Post Fact

Soooo… I have been laying low since the election.  

What I discovered in the election is that...

MY SILO WALLS ARE VERY THICK AND HIGH AND I THINK MY SILO SITS OUT BY ITSELF IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE.  

To say I was confused by the result is a dramatic understatement.  I pride myself on being well read, well informed and kind of an information junky.  I proudly discussed the fact that I sought out all of the input I could on a day to day basis from what I thought was the “spectrum” of opinion.  This generally included:

1. The Wall Street Journal (Subscribe)

2. The Post Dispatch (Subscribe)

3. NPR (Send them money and listen as default in car)

4. Patriot Radio (Because my brother is Tea Party Conservative and listens to them

I mean that is pretty diverse.  And I listen and read a lot.  I read things on line.  I know the difference between Fake News and a journalistic piece.  I assumed any 6th grader knows that but once again I discovered that I was wrong.

The Drive By Truckers, a southern rock band (being totally unfair to them) came out with a song this year called “What It Means” regarding the current status of the “Black Lives Matter”, “Blue Lives Matter” racial divide that we are all living in post Ferguson.  It is a great song and here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY0qOCUy27Q

But one of the many great lines summarizing our morass is this:

"And we're standing on the precipice
Of prejudice and fear
We trust science just as long
As it tells us what we want to hear
We want our truths all fair and balanced
As long as our notions lie within it
There's no sunlight in our ass'
And our heads are stuck up in it”-DBT

So we are are all just hearing things that confirm our own innate world view and we don't hear anything that disagrees with that. And we all come to the table loaded with opinion. The Internet that was supposed to bring us all together and level the playing field instead is dividing us more than ever in ways we never imagined.

There was nothing in any of my information sources (and I don't want to label them “media” because that has become a prejudicial term) but there was nothing in any of these sources, liberal or conservative that prepared me for the fact that we could elect a man like Donald Trump to be President of the greatest country on earth and perhaps the greatest power in history on that earth. It felt like and it still feels like we gave the car keys to a drunken kid.

I get that the country rejected Hilary (although she won the popular vote she lost the election under the same rules that she thought had gamed the system for her. She was and is, difficult to like, a career politician, weighing every word and evaluating every opportunity to see how it “played”. Nothing got said that was not field tested to make sure it fit one of the demographics needed to cobble together the votes she needed...and she blew it. And she deserved to lose. Don't ever let me be mistaken for a Hilary lover but she was the kind of politician I knew and frankly the kind of politician that our country has historically rewarded. She played the game. I was happy she lost. Just not to this man. What the election said is that there are 48% of voting Americans who reject that and demanded change and it was change at any cost.

I am amazed at how wrong the polls were. Even Five Thirty Eight, my favorite and the other numbers stats guys had it wrong and evidently they had it wrong because no one would admit to a pollster that they were voting for The Donald. How does it feel that we elected a guy that people were embarrassed to acknowledge that they would consider voting for? Not too good.

But ultimately we get the leadership that we deserve. My hope and prayer is that I am wrong and this man who I loathe everything about (and when people ask me what I am basing that on I am basing it on everything he has ever said or done and his entire predatory, self aggrandizing, proud bullying career). I do believe he will bring change. So we pray that God blesses our country and blesses or leaders and for me, I have to expose myself to more and different people. Outside my silo, outside of my work, outside of my church. The fact is that I know more urban African Americans that I do white, rural working poor. Shame on me.

So I am looking for a source for news and for facts. Facts are something we should all be able to agree upon. If you are aware of a source where I might glean these common accepted facts, please advise. If not then I think we all have right to be scared because if there is not place to get facts that we can all agree on then I believe we are all well and truly #$%&*%$$!
Help me out.
Please.

Sooooo...Music has been problematic for me of late.  I am no longer buying music but just renting it and this continues a long occurring trend of “disassociation” from information about the music.  It is a long way from the liner notes I grew up with when I could often find everything I wanted to know about the album.  Who played on all the tracks, where they were recorded, who produced, who wrote.  The lyrics often we all there as well as a “feel” that you were really understanding what the artist was presenting.  You were delving deeper.  It often provided factoids to pretentiously throw at your ever diminishing group of friends who tired of such “card tricks” but still.  I miss them.  CD’s provided the same information but in tiny impersonal print and when I started buying from iTunes the separation continued knowing less and less other than artist name and track name...finally arriving at streaming music where other people (or algorithms) curate play lists tailored specifically for the hundreds of thousands of similarly pretentious pieces of shit like myself who still like to listen to new music.

My brain had tired of the game, reading reviews etc… in order to go deeper.  I was becoming a grazer.  A little of this, a little of that…”oh that is pleasant”.  Awful.  But it happens.  It is just a lot of work to keep up and with digital ALL the music in the world other than Prince and Bob Seger is at your fingertips.  But no filter.  No trusted sources other than NPR, No Depression and Lefsetz and that ain't much.  Rolling Stone long ago became irrelevant.  If it was not a major label release Jann Wenner wasn't having his folks review.  But last year with Courtney Barnett and Wakahatchie I started to try and list again and as always when you listen, there is a LOT of good music out there and there is even some great music.  Although I have my own peculiar tastes I will posit the Band Car Seat Headrest and their latest “Teens of Denial” is great.

The Pitchfork review is worth a read but to give you an idea of the grandeur of the songwriting and the angst:

“Teens of Denial is guitar-driven music filled with book smart lyrics concerned largely with depression, which naturally means that Toledo has been championed in some circles as an “indie rock savior,” whatever that means.”

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21673-teens-of-denial/

I mean Pitchfork is too pretentious 90% of the time to gush.  How uncool is that?  But they nail this one.  Will Toledo is the driving force behind it and in this heroin age he writes of denial, dysfunction and a personal dystopia that the sick and the lame (me) need as we thrash around with out brilliant, depressing, mundane, fabulous, perfect, disastrous and disappointing days.

I don’t have the strength

(I don’t have the time)

I poured myself a drink

(I told myself a lie)

You know I’ve worried

(You know I’ve tried)

Don’t you know I’m not strong?

(Don’t you know I’m not kind?)

Someone’s getting lucky

(Someone’s calling the cops)

Someone take me away

(Someone make it all stop)

I had a bright tomorrow

(I spent it all today)

Now I am silent at last

Now I have nothing to say

If I’m being honest with myself

I haven’t been honest with myself

-Vincent

Now I have to be honest.  I love songwriters who reference Van Gogh.  I love clever word play and if you don't listen to lyrics than you cannot appreciate how brilliant this guy is.  I always figure when I hear something like this that I am catching a guy who is peaking and it is a brilliant feeling.  Most of them never become greats who crank out brilliant music for years.  Their personal psychosis and their talent allow them to deliver a shooting star and then they thrash around but god help me I love the rush of feeding on his brilliance.  

Every song has trite, clever chestnuts.  I remember reading someone talking about alcoholics anonymous and saying the hardest thing is to give yourself up to the cliches like “one day at a time” but equally hard was realizing that those cliches tend to encompass huge and Biblical truths. In his upbeat song “Fill In The Blank” Toledo explains….

I’m so sick of (fill in the blank)

Accomplish more, accomplish nothing

If I were split in two I would just take my fists

So I could beat up the rest of me

You have no right to be depressed

You haven’t tried hard enough to like it

Haven’t seen enough of this world yet

But it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts

Well stop your whining, try again

No one wants to cause you pain

They’re just trying to let some air in

But you hold your breath you hold your breath you hold it

Hold my breath I hold my breath I hold it

I could go on reading and quoting his lyrics all day but the bottom line is this a great lyricist who with his band sounds like the great Ray Davies of the Kinks.  That is a distinctive voice and I don't think I have ever heard anyone and thought…”Ray Davies”.  How cool is that.  The atonal thrash that I love so much is Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Junior cacophony of brilliance and sometimes veers to the brilliance of my fave Built to Spill.

Buy this.  Rent this. Stream this.  Dream this.  You need music and you need to be distracted and you need to be reminded that your pain is not suffered alone and that maybe your pain isn't pain at all.  Thank you will Toledo.  You can bleed for me anytime.