Progressive Wednesday

Something black and white and beautiful

Glenn Gould. The master. Something to start the day off right. Enjoy.

Doing Work for Hard-Working Families

Problem:

Eric and I have held oodles of very different jobs. Here's a list: bookseller, McDonald’s cashier, factory worker, shop foreman for a construction company, maintenance worker at a state park, newspaper reporter, office assistant, courier, audio/visual equipment operator, audio/visual specialist, college professor, substitute teacher, children's writing instructor, home theatre sales associate, customer service associate in a bank, residence life assistant at a college, and phone surveyor. Most of these jobs are the kind that could best be most kindly described as “learning experiences.–

Partly because of these variegated occupations and partly because of where we've been lucky enough to end up in our careers, we have intense sympathy for hard-working families. We know first-hand how hard it can be to sweat all day and feel depressed by the lack of digits in our paychecks, to watch the walls of a cubicle, to live below the poverty line and live payday to payday, to run up credit card debt to make ends meet, to lack health care and have to struggle through illness because we couldn't afford a doctor's visit. Now that we're in better financial positions, we want to do more to help the kind of people we used to call co-workers, the kind of people we still think of as friends.

Work is something Americans think of as the most identifying quality of a person after their name, and yet we tend to treat our hardest working Americans as lesser citizens, as if their low-paying jobs are their own fault. It's a myth that working harder will necessarily make you more money: we know folks who've slaved away at 60-hour-per-week jobs with no advancement. It's a myth that a higher education means a better paying gig: we know PhDs who work in bookstores. There's a myth in America that we live in a meritocracy. We don't.

The American Dream shouldn't be work. The American Dream shouldn't be to make ends meet. The American Dream should be pleasure in all its permutations like spending time with your friends and family, doing things that strengthen, stimulate, and lift our bodies, minds and spirits.

We owe it to one another to care more about how we all make a living. It's that last word, “living,– that we seem to forget.

Photo thanks to this hard worker.

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Make Progress:

The Declaration of Independence reaffirms that we all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it's hard to pursue happiness when you lack health care, when you run up ridiculous dept to survive, when you can barely pay for meals, when you can't see an end in sight for a desk job that you despise. It's hard to pursue happiness when you bring work home with you, literally and mentally. Work is hard for all of us, nurses to farmers, temp workers to truck drivers, pastors and cops and folks who man the factory belts.

Dear readers, work is one of the few things that unites us all as people and states. It's about time we made some 9-to-5 progress.

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Doing Work for Hard-Working Families: Listen

Listen:

We'd like to recommend checking out the poem “What Work Is,– written by the wonderfully grizzled and occasionally gritty poet Philip Levine. This masterful piece of his oozes empathy, crackles with the meaning of labor, and stresses the importance of art and goals. By the last line, Levine turns the poem around on himself with a deft hand and control of simple, accessible language.

About a decade ago, I became aware of Levine's work through my one of my writing mentors, Kathy Fagan, a former student of Levine. Starting seven decades before that, Levine grew up in Detroit, attended at Wayne State University during the nights, and sweated during the days in one of the Motor City's auto plants. He's the author of sixteen (count – ˜em, sixteen!) books of poems. Amongst other prizes, he’s received a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

I highly recommend listening to Levine read the piece by clicking the link below. Consider it an appetizer for this Wednesday. Consider it some calisthenics for this Wednesday. Consider it the essence of this Wednesday captured in 288 words.

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/audio/levine/what_work_is.mp3

You can read along by clicking this sentence. You can snag yourself a copy of the book by clicking this sentence.

“It’s alright to be frightened when there’s light.”

I’ve made no bones about it: Wilco is my favorite band. I ain’t ashamed of this, and I kind of wear it on my short sleeves. When folks foolishly bash the band or tell me I’m a little “into” the sextet, I get protective as a parent.

This is a band contantly morphing its music and line-up, and over the years they’ve had nine different members and five very different studio albums.

Their debut album, AM, is a great example of poppy alt-country. Being There, their sophmore double album, adds classic rock and loads of distortion. Their third album, Summerteeth, is like listening to a nihilistic version of the Beach Boys, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is an album praised high and low for its complexities and trust in its listeners. A Ghost is Born won the band a Grammy for best alternative album of the year. A new CD, Sky Blue Sky, is forthcoming on May 15, 2007.

There’s a tune I prayed, with my fingers crossed as I blew out the candles and wished upon Polaris, would appear on the album. It’s called “What Light.” It’s kinda fantastic. You can legally download the tune by clicking this sentence. And tomorrow (March 11) you can listen to the entire album from 10am to 10pm EST by heading over to their homepage.

Below, you’ll find two versions of “What Light” performed live. Rock.

@ Alderney Landing.

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@ Lollapalooza 2006.

“And don’t you forget it!”

A little over a year ago, my writing mentor and good friend, David Citino, passed away from complications from MS. (Please consider making even a $5 donation here.) Thankfully, he left behind an incredible collection of work, including, my favorite book of his, Broken Symmetry, which snagged a citation for “notable book” from the National Book Critics Circle in 1998. And thankfully, you can find oodles of his work on the web; this verse serves best as a poetic primer to his welcoming, witty and wise work (right now he’s staring down, sighing and shaking his head at that asinine alliteration).

One of my faves is “Reading the M.R.I. Report, the Retired Pastor Considers Dementia.” David often wrote about his illness in ways that describe the disease from the voice of an imagined character, which made for more empathy toward others with MS. David never wanted pity — he found living too glorious for that waste-of-time emotion. You can always read the poem at the Cortland Review, but I’d recommend listening to the big man read it himself.

You can find David all over the web: at Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and in the Roanoke Review and The Literary Review.

Let me tell you one other thing about David. One day as he drove off Ohio State’s campus, he spotted me on the sidewalk, rolled down his window, and yelled, “Hey Z-man! Poetry rocks, and don’t you forget it!”

David, I haven’t.

Drummer boy

In 1984, just as Reagan started forgetting about the arms he was selling to Iran, I started learning how to beat the tar out of the drums.

Mr. Albright was my first conductor, and I remember having to choose between playing the trumpet or the drums — Mr. A needed kids to fill out his brass section, but for reasons I can’t explain, I desperately wanted to play the skins. In fifth grade, I played drum-set on our very fifth grade version of Phil Collins’ very forgettable song, “Sussudio” (this, of course, implies that there’s a memorable Phil Collins tune). A decade of lessons followed, and when I turned 23 these skills were finally put to a good use: rock and freaking roll, baby.

Right now, I’m essentially between bands, pining for another chance to teach my drums a lesson. To me, there has always been something spiritual about knocking something inanimate senseless and having other people call it music. As is the case with most of my fellow percussionists, Buddy Rich wasn’t so much a god to me as much as he was Moses, leading me through the desert of orchestral numbers with better triangle parts than snare. He gave me hope. He gave me rage made magnificently incarnate.

So, now that I’ve got a forum, and now that I’ve got your attention, please, for your sake more than mine, check this sucker out:

This is what I think of when I watch Rich: I’m watching the best there simply ever was and, most likely, ever will be. The greatest. And the thing is, you can tell, if you watch enough of him play, that he never even reached his zenith — if it weren’t for that blasted thing called time, he could have shattered any expectations, blown away any imagination. As it is, much of what he does seems physically impossible.

Ed Shaughnessy, another drummer, is absolutely, mind-bogglingly great. But in this video, Rich kind of puts him to shame (Ed can’t keep up by the end):

All this, plus Rich was a black belt! And he went 250 grand in the red (in 1946!) to keep his band up and running! And he had multiple heart attacks and was told to stop playing and refused to! And he played on the Muppet Show! And then, my friends, there’s this next clip. I don’t just love it because I watched it 1,000 times when I was a kid, or because sweat pours from Rich’s face, or because he’s wearing a damned suit, or because his playing gives me chills. No, I love it because John Williams (the John Williams) looks over at him, utterly awed. Enjoy:

More of our thoughts about music can be found in this Wednesday’s topic:

Yes to Music, No to Muzak.

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To learn more about Progressive Wednesday, just click here, here, or here.

Yes to Music, No to Muzak: Listen

Listen:

We grew up listening to the radio — Matt to oldies and crooners, Eric to 70s pop — and we love the idea of radio — music streaming through the air, cross-crossing the expanses, literally changing (not to sound too sentimental, but rather scientific) the beats of our hearts. But we despise the growing number of commercials, the lack of alternative choices, the top-40 rock and pop leanings on FM. And we're not quite willing or able to shell out ten to thirteen smackers each month for satellite radio. So, we've welcomed Pandora into our lives with open ears.

Believe us, when we first heard about Pandora, we thought there was a hitch. There ain't. Pandora is the product of the Music Genome Project, which, according to its founder, Tim Westergren, aspires to “help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.–

How do they hope to achieve it? Well, the bad boys and girls of the Music Genome Project pour over thousands and thousands of songs, and categorize tunes and artists by considering “melody, harmony and rhythm,– ¦instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony.– By doing this, the software they've created better understands your musical tastes. You select an artist you dig a lot, in my case, my first selection was Wilco, so Pandora started a Wilco “station– for me. When a song plays by an artist other than Wilco that they think I might like based on my preference for Wilco, I'm allowed to rate the song and let them know if I'd like to hear more songs like that one or not.

For example, since writing the first draft of this, my “Wilco Station– has automatically played songs by Sonic Youth (which I told it I dug), Stephen Malkmus (who I didn't realize put out solo work post-Pavement), The Go Betweens (which I told Pandora never to play again for me, thank you very much), Stephin Merritt (ugh), Box Set (another ugh), and Wilco. Based on the thumbs up and down ratings I was able to give, the station changed more to my liking.

The page does have fairly inconspicuous advertisements on the right side of the player, but if you're not into looking at ads, you can buy an ad-free subscription on the cheap.

So why are we suggesting this?

1. It can steer you clear of corporate radio, which is essentially owned by 10 media conglomerations.
2. It offers variety that you control.
3. You're bound to discover little known artists that you never would have thought of or discovered otherwise.
4. You might buy records from here or here and support creative efforts, or better yet, you might go see a show.
5. And if you do number four, you'll be helping the culture progress, because art, more than any other human endeavor, can express and alter a society's desires and intentions.

So go ahead: fire it up.

To learn more about Progressive Wednesday, just click here, here, or here.