that it's difficult to get ANYONE to read my manuscript.  I don't blame people for giving me the swish n' pass treatment.  In spite of so many obstacles, I'm stubborn and I believe in what I'm doing.  Now, thanks to my "excellent writing", there are people willing to read me, and not only read me but fall in love with my work.

Lin Ross is an email acquaintance.  I don't know the gentleman; he's  a fine novelist and we have a good online rapport. I decided to send him the manuscript of CONFESSIONS.  Yesterday I received this review of CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST MAN, written by novelist/poet/musician/artist Lin Ross. I thank Lin from the depths of my heart.  He is nurturing and unselfish, a rare bird indeed.  To read the first two chapters, click this link:Confessions Of An Honest Man

"Confessions of An Honest Man"  a Novel by Art Rosch

 Reviewed by Lin Ross

What happens when the desires we think we want for the majority of our lives dangle there, within our grasp?   What happens when those special almost golden people who loomed as heroes prove to be not gods, but flawed and human?   "Confessions of an Honest Man," by Art Rosch , answers those intriguing questions, and sheds new light upon an era, a cultural explosion and an art-form too often romanticized, but rarely given the life, breath, and rhythms it truly deserves.  I speak here of the world of jazz and its players.  

Author Art Rosch masterfully takes our hand and leads us through the life of  his protagonist, Aaron Kantro from the  age of nine into adulthood where he meets his idol, the jazz legend "Zoot Prestige." In Rosch's world there is black and white (in the complexion of his characters, in society, and in metaphor), but there are also sweeping portions and broad strokes of gray. That gray is far more fascinating for it is there that the realities of these often harsh and sometimes painfully beautiful dualities exist.  

Is this the story a lost boy seeking a father figure? Yes... to a degree, perhaps. Between the pages, lurking there inside the lines, this is so much more. This is about life and how, in a moment, it can show us its most dazzlingly wonderful face, and then in the blink of an eye, its most hideous, ass-ugly underside.

There is a certain genius in the storytelling and when young Aaron makes it to 1960s New York City, the sound, fury and poignancy of jazz embraces you like a cool cerulean blue spot of neon. You are lost and found inside the grooves of these talented musicians: you are a blues traveler walking beside the cool bop of their struts and frets.  

Any young person reading this impressively inclusive novel might want to leave the warm yet stifling cocoon of home to venture out into the vast unknown, join a band, be hungry, and then be fed by the art of of creation. However, be forewarned, there are cautionary tales around almost every bend, and sometimes getting what we THINK we want might end up breaking our hearts in the process.  

This is one of those rare books filled with the liveliness of characters, dialogue, lessons, and such lushly vivid storytelling that the reader is haunted long after the final page is closed. Such is the poignancy and the precision of Rosch's pen.  

I look forward to more work from this author, because Art Rosch is a singular and deeply unique presence in the writing world: a truth-teller, an intrepid reporter of the streets and a chronicler of the human heart. This is an Artist who truly understands The Blues Condition and it is reflected so intriguingly here. 

BRAVO, Mr. Rosch! BRAVO!

Addiction And Redemption

March 28, 2015

            Addiction is a way of postponing suicide.  I know what I'm talking about, because I've wrestled with addiction at various periods in my life.  I realized that being an addict was a means of dividing my inner torment into manageable packets.  Without this strategy I might have been overwhelmed by my pain.  These manageable packets were all the individual doses of my comfort-drug of the moment.  Aside from the usual substance abuse, I also regard most of my consumer obsessions as addictions.  When I became enamored with photography I didn't buy equipment as a mature adult.  I bought all my gear compulsively.  I was crazy with wanting gizmos.  I built up such formidable debt that I watched my income dribble away in un-manageable packets, flowing into the pockets of credit card banks.

            I can talk about my poor abused childhood, the family violence I endured, but I'm not keen on rehashing that old stuff.  Everyone has their story.  I'm more concerned with the way our entire culture has become a society of addicts.  Not only is addiction pervasive but it's encouraged.  If I could count certain products advertised on TV I would likely discover that smart phones, automobiles and fast food are the most touted items, and that their marketing is designed to increase their addictive potential.

            If I came from a remote galaxy and watched a recording that consisted ONLY of commercials I would conclude that earth people (or Americans, at least) are infantile morons, gullible yokels who respond to glittering things that promise fulfillment.  That promise is delivered in a silly cajoling voice that I wouldn't use to coax my dog to take his medicine.  Who IS this lady in the white medical scrubs with the blue lettering in a white room full of boxes?  Why is she escorting ordinary citizens on a tour of her product line, a line that promises SAFETY, SECURITY, REDUCED RISK AT A FANTASTIC PRICE?  Why does she look like an  android?  Her name is Flo.  Flow?  Go With The Flow?  Should we trust this Flo with our insurance needs or should we trust the funny little lizard who is so personable and harmless?  I would trust the lizard because he speaks with an English accent. Everyone knows that Englishmen are stalwart folk with stiff upper lips who know how to cope with life's emergencies.

            Addicts.  Every one of us.  The question is simple.  Why are we in such pain that in order to survive we must subdivide our lives into manageable packets of agony?

            Hmmm, let me see: our planet is being poisoned, our most beautiful animal companions are being poached to extinction, our families and support structures have vaporized.  We are the loneliest people in history.  Expressing our emotions is amazingly difficult because we fear judgment and rejection.  We have forgotten how to FEEL emotion much less express it because we are so occupied with managing the insane complexities of daily life.  That takes a lot of mental energy, daily life.  Who has the time to stop, reflect and feel?  And if we could feel, we might be driven towards a sense of empathy for those who are afflicted by war, tyranny, famine and homelessness.  Who wants to feel that sad?

            No no no no no!  If I felt that sad I might want to kill myself.  But if I could look at my human companions on this earth and if we could admit to one another that we feel terribly sad and lonely, that might help me.  That might alleviate my sense of isolation.  I might even make new friends.   I might let go of my fear of judgment and rejection when I discover that everyone has the same woes, the same addictions, the same thwarted needs for simple humanity.

            What do you think?  Is it possible to create a new paradigm based on authenticity and compassion?

            I do.

Global Alchemy

I guess you would call this a still life.  My thanks to Flaming Pear Software for their Flood plug-in.

Let's Switch Lives!

March 15, 2015

            Sometimes I wish that I could live someone else's life.  If I were given a choice and I could magically flip into that other life, yet retain my memories of this current life....wouldn't that be great?  Or even if I couldn't retain my memories....

            There's a little voice inside me that says, "Uh oh, that way lies trouble.  The very concept of wanting to escape your life says so much about your pain."

            I can safely say that today I do not want anyone else's life. 

            There have been parts of this year that I would have jumped into the life of people I see on television.  Oh my god!  I would live the life of a fictional character!  Or even the life of a commercial!

            Essentially, the desire to live someone else's life is a form of suicide.  That's how bad it got!  I would have traded places just to live in a nice house.  I would have traded places just to have a group of friends.  I would even have traded places to drive a nice car. 

            Pathetic.  Sad.  I've been plagued by a sense that I wrecked my life by making a couple of epic bad decisions whose consequences have rebounded down the years until they combined to put me in a prison of my own making.

            Fortunately that depression lifted.  I'm functioning better and I'm mobilizing a bit of drive to put me back on track towards achieving some of my dreams.

            There's a lot of talk about dreams these days.  There's a lot of guilt attached to failure.  If you haven't achieved your dreams, why....you're a loser!  You didn't work hard enough.  You didn't focus, you didn't "seize the day" and now you're just another wannabe standing in the food stamp line.

            I'm suspicious of The Dream Machine.  I wrote an essay about Oprah and her sales juggernaut  of "Dream Fulfillment Technology". You can read it here:  Dream Fulfillment Tech

            Dream fulfillment is so quintessentially American.  Do you think that a  hundred years ago people invested so much thought and energy into the concept of personal dreams?  I think The Dream Machine is a marketing construct, a broad distracting drama to remove our attention from the impact on each of our lives by our current historical context.  We live in disturbing times.  We live at a moment in history when theft is being committed on an institutional scale, when our oceans are being filled with toxic sludge, when our forests are being expunged.  How do we respond to that as individuals?  Let's indulge in a metaphor: the Earth is a body and the oceans contain the planet's reservoir of blood.  The Earth's circulatory system is fed by the ocean to the rivers and lakes and those veins and arteries feed back into the ocean in a vast system of pumps and valves.  Our planet is metaphorically like a human body.  Its condition is felt by each of us and we know, however subliminally, that things are not right.  Ask any fisherman.  The big fish are almost gone.  The great schools and the worldwide migrations have been disrupted by the sludge in the Gulf Of Mexico, the toxins in The China Sea.   

            If we're not sometimes depressed then we are numb.  That's worse.  Much worse.  So..I may be depressed by my individual circumstances but I am also a citizen of this planet and I am directly impacted by the world-wide crimes against nature that are being committed by faceless men in suits or young greedy people who drink too much Red Bull and are obsessed with being the "winners" in...in what...is life a contest?  Is it a game show?  That's not how I view life.  I view life as a sacred activity.  I view life as a mystery that we are not yet equipped to penetrate.

Living in my own life is important because I have responsibilities of which I am not fully aware.  I just know I have them.  No matter the suffering I endure, I'd be an idiot to switch lives with anyone!  This is the life I got.  This is the life whose problems I must solve.  I feel a vast untapped potential in myself.  I don't give a shit about winners and losers.  I just want to feel as if I belong with myself, in my place and time and that I'm doing something, however small, about fighting the evil people who wear expensive clothes and think about how much money they have and how much more they can make if they replace Worker X with Worker Y because Worker Y will accept lower pay out of desperation to feed  his or her family.

            I rambled a bit but I think I stayed somewhere near the point: don't live anyone else's life.  You got yours for a reason.  You don't even need to know the reason.  Just be loyal to your own life and do your everyday work as if it really counts. 

            It does.  It really counts.

             

Superman On Prozac...Chapter One excerpt

I've written about a third of a novel of this re-visioning of the Superman Myth. Of course there are copyright infringements. I would have to be hired by Superman's owners, or simply sell the idea and be a consultant.  Any time, Super People!

Superman was awakened by the buzzing of his Iphone.  It was still in the utility pocket of his tights.  Now it vibrated against his butt cheek, bringing him out of a deep dreamless sleep.  The fact that his Iphone was in his tights and his tights still on his body was due to his having fallen asleep after a hundred hour work-day.  He had gotten back to the Fortress of Solitude only long enough to have a cup of Ramen noodles and collapse onto his bed, eyelids falling of their own weight like leaded curtains.

                “Awww, shit!” He rolled to his left, and the badly fitted contour sheet snapped up in the corner, so that all his bedding started to unravel.  He slapped at the buzzing pest in his pocket, hoping to kill it as easily as he would a mosquito.  It vibrated insistently.

                Superman sat up, dragging blankets and sheets with him.  He rocked to one side and fished the smart phone from his pocket.  There were only four people who had his phone number.  He tapped the face of the device and squinted blearily at the display.

                “Where R U?”

                The Man of Steel pushed the Clear button.  It would notify his Project Manager, Piers Bloch, that he was in the Fortress.  That was all Piers needed to know.

                “Where the hell would I be?” His voice had the gravel of fatigue and irritation.  “Moscow?  Alma-Ata?  Minsk?”  He sat up, kicking his sheets and blankets into a pile on the floor.  The place was a wreck.  Outside, he could see the mountains of  Greenland, rising in range after range, deep in the interior.  Wind kicked disdainfully at the peaks, blowing off piles of ice and snow.  It was almost possible, here, to make the world stop.  Almost.

                For Superman the world could never stop.

                Sighing deeply, summoning his will power, he got up.  He took three steps to the left and

was in his bathroom.  Outwardly, to the visible world, the Fortress of Solitude was a wheel-less Winnebago.  Superman didn’t need much in the way of personal accommodation.  There was more,

 much more, underground. Next to the trailer, a twelve foot satellite dish and several other antennae rocked in the gusts.

                Superman looked at himself in the mirror.  There was a faint sizzling sound, and a blast

of heat from his eyes.  His three-day stubble disappeared, leaving behind the odor of burning hair.

                His gut hung over the red-speedo  atop the blue legs of his tights.   He needed a Rejuvenation, he realized suddenly.  But who has the time?  Wait, he thought…..that’s  a joke.  A Rejuvenation is about moving so fast that time runs backwards.  He could make the time, if he wanted.  It was the wanting…..it was the motivation that was missing.

                Superman thought,  with sudden and unexpected longing, of the key to the Kryptonite Vault. It was hanging just out of his reach, in the towel shelf.  He could see it, dangling from a Bugs Bunny key chain.  He could go down into the underground world of the Fortress, unlock the vault, walk in….and never walk out again.

                He rubbed his now-smooth chin, patted his belly, and reached inside his tights.  A discreet little Jockey-style flap enabled him to reach his...um...his Super Junk, as he called it (with a super amount of self-mockery).  He made a piss that poured from him like Niagara, on and on.  After three minutes it gradually rattled to a halt….squirted one last time…and was done.  The super hero replaced himself in his tights and went into the single room of the camper, stepping over empty cans and papers.  The lights were on…he had fallen asleep with the lights on….but they were beginning to dim, and his computers had already kicked over to auxiiary power. 

                Impervious to the cold, Superman went outside, brushed snow off a stationary bicycle,

and pedaled for two minutes with such speed that smoke rose from the bushings that

kept the bike’s cranks and pedals attached to the frame.  The lights came back up. 

                He returned to the trailer’s interior.  “I should clean this up,” he mumbled to himself.

He was, after all, Superman.  He could have asked one of his clones do the cleaning, but the idea

of watching himself working for himself, that was a little too much….and he could, or would, only clone himself, so there was no cloning some sweet plump girl named Rosita to do his housework.

                He heard a sound like distant thunder.  This was followed by another sound, like a straw sucking on an empty milkshake.  FtooothweeeeeeEEEP!

                Superman looked out the window.   One of his clones had just landed and was heading towards the silo opening behind the trailer.  Briefly, the clone and its maker exchanged a glance.  Superman nodded perfunctorily.  It was best not to engage them in conversation. 

                Hunger.  He registered hunger as the quiet gurgling at the center of his abdomen and a

slight dizziness due to lowered blood sugar levels.  It was ridiculous, this need to eat, defecate,

occasionally masturbate, blow his nose, fart.  Ridiculous.  But that was where the central problem

was located, wasn’t it?  He was Superman.  He wasn’t  Super Super.  He wasn’t Man Man.  He was Superman.  He was, in fact, a goodly part human being, even if his Kryptonian origins lent him

unusual faculties. No one knew the truth: that his mother was a human being transported from Earth by Jor-el.  There was no getting away from it.  It was a long and complex story, best left in the dust of the past.

                He called himself by his real name, Kal-el.  That was his given name.  This Superman business was ridiculous.  True, he could leap tall buildings in a single bound…..

                He waved his hand in front of his face, as if to dispel a mirage.  To get to the

half-sized refrigerator, he had to wade through the detritus of his trailer:  bedding, old

newspapers, empty CD jewel cases, cans of Calistoga water.  He couldn’t even get it open;

there was a box of Ramen jutting from the cabinet, obstructing the door. 

                Frustrated, he decided to clean the place, now, not later, NOW!  He became a blur,

and twenty seconds later the Winnebago was spotless, immaculate.

                “Why did I wait so long to do that?”.  Kal-el spoke aloud.  He was beginning to

worry about himself.  The brooding, the mess, the overwork….all classic symptoms of depression.

                “That won’t do,” he said bitterly.  “We can’t have Superman on Prozac.”

                He was going to take this day at a slower pace.  He was going to relax, meditate, read

some Dostoevsky and some Philip K. Dick, watch the Lakers take on the Bulls.  Almost…almost,

a day off.   

                “There’s so much to be done,”  he thought desperately.  “So much to be done.”

                Then, as always, aware of his mental processes, he stopped thinking and hurled  his psyche a billion light years into space.  From that distance, he looked down upon the infinitesimal speck of this person, this unfortunate hero the Earthlings called Superman, Kal-el, son of Jor-el.

                This thought, he realized, was his nemesis:  There’s so much to be done.  In those five

words huddled a universe of misplaced responsibility, guilt, neurotic over-achievement. 

He had that insight for a few seconds, then his distance collapsed, his detachment gave way to

a sucking rubber-band sound, thwangggg! and he was pulled back into his personality.

“Who am I kidding?” he asked himself.  “I’m the only person who stands between these earthlings and utter self destruction.  I can’t afford the luxury of neurosis.  I am doomed to be a workaholic because the alternative is to be uncaring, unfeeling, and to let these people fight each other to extinction.”

                He had altered the political structure of the planet Earth until its stability depended upon

his intervention.  He kept the peace by what he called “The Balance of Astonishment”.  Or, sometimes, “Mutually Assured Incompetence.”

                Kal-el found a can of chunky pineapples in his kitchen cabinet, and a container of cottage

cheese out back in a tin box.  The wind drove particles of stinging ice into his face, but he didn’t

feel it.  Pain was, for him, a voluntary experience. 

                His computer chair was a drummer’s stool, a collapsible Gibraltar Power Throne.

He sat in front of his monitor, moved his wireless mouse with a nudge of his forefinger. 

Eating with deliberate slowness, he watched the monitor come to life.  Between bites, he brought

up his email program.  It was server-automated, and software sifted the messages for code words

and phrases of things he thought might need his immediate attention.  At the bottom corner of

his Outlook Express in the left hand box, the program said, “You have 17,596 unread messages.”

                About average.  Down in the bunker complex, a dozen of his clones answered email,

another hundred thousand messages a day.  Automatically sifted out were the “Dear Superman,

can you get my neighbor to drop dead” messages.  Emails from civic leaders, volunteer coordinators, educators, local politicians, national politicians, tribal chieftains, individuals who fit the profile of true need, those were the emails he answered and responded to with the appropriate action.