i.e. and me

final notes

2012-01-04T09:19:00.000-08:00

The manufactured fun – the manufactured confidence. It’s enough to drop them as cubes into deep sadness. It’s enough to hold them up until first light, filling voids in the voids of dark corners in unfitting nooks of the night. Effortless tears and forced dancing – shows for different crowds, same truth for the observers.

Insecure hedonism – and everybody stands, wondering where their looks went when the stares stutter – when the needs begin – a tank of misunderstanding, and still more pain. The competition is a silly bout of former champions. The emptiness is inside the wet ring left by the engagement of sweat and sheets, left behind, looking forward to awkward interactions. Altercations between self-respect, guilt, and what’s expected – fit for lockered hallways and today’s lessons. Don’t forget what you learn – give attention to what you can learn – it’ll get you breathing on the mouth of meaning, and you won’t have to struggle to hold on to childhood. Even kids know when something is wrong with adults.

You went wrong. It’s the right day to leave. It’s gone, and it’s gone. Pick a spot for a chorus of broken promises. If you can hear the warm, weak beat beneath the flimsy ribs, you surely hear the howling dirge. Hum it in my absence.

the hub

2011-12-28T05:16:00.000-08:00

I don’t owe anyone anything. Perhaps this is why I can make the permanent decisions that need to be made at my path’s city stop – the hub – where the crossroads spider. As I approach, the anxiety becomes palpable – a clear sign that a determination is necessary. If I stall, I deteriorate. If I am static, I’ll self-destruct. The freedom of possibility is the itch of life, screaming at me everything I already know but haven’t acted on – that needs attention, energy, and what’s due.

I don’t owe myself. I owe the perspective. If I waste that, I might as well prune this world from existence. I have responsibilities to my borderline sanity and the open vein to my heart, but I have nothing holding me to my history – only those who want what they want and take what they need – individually – and collectively stand in front of my future. Those who give run beside me – towards the same unknown, with their unique, individual, guttural battle cries – in harmony, with mine, out of tune – or just in tune with myself.

I’ve always known this was a journey we go alone. Friends, family – we grow further apart each spring. Love disappears into the void from which it came. God even got his chance, but was debunked by an eleven year old who had already experienced too much to know better. The universe doesn’t remember being born, and we won’t remember dying. Living is the only thing I know. The only direction to go is forward, and though I hope I can bring my hopes along with me, it’s up to the rest of the world to keep pace with me. I know how chapters end.

I speak this in my shy, dry tone. As it happens – being interrupted or talked over, and never being asked to continue – never heard, never appreciable, so it is acted out. If care is guilt, it is self-satisfying, and we’re back to zero – again. I can wade only so far into absurdity before the anxiety – the itch – shakes awake, leaving me up for days – mostly nights. In the hub, reducing the routes – it is possible, what I’ve imagined – I know, and I’ve said it aloud. It’s only important that I hear it. I do hear it. It is a song I’ve known all along.

The Artist and the Continuing Age of Enlightenment

2011-12-02T15:51:00.000-08:00

The Artist and the Continuing Age of Enlightenment
By: Chad Cheatham

An artist who expects to make enough money doing their art to consistently sustain a living for an entire lifetime is residing inside a fantasy world of their own creation. Thanks to technology, the power once held by the corporate side of the art world – especially in the popular arts like music and film – has begun to dramatically shift towards the artist. However, this does not mean the artist will get a larger share of the money – because it is the business of art that is dying. Music and film are more accessible than ever before, and they can be easily obtained for free. This has not only begun to jackhammer away at the foundations of the business models corporations have had for these main culture streams, but it has also created a serious dilemma for the artists in these mediums.

How does an artist make a living when their art is (inevitably) available for free in the digital realm? Another question, and perhaps a more important one to address first, is should an artist expect to make money off their sacrifice?

The mere idea of making money off a sacrifice is in itself a contradiction, and art has sacrifice at the core. As soon as an artistic expression is externalized, it is immediately subject to another’s interpretation, criticism, and adoration – it sacrifices its identity and intention. The moment it leaves the mind of the artist, it sacrifices ego and pride. It’s a revealing, regardless of whether or not an artist chooses to wear a mask during the presentation. Part of its purpose is to unmask truth, and one must relinquish their knowledge, understanding, and perspective in order to accomplish such a feat.

Art doesn’t come out of the need to sustain a life, and creativity exists inside an artist long before the idea of business or money is even remotely understood. We know art predates currency by about 25,000 years. Money is so separate from the creative spirit that public school systems worldwide have the arts on the bottom of the hierarchy. Nobody chooses to be an artist as a pathway to financial success, and as people get older, they inevitably repress their artistic tendencies for more practical ways of life.

Technology has affected music (and the musician) more than any other medium of art, as shown by the music industry’s downslope over the last decade. Being that they can’t seem to adapt, it seems there will be no upslope in the future. The digital distribution of music – legal and mostly illegal – has increased access to a more diverse world of music. It has busted through the corporate ceiling that radio and MTV was limited to, and with the help of a huge insurgence of music writers on the web, the palates of the masses have been expanded. This has helped create hundreds and maybe even thousands of independent record labels – another avenue on which musicians can approach. However, this change in technology has actually pushed the musician to be a marketing manager instead of an artist – to create brands and products instead of art – a necessity in order to stand out, vying for the chance to get signed to a record label.

Recording music has never been easier, but the relative ease of recording has only created a rising sea of musicians wanting to be heard – all clinging to their demos, hoping a major or noteworthy independent label will come along and rescue them from obscurity. The field has been saturated, and it has become more difficult to sift through – to find a gem. Music blogs and publications have helped, but the audience ultimately ends up having the same problem sorting through that information as well, so the consumer is pushed to retreat to a couple popular media faucets – thus limiting their own access. With the technology, we have created more congestion and clogged the drain.

As for film, making movies is still an expensive endeavor – even in the independent realm. While the six major studio media conglomerates lamented about the changing tastes of movie-goers earlier this year, who have shown some bottom-line-affecting disinterest in big-budget blockbusters, the same corporations should now be celebrating as video-on-demand has shown to be a more than effective outlet for releasing independent films. Recent numbers show the grosses for video-on-demand audiences are equal or even higher for independent films that were released simultaneously or before the theatrical release. When the distribution costs go to practically nothing, and the profits are the same, it leaves a pretty clear picture. Still, video-on-demand does nothing for the aspiring screenwriter, editor, director, or actor – it does nothing to support or enable those unable or unwilling to go the route of Hollywood (or Sundance). Contests and festivals are beneficial to some extent, but an artist shouldn’t be forced to pay for consideration, or to display their art. There has to be another way.

Just as they’ve shown in the music industry, the consumers will ultimately disconnect the power from the corporations. The commercial demand will diminish as the public will expect their culture to be free. We already have public libraries that hold our authors, and now with the convenience of the largest (and most disorganized) library of them all at our fingertips every waking hour, it’s going to be impossible to stop information from being distributed, exchanged, and consumed. The arts are included in this inevitability of advancement, but even if a huge percentage of the money is omitted from the equation or lost, the power still dangles and swings towards the artist. It is up to the artist to grab it, hold it, and utilize it.

Artistic freedom and artistic control is the reason why we have the progression in film in the 1960s and early 1970s, “Citizen Kane”, and Woody Allen’s entire career as one of the most acclaimed filmmakers ever. Wilco’s opus 2001 album, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, is the epitome of an artist’s vision being fulfilled with complete disregard to what the record label wanted them to produce, as documented in Sam Jones' "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart". There are countless other examples, of course, and after a while it becomes undeniable. When an artist is free to disconnect from their responsibilities to an audience or employer, they are free to create and express themselves as they would naturally want or need to. It is true expression. This is where genius is discovered, when classics are created, and sometime later, why classes are developed to study them. Emily Dickinson lived there her entire life.

Making it easier and cheaper to create art is the necessary beginning, but organization is the essential element for growth and sustainability. As the world exists today, for most artistic mediums, you have to go to college to study the techniques, tools, and history. Almost as important, you go to college to begin networking – so you can find employment in your field after graduation. Lowering the cost and increasing organization can be achieved through technology.

Popular music artists (rock, pop, and all in between) have always been able to bypass this engrained path. You can go to any major city and cut your teeth on the stages of the many live venues. You can meet musicians everywhere – it’s not hard to network as a musician in places like New York or Chicago. For other artists – filmmakers, writers, painters, photographers, dancers, actors, etc. – there is really nowhere to go – not many places to meet others in your field, and especially few places that are designed for your medium, as a live music venue is for musicians. In addition, being socially inclined shouldn’t be a requirement in order for an artist’s work to be seen or heard. With technology, now even the most reserved artists can and should have a place to congregate – to find collaborators, other artists to influence and be influenced by.

An easy example of collaboration that can benefit numerous artists is a music recording project. In creating just one song, a project can include musicians, engineers, producers, public relations writer and rep, graphic artist, and a photographer. Add a video, and you can include a film producer, director, actors, cinematographer, dancers, editor, sound engineer, graphic artist for title sequence and credits, and so on. What this does is first builds a large network – it develops a team with a common goal. Collaboration also allows for the delegation of tasks. Musicians can focus on the music, and everyone else can concern themselves with their own individual tasks. It takes less time and more can be done. An increase in efficiency and productivity is what they’d call it in the corporate world.

At the four major music labels, it’s a weekday. For aspiring artists that want to be involved in projects like this, it’s a dream – and it’s also the reason why they go down the current dying, obsolete, or saturated avenues – the only that are available – that lead to corporations, where art and artists go to die. Simply put, we are wasting talent, creations, and time – allowing artists to rot on the vines – corporate and otherwise.

I read about entrepreneurs all the time who discuss how they became so successful off of this or that idea – product or company or whatever – and the consensus seems to believe one should never start a business to make money. It has to be something you’re passionate about because you’re going to have to pour your days, blood, and soul into the endeavor. And it may not happen quickly. This is advice on how to start a business, mind you. At the risk of sounding ironic, it seems that artists need to find humility in being an artist. We need to source from the passions – not from the dreams of fame or money.

Technology is the tool, and we need to use it to build a network – a platform – a grand stage for all artists. We have a place to connect with friends from our past that are strangers today, so I’m sure we can find a way to connect a few ambitious artists moving in the same direction towards a common goal. The question of how to make a living as an artist in tomorrow’s digital world is moot because we can’t begin to address that until the model is changed. We can’t take control of that power without the tools to wield it. Until we build this place to congregate, the majority of the artists (and their art) will be hidden from a world of potential audiences and consumers. They will be modern-day Emily Dickinsons. With the technology that we have, this common tragedy does not have to be. We can change that today. ***

Higher Learning

2011-11-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

Higher learning costs are outrageous by any rational standard. Believing the purpose of college is to produce workers for industry is an archaic ideology, and one that will hopefully die with the Greatest and Baby Boomer Generations. Colleges have become factories, spitting out uneducated children - leaving them with crippling debt and no problem solving skills. Boomers made college a necessity for their children, pushing them through this processing system, but they failed to create enough opportunities for their kids in the last 20 years. They didn't adapt to globalization, nor the technological boom. And, now that they destroyed the economy through negligence and indifference, I hear them blame their kids for not taking the right courses. It's enough to make a sane person sick to their stomach...

State Of Young America: Indebted And Dubious Of Attaining American Dream by Amanda M. Fairbanks

the exposure to the jungle

2011-11-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

there is a line between entertainment and enrichment. those who venture outside popular culture know this line. anyone who has ever gotten laid just by being themselves, knows that line. it exists, and i do hope more find it. perhaps it would be better visualized as separate circles, to which, on occasion, i don't mind an intersection of them, ala venn. however, the residue left behind by moments with depth protects me from the cold of this dying jungle, and i prefer not to die from exposure...

The Bonus Army - 1932

2011-10-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

Poignant. 1932. World War I veterans (most unemployed) marched on Washington D.C. They camped out there and gathered at the Capitol. Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his troops eventually pushed the veterans out with tear gas, burning down their camp sites and even killing a couple people. This should be watched. Three parts on YouTube. Here's the first:

wake up

2011-10-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

looking at how much people spend on end-of-life health care, it's obvious to me that a great number of people don't appreciate life until they realize how close death is to them. hold that thought tightly at all times because you are constantly walking a thin line between the two worlds. live your days, and hold dear those enriching times - don't wait until you are faced with the inevitable. say the words now. do the things now. tomorrow can be anything you want it to be, as long as you wake up in the morning...

the tri-generation

2011-10-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

the post-boomer tri-generation finally has their rite of passage in front of them. the information revolution has made this moment possible - when the age of enlightenment can actually flourish and be sustained. the sciences, the arts, the government of the people - all influencing each other, erasing the boundaries of a previous generation and leading with reason. the citizens are the breath of that voice. it is the nature of things - the youth overtakes the old and rejects their outdated worldview...

the open door

2011-10-04T23:19:00.001-07:00

I can’t tell if I’m in denial or if the hope is real. It is an epic – in proportion and length – and there remains no definite end in sight, even though the separation is here. I feel relief, as if I know for certain that I still hold what I had – I just can’t hold what I have.

But keep the door open, she says. Everything that I held locked up in that small, hidden room was released when she sapped the dark from inside. She is the only one who could close the door. She runs, but asks me to stay. This is an individual journey that I brought to be, yet I am the witness, not the participant. I wait, forever in a Chicago fall, trying to avoid touching the bottom.

Future photographs were already taken, and the echoes of her movements push out from the walls, surrounding my hands surrounding my head. It is reduced to faith – belief in the sustainability of what is already self-evident. All we have to acknowledge is that it exists, and my imagination can stay intact.

One circle is halfway complete, and it is time for the rebirth and return. The other hasn’t quite gotten past the first arc, and is set aside for the other’s ordeal, but will be celebrated at the culmination – one journey exploding into another, finally accepting the launch.

And then there is nothing. A body disposed of – a love disconnected. And I just want to run again. I can’t have my life back because it’s been in transition, and that’s where it remains. I want what I last saw. I hold the door for that – the raw, true expression. Tomorrow can always be too late, but today we are left with no other choice.

the certain void

2011-10-04T03:05:00.001-07:00

The void consumes my sleep. Pulled away by momentum – pushed away by silence and secrecy. The guilt is the only giver and the damage of revelation will take it all away. A year of exhaustion – of separation – desperately clinging to both extremes – left to stand as a new statue. Battered city, broken hands, fits that match a past – I can’t feel my lips, cracked and holding truth. The presence of pain, rotting my ribs like old garbage – eating through every idea of worth and scale – is handed down the chain, linking history with the present, and dismantling the future. The lack of urgency is a comfortable nest – the distance assures there is only one victim. My eyes defend, knowing how dangerous it is to dream.

disorganized mob

2011-09-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

the older i get, the less energy i have to logically explain anything to an irrational, ignorant youth, who seem to have the buzz of a television set surrounding their ears - closed off and unable to hear anything other than what they think today. mob mentality rules in an insecure group, all looking to lynch anything they don't understand yet. quick to defend themselves against those who disagree with the statement, even though they may agree with the idea. nothing is more dangerous than projected ignorance. nothing evokes pity more than insistent irrationality...

always warm blanket

2011-09-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

such innocence is stark. but when such innocence reveals ignorance, it's simply naivety - and i refer to a maturity to which i am painted with - i leave the intrigue to those who have never found the thing they want most. i have experienced it, to its fullest extent, and not for a moment could i trick myself into believing any one of she could have any thing on her. in her worst, she blankets my world with residue of her best.

pains of the day

2011-09-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

while the suburban urbans never grow up, and do what they can to tap into "the best years of their lives" (high school and college), the hipsters try to regain a youth they never experienced with misindividualism and false freedoms. we all want so much, but nobody wants to face pains of the day...

Loft Space

2011-09-15T20:58:00.002-07:00

Here's a still from "The Conversation" - Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman, 1974. This film would never get made today. I should start a list. This is the first entry in "Best Films That Wouldn't Get Made Today" - or BFTWGMT.

Anyway, if anyone knows of loft space like this, please let me know immediately!

nancy upton

2011-09-15T20:58:00.001-07:00

good sign: nancy upton. absurdity as a medium - as a check and balance for consumers and companies. it's a new powerful new tool, thanks to technology. it's nice to know truth can spread and reveal repulsive actions/perceptions by anyone. the further we go, the more difficult it will become to hide behind the facade of branding and damage control...

power struggle

2011-09-15T20:57:00.001-07:00

there were over 11,000 corporate lobbyists in d.c. in 2010. there are over 300,000,000 citizens. there is power in numbers. there is a lot of power wasted and ignored. the surprise and shock is tiresome, just as it was when people once exclaimed, "cigarettes are bad for you?!" the "i can't believe that happened" society gets herded. waiting for the aggressive monkeys to eat the tainted garbage and die. evidently, our hierarchy is the same.

they write themselves

2011-09-15T03:18:00.001-07:00

editing life - rewriting, erasing. blue moods, sparks of excitement, notable adventures. timeless stories develop. the insights we miss - the loss of essence we experience. tangents, spells, sprawls, and tic-toc - i'll pick it up again tomorrow. building character. chapter after chapter. honing dialogue. creating conflict and resolving human flaws. growth, tests, challenges, defeats, and ultimate boon - ultimate sacrifice and resurrection - learned lessons. mastery - it's complete. it's time for a new journey. a task of living, this writing and editing life...

Leon Russell - Tulsa, OK

2011-09-08T02:26:00.000-07:00

One of the best songs ever crafted...

Waiting For "Superman"

2011-09-03T23:25:00.001-07:00

I finally saw "Waiting for 'Superman'" today. It was similar to my "Food, Inc." experience, in that I had an idea of how things were through reading books, articles, etc. - how fucked up things were - but seeing it laid out as both of these documentaries do is that much more impacting. It really does demonstrate the power of film. "Waiting For 'Superman'", which is about the horrific public school system we have in America, is something everyone should see.

The one thing that really cut me deeper than everything else - above all the great stories of educators who are doing good or wanting to do more - is the fact that these young kids are having their hopes stomped out by the reality of how things are (as opposed to how things could be). Early on, they feel the disappointment and disenchantment - and all they want to do is learn.

We are rushing up to a tipping point in this country. Too many of the essentials broken. Find two hours in your week and watch "Waiting For 'Superman'". If you're not moved by it, you don't have a soul.

You can go here and watch it in 8 parts for free. Or rent it.

Trailer:

Creativity In Schools (Ken Robinson @ TED)

2011-09-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

Here, Ken Robinson talks at TED (in 2006) about the need to nurture creativity in schools. As someone who had his creativity consistently quashed since I was in grade school, I find this presentation very familiar. The idea is immensely important, and well presented.

what is, what can be

2011-08-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

the primary difference in most of my encounters is that i see what can be a lot clearer than what is. i've seen the potential. my body just has to catch up. my heart and mind are already, always there. my persistence knows no time. this is the foreign land - what is. home is what can be.

Harry Nilsson - Brooklyn, NY

2011-08-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

Last night, I watched the penetrating Harry Nilsson BBC special from 1971 for the third time and was more impressed than ever. Where are artists like this today? They simply don't exist, nor is there any sort of demand for them. He wrote for The Monkees, did an entire album of Randy Newman covers, did the Popeye soundtrack for Robert Altman, was the best man at Ringo Starr's wedding, and had his album Pussy Cats produced by John Lennon (who participated in a screaming match with Nilsson, resulting in permanent damage to Harry's beautiful vocal cords), among many, many other things. He had one of the best voices popular music ever knew, and had an amazing knack for melody. Completely under-appreciated.

Do yourself a favor and discover this man's music.

Start with Nilsson Schmilsson, Aerial Ballet, or Pandemonium Shadow Show.

There's also a documentary on Netflix right now titled Who is Harry Nilsson?:

The site/blog where the BBC special is located has an immense amount of information and free music related to Harry Nilsson.

returning

2011-08-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

There's too much to be said. There's too much to share. There's just too much, so expression is necessary for my sanity. It's going to be all over the place. It's going to be fun.

Starting with this - The Power of Myth - interviews with Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers. This is the 4th episode (of 6 episodes), titled "Sacrifice and Bliss". The entire series is one of the most impacting things I've consumed in my adult life. It's informative, insightful, and simply entertaining. Campbell's excitement in speaking about these subjects - these myths and ideas - is captivating and enjoyable on many levels. Each episode is about an hour long.

the moon is close

2011-03-11T13:44:00.001-08:00

some massive changes coming to america. moods are shifting. tired masses with too much information. caught in the cookie jar too many times - too much. it's affecting people. discomfort is a bad place to gloat. the power struggle has the world shaking. don't count out the youth. we're too young to have our dreams taken away...

Short Film - the Record Low

2011-03-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a short film I did recently. The original idea was a documentary on the Chicago band, the Record Low. Unfortunately, we ran into some production issues and shut the project down after just one day. HOWEVER, I salvaged a few minutes of film and put together this little teaser of a short film. Dig.

Visit the Record Low here: the Record Low

the sunset of thirty-four

2011-01-18T20:58:00.000-08:00

When everything is still, a glance at a photograph of fossilized years will reveal footprints, tread marks, blood stains, broken fragments, and crumbs of moments left behind – not used to find your way back, but to see from where it is you came – how you arrived here, now. Risk the world and run the gamut – survive the gauntlet and run it again because there is no other way to live.

I have filled these years with chance, grit, and audacity – the success or failure is determined by others. People listened, most ignored – the purpose never changed, and if I can look back it means I have traveled and transcended. Celebrations are fleeting, and all moments gone are mourned. It’s cyclical, and fixed in the center of the wheel allows every dragon to spin around and around while I view the horizon I move towards.

the dawn of thirty-four

2011-01-18T18:27:00.001-08:00

I revolve and revolve, but I am stationary. Ideas are smiled at, actions are ignored – if your closest friends, family and lovers don’t lend an eye or ear to the passions you can’t contain, who else can be expected to lean in with interest? I've wasted these years – I’ve put aside experiences – I’ve left indulgence for some sort of higher ground. All for nothing. I’m now at the point where endeavors can’t even be lifted onto my toes before they’re dropped in futility. This is what I’ve become, and there’s nothing more to become. There are no more celebrations – all is for mourning. In cycle. In place.

"i'm still here" movie review

2010-12-30T16:33:00.000-08:00

It’s always difficult to presume the intentions of an artist, but it’s always easy to observe the reaction of the audience. In the case of Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck, and their experimental documentary/mockumentary/film, “I’m Still Here”, it would be a mistake to focus solely on the film and the artists. The real story is the way our society limits, ridicules, judges, and ruins artists. It is through Joaquin Phoenix’s dedication to his craft that we are able to realize how seriously ridiculous our society is.

If this were perceived strictly as a film, the audience would praise Phoenix for submerging himself, through method acting, in a character for a year. The documentary piece of “I’m Still Here” should bring accolades for Phoenix’s courage to risk his entire career – not on rapping, but on his public image, which is the single most important element of an actor’s career. Unfortunately, even after the film’s release, you have critics and the public voicing anger and dismissals simply because they can’t see past their own noses. Even Roger Ebert said he would be “pissed” if it turned out that “I’m Still Here” and Joaquin Phoenix’s downward spiral was not real. Why?! It’s entertaining at the least. At the most, it’s a clear picture of our closed-minded society – building walls for artists and ignorantly type-casting artists from every medium.

The document is over the top in several ways, but so are most films. It’s futile to attempt to figure out what’s real and what’s staged or scripted, but what’s certain is that everyone’s reaction to Phoenix’s endeavor is obvious and honest – frightening so. The abuse this actor has to endure from the public is disgusting, regardless of whether he’s acting or not. Phoenix’s destruction of his own golden public image is magnificent, but the public is only interested in providing its own wrecking ball and dynamite. It is the disease of the generation – the insecurity created by constant advertising – the desperation in maintaining a specific image – all externalized and pushed onto anyone different or wanting to divert from the norm. While the majority of Americans indulge in and consume mindless art, music, and film, they play ignorant hypocrites by judging things they have no knowledge about.

Today, people celebrate the real-life method acting that Andy Kaufmann performed, and it makes me wonder if anyone will eventually see Phoenix’s genius in his endeavor. “I’m Still Here” is not a great film or documentary – technically or otherwise – but it does capture a culture obsessed with pulling down anyone who doesn’t follow their expectations and demands. The insecure feed off the destruction of others – like hyenas crowding around a beautiful bloody gazelle. The best thing about “I’m Still Here” is that it managed to hold up a mirror while sacrificing one of its own. Phoenix’s career may be stunted in the wake of the poor reaction to the film, but he will be back. Just as the movie suggests, he will be resurrected. He simply needed a clean slate. He needed to confuse the audience. He needed to remove their expectations so that he could start fresh. Whether he intended it or not, he ultimately succeeded.

setting a pace

2010-11-30T10:23:00.000-08:00

One of the worst feelings is that of being alone. It is an artist’s curse. I finally feel like I can ease off myself a bit. I’ve gained respect from those around me, and though most never knew, I needed another lifetime to counter the disrespect I deserved through the first part. Being that one task was to surround myself with better people, it means I must be at that level as well. It takes a few beatings – it takes loss. Hammering out dents is not easy, and shedding skin is not painless. It does not take days – it takes several years to identify, adapt, overcome, and dominate your internal and external hindrances.

The work is never over – the fine tuning, the buffering, the polishing – but I now realize there is a time to slow the pace – to focus on production – to redistribute some of my energy to other areas. It is not that external acceptance is necessary for fulfillment, but it is the evidence one takes to prove to themselves that they are not alone in their thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. I am my own watcher, and the plan is mine. It is time to make goals. The death of winter always produces green. We rotate, we fall, and we rise. In this, we are never alone.

election day 2010

2010-11-11T22:15:00.000-08:00

I’m not disenfranchised with my government – I’m disappointed in the People. An uninformed, impatient public with ridiculous expectations and short-term memories – a culture of excess and image – will always result in disillusionment. People are unhappy because they’re impatient, and don’t have a sense of reality. In a world where information is so readily available, citizens still rely solely on sensational headlines to guide their perceptions and opinions. Welcome to the Twentieth Century, Mr. Hearst. They’re too busy to get nowhere, waste time on Facebook, and play games on their phones – too overwhelmed by nothing on television to actually read information and reason with it.

We defined the culture in which our government breeds – congressional seats bought by companies we support with all the shit we buy. We allowed all this to happen. We gave free-reign to corporations – to influence how we live and what we consume (without realizing how we live or knowing what we consume). We got fat on fads and trends and short-term orgasms. Our work ethic has disappeared, and the only things we manufacture are social degradation, knee-jerk reactions, facades for comfort, life-hindering processes, and consistent apathy. Even our artists have become lazy and content. Technological advances are dismissed for enhancements to image. All the while, the majority gets poorer – complacent, and conditioned to expect so much for doing so little. You can’t build or rebuild something if everyone expects someone else to bust their knuckles, bleed, sweat, and want something better badly enough to do something about it. Long gone are the ideas of Lincoln, Teddy, FDR, JFK, and Obama. Hope, change, and you fix it while we sit back and do nothing except bicker over the irrational.

The People expect the government to create jobs for them while businesses refuse to hire, and they ignore the fact that the only real impact the government can have on employment is starting a war, which nobody and everybody wants. Work programs would be a nice snack, but businesses housing jobs in America is the real stuff. The People have set the demand for cheap products – we have been raised in an advertising culture, where we have conditioned ourselves to buy all the cheap crap we don’t need – from other countries. It was the death of Ma and Pa, and it poisoned the well for future generations – producing less local jobs, making it increasingly more difficult to sustain our way of life – to redefine the way. We have turned life into a process to expedite our death with a numbness that puts cocaine in the wind.

The changes are the same – no generation lacks their share – the cycle is simply sped up. We rise and fall with the rush of this or that process. The chip in the phone sounds an alarm to wake – the same chip used to rig an exploding plane. We sit in an assembly line for food that has been removed from the chain, putting us in line at the hospital, on transplant lists – waiting to pay all the medical bills that come with declining health and a large Diet Coke. We stare at screens, doing tasks according to standard operating procedures – systematically removing our hopes, dreams, and ideas of what our nature is. Our relationships have been streamlined by magazine articles on how to act, dress, and talk – what to like, buy, and spread – designed to bring people together, yet forcing insecurities to dictate action, thus causing divisions.

Our days end with anxiety – the nightly news of choice, or the thought that things are crumbling all around us. People are dying in discouragement, and there’s nothing they can do about it except purchase the little pill that makes it all better – until another pill is needed to counteract the side effects from the first pill – until another pill is needed to counteract the side effects from the second pill that is keeping the first pill from causing an allergic reaction to things nobody has ever been allergic to, which has to be taken with food – processed fifteen different ways, cooked with radiation in a microwave – giving everything an artificial flavor and less nutrients. We need an unhealthy dose of sodium to make it edible to the tongue, and a horse-pill vitamin to supplement.

The sleep. Our subconscious is buried, and unable to scream loud enough to shake us awake. The American promise has been rescinded – opportunity is created by the individual, and the individual has been processed into a mass – packaged in the same wrappers, vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag. We have sold our opportunities to other parts of the world – at the price of our identity and humanity. We have become poor slaves to our own creation, and we have no idea how to release ourselves from the nightmare we have written into our history books.

Mad Men - Episode 13 - "Tomorrowland"

2010-10-18T21:49:00.000-07:00

PREFACE
This weekly entry is for those who have seen the first three seasons of “Mad Men”. This commentary is about the story, and the reduction of it. It is not a prediction, nor is it a hope of what is to come - I don't watch the previews. It is a working draft at all times, but hell if it isn’t insightful.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 13
“Tomorrowland”
Written by: Jonathan Igla and Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Matthew Weiner

Don Draper’s tests were evident. Don had to deal with his past, his new role as weekend father, his guilt-ridden freedom following his divorce, his alcoholism, and his vulnerable infant: SCDP. He needed to open up and release – to shed his skin and put on a new suit. He needed to use his newfound fame on Madison Avenue and secure his agency’s future. He had to trudge through it all while walking around with a bulls-eye on his back. But in the end, the writers failed to resolve the shadows of Don, or confront the death rattle of SCDP. To build such a solid foundation and fail to roof the structure is a misstep in storytelling. Keeping the fate of SCDP in such aimless limbo until the next season is flawed writing.

At the end of this circle, Don’s past still lingers. This particular storyline is becoming stale. It doesn’t matter who will find out next if he never actually has to confront it. After close to two years of being divorced, both Betty and Don simultaneously decide it’s time to move on. With Anna gone and Betty moving, Don is able to sell two houses that take up large portions of his past. At the same time, it’s apparent that he’ll someday have to tell his kids that Dick isn’t just a nickname, not to mention his new fiancée. It seems to be a never-ending issue that is never dealt with – a straight line is not an arc. The only purpose of having such a plateau is if it’s the one shadow he’ll never outrun – the one that is dealt with eventually at the climax of the entire series. However, you can only drag Act II along so far before it gets old. It’s at that point.

Over the past several months inside 1965, Don has been getting into shape – swimming to clear his head, and cutting down on his drinking. He still relies on others to help him curb his drinking, but this is one thing he will continue to struggle with now that the tide has turned and he admitted he has a problem. It caused many failures this year, and it’s likely he will fall back into it at least once, for alcoholism is a disease to be controlled, not cured.

After months of bouncing from woman to hooker to woman, Don finally finds the one that fulfills what he wants – what he needs all the way through. Allison and Bethany were both sparkling young women, but they were still girls. Faye was a mature woman who Don could confide in and trust, but it is Megan who makes him feel alive. Unlike Faye, Megan is great with the kids, and she also shows she could fill the role of consoler and listener, like Faye. Probably the most important quality that makes her stand out – against perhaps the biggest challenger in Don’s subconscious, Betty – is Megan’s calmness in tense situations. Don saw this when Sally fell down at the office, and he sees it when the milkshake is spilled at the California burger joint. The entire family is stunned, and yet relieved. This is the one thing Don succeeds at – getting his family life in order. He becomes a better father, and he adds a new mother who can help stabilize him, as well as the kids.

SCDP is in turmoil, yet its fate is left uncertain. We are left with a glimpse of hope as Peggy lands the Topaz account, but the only thing it really does is break the “no new business” streak. They still need big accounts, and if they don’t get them in the next few months, SCDP is no more. SCDP is no more anyway because there is no Cooper. The story begins with SCDP not being secure or independent. They are forced to meet that challenge, and then the writers never write in the resolution. The main storyline of Mad Men is left undone at the end.

The question is posed in the first episode: “Who is Don Draper?” We know who Don is. He is a good man with a good heart. He has flaws, and every year he seems to confront them in some way, and even resolves a few here and there. He has weak moments, gets scared, and isn’t sure of himself at times. He’s aware that you don’t always succeed at being the person you want to be, and therefore, he is human. Throughout his story, Don is viewed in overwhelmingly glowing light or infinitely dark shadow. He seems to save some, and then crush others. Because of this, he has a target on him – good and bad – just as any powerful figure will have. There were a number of potential assassins, but nothing ever stood up and challenged Don completely, so it’s still uncertain as to how Don will fair in a real shootout at high noon.

Besides the obvious dangling SCDP storyline, “1965 in America” was shown in the first half of the story, but ignored down the stretch. Race was touched upon, and the women’s liberation movement pushed off. The race issue went to the back burner, and the women got an episode dedicated to them. As the decade goes on, more societal issues will have to be dealt with, as they begin to affect more and more of the population. If a writer is going to incorporate the era into the storylines, they have to do it all the way through, or at the very least, bring attention to it when it is most important.

Family over work is the lasting lesson Don learned this season. But his agency is also his family. They show him feeling such things when he mournfully gazes at the workers SCDP laid off. He cannot keep its fate in limbo. Perhaps next season he will take on this challenge. Perhaps we’ll find out what happens with the American Cancer Society and the meetings he had in California. Perhaps we’ll find out what the new company name will be. Perhaps the end to season four will be included next year in season five. With a very disappointing and botched ending to this season’s story, hope is all the audience is left with until the end of summer 2011. ***

SUBPLOTS

Peggy:
She has shown herself capable and important. She is becoming a woman with a career. She can stand up to men, she has a powerful position at the agency, and she brings in the first piece of business since SCDP lost Lucky Strike. She is kicking ass.

But then she stumbles again at the very end, and wallows in assumption and misperception. She fights so hard for “The Woman,” but then dismisses a woman like Megan as just a pretty face. She does something good by bringing in a new account, but then is seemingly jealous at the attention Megan is getting from Don. She first claims to have saved the agency, but then she wrongly accuses Don of not caring that much about the new account. Don beams with joy and voices a heartfelt and happy “good job” upon hearing the news. To miss that would be to be blind with envy.

For Peggy, her overall arc will include more power in the agency or an agency of her own. She is in line for a partnership. The storylines with Abe, and also her child (who is still at her mother’s?), can continue on into next season, but they’ll need more attention.

She may have to work with Megan, as Joan suggested. Her biggest struggle is that of the woman. If Megan is nearby, it will help Peggy, and the movement. This sort of change will be tough on both of them.

Megan:
Megan has gone from the girl in the background that Joan mentions by name to Don Draper’s future wife. If she is true to the character that was built, Megan is a force of a woman. She is young, and will be going through her own changes, but she has shown herself intelligent, versatile, quick-thinking, accountable, reliable, supportive, caring, calm, mature, ambitious, talented, worldly, aware, hard-working, and good with kids. On top of being a knockout, that’s not a bad start. Her future is uncertain, in a time of uncertainty. Her storyline is in its infancy, but it is crawling along now.

Faye:
Faye Miller played Dr. Faye for Don. Utilizing Peggy, Faye, and his notebook, Don was able to vent and reveal himself. Faye was always there to give him some sort of advice – to treat him in some fashion. She fell in love with her patient, but he didn’t fall in love with his doctor.

One notable is that Don was right in his argument with Faye: you can’t predict someone’s future actions just because you know something from their past or about their childhood. Don proves this at the end. This also puts Faye in the category of Joan and Peggy, when they make the poor assumption that Don is marrying because Megan’s just a pretty face. They all think they know Don, yet they are constantly surprised by his actions. Faye said he’d be married within a year, which is true, but she claimed she knows his type. He can’t be holding to a type if his only reason for getting married is falling in love.

Faye Miller may not be gone forever. She may show up later as a competitor, setting up her own shop. She knows Don’s secret, so that’s always out there. The one thing that strikes me as strange is that at the very end, while she’s at home and on the phone with Don, she has her “fake” wedding ring on. I thought she only wore it while working, but maybe I was mistaken. Either way, she may pop up again someday.

Joan:
Joan being pregnant isn’t a surprise, but the fact that she didn’t tell Roger is a bit…deceitful, to say the least. With her husband in Vietnam, one can expect Joan to be living the life of a single mother next season. If he comes home, she’ll be forced to live a lie every day of her life.

She got a promotion, but it seems she blames sexism for not getting a raise with the title change. Under the circumstances at the agency, one would think she’d be more understanding.

Nice to see Joan and Peggy bond at the end. Unfortunately, they bond over gossip. This ending does nothing but demean both women to some degree.

Pete:
Pete’s storyline was forgotten. He had a child, and he had to dump North American Aviation – that’s about it for his storyline. He talked big talk this season, but didn’t bring in the big score (Vicks doesn’t count because it’s directly related to the baby). He definitely didn’t show himself capable of filling Roger’s shoes, so Roger is forced to stay on the show and in the storyline.

Not finishing Pete’s arc is another failure on the writer’s part.

Roger:
He’s the living dead. It’s uncertain why he’s still around. He was dying all season, and yet he lingers going into the next. And he doesn’t have a clue about his unborn child.

Leaving him open-ended is another failure on the writer’s part.

Cosgrove:
Shows himself a man who chooses family over work, which is admirable (and Don takes note), but it still seems like he’s out of sync with the rest of the company. Even during his meeting with Peggy, he stumbles and says something stupid. His fate is uncertain.

The good thing is that he ended up being a true ally to Peggy, as suggested he may be.

Lane:
His family is back in New York. He apparently succumbed to his father’s pressures and broke with the black woman. I’m guessing at this because the storyline was ignored at the end.

Harry:
Nothing really changed for him. He’s the same as he was in episode one of season four.

Cooper:
Is gone. Since nothing was said about his leaving or whether he’ll be back, we can only assume he’s gone for good.

Betty:
Betty doesn’t learn anything this season. Her new life is still rocky. Henry is just about fed up with her. She’s a horrible mother, still. She fires Carla for a bullshit reason. She’s a worthless person, and as a character with no arc, she’s a pointless character.

She’s moving, so perhaps she’ll be gone from the show. Her character has no arc, so it wouldn’t harm the story one bit.

THE LEFTOVERS
Tidbits and Observations

The “holiday”? Labor Day?

Stephanie didn’t seem confused about Don saying Dick was his nickname, even though Stephanie only knows him by Dick. Perhaps Anna told her?

Betty obviously waits for Don at the house at the end, and lies about not knowing why he’s there. She puts on make-up and talks about how rough it’s been for her. Did she actually think she could entice him?

The ending song, “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher gives us the idea that Don and Megan are going to be a serious thing – that they’re going to be a real team. I added another Sonny and Cher song – one that I prefer.

LISTEN: Sonny and Cher – I Got You Babe
LISTEN: Sonny and Cher – The Beat Goes On

Mad Men - Episode 12 - "Blowing Smoke"

2010-10-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

Mad Men - Episode 11 - "Chinese Wall"

2010-10-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

Mad Men - Episode 10 - "Hands and Knees"

2010-09-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

PREFACE
This weekly entry is for those who have seen the first three seasons of “Mad Men”. This commentary is about the story, and the reduction of it. It is not a prediction, nor is it a hope of what is to come - I don't watch the previews. It is a working draft at all times, but hell if it isn’t insightful.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 10
“Hands and Knees”
Written by: Matthew Weiner and Jonathan Abrahams
Directed by: Lynn Shelton

It’s suddenly August, and Don is naked. He is shivering with fever, and sick with anxiety about a looming death blow to the life he built and the life he knows. He is surrounded by his own carelessness, selfishness, and disease. He is about to self-destruct, and leave everything behind at a moment’s notice. He is still shifting most of his blame, and asking others to help out all too much. He is in danger, and he knows it. He is scared.

It’s all related to North American Aviation, who requires those working with them to fill out an application for security clearance with the government. Don’s new secretary, Megan, fills out the form for Don, but he doesn’t recall signing off on it. This sets the cogs in motion. Betty actually helps Don out by not revealing who he really is to the FBI and Department of Defense – a surprise to Don, as well as the audience. However, when he asks Pete to help him, Pete does so begrudgingly. Everybody, from Don’s lawyer to Megan to Pete to Dr. Faye, believes everything will be ok – no matter what he does – but Don feels the walls closing in, and his escapist tendencies start bubbling up.

He has some comfort zones, as Dr. Faye tries to take care of him, Megan will do anything for him, and Pete ultimately takes the hit for Don by killing the NAA account. However, his security blanket is about to be ripped from him. His secrets are too close to the surface, and after playing patient and confessing his reincarnation as Don Draper to Dr. Faye, he is too vulnerable for nothing to happen to him. He says flatly that he shouldn’t have told Faye, even though Faye seems to understand and wants to help him, but he also knows there’s nothing he can do – his past is going to catch up with him sooner or later, and he is tired of running away from it. This means he has to face his largest shadow. It began early in the story, and it has returned season after season, but now seems to be the time when he’ll have to release his past – or reveal it – or have it revealed and deal with the consequences.

There are a few visible scenarios in which Don can and will be defeated before he rises again, and there are obviously more that can come out of nowhere. One is Pete. Pete’s growing animosity towards Don and his recklessness is quite clear. Pete bites the bullet for Don, and rids of an account he worked so hard to build. So, it seems his resentment is justified and boiling over, but he may simply swallow it as he has in the past – as he does by ridding of the NAA account at the end of the episode.

Another possible misstep is Don pissing away his relationship with Dr. Faye, and her knowledge of his secret puts him in a very vulnerable place. However, she may be in a place to help Don with this problem because her dad is connected to the mob. But, in the final scene, he stares down Megan as she puts her lipstick on. Combine this with his lawyer asking about Don fucking Megan, not to mention Megan’s bond with Sally in the previous episode, and it seems that Don may run in that direction. Afterall, drink and women are his safe-houses.

And, the most obvious landmine is Betty, who knows all about his secrets. She may have an obligation to tell Henry because of his political ties, but she also has a responsibility to her kids’ future, which includes their father, and his money.

During his anxiety attack, Don rips off his clothes, showing he’s no longer comfortable in his own skin, and his own internal demons are choking him from within. Faye says she won’t leave him as he struggles and gasps for air, but he may finally make a mistake that he can’t walk away from – one that results in Don Draper having to face the firing squad. He will not escape this test unharmed, and after he shaves some of the weight he’s been carrying all this time, he will emerge a new man at the end. ***

SUBPLOTS

Joan/Roger:
Joan tells Roger she’s pregnant – no surprise. Roger reacts like a child, and gets scolded for it by the doctor they go to. “Selfish” and “irresponsible” barely cover the description of Roger’s reaction to the pregnancy. His tone and lack of perspective is completely out of synch with Joan, and she decides to handle the situation herself.

She is shown at the abortion clinic, but she never confirms the abortion was actually performed. Her conversation with a young mother who brings her 17-year-old daughter in to the clinic shows Joan has deep-seated regrets about her abortion(s). Assuming Joan is there for her own daughter, the woman asks how old that assumed daughter is. 15 years old may actually refer to Joan’s first aborted child. She tells Roger that a tragedy had been avoided. To Roger, that means an abortion. To Joan, that may mean she is keeping the child and simply not telling anyone, which would be another huge secret inside the walls of SCDP.

With Lane taking a leave of absence, Joan is left to take care of the finances – a big temporary promotion and test for Joan. Being that Roger is so close to Joan, and confides in her his deepest fears and problems, he will most likely tell her about losing Lucky Strike. Now in charge, Joan won’t be able to keep this a secret – at least, not completely. Then again, Don or someone else in the agency may find out about the demise of Lucky Strike before that happens. Either way, Roger can’t begin getting SCDP’s affairs in order without telling anyone about the iceberg they just hit.

Pete:
Pete’s righteousness is becoming an issue, and a comeuppance is needed. Specifically, his hypocritical castigation of Don to Trudy, about how he’s tired of people dragging their problems through other people’s lives – leaving him to pick up the pieces – is ridiculous, considering his own secret involving a baby with Peggy. If Pete is going to be part of SCDP, yes, he has to live with Don’s shit over his head, just as Peggy and Trudy have to live with Pete’s cache of shit.

Pete is so hot and cold – likeable and downright detestable (and not in an anti-hero sort of way – more like a straight villain) – that it makes it hard to root for his success. His fear is Don’s fear. If Don gets figured out, Pete is out of a job, and the business he was building is gone. Don even suggests Pete could take over the agency if he has to leave – to which Pete quivers. He needs Don, and he knows it, but knowing about Don’s biggest secret (and now a small one – Dr. Faye) may be too much for him to handle. That is, until his own secret is revealed. Perhaps he’ll be humbled and ask himself why he can’t live in the open, just as he asked Don.

In the end, taking the rap for NAA going away, not to mention the berating he receives from Roger, is noble. As a partner – if he wants to succeed, along with SCDP – he has to learn to do what’s best for the agency. Between Cosgrove and the NAA situation alone, he is learning this lesson, but his resistance and lack of perception (see Peggy earlier this season) may be standing in the way of his true successes.

Lane:
When did he fall in love with a black Playboy bunny?! The only reference to the Civil Rights issues the United States encountered in July of 1965 is delegated to the British guy? Eh.

Instead of Lane’s son coming to visit for two weeks, his father arrives with surprise to bring him back to England with him. His controlling father is a bit of an asshole, and I’m not sure it fits Lane’s character to have such a father, but here it is nonetheless. In short, Lane attempts to make a stand against his father, using his new love interest, Toni, but is literally beaten down and defeated.

One interesting thing is that his father crushes his fingers until he replies “yes, sir” to returning to England to get his family issues straightened out. It’s interesting because it’s very slavish, which is an obvious link to Toni, blacks, and the Civil Rights movement. Will Lane, like the blacks did consistently through that era, rise up again and again to stand up against his father for what’s right? His 2-4 week leave of absence doesn’t get us closer to answering the questions related to Lane’s storyline, but his journey is certainly not over.

NOTABLES
References and Themes

Secrets. There are many secrets in the world of SCDP, and as their impact goes from the personal realm into the agency itself, there will be much talk about the details that nobody knows. Lucky Strike, Roger and Joan, Joan’s child (or abortion), Pete and Peggy’s child, Don’s history, Don and Faye, Lee Garner, Jr.’s homosexuality, Lane’s love affair with a black woman, etc. All of that in one episode.

THE LEFTOVERS
Tidbits and Observations

The Beatles played Shea Stadium on August 15, 1965 – to 55,000 screaming girls. The ending song for the episode is an instrumental version of “Do You Want To Know a Secret” off The Beatles’ 1963 debut, Please Please Me. The song is a direct link to the theme in the episode.

Cooper was floored by the “loss” of NAA, and not fully satisfied with Pete’s explanation. His turn from borderline anger to telling Roger to apologize to Pete for yelling at him might be a display of his understanding (of the situation). It caused me to think Cooper quickly read between the lines, already knowing that Don’s history may be a liability or issue when it came to dealing with NAA. It was so slight that this is a longshot, but Cooper is a sage, and is not to be underestimated. Then again, it might have meant that he already knew about Lucky Strike.

Hurricane Betsy hit the Gulf at the end of August. Don calls Betty “Betsy”. It could be used as an easy metaphor.

Other upcoming events that may find their way into storylines:
Bob Dylan released “Highway 61 Revisited” on August 30.

“I Spy”, “Lost in Space”, “The Dean Martin Show”, “The Smothers Brothers Show”, “Get Smart”, and “I Dream of Jeannie” all premiered in September of 1965. “Days of Our Lives” debuted in November.

The Northeast Blackout of 1965 occurred on November 9, blacking out much of New York (as well as other states and parts of Canada). It started at around 5:30pm. UFOs were reportedly seen that day. Anna referenced UFOs while Don was out in California. Time Magazine printed a picture of an object. It was also a full moon that night.

John Lindsay was elected mayor of New York City in November. This is a direct link to Henry Francis, who was asked to work on Lindsay’s campaign for president of the United States (in the future).

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 9 - "The Beautiful Girls"

2010-09-21T00:21:00.000-07:00

PREFACE
This weekly entry is for those who have seen the first three seasons of “Mad Men”. This commentary is about the story, and the reduction of it. It is not a prediction, nor is it a hope of what is to come - I don't watch the previews. It is a working draft at all times, but hell if it isn’t insightful.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 9
“The Beautiful Girls”
Written by: Matthew Weiner and Dahvi Waller
Directed by: Michael Uppendahl

As summer heats up, Don begins to sweat a bit. He’s trying to hold steady, but his entire world is being challenged – from all sides – keeping him off balance and on the edge of danger. He’s so overwhelmed that he can’t even write out his thoughts. He’s too exhausted. His affair with Faye has begun, and she’s become a fixture in his life. Sally runs away from home, and runs right to Don, who has no idea what to do in the situation. Sterling Cooper Draper Price is face to face with the Civil Rights movement due to Filmore Auto Parts’ mandate in the South not to hire blacks. With a young generation nipping at his heels, Don needs to defeat some of the demons that are right in front of him in order to be light on his feet and agile enough to take on the constantly moving times.

Don is opening up to Faye more and more. He first shows his distrust, questioning why she can’t tell him what she’s working on at other companies. She swipes that aside with the mention of a Chinese wall – a term Don should be familiar with, being that he runs a company of his own. He gets it and turns the corner – displaying some trust – allowing her to stay in his apartment after he leaves. However, he puts too much pressure on her – to perform, perhaps – and even if it’s unintentional, it still builds on the idea that Don has not come close to mastering this new world. At the same time, he is getting better at closing the gaps, shown at the end when he apologizes and voices his understanding to Faye. A strong woman who can supplement him may be Don’s reward for surviving the mess (in 1965).

Sally says she hates living with Betty, and she wants to live with Don. He says no. She asks why. He doesn’t have a good reason. This is a struggle for Don – he can usually give a good answer to anything. Don and Sally have a bond, and it shows. He is a good father, when he’s a father. He does allow her to be responsible for her own actions – by not punishing her, but rather making her promise not to run away again. No smack across the face – a pizza instead. One thing Don will have to do, if Faye does stick around, is be sure to remove “Dr.” before Faye’s name, so that Sally doesn’t feel like Don is using Faye to “help” her – or the situation.

The other thing that should be considered is the fact that even today, a single father with custody of a child is a rarity. This has to do with societal presumptions as much as anything, but perhaps Don will be forced to juggle his work and his family as a single father. He doesn’t have a reason why he can’t. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see this storyline because there’s no way they’ll have a man leading that charge to show the women, such as Dr. Faye, Peggy, and Joan, the way to handle those two worlds at once. Sexism, or simply trying not to confuse the lessons learned during the women’s liberation movement? Who knows.

The clash of racism and Filmore Auto Parts. Peggy, as part of Don’s conscience, brings this to attention. Don has apparently already given this thought, but probably only through applying standard business practices. Business is business – it’s not their job to play a moral role in the companies they work with. However, as Abe says to Peggy, “You’re political, whether you like it or not.” Unfortunately (for SCDP’s bottom line), Don will have to confront this conflict. He says so himself (echoing young Abe) in the meeting with the Filmore brothers – you can’t have it both ways. You have to pick a side. You can’t go forward with two strategies, allowing for inconsistencies. The South cannot be an exception to the rule. The rule must apply everywhere, to everyone. However, just as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 resulted in riots in Watts and Chicago, Don’s inevitable decision may cause such a ruckus at SCDP. Even if the parallel doesn’t hold true down the line, Don will still be forced to deal with this issue. SCDP’s image is at stake. Is it moving forward with the times or being held back? And since when does money trump integrity in Don’s world? It hasn’t, and if everything stays true to character, it won’t this time either.

Straddling the generations as Don has, he will have to decide – for each scenario that arises – how he will move forward with the current of the society – because, really, he has no choice but to make these decisions. Don, like the nation, will not only witness the horrors, but he will participate on many levels, regardless of whether he wants to or not. ***

SUBPLOTS

Dr. Faye:
Like Don, Dr. Faye is independent, but her scars begin to show. She displays her need for space (independence) in bed with Don – offering only a cool, soft leg. She, like Don, has trust issues – made more obvious by her surprised reaction to Don allowing her to do whatever she wants to do in his apartment while he’s gone. Don delegates Sally to Faye, which Faye handles well, but it’s still a challenge for her (and the wrong thing to do on Don’s part).

She is not insecure, but she is quite conscious of her decisions, as well as her position as a career woman. That is to say, she passed up marriage and kids because she wanted to dedicate herself to a career. However, she has her career. If she wants Don, it may include kids – possibly to the point where Sally lives with Don. Will she choose to be in that world, or will she skate?

One notable is that she had dinner plans after watching Sally. Then, the next day says she didn’t get any sleep that night. Could mean nothing. Another is Blankenship calling Faye “pushy.” I assume that’s just a generational difference (Sally gets her way after pushing Don as well) – kind of like the woman who dropped off Sally, who says, “Men never know what’s going on.” One last observation was Faye’s seemingly natural slogan slinging in the Filmore meeting. Could she be the female copywriter Peggy was looking for?

Peggy:
I don’t see Peggy as a masochist in her relationship to Don, as Miss Blankenship suggests. I don’t think Peggy sees it that way either. She’s very much in control of herself right now, and stands on her own two feet at the moment. She handles the situation with Abe with beauty and grace. However, it left a lasting impression on her, if not directly challenged her to speak up, which makes her angry and interested at the same time.

She makes the statement for women – that they’re a part of the civil rights movement – that women are discriminated against as much as blacks are.

Joan/Roger:
Joan is scared because her husband is going to Vietnam to die, and she is alone. Roger is scared because death is awaiting him. His memoirs are failing to gain interest, and Miss Blankenship dies. He is next, and he can feel it.

After getting mugged, they end up fucking in a gangway, or is it the entryway of a garden apartment? Can this be another possible pregnancy for Joan? It might be more fitting for Roger (than Greg) – as something to remember him by after he passes.

Cosgrove:
I believe Ken is wearing thin at SCDP. It seems that every episode he’s saying something he shouldn’t be saying – showing he’s immature and wrong on just everything. With the Filmore Auto Parts problem not close to being resolved or over, there could be a showdown between Don and Ken or Pete and Ken. Perhaps Dr. Faye or Joan could fill the position of account manager. Nobody has to worry about the departure of the biggest account Cosgrove brought, Birds Eye – their representative was mostly interested in the fact that Don Draper was at SCDP (when Pete saw them at the CLIO Awards) – they’ll surely stay.

Megan:
Megan can now officially join the new generation of women (along with Bethany and Allison). She is now involved more in the story. With her comments to Peggy in the bathroom in a previous episode, her smooth responses in off-balanced situations, and her being the consoler for Sally in episode nine, she is beginning to be an actual character in the series. And I thought she was just window dressing…

NOTABLES
References and Themes

The theme of the episode is obviously The Woman.

Miss Ida Blankenship dies, which is to say, there has been a death of The Woman of the Past. This is a noble woman. A woman who put up with shit from men her entire life, and she should be commended for her suffrage. Cooper puts Blankenship in the same status as an astronaut. She is a saint.

The elevator trio of Peggy, Joan, and Dr. Faye are The Women of the Present. Dr. Faye is a proven career woman. She has already (seemingly) passed up her opportunity at being a mother and having a family. Joan has been waiting for that life to be reality in her world for a couple years now. She got the husband, but she has put off the children. And then there’s Peggy. She’s a mother, but she has pushed that far away in order to pursue a career. She has pulled herself off the track Joan is on, and put herself on the one Faye took, but it could very well be that they all end up living both lives at once.

They have, and will still suffer, but they are the officers of the liberation movement. They are battling for the next generation. They are fighting for Sally – The Woman of the Future. Don takes the brunt of the message for the entire male species when Sally insists that she is going nowhere – that she is here to stay.

Although they may need a man to move a dead body, when a woman stumbles and lands flat on her face, she must pick herself up (instead of having a man help) and reassure herself that it’s going to be fine – that everyone falls. This is what an independent woman does. Don stands aside in this scene, and in a true showing of female bonding, all the women in the office watch with empathy, as if they were all Sally. The only one on the outside is Betty, and after this season, it’s becoming impossible to imagine she will fit into the progressive side of society at all.

THE LEFTOVERS
Tidbits and Observations

When Sally is dropped off, and Don is talking to the stranger, if you look out the window, across the street, the building’s address is 666. This is no coincidence – they chose this location across the street from The Tishman Building at 666 Fifth Avenue for a reason. And from what I have been able to find, it’s not the first time it’s been visible this season (e.g. the end of episode 4), though hardly anybody has noticed. The fact that it was shown clearly this episode could mean Don is close to Hades in his journey – the point in Greek myths where the hero must take a trip to the underworld and face Persephone before they can return to the living world. This is a death and resurrection motif. Maybe not. But who is in that building? And if it’s a reference to Satan, who is Satan? There are no historical references attaching any ad agencies residing in 666 Fifth Avenue, so perhaps it’s just symbolic. Strange either way.

Don drinking at the end. He showed more restraint before. Things are getting tougher, and if drinking then gets easier, something is going to go very badly.

-2004 words-

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 8 - "The Summer Man"

2010-09-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

PREFACE
This weekly entry is for those who have seen the first three seasons of “Mad Men”. This commentary is about the story, and the reduction of it. It is not a prediction, nor is it a hope of what is to come - I don't watch the previews. It is a working draft at all times, but hell if it isn’t insightful.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 8
“The Summer Man”
Written by: Matthew Weiner and Lisa Albert & Janet Leahy
Directed by: Phil Abraham

Reversing the flow of a river is not an easy thing to do. Don wants more control over himself – over his feelings. He forgot where he was going, and he finally woke up. He is not going cold turkey, but he admits his drinking problem and is severely restricting is alcohol intake – resisting liquor and settling for Budweiser and Chianti. He’s getting into shape, and he’s also focusing on the internal aspects as well – his past, his present, his future – and he’s trying to evaluate the feelings that are related to it all. He’s becoming poetic as he begins to keep a journal – going deeply introspective – and he’s going to need that kind of perspective in order to live through the remainder of his journey in 1965.

While he was out in California, visiting Anna for the last time, Anna told Don to swim – “it’ll clear your head” – no cliff diving. He followed her advice, and is showing large strides towards becoming the man he wants to be – towards waking up a stronger, more complete man – a new man. Being in water is also a motif often used in mythology to represent the deepest part of one’s psyche or unconscious. As poorly as he has handled things in the last several months, Don rebounds a bit, but it’s still a struggle, and by no means is he in the clear. He’s taking baby steps like his two-year old son, Gene.

He talks about how much he appreciates sleeping alone – his space is important – but women are magnetic to him. He can smell perfume everywhere, and it’s summertime. He goes to dinner with Bethany, during which she makes the statement that they’re from two different generations. Don agrees, and quickly shows how well he knows her by revealing her insecurities. He later writes about how people like Bethany are easy to see through, but we often ignore the obvious in order to keep an image of them that we want to see – as opposed to the reality. Bethany may be a fill-in for Betty (note the mention of a country club), but from the youngest generation (e.g. Stan, Joey, Danny, Stephanie, etc.), and it may be a generation Don wants little part of – at least, right now. However, he’ll take the blowjob, of course.

On the flip-side, he also goes to dinner with Dr. Faye, who is already a new generation of woman. She’s strong, intelligent, confident, and mature. This is more in Don’s realm. He even tells her he admires her work. After dinner, Dr. Faye wants to go back to Don’s house, but Don shows his restraint and reveals the self-enforced boundaries he has created while he deals with his other problems – namely, his work and his alcoholism. This relationship is the dangerous one for Don. He is open with Dr. Faye, and she’s in a position to manipulate Don while he’s vulnerable. The kicker is that her father is connected to the mob, or something similar in the criminal world. Faye even compares Don to her father, saying they’re both handsome, two-bit gangsters. This could also allude to a father complex in Dr. Faye, just as one could say Don has a mother complex.

Don is finally shedding the final remnants of his past – the dust, really – when he picks up his boxes from his house, where Betty and Henry live, and throws them in the dumpster. As Henry tries to rid of Don’s ghost in the Francis household, Don attempts to peel the past away from the future when he shows up at Gene’s birthday party. It’s to say, you can have that woman and that house, but I’m going to be a part of my kids’ lives. This is a significant shift for Don, and a positive one, no matter how Henry or Betty react to it in the future.

“Conceived out of desperation, and born into a mess.” Don says this about Gene, but he could also apply it to himself, as well as the country at the time. It’s hard to navigate a jungle if you’re not familiar with it – it’s a test of will when the worst of life comes rushing towards you. Don is inching towards betterment, but he has a long way to go before he can get past his history, deal with the present, and move towards the future. If he’s ever going to go to Africa, or live in California, or retreat back to a farm where he can smell corn every day, he still has to trudge along this road ahead of him. Dr. Faye practically warns of something significant on the horizon. The journey is past the halfway point. It’s a good thing Don is getting into shape – he’ll need to be strong and fit as he ascends towards the apex of his story. He’ll have to wait to climb Kilimanjaro – he’s climbing the rocky terrain of 1965 right now. There are loose rocks and dangerous conditions. Danger is waiting at each and every step. ***

SUBPLOTS:

Joan:
Peggy asks what’s wrong with Joan. Joan is having a pity party for herself – hosting with a machete, and inviting everyone into her vacuum of misery.

Greg is leaving for basic training – he will end up in Vietnam, most likely, which means he may die. Joan could be the single-mother of the show, while Peggy is the career woman – we already saw Betty remarry. The sex that is implied between Greg and Joan may actually imply conception. The mother references that Joey spits at Joan could also be applied to the hint.

Joan doesn’t know what to do anymore, and she’s taking it out on everyone else. Granted, the kids are out of line at work, but Joan tries to gut Peggy at the same time for actually standing up for her. She has no friends, but that’s her own fault. She’s always been abrasive, condescending, and downright mean at times. Granted, her sass is one of her likeable traits, but it often goes way too far.

Joan’s biggest issue is her inability to push against the way the society is. This is actually Peggy’s generation, not Joan’s, who does that. Joan makes this perfectly clear when she explains that she could’ve went to dinner with a client in order to take care of the Joey problem. She tries to use sex to get everything she wants – Lane pointed that out a couple episodes ago. It’s not to agree with Joey’s comments about Joan, but there is an undeniable trend to Joan since the beginning of the series. She knows she’s intelligent and can do anything a man can do in the office, but she doesn’t push towards breaking down the social barriers that keep her down as a glorified secretary. In other words, she assists in the oppression.

And eventually, she is going to have to treat Peggy and her generation of women with a little more respect if she’s going to participate in the women’s liberation movement.

Peggy:
Shows why she’s the symbol of the next generation of women. She sees the wrong in the sexist jokes and wants to confront it head on. In going to Don, her mentor explains that nobody will respect her if she goes to a man for resolution on an issue (Joan should take note). Through Don playing her conscience and guide, she realizes that she does have power to battle such disrespectful behavior on her own. She even offers Joey a chance at atonement instead of just firing him straight off, showing some compassion in the midst of atrocious behavior.

She shows herself a pillar in this episode.

Joey/Stan/Danny:
Joey got fired. He shows himself helpful, reasonable, unreasonable, disrespectful, sexist, cocky, homophobic, talented enough for Don to want to keep him on Mountain Dew, and to have some mommy issues of his own – all in one episode. But, he got fired. Maybe he’ll make a cameo in the future as an actor in a commercial SCDP is shooting.

Stan takes over Mountain Dew. And Joey says Stan loves Peggy. This may be so.

Betty/Henry:
Betty still longs for Don. She freaks out at the restaurant when she sees Don with Bethany, and even after attempting to be the good person at the end at Gene’s birthday party, she gazes at Don as if she wishes for the past to be present again. Perhaps it’s like Don writes: “We’re flawed because we want so much more. We’re ruined because we get these things and long for what we had.” She has everything…except for Don.

There are problems in the Francis household. They both voice doubts again. Henry is passively acting out, trying to be the stand-up guy while being the smug prick. He’s trying to act like the adult while being an insecure child by wanting every piece of Don out of Betty and the kids’ lives entirely. He’s a contradiction – I wonder when it’ll be exposed. Perhaps it’ll be when he climbs higher in the political world.

Dr. Faye:
Shows more of herself – a bad break-up, she doesn’t like to cook, her father is tied to the mob and owns a candy store, etc. Is Don a rebound for her or is she actually interested? Is she sincere when she says she’s been waiting for “this” – “this” being Don’s transformation – or is she simply interested as someone whose job it is to reduce people? Is she trying to get Don to do what she wants him to do – through kindness, gentleness, and persuasion? If so, for what reason? To take his coat (warmth)? To get him naked (vulnerability)?

One thing’s for sure, she falls for the trendy marketing trick – the one VW used for the Bug campaign: The most attractive thing is that which you least expect. She doesn’t expect Don to resist her and take her home – she dives right into him as a result.

THE LEFTOVERS
Tidbits and Observations

The Rolling Stones – “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” – wish I could put up the track, but I’ll avoid the corporate giants.

Margaret Mead – known for her observations and books on more primitive societies.

Mountain Dew hillbilly. I’ve seen old cans and bottles at my uncle’s, but here’s a picture of a bottle from 1964:

Vietnam. Don is hearing more and more about it. In July, it’ll be everywhere when LBJ sends a couple hundred thousand troops. The impact of that war is still felt.

Felix or Oscar? This refers to Neil Simon’s play (eventual movie and television show), “The Odd Couple”. It premiered on Broadway in March of 1965.

Aesop’s fable, “The North Wind and the Sun”:
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 7 - "The Suitcase"

2010-09-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

PREFACE
This weekly entry is for those who have seen the first three seasons of “Mad Men”. This commentary is about the story, and the reduction of it. It is not a prediction, nor is it a hope of what is to come. It is a working draft at all times, but hell if it isn’t insightful.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 7
“THE SUITCASE”
Written by: Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Jennifer Getzinger

Don Draper is in descent – he is heading for the deepest parts of himself. He loses the one person who knows him, only to figure out he’s always had someone close by who could understand him as well – Peggy, who he has kept at some distance all this time. He’ll need allies as he goes further into his journey, and there is nobody better to have by his side than Peggy.

The episode fills in some holes for workaholics Don and Peggy. It gives each of them some perspective, and allows for actual understanding between the two. They bond through real trust and revelation, rather than the usual circumstance and discretion connection they’ve had. But they have to battle – they have to fight – they have to abstractly play Cassius Clay (Ali) and Sonny Liston in order to feel safe enough to talk about personal things – actually talk. In the end, they both win, and they’re both stronger afterward. But it leaves two secretive, ambitious people more vulnerable, and as harmless or even beneficial as this breakthrough with Peggy is, Don may eventually leave himself open to the wrong person. Or maybe he already has.

Don will go through a grieving period over Anna. She leaves a void too big to fill right away – even Peggy can’t do anything to fill it. This means more drinking and more women, most likely. Summer is coming – sun, women, and debauchery – and Don will most likely have his share, unless he hides in himself some more. The right mix in a sweltering, tumultuous ’65 summer can make it seem like the world is crumbling – Don will have to face something big to get him to his bottom. Throwing up and losing a drunken wrestling match with Duck Phillips is not where Don will rise from – partially because he’s attempting something noble, and as the man in the bar says, “Nobody goes down like that!” It will be something further down in the belly of the whale, and it will be Don against his biggest enemy. Who or what that is remains to be seen. There are plenty of shadows, but no clear villain as of yet. ***

SUBPLOTS

Peggy:
Peggy had been looking for someone to talk to – she’s been looking for outlets to vent to about Don. She finally opens some pieces of herself to Don and receives plenty in return. She reveals her dilemma about being a woman with a career, which is trumping every inclination of getting married and having children (more children). We see the two worlds clash – the Clay/Ali and Liston reference again – in the bathroom, where Megan makes the comment that Peggy is kicking ass at 26, while Trudy unintentionally insults her by reassuring her she’s only 26 – as if to say there’s still time for her to have kids.

I keep hoping the Pete/Peggy landmine won’t get stepped on, but there are only a couple secrets that aren’t in the open. Peggy doesn’t know about Don being Dick Whitman, and Don doesn’t know Pete is the father of Peggy’s kid. One or both of those may find their way out – how, I can only imagine.

She really gets her eyes opened in this episode, and she needed it. She was getting ahead of herself and expecting way too much. I like that she is standing up for herself, but if she’s going to be a leader of women, she needs a little more experience. Her perspective is given focus, and her reward is an open door policy with Don – a teammate instead of an adversary.

Oh, and Mark’s done. Expected.

Miss Blankenship:
A hellcat? The Queen of Perversions? Roger and Blankenship? Awesome.

And it’s true, Don deserves some punishment for breaking his own rules, and he finally admits it, saying Joan was right to hire Blankenship as his secretary.

Joey/Stan/Danny:
Joey has two run-ins with Joan in two episodes. Hmmm. Don picks Stan over him to work on taglines for the Samsonite commercial. Not good. They use Danny’s idea for Samsonite, but then Don still makes fun of him.

I can’t tell if the high school Three Stooges of Joey, Stan, and Danny are worth anything, but I suppose we’ll see. I’m kind of shocked that SCDP couldn’t hire better creative folks – it seems very uncharacteristic of Don. With Lucky Strike and Lee Garner Jr. possibly on the outs, an old gay friend may end up coming back to help SCDP move forward in the creative department, thus making the trio of kids obsolete.

NOTABLES
References and Themes

This episode is obviously filled with references to the boxing match between Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston. Youth versus old is a theme that has run through the series from the beginning, but it seems like it’s coming to a tipping point, as more and more distance is being put between the generations. Roger’s past affair with Miss Blankenship seems unimaginable, but it’s obvious they both share that generation’s view on things, such as race (note Blankenship’s joke about the dollar bill). The youngest generation – Joey, Stan, Danny, and even Peggy – view things much differently. Peggy makes the point about Clay being handsome, telling the story about how her father threw away all of Nat King Cole’s records after her mother was talking about him in a flattering way. It reminds me of “Goodfellas” at the Copa, but it’s not an uncommon thing – I know that my grandpa hated the fact that my grandma liked Al Green (the REVEREND Al Green).

Stan notes that Clay would be a good ad man – while Don agrees half-heartedly, he puts his money on Liston. It’s to say, Clay may be good, but he’s still full of piss and vinegar – if anything, it’s Don’s resistance to Clay’s self-proclaimed greatness, which most modest men have a tendency to do (Teddy vs. Don?). But Clay/Ali was a rebel of sorts, and the younger generation identified with that. I don’t think Don is as against Clay as, say, Roger may be, and it seems that Don immediately recognizes that the picture of Clay/Ali over Liston is historical (today it is iconic). Don is a floating character of sorts who embodies all the facets of the ‘60s. The ebb and flow is within him, and he walks the lines between generations, leaning to either side, depending on the situation. However, he understands both sides, and he has shown himself to follow more of what made our country progressive in the ‘60s rather than what tried to hold us back.

Interestingly enough, Clay redefining himself as Muhammad Ali could be seen as a direct reference to Don himself. Don may end up being Clay/Ali – the greatest – floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee, etc.

WATCH: Ali vs. Liston – the actual fight starts at around 2:15. As the guy in the bar said, “the fix is in.” The discussion still goes on today about whether Liston threw the fight for the mob, or even as Liston supposedly said in an interview a few years later, that he feared retaliation from extremist blocks of black Muslims, who were supporting Ali. Either way, the whole thing seems off, especially Joe Wolcott - referee and former heavyweight champion himself - who seems lost throughout.

THE LEFTOVERS
Tidbits and Observations

One thing that should be clearly noted is that Cassius Clay already beat Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title in 1964, after which he yelled, “I’m the greatest” and “I shook up the world!” The May 25, 1965 bout was the rematch.

At dinner, Don tells the story about his uncle, who said something to the effect of “a man has to be ready to go at any moment” in regards to always having a bag packed. They both think there’s a story or metaphor there, but neither can put their fingers on it. When Anna’s apparition shows up at the office, she’s holding a suitcase. It could be said that the point of the saying is to always be ready for death because it can come at any time. Or, I could be waaaay off.

Don throwing up = Don purging, as he does throughout the episode.

Joe Namath. For those who don’t know, Namath played for the Jets of the American Football League (AFL), which wasn’t considered the professional league at the time. The “professional” league was the National Football League (NFL). Namath is another reference to youth vs. old. He grew his hair out long and was flashy for the era – much like Ali.

Duck initiates the idea of a Phillips-Olson type of agency, but I still think it could end up being DPCO by the end of this season or the next.

Although I think the mouse was just an excuse to bring up Don’s youth on the farm, he does say something interesting in reference to it: “There’s a way out of this room that we don’t know about.” This could be a reference to something coming – for either Don or Don and Peggy both. Also in reference to the mouse, and also the cockroach – could this refer to pests being around Don and Peggy?

Burt Cooper has no testicles. Not really funny, but an odd revelation. The thing I found interesting was that Roger mentions Dr. Lyle Evans in episode five in the Honda meeting. It turns out, that’s the doctor who accidentally(?) removed Cooper’s balls, and who Cooper may have had killed(?). Weird.

Peggy’s and Don’s revelations to each other: Korean War; Don’s Midwest upbringing; Peggy’s mom thinks Don is the father of the child and hates him; Don never knew his mother, which is a direct connection to Peggy and her child; their fathers’ deaths; Anna’s death; Mark and everything related to wanting a career instead of a husband; Duck and Peggy’s affair…

The show ends with Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bleecker Street”.

LISTEN: Simon & Garfunkel – Bleecker Street

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 6 - "Waldorf Stories"

2010-08-30T17:07:00.000-07:00

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 5 "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"

2010-08-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 4 - "The Rejected"

2010-08-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 3 - "The Good News"

2010-08-21T09:14:00.000-07:00

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 2 - "Christmas Comes But Once a Year"

2010-08-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

PREFACE
This weekly entry is for those who have seen the first three seasons of “Mad Men”. This commentary is about the story, and the reduction of it. It is not a prediction, nor is it a hope of what is to come. It is a working draft at all times, but hell if it isn’t insightful.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 2
“CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR”
Written by: Tracy McMillan and Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Michael Uppendahl

Christmas is a time to give and receive gifts. Some you ask for, some you don’t – some you’ll be happy with, others you won’t. Don Draper hates this Christmas – probably because he spends most of episode two tasting his own medicine, and being reduced by others – even categorized into a “type” by a tough, progressive woman in Dr. Faye Miller. Dr. Faye even predicts he’ll be re-married within the next year, leaving the prediction in his lap with a smiling “Merry Christmas!” Don is beginning to see inside himself, and he’s not liking it. As a matter of fact, he’s actually avoiding it – a refusal of sorts to the adventure of finding himself – and he’s drowning it out with booze – a lot of it, a lot of the time. Even though Don isn’t really getting what he wants the way he wants it, he is lucky to have a couple women to take care of him to prepare him for his journey: Nurse Phoebe, his neighbor, and especially his secretary, Allison. We know he’s going to Acapulco soon, so it is evident Don needs a vacation – he needs to get lost in an adventure and return reenergized. He’ll need that energy to endure 1965, just as the country did.

Don has Allison open and read a letter from Sally to Santa (who she already knows does not exist). This is a slip of privacy that Don usually pays a little more attention to, as Allison reads and gets choked up at the sadness in the letter – how Sally wishes most of all that her dad could be with her on Christmas morning. Allison learns more about Don when Don is so drunk that he leaves his keys at the office. He first goes to his neighbor, Nurse Phoebe – because Don is a man who doesn’t mess around with women at the workplace – but then turns to the helping hand of Allison when Phoebe doesn’t answer her door. There is a noticeable connection between Don and Allison. After sex, Don doesn’t want her to leave – he even pauses to admire her – but she’s got to meet someone – something that Don is shocked at (he’s usually the one that gets up to leave and who has someone else to meet). She’s a little overwhelmed by the experience as well, and is expectant of something more the next day at work, but Don lets her down hard, basically telling her it was a mistake to take advantage of her “kindness.” However, being that she has been allowed inside his lair and shell, Don may be opening up to her in some fashion. Who knows, perhaps his rule about not sleeping inside the office only applied to a married Don – not a single Don – and he’ll bury the idea that it’s wrong, along with the resentment from being called a “type.” Allison may end up actually having Don’s keys.

The interplay of Glen and Sally could be viewed through different prisms of Don and Betty – related and singularly – mirroring and paralleling. Glen flatly states the fact that Don and Betty aren’t getting back together again, and that Betty and Henry will move soon – and get out of that tainted home/prison. The house is too small for this new life with Henry, as shown symbolically in the opening scene when they’re buying a Christmas tree – you can’t buy a tree that is too big to fit in the house.

At the point where Glen breaks into the house and vandalizes it, there is some subtle tension between Don and Lee Jr. – Don could be messing up his own house. Dr. Faye points out that it’s all just a difference of “what I want vs. what’s expected of me.” Don agrees, and this may mean a battle with Lucky Strike is in his sights, consciously or subconsciously. The way that Don reacts to Lee embarrassing Roger displays an “I would never put up with that shit” kind of look. Don’t expect Don to bow down to Lee Jr. like the account men do. It could also relate to Don sleeping with Allison – in-house affairs are typically not good.

Sally hates it at the house because she misses her dad in it (or through Betty, she hates the feeling that Don is always around the corner), and she doesn’t seem to know or understand what Betty is doing. In some sense, standing at her bedroom window in the middle of the night, she’s not waiting for Glen, but rather, she is waiting for Don, and/or Betty. It’s most likely Don since the cutaway shot of her at the window happens during Don and Allison having sex. Or, on another line, it is Betty that is delaying moving on because she’s waiting for Don. Don will return to be a father, as he is going to search a bit of his childhood to realize how neglected he felt – and that he is doing the same to his kids – but he’ll never return to Betty.

Don’s parallel to his own father is boiling up, as he’s becoming somewhat of a drunk. He’s avoiding the internalization – he walks out of the meeting after Dr. Faye mentions a question regarding people’s view of their fathers. The threat of Don falling prey to a vice like alcohol is not likely in the long run – there is no way a peon like Joey is going to be right in calling Don “pathetic.” Don is a troubled man in troubled times. It is no coincidence that Freddy has returned sober and in AA. He brought Don and SCDP the gift of Pond’s Cold Cream – a two-million-dollar account – but he also may be another helping hand for Don to use as he rises high enough to fall again – most likely after a few gulps of alcohol and some sort of self-punishing act. It is a storm that will pass, but it may be cyclical – bursts of sunshine and chaotic downpours – ups and downs – the bottle may be Don’s fallback when times get tough in ’65. It was a year of change. They all were. ***

SUBPLOTS

Betty:
Betty is nowhere to be seen, unless you count Sally as Betty.

Peggy:
We all know Peggy is not a virgin, but her naïve young boy-man thinks so. In comparison to Duck – a real man (even though I don’t care for him) – this insatiable kid is no match, as expressed by Peggy’s blank face at the end of the episode. Peggy is becoming a strong, strong woman, but she’s having a bit of trouble juggling what she wants and what is expected (ahem). She has bigger things on her agenda – she’ll most likely be in charge of Pond’s and push old-fashioned Freddy Rumsen out.

Pete:
He’s out of the loop on everything. He better snap out of it or else we’re going to see Ken Cosgrove arrive soon. Either way, Pete will bounce back with something big – he never dwells in failure for too long, and with him and Peggy being the company’s eyes and ears of the younger generation, he’ll grab a hold of something that will impress everyone – and possibly lay an important future foundation for SCDP – a big client like Lucky Strike. A replacement for it, perhaps.

Harry:
For a TV guy, he’s awfully slow on some things, but maybe that’s the point. Dr. Faye had no problem pointing that out in regards to the cookies.

Cooper:
Brings in the Motivational Research Group, but once again, I think he (and his old pal) doesn’t quite understand what’s really happening, as the young Dr. Faye subtly quips twice about the absurdity of their disconnect with today’s generation.

Sterling:
Things are so tight at SCDP that Don has to personally take care of Allison’s bonus, and SCDP had to make radical adjustments to their usually rambunctious Christmas Party – that is, until Lucky Strike kid asshole, Lee Garner Jr. invites himself. Leave it up to Joan to organize everything on the fly and ensure Lee is satisfied. But Lee’s insatiable boyish appetite drives him to belittle and embarrass Roger, who is forced to put on the Santa suit and swallow Lee’s slights about his age and health, while watching his wife get groped by the mega-client.

Roger had a tough holiday, but he did his job, and he does his job well. He does make things happen, that’s for certain, and he knows how to keep the client happy – even though Peggy (like Don before her) can’t see Roger’s talent and place. However, SCDP is a creative agency. Don Draper said it, and he wants clients in the same vein – not like Jantzen – and most likely, not like Lucky Strike. Sterling is Lucky Strike, Lucky Strike is Sterling. Lee pointed out Roger’s age and health. Can Roger adapt to a changing tide or is he too old-school? Is Pete going to be able to step into his shoes if he goes down?

Pryce:
Lane is pissed – at Roger nonetheless. The excess is too much to remain stable (perhaps a reference to our recent boom and ultimate recession). There may be a shift of power among the partners, and perhaps by the end of season four the company will be named DPOC, but there is certainly something brewing here, and with Pryce in an equal place of power, he may put his foot down on the next extravagant expenditure.

Joan:
Joan knows how to run shit. Her season four story has yet to start, so that’s all I’ll say for now.

Joey:
Drawing pictures for Allison is not going to get a girl like Allison. He thinks Don is pathetic, yet Allison went for the man, not the boy. I don’t like the character, but sometimes it’s that unexpected, seemingly insignificant character that is the perfect piece to solving a big puzzle. I think it’ll be for the company more than with Don, but with Don collecting helpers, you never can tell.

Freddy:
Freddy is a plain-clothes Santa Claus – a role he was born to play – returning to old friends, sober (in AA) and carrying a present: Pond’s Cold Cream. It’s a two-million-dollar account, so there’s the slight recovery SCDP needed after the Jai-Alai debacle.

But Freddy echoes the older generation – Peggy even calls him “old-fashioned.” It’s true, and he won’t be around for too long – he told Roger he can rid of him and keep Pond’s if he wanted. That would allow Pete to be on the account and Peggy to take control of the creative.

NOTABLES
References and Themes

Civil Rights and Medicare
In January of 1965, Lyndon Johnson introduced his “Great Society”, which included some focus on Civil Rights. In February, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested, along with almost 800 others during their march in Selma, Alabama. Twenty days later, Malcolm X is killed. In March, LBJ calls for legislation that would ensure everyone’s right to vote. In August, The Voting Rights Act became law. The Watts riots explode five days later. Race riots in Chicago the next day.

Medicare was passed in July of 1965. This could be a reference to today’s health care discussion (calling it Socialist). Also in July, a bill was signed to require health warnings on packs of cigarettes. This could also be related to Lucky Strike.

Boy vs. Man, Girl vs. Woman, Young vs. Old
The theme of children and the older generation is again prominent in the second episode, and gets more complex. Bringing psychology into marketing to find out what people are really feeling – to find their insecurities – is what has defined that baby boomer generation and now even more, our own and the next. The elders (Cooper) don’t understand the hidden impact, while the younger generation eats it up (Harry grabbing a handful of cookies), but it is evident today that marketing and advertising, by playing to our insecurities, have created a society of consumers – and the id-like insatiable need to consume and spend money in excess – money that we don’t have (thanks to Pryce for making this point). “Too much television,” as Don says (of Sally when she misspells “ruse” in her letter to Santa) – “It rots your brain,” as I heard growing up.

The connections are many for this theme – Mark (Peggy’s boyfriend) vs. Duck (or Pete?), Joey vs. Don, Peggy vs. Freddy, Greg (Joan’s husband) vs. Roger – Dr. Faye is obviously a new generation of woman, as was Jane Sterling’s friend from episode one, and maybe even Allison. The other, elder male doctor (whose name I couldn’t make out) refers to the population as children who need their decisions made for them – a herd – to which Dr. Faye says sarcastically, “Storm our houses and rape our wives.” Peggy’s fight with Freddy reflects the changing times – she’s dumbfounded at Freddy’s dated ideas and asks him if he’s seen their progressive, contemporary work. The wedge of change, rebellion, and youth overtaking old will splinter at some point, just as it did societally.

THE LEFTOVERS
Tidbits and Observations

The Beatles are finally mentioned, and interestingly in reference to Sally (or Betty through Sally). The Beatles make a change in ’65 with Revolver, and even more drastically in the latter half of the decade. Could it mean a drastic change for Sally and/or Betty as well? I'd put a Beatles track up, but I don't want the law on me.

One very subtle and possibly meaningless thing was the comment Lee Garner Jr. made to Pryce after Pryce said his wife and son had returned to London. We know Lee is gay – is Pryce as well?

Could Freddy actually be on to something? Here’s a Pond’s Cold Cream commercial from Australia, circa 1969: WATCH: Pond's Cold Cream Commercial. And here’s a Mexican commercial from the mid-60s (a ’65-’67 Corvette featured): WATCH: Pond's commercial

Sugarberry Hams. Don, Peggy, and Pete are working on Sugarberry when Roger and Freddy walk in. Don mentions how the sales have been great, which means Sugarberry may be a bigger account, just as Pete wanted and needed. It also means Pete and Peggy’s PR stunt worked.

Lee Garner, Jr. gets a Polaroid for Christmas. I couldn’t see the model, but here’s a Polaroid Swinger commercial from the mid-‘60s, featuring a young Ali MacGraw. WATCH: Polaroid Swinger Commercial

Mad Men - Season 4, Episode 1 - "Public Relations"

2010-07-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

PREFACE:

This weekly entry is for those who have seen the first three seasons of “Mad Men”. This commentary is about the story, and the reduction of it. It is not a prediction, nor is it a hope of what is to come. It is a working draft at all times, but hell if it isn’t insightful.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 1
"PUBLIC RELATIONS"
Written by: Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Phil Abraham

When the third season of “Mad Men” ended, Don Draper had finally learned his lessons, starting in the spring of 1960 and ending just weeks from the final days of 1963. In that time, this man reinvented himself, from Dick Whitman to Don Draper, but as the fourth season opened, it was clear that a threshold had been crossed. Don Draper is in a new world – unfamiliar, where the rules of the old world do not apply, and the new norms are to be revealed, learned, mastered, and set. A new era is coming, and Don Draper is in a place to be the man to define that new era.

The past is still lingering in season four, but it’s quickly disappearing. The hack reporter from the advertising trade publication, who interviews Don, has a wooden leg – shot off in Korea, where Don Draper was “born.” His ex-wife, Betty, and her new husband live in the house Don pays for. Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is almost a year into its inception, but it’s merely chugging along – straddling the past and the future at every turn – trying to make one final push off from the pier where the old advertising world docks, so they can be afloat and take off.

But Sterling Cooper’s leftover small fish clients like Jai-Alai threaten the livelihood of the business. Peggy and Pete are desperate enough to stage a PR stunt over a canned ham to get a client to spend more money on media. Cooper is a zombie – disorientated. Roger is deteriorating – he mentions his unfinished book (something he criticizes as cliché last season), he stands aside while clients gush over Don, he envies Don’s sexual freedom and youth, etc. The taints of racism, sexism and now even cracks about the disabled – a veteran even – all show Roger Sterling is on his way out – that generation is done. Don (and society) needs to cut ties to his past and release – it’s the only way to move on into the latter half of the 1960s.

There’s a new era coming – a dark and scary one. Don states it clearly at a dinner date when he says that there’s so many real problems in the world. Bethany, the young lady Jane Sterling sets Don up with, initiates images of the death of America’s innocence and societal denial – an unveiling of the shadows of our society, and therefore ourselves. She may very well be the embodiment of the next generation. She may also be a shapeshifting character, for that’s her job on the stage. Bethany is definitely willing (“C’mon, let’s have some fun,” she says at dinner), but it is evident Don is going to have to figure out this young generation before he can fuck it. On his first try, using old tricks, he fails – mirroring the interview. He has some work to do – and he’s constantly working, pushing limits, eating on the run or not eating at all, in front of the television, portfolios – even while his kids are with him. According to the new mystery girl, he has until New Year’s Eve. “If it’s meant to be, it’ll keep.”

To deal with his failure and incessant drive, Don delves into his masochistic side – wanting and receiving a few slaps from a hooker – a seemingly regular thing. He gets reprimanded by the execs at SCDP – first Sterling, and then Cooper, who tells him, “Turning creative success into business is your work – and you failed.” He also castigates himself through Peggy, who has become a protégé and a younger version Don, when she tries to explain the PR stunt. He also asks her (and really, himself), “Do you want people to think we’re idiots, Peggy?” Standing tall, Peggy fights back, pointing out his hypocrisy about minding the image of the new agency. She, like everyone else at SCDP, reassures him that they’re all there because of him – because of his talent, vision, and ambition. Joan gives the most telling and comforting words after his failed interview, “It’ll pass.”

There is a rebellious spirit simmering throughout – Peggy’s confidence, Sally Draper’s angst, and Don’s anger – civil rights, bikinis, and rock and roll – the seeds of change have been planted. Don simply needs to land a big one and help get SCDP over the hump. Some sort of luring fish will soon splash the tops of the water that Don’s constantly drowning in – something will call him to a challenge – a bigger one than a young woman.

We catch a glimpse of where Don Draper is taking himself, the agency, and everyone around him. First, he lays down the law with Betty and cracks to Henry Francis, “Believe me, everyone thinks this is temporary.” But their separation is definitely not. Next, he tells the old fashioned, prudish client, Janzen – who is obviously struggling to stay alive in this new progressive era – to get out of his office after they don’t like his risqué new pitch. That was right after he called SCDP a “creative agency.” Lastly, he begins crafting a new story with a Wall Street Journal reporter – a new image for a new time.

Don is setting the standard because he is finally in a place to do it. Perhaps the bubble of PR stunts will burst, or maybe they will carry them into the stratosphere. Either way, he is a known, wanted man, and as he tells the Wall Street Journal in the final seconds of the first episode of season four, he had to make a decision: “Die of boredom or holster up my guns.” He’s done fucking around, and he’s the kind of man that can trade shots with anyone. His ego may cause him to fail as 1964 ends and we travel into 1965, but by the end of season four, he will have adapted to and gotten some control over this new world. It will take him one or two more seasons to master it though – especially considering we’re going into the second half of the tumultuous ‘60s. ***

SUBPLOTS

Betty:
Henry Francis is figuring out what he’s in for. It’s obvious both Betty and Henry are fringing upon doubts – with him bracing himself at the end of the episode, and her being disappointed by him being too full to fuck after Thanksgiving dinner. For Henry, he may simply be too full of her shit.

Henry’s mother says what she thinks about Betty, and she’s certain that even though Christmas is only a month away, the leafs of the family dining table should be stored in the basement.

As per usual, Betty is neglecting and punishing her kids instead of dealing with her own problems, and Ma’ Francis points this out as well.

Peggy:
She has a junior copywriter, Joey, and their relationship definitely mirrors Don and Peggy’s from years past, but in a youthful, softer way that we never got to see out of Don at that age or stage, except for the one flashback of him as a salesman just before being approached by Anna Draper for the first time (season two). Peggy also has a new man, who will probably get thrown away as Peggy’s confidence continues to build and she continues to blossom. She won’t be held back by a man – she’s still ascending. She will prove that she belongs in every meeting – even if the client or Don is uncomfortable with the idea. I wonder if she’ll take on pieces of real-life advertising trailblazer, Mary Wells Lawrence.

Pete:
Nothing much to go on here other than he and Peggy are working well together and making things happen – which is why Don wanted them in the first place. But they’re still thinking in small terms – that is, unless Pete is right about Sugarberry possibly becoming a big account. History (and Don) will already tell you that Jai-Alai will not last long, so Pete needs to do something in terms of bringing in business.

Harry:
Has become powerful, as television becomes the new direction of media. He’s even able to set up high-level meetings at his convenience. He is good at his job, and his confidence shows when he starts ordering around Pete as the Jai-Alai ship starts sinking. But he’s also put in his place by Pryce, and also Joan, who isn’t impressed with his name-dropping Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, nor his success with the Jai-Alai special on ABC.

Cooper:
Walking corpse.

Sterling:
Ailing previous generation.

Pryce:
Almost absent.

Joan:
Barely there.

Joey:
Peggy’s new assistant. He seems savvy, but he’s very much a tyro.

NOTABLE REFERENCES

“John and Marsha”
In one scene, Peggy and her new junior copywriter, Joey, go back and forth, calling each other John and Marsha. This is a reference to a Stan Freberg record from 1951 – a reference to the past most likely, as they ponder new ideas to revitalize their approach on an old client. Even the novice, Joey points out that the work on Sugarberry’s campaign is “old-fashioned.”

Freberg was also a creative director in the advertising world, known for his satirical adverts. Before that, he was a radio personality, whose show replaced Jack Benny’s radio show in 1957.

WATCH: STAN FREBERG - "JOHN AND MARSHA"

Blues Magoos – “Tobacco Road”
The ending track to the episode. An odd choice, being that it wasn’t released until November of 1966, but it makes sense lyrically, as it refers to a countrified upbringing – like Dick Whitman. Even more obvious is the tone – garage rock. This track is featured on the infamous garage rock Nuggets compilation.

Interestingly, The Blues Magoos have a link to the advertising world. They were part of the Great Shakes radio ad campaign in the late ‘60s that featured pop/rock bands. The Who, Blues Magoos, The Spencer Davis Group (Stevie Winwood), The Yardbirds, Happenings, Tokens, Chiffons, etc. all took part. Great Shakes was a product that consisted of a packet of powdered shake mix – to make shakes at home instead of going to the local soda jerk for one.

LISTEN: Blues Magoos - Tobacco Road

LISTEN: Blues Magoos - Commercial For Great Shakes

CORRECTION!: The version in the episode is actually by The Nashville Teens. The two versions almost sound identical, but I should've known better not to check after seeing the Blues Magoos version wasn't released until 1966. Well, it just means you get another song for your iPod...

LISTEN: The Nashville Teens - Tobacco Road

THE LEFTOVERS
Themes, Tidbits, and Observations

· The style has obviously changed – find a style guide for that one – I’m no expert
· The Glo-Coat commercial is a step in a new direction creatively, but is art imitating life, as it features a boy dressed as a cowboy (Don) behind “bars” and a very Bettyesque mom. Needless to say, Don knows the feeling of imprisonment. (WATCH: Actual Glo-Coat commercial)
· The shine kit is also related to the Glo-Coat ad – his scuffs upon the whitewashed world he used to live in and have with Betty. He is still polishing himself and his image – he needs the shine box out all the time – in front of the television.
· The Janzen ad refers to an inside joke at SCDP about there being no real second floor to the company. This is an image game that Don is playing, even though he doesn’t like stunts like Peggy and Pete’s.
· TV as a babysitter. Don has the kids for part of the holiday, but he’s working and the plops the kids down in from of the television.
· Korean War link with the reporter, and the loss of something in that war
· The stigma of being divorced in the 60s – everyone danced around the topic as if the divorcees had a disease.
· Women’s place and progression – Don keeps Peggy out of a meeting. It makes sense, but moreso in the past than it does in the age of the brewing women’s civil rights and women’s liberation movement
· Two women fighting over a ham could be foreshadowing for Don or Pete
· Don making his bed before heading out on his date – expectation that he’s going to succeed.
· The noticeable abundance of profanity
· “A slogan’s nothing when you have a good idea,” says Peggy, echoing Don from seasons past when he criticized her for trying to pass a slogan as an idea.
· Waverly and 6th Avenue – where he asks the cab to take him. He’s living in Greenwich Village.
· The swinging doors in Don’s house after he says goodnight to the kids (or goodnight to Betty and Don) is another reference to the Wild West, or Don as a gunslinger.
· On the television when the kids are visiting Don, the line “They found him,” can be clearly heard. This is at the point where Don begins confronting the obstacles that are in front of him – things holding him back.

destination known

2010-06-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was helpless, whispering to myself in the curtained room. I thought about everything that was on the other side of that locked glass door What have I done – what am I leaving? A vivid picture emerged – like that of epiphanies past – and though the sadness left me, the tears fell unrestricted, beyond my control – knowing exactly what I had within my determined destiny. I was released a new man.

The road back is never easy. I haven’t been full of pride, but I am also not disappointed. The best and worst thing I have is my belief. What I know is a trick of truth, and I am lucky to have been given the most horrible gifts. It is not what will happen anyway – what’s written owes itself to the activated idea. We can win or we can die.

Blocks of time become blips of synapses as the years pass. It all becomes distant, and what’s a headline today will be fanned ash two years from now. The constant is the singular that keeps every moment of time connected, and what once seemed like an ugly accident in the bottom left corner will be displayed as an integral piece in this creation two artists have collaborated on.

I can smell the rain – I can taste the goodbyes. I can pull the stubborn sun from the edge of the Earth and patiently wait for the day I no longer wonder when the day will come. It will arrive – tears will rush and spill over my lids without my consent. It will be life in its beauty, and I will have finally reached what I’ve seen.

Three Pests In a Mess

2010-06-09T13:33:00.000-07:00

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feverish whisper

2010-06-03T15:21:00.001-07:00

He didn’t need a bare rooftop – all he wanted was to whisper the longest whisper into her soft ear for her entire life. She was the only one who needed to hear – she was the importance.

He jots with fever, sweating through his clothes and sheets. His stomach curls upon itself to paralyzing effect. She sits, saddened, helping, loving, and appreciated. He yearns to infect her.

All the past rushed up with nausea, but it was fleeting, and it passed before he fell into a sleep from which he could not wake. The sickness that had come and gone months prior almost buried his mind in the fear of death.

He is not well some days, nor is she. So close, it’s hard for either to escape the malady of the other. But there is an immense overlap of self between the two – held with bolts of understanding – and that will always be celebrated with constant murmurs of love.

shared truth

2010-06-02T13:51:00.000-07:00

I thought I had reason to resist. As natural as the subtle hesitation is, it had to be temporary, or it would be destructive. Believing a truth does not give an exemption from pain and suffering – because people are fallible, and though there are honest ones out there, the lot cannot be trusted.

Today’s Western culture compounds this tragic trend of mendacious tendencies – the examples being set by our leaders, saints, and corporate thieves – all skating away from responsibility on a thick slab of cold-hearted money. Uphold the image – the deception – the massacre of the foundations as they build more – higher – toppling over, onto us for us to save.

Individuals have unknowingly embraced this image-me-first, and the apathetic attitudes that saturate the boomers on down have caused a severe strain on interpersonal relationships, as well as the basic connections with the ground we walk on – or piss on and rape like unleashed Beserkers. The vicious selfishness that permeates through the expressways of this society continuously destroys it from within.

This is the majority. When you find the exceptions, hold them close. Regardless of what I deserve, what happens in relation to others is not in my control. So then, what does a shared truth deserve? All the affection I can give, and the conscious sacrifice that allows that truth to live. I cannot refuse the obligation to those truths and my heart. Not for long – not ever again.

lost inside out

2010-05-31T12:23:00.001-07:00

I’m lost, and I don’t want to walk anymore. I mimic the yellowed lightning sky as the deepening anguish pours down on me, over me, inside me. I’m beginning to drown beneath the mud being smeared on every smiling quip. The best I can do with circumstances is not sufficient – at every turn in thirty revolutions, I am continuously not good enough – I am curiously being drawn as somebody else, again, against my will – in spite of my efforts.

My warranty was said to be unconditional, but the fine print is revealing expectations that will cause a regression of character – the very things I’ve spent my youth rebelling against because they infringe upon my freedom – to be myself and act in accordance with nature. I am me because I don’t adhere to the absurdity of falsifying social graces. My politeness is enough – having to entertain or interest those who either don’t care or who are too ignorant to warrant such effort is beyond my will. My ability to be honest is a quality, not a flaw.

The haze has gotten so dense that acts of consideration are taken for insanity – due to the obliviousness of a person – the basic lack of understanding coming out with a knife to deride someone as they act out of kindness. It’s a lack of effort to understand. It’s a pattern that is bent around and over in order to corner and kill. My back is against the wet brick, and I can’t walk anymore. I have no defense except to turn inside out in hopes that I will be seen as me again. I want to be found.

the tap

2010-05-30T10:33:00.001-07:00

A person’s character can be reduced – their actions condemned – but to criticize frivolous things about people, such as their taste or status, is a privileged perspective or a vocalized insecurity via vanity. The disinterest in the affairs of others displays detachment from understanding – bound to self with a blurred reflection. Expecting someone to fake happiness reveals a lifetime of acting – repressing all natural feelings, fearing censure – putting on a facade for not only the comfort of others, but also for their happiness, as if the sick need to take care of the healthy.

The inability to see exerted effort – to belittle those you love while they struggle – multiplies the detriment in every direction, adding more fog to wave through. When you reach and can only grasp the air, thick with self-interest, you can feel the loneliness pushing everything out until everything shuts off, and is left empty. When everything is perceived negative, the tap gets conditioned to dispense that favored flavor – the confidence is worn by a constant mistake that hasn’t been made. It is a critical statement on hello – it is giving up on what’s important – it is a silent goodbye.

remaining

2010-05-29T21:45:00.002-07:00

My guitar has seen better days. It would be better if I would put the humidifier in the case to keep the wood from drying out. Sometimes I don’t remember to – it’s not a thought. But even if I put the humidifier in it, I’m sure it sounded better at some point since it was built. When I strum it, and give it some of my soul, as I steal its vibrations, I do what I can to show it affection – to make its dry wood feel just a little bit better. It’s only right – I couldn’t make music without it.

In the midst of a heated discussion about jazz, of all things – on the next morning of the night of my thirty-second birthday – I busted a guitar into several pieces over the arm of my sofa. After a moment, we laughed.

Wanting something from someone so close to you – close enough to you that you create one scent – but then at the same time not assisting in helping get it from behind a locked door – creates a separate set of needs. It’s asking a bum for five bucks. It won’t make the bum any poorer if you ask, but it also doesn’t help much. I hate bums.

The other night, I wasn’t in the mood for Thai food. It’s not to say I’ve never liked Thai food or that I wouldn’t typically eat it or be in the mood for it. But when I’m not in the mood to eat something, I will not enjoy eating it. The taste is the same – the same ingredients – nothing different than when I would normally enjoy it. It’s just my mood – my taste buds go flat. I tried – I gobbled down some rolls and even some Pad Thai but after swallowing it, my mood remained. Nobody suggested anything else to eat.

I think I’m coming down with a complex – perhaps it’s the other me. Can I be me and still remain? I will surely grow, but I’ve never thought twice about being me in full spectrum…until this very last moment – the one between the two notes of my friends – a quarter of a second, I bet. Can’t omit it – it already exposed itself – the image is there. What do I do with it? This is the test of a man who has been found. Find him face down and you won’t be able to identify him. Find him face up and he’ll be gazing at the stars from the gutter.

tuckpointing

2010-05-29T21:45:00.001-07:00

He crashed to his uneven knees in a desperate attempt to find a hole for his head. He ran because he knew his life depended on it. A man asking for help is a lost man. An uncertain self attracts hopelessness and confusion. Even more, the load prevents it from coming to an immediate stop. A buckle in the air creates a crease between the fracture and the mend, leaving no limits to identify – to know. He didn’t know anymore. He’s never known more than what he knows now. A break in a man gives friction to the witnesses as it does the man. It is an opening to historic corridors. Tuckpointing the gaps once in a while ensures stability. He will never doubt again, for he came across certainty while digging holes.

the ratios

2010-05-29T21:44:00.001-07:00

I am a quiet person – shy, even. This does not mean I can’t get rowdy or loud because I can, and do. For the most part, I remain silent, observing. I’ll answer any question posed, and even go on a rant to fully explain something – for understanding. I tend not to ask too many questions anymore, for I’ve found that my line of questioning is often perceived as a little direct, and it creates discomfort, or worse, defensiveness. I have questions, but in actuality, to learn about people I observe and fill in whatever gaps that remain as I go. You can learn something from what people tell you, but you can know everything by watching the way they act.

I lean towards those who can bend the two ends of the spectrum to touch behind the universe’s back – the kind of people who aren’t limited to a predictable set of responses. I don’t find chaos attractive, but when there is a controlled release of one’s passions – this is the person I want to be around. The others are those who skate back and forth on that spectrum, using up less than half of what’s there on either side. You have to know what’s worth dying for, what’s worth fighting for, what’s not worth the effort, the worth of your existence, etc. The greatest experiences are the most traumatic, in elation and in horror. One cannot ride the edges without tipping the odds, but you cannot be afraid of experiencing the brink.

When you look through someone, you surpass reason and begin the challenge of harnessing emotion – and then unleashing it through a controlled filter. I fail more often than I’d like to. I’m an abstract artist – my natural form of communicating is in the same style. Knowing where I am is the only way for me to explain – when I’m alone, I am there all the time. Add others and I get distracted – something to observe, and if I’m lucky, someone to love. Living through reasoned emotion is a fight worth having, for what can be more impacting than seeing someone so completely without knowing anything about how they were created. It is a golden ratio in the boxes of life.

more i.e. pests...

2010-05-27T17:20:00.000-07:00

album art and track 2 off Three Pests In a Mess...

MP3: Soon Enough

Photo on cover by Siobhan Cullen

i.e. cheatham and The Immortals - Three Pests In a Mess

2010-05-22T16:30:00.003-07:00

...the new i.e. cheatham and The Immortals album, Three Pests In a Mess, is done. Here is the first track on it:

Regret Your Philosophy

dry color

2010-05-22T16:30:00.001-07:00

He’s been left alone again. A heist has relieved him of his belief and trust, right from under his nose – again. He is a dunce of a man, for he accepted the painted argyle – red and blue and colors of the like upon his smiling cheeks. It is only when he wonders why he has been left alone does the facial décor crack and flake off, revealing raw skin and freshly swollen scars. His memory arrives at the previous robbery – something long forgotten with the coming and going of floating words. The stop creates a metal on bone ache throughout. The stagnancy gives him life without motion – a moment to know he’s been alone all this time. There is nothing but dry color to stand on.

high society

2010-05-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

It is no caprice, for there are reference points. Unknown maladies, ink pen tragedies, limited currencies – they sit disconcertingly on the brow, pulling it down as if concentration has suspicion on its mind. The body tries to pull through it – an understanding touch, a spirited kiss, a warm body holding through slumber – unconscious battles against conscious truths.

The day, no matter the warmth, can wear away secure soles, even with one skinny ankle resting upon another. The gusts wrestle graying hair – the sun spots white on the face – sad eyes are tired from holding all they can into the night. But with one large exhale, we send a wind of our own. It is life that we take in and give out. The refinements of truth and love are the celebrations – the awards – and only the mood of divine smiles deserves such high society.

enabled space

2010-05-01T05:43:00.001-07:00

As I listened to her breathe, I wished that my own lungs would cease. The miles between us have not been bridged by a dream or a ticking clock – a time-bomb set to detonate weeks ago, resting beneath the dirt of trust like a smiling mine – several – too many to avoid – it was evidently a matter of time, not love. The simplicity and familiarity of emotion that streams through a day cannot be swatted away – it is textbook memoirs, left on the stoop of the gullible, waiting for me to crash down the metal stairs bending down to lift it to my chest. She rests as I stare, carved awake. I feel nothing but dull, dense pain, except the feeling of wanting to induce more through the destruction of my beliefs. One thing I should know is that nothing follows the past, and if it does, it all does – left there with the rest of the legless sorrowful.

binding detachment

2010-05-01T05:03:00.001-07:00

Separate and erase my wrapped arms. Step back and there is nothing in the distance – on the dying horizon. Today was from yesterday – a past that had been absent, standing side by side, staring at a future held up by a promised dawn. But here it was, leaning on me – pushing between my throat and my tongue. I was left alone, and initiated a lonely bout of self-preservation. Preserve this hour – it’ll never come again – not with sleep, nor with wake. A collision is momentary – resolve is instinct – separation is useless.

more words, no words

2010-04-15T23:25:00.001-07:00

Words are useless and unimportant. They extend out to form soft footing, but without an active, firm foundation, everybody sinks when they stop to listen. The shade is off the lamp – the shadow off the figure – the ruse off the teeth – simply off. Secrets among friends, hidden in plain sight, as they furtively check their company before talking about everyday activities. More words. They fill up spaces left empty by the lack of action – they being the smiling rats between the knees of cowardice – hold a head up high so the crowd can chant “off with it!” Everyone rotates to see the mass of guilt with their own eyes, but they do not witness the hypocrisy, floating away in the warm breath in the cold air. Few stand alone, integral to the integrity of confidence. They watch and walk away with nothing to say, but everything to do.

in another life

2010-04-15T09:22:00.001-07:00

He wonders where he lives – where he sleeps. He ponders months of memories that lay dormant behind his back. He contemplates what he gave, and what he gives – a received lie, blatantly tainting a character that cannot be true as the tide rolls to shore. The tweaks of the heart remain unknown – still submerged between a self-destructive guilt and a selfish need for youthful nothingness – control and detachment – a birthday wish on a yearlong tragedy. And another now – soon to be – or already is. The reasons are lost, and the explanations are scarcely within reason. The pull is harrowing, and the tongue turns cane away. The solace found in friends when death is felt – a run to comfort in a lesser bed – deceives even the friends of friends. There is nothing to be done, and nobody knows when only one wonders.

unimagine

2010-04-13T12:12:00.001-07:00

It’s difficult for me to keep my voracious eyes shut if I’m not tired. It is tiresome to hear the constant dings while the room is unmoving, with utter silence. The aggressiveness originates in the thought that proof is evident – that wonder is unimaginable, and the unimaginable is impossible. The obvious neglected to scatter coincidences over stark memories – forgotten statements of meaningless intentions, painting teeth black and chests transparent. Blindness causes avoidable sorrow, for which there is no remedy. Neither sleep, nor death can erase history’s watermarks, and this is how I am measured.

circumstantial questions

2010-03-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

I never feel more alone than when circumstances bring that familiarity of a determined challenge and summons words akin to curse. Escapism is the natural response – contemplating flight because it’s the easiest solution…that doesn’t solve anything. Instead, I run into myself, knock myself onto my bony knees, and deliberate with no real sense of destination other than “what makes the most sense at this particular moment?” I pour the absolute worst into my crowded head and try to shake it out through the best of me, playing all sides of the argument – supporting and then railing against every option that seems to be available. It’s circling the wagon, encircling me – protecting myself from mistakes and noting successes – always rediscovering where I’ve been, who I’ve become, and what direction I need to go. I often do not know, and depending on who is around, my self-perception can even become a victim to my insistent debate.

Today is no more a test than yesterday, and tomorrow can bring worse. What can I do but stay and get the shit kicked out of me once in a while? If I’m trudging along in the right direction, I know that it’ll only be occasional, no matter how badly I want to hide in self-pity. The stress no longer entangles me at length – this should mean something to me. What do I still have? It’s more than enough to survive off of – it’s enough to envy. The solitude is a temporary necessity, but I know seclusion is my escape to resolution. It is independence from the unreliable – protection from the disappointment of being left alone – of being alone. I am the only certain permanence I know, and even that is questionable.

the air looms

2010-03-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

She stood in the cold bathroom, in the reverberating darkness, facing away from the vanity mirror in spite, with her fingers stuck deep into her ears. Her heartbeat filled her head – her breath fast and short.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered to herself.

The tiled walls heard, but rejected it in an attempt to let her hear it again, echoing all the transgressions that have poured out of her.

There is no bias – no hatred. Splash a little cold water on your face and stare at it for a while – the admittance of morning will wake you up – the eyes will clear. In order to understand anything, you must remove your own perception first – apply it at the end, and weigh the reasoning. Truth has nothing to do with reproach or censure – it has nothing to do with the victory of one side versus the other. It’s an acceptance of the natural order of cause and effect – the usage of reduction and deduction. Human behavior is not mysterious – people receive, digest the if-thens of their brains, and react. If something hinders or confuses the reception, the output will not match the input. There is not always what would be considered an equal reaction to every action – there is irrationality – there is chaos – but anyone can see where the cracks existed – where the gaps were – why and how something was computed a particular way – why and how something broke down or died.

The combustion engine boils down to three elements – spark, fuel, and air. Too much, not enough, or the off-timing of these things and the motor will gasp, stutter, or simply fail. It is a balance – the working of many pieces – that allows for something to run. When it is neglected, ignored, or taken for granted, the machinery wears down quicker, its efficiency is diminished, and its miles cut short.

Hold a second mirror and catch the reflection in the first – your face has changed. It’s an angle everyone else sees, but you don’t because you wake in the same place – in a one-dimensional point of view – hardwired to refuse, banish, retreat, and regret. Keep adding more mirrors and you’ll surround yourself with your own image. Now destroy them all and remember what you saw when you saw yourself completely. Now surround your actions and your words in the same fashion and you’ll have a different understanding of how things came to be in your life. And then, you just have to accept it.

Epiphanies are not of the past – they are a vivid vision of the future – complete potential incarnate, revealing enduring truths that others can witness through expression. Fear and the lack of will are the primary enemies that can spoil what nature determines to be truth. History says we are not truly living if we are without sacrifice. Without the appreciation of life and its best – in happiness, in love, in freedom, in adaptation, in truth – we are merely dying in numb comfort. If this generation believes treasures come without effort and determination, they are the dolts who will spend their lives waiting for their number to come up. They are the ones who will finally destroy this world. This is apathy killing mankind, nature, and life as anyone has ever known it.

The shower curtain draws. The water beads on the flesh. The sounds of the water falling and crashing are still soothing in memory. Nothing is necessarily understood, but the beginning is at wanting to understand. It’s impersonal, for there is no gain in self-deception. People who believe without reason are ghosts to their own philosophies and detrimental to everything around them – the closer to the epicenter, the more damage. Stand alone, and the absence of things will give you what you need when you are able and ready to go recover them.

removing violent doubt

2010-03-15T18:15:00.001-07:00

It does not matter what you do or who you are, people will treat you as they view or treat themselves. If someone is a miserable person, they will take advantage of your kindness and generosity every time – waste relations, disjoint connections, and repress discoveries – all because, like children, their only concern is their own fulfillment. However, when the void is so wide and bottomless, no amount of external love can fill it. Sooner or later, the person must grow up and figure out how to appreciate themselves so they do not continue taking everything else for granted, as we all do throughout our id-ridden youth. At the very least, they must be mature enough to let the praise of others help with the foundation of an adult confidence – to assist in the understanding of self, and also a realistic perspective of self.

To think someone is arrogant for knowing what they deserve rejects and ignores the entire spectrum of treatment you yourself had given to that person. Over time, one notices how other people react to them – how others value them. If there is no evidence, then there is audacity, but once others investigate, ascertain, and appreciate someone, it is not a fault of the person to believe those same things about themselves. It is the other who sets the expectation – who makes the proclamations. As it is with anything, whether it is the ability to see, hear, or walk, once you realize that these elements of life deserve humble gratitude, you cannot be inconsistent, or simply evade it, without being unappreciative. Children open gifts and discard them without a thought only because they don’t know better. When adults devalue the human gifts they are given, and they do so with the clear knowledge of their worth, it is a direct form of violence.

When you innately believe people resent you for what you don’t release or give, you bounce around haughtily like royalty, in a fictitious world that exists only to supplement the woe that chokes the reality. Shallow complaints, detrimental self-deprecation in tandem with narcissism, and a complete lack of accountability leaves many harrowing hours. Selfish beds, a reckless tongue, and the insistence of misunderstanding viciously takes aim at the confidence of others. The irascible have an internal trigger – a concealed weapon – and when it is switched on, they scurry away, hissing like possums – pointing with their supposed indifference, but screaming with all the emotion of someone who secretly cares – carrying the guilt out into the streets. If you possess the same flaws as someone who finds those flaws in themselves to be ugly, the judgment and condemnation is twice as harsh upon you.

The only pillow you have are the reassurances of those who know you, or merely just those who don’t try to paint a hideous mask on you for the sake of ease – so they can justify their ignorance and escape. These soothing replenishments confirm everything you already know about yourself, if you are aware enough of your own worth. You can take solace in your documented history – comfort in evident patterns and cycles of life and others. You know it does not matter, but you still have to give all you can because that’s who you are, regardless of whether or not it will all squandered and left to fertilize the barren dirt.

a blank book

2010-03-13T06:00:00.001-08:00

I couldn’t write, so I wept. I swelled, quivered, and clenched like a boy who had gotten lost in a world unknown – resenting every incessant tear – thoroughly ashamed of the displayed weakness. The brink of total self-damnation is a moment of isolation – a manifestation of years of lonely reduction – of face to face harshness with myself – beaten down further from where Life has left me to flail and gasp in this impenetrable world. At times, I am a man who cannot convince himself of his own worth, perhaps because I am capable of collapsing like a tattered boy.

The doubts may overwhelm on the rare occasion, but they never completely omit the beliefs, no matter how mesmerizing and spectacular the debate. I know this, and this is the stalemate fight – the stubborn arguments between what I know and how to defeat what I know. I’ve hit the limit of self, and either I keep myself bound or throw the whole book in the fire. Because my heart is in everything, it becomes more and more difficult to remain standing when I fail at almost everything. Who am I to believe when there is no evidence to support my self-proclamations?

taking the time

2010-03-11T17:44:00.001-08:00

It’s easy to receive. It satisfies the self. It allows one to reap the benefits of a treasure trove, while never having to contribute anything to it. The delusion is that time spent is meaningful and valuable, but with each day, the open chest shows more empty space – more of its ornate interior is exposed – and there is less and less to plunder and waste.

The beauty becomes merely physical, and that too, becomes ugly under the dictatorship of selfishness. Assume the worst, and you will see the worst. Assume the best and you will be disappointed. Try not to leap from square to square treating everything you don’t understand as bizarre, negative, or assaulting. Evading empathy hardens the heart’s historical callus, and questions one’s morality. Refusing to care to understand is the concussive complication in humanity that blindly kills people – their bodies, their souls – their gifts to the rest of the world, no matter how small that universe is.

The balance is overrun, and gratitude can never be requested. Generosity is the expansive plains, free to distribute without obstruction as long as the heart is in the right place. Anyone can dedicate time – half of our life is devoted to our employers. It’s meaningless, and lacks the importance people need to feel alive. Anyone can feel safe when they don’t have to leave their comfortable cell. Contention is the fate of a life refusing risk. Loneliness is the destiny of narcissism. Emptiness is the affliction left behind after time has been taken for granted. When only two sapphires remain, the treasure will become a hoard, and everything will be shunned – unable to give, and unable to receive.

pollinating self-deception

2010-03-10T23:53:00.001-08:00

It aligns in the sunny day pollen spread across the sidewalk – so clear, the blanket sky has its limits – a yellow rain drips from the red clouds. It’s free-falling all the time – some days faster than others. Sadness is created by hope failing – by lying eyes, mistaking realistic shadows for undeniable lights.

I heard the multiple warnings, but did not heed them. Belief is for those who want something that doesn’t want to be there. Today, it becomes evident – today contains a simple summary, documenting a fool – outlining empty months of self-trickery. It’s easy to walk outside without a coat, see the snow melting, and believe it’s spring, but the reality will show a different forecast – the same season that has been stinging my face with its brute cold.

I can’t see the able authenticity – there is no explicit passion. It’s arbitrary in order to avoid confusion. I am arbitrary. I have been, and I never wanted to know it. I am ephemeral, and all I’ve given has been spilled into the winter wind – like pollen, drifting and enriching similar piths – blossoming flowers. Tomorrow is handed to me, but with white-knuckled, clenched hands, and in return Life will receive the balled fist that has taken residence inside me – in the void that the breathing breeze caused when it blew through me and left nothing to believe.

restrain the song

2010-03-04T00:49:00.001-08:00

“I think you smile when you think of me.” This could be accusatory – if it were saying it is wrong. To feel victimized by anything that might question why you do something is a game for adolescents. The absolute refusal to speak about anything that requires an explanation is nothing more than someone being afraid to stand on two feet, stare directly into a mirror, and hang their head nodding at their own thoughts. And then to others. Hold back as much as you possibly can with that privileged stubbornness you retain because life becomes too daunting otherwise. You need control. You need. You need. You. You. Run away to a half a life ago – with a scowl – dirty hands pointing inhumanity – belittling life as you demean him, and mostly yourself. Comfort food. Negative nutrients. Depletion of heart – deflation of love.

Gratitude is lacking in every moment that someone holds back their heart. The further its proximity, the more one takes for granted. Without that heart leading you down the street, people become things – life becomes reckless – love becomes death. Trust no one! – especially those who can reduce you to a fool – who can cause you to ache intensely. Give nothing more than what serves you – there’s nothing more you deserve in the same breath. Try to look in someone’s eyes – someone’s soul who so desperately does what they can do to avoid releasing what they hold so tightly to – can be seen as guarding them from a quick exit. Every body and every word is now against them.

The evidence is in the departures. If you appreciate something, you don’t leave it in vain. If you trust something, you understand it. If you love, you love. The simplicity is complicated by contradictions, irrationality, and brutality – insecurity, fear, and selfishness. The complication remains in the arms wrapped around the ribcage.

You lose control when you smile a real smile. Due to a poor set of teeth, I have conditioned myself to cover my mouth with my hand when such a thing occurs. Laying on my side, stating to the gods in my mind that there is endless beauty next to me, I cover nothing. Take it for granted again. Take it again. Mistake it again. Leave it alone if you don’t have the strength to endure it. Leave again – you’ll find yourself at the same fight with yourself. When the departure becomes the beginning of a passionate quest to return, the mind and heart is in harmony. I dance to the song I once sung, and I sing along. I sing true because I believe what I see, and people believe what I see because I sing true.

pointed pointlessness

2010-02-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

There are too many crisscross thoughts and nobody here to hear them. When they’re finally released from the cage, nobody understands – and most don’t care to. There is deep loneliness in this simplified world – the careless mindset – the hypocrisy that people call their lives. The worth is minimal, which results in my meaningless existence in this realm. If the loss does not make an impact, then what’s the point in pretending I am this or that? To the ignorant, I am that which others determine me to be. Why fight the insistence – the judgment? Those who lack empathy cannot see anything outside themselves – the common theme is redundant and tiresome. To have your life be taken for granted is the destruction of it. And so the thoughts die, never heard, and this is the only escape from facing the realization that I am all alone with my pointed pointlessness.

the spectrum

2010-02-23T15:27:00.001-08:00

Many people want to experience things so they can have fond memories. I want to experience things to feel alive, always moving to the next experience and elated moment. Perhaps when I can't get around as well as I once used to - when my days begin taking more out of me than I can replenish in a night's sleep - perhaps then I will begin to look back at this collection of impressions. But if you're there - to obtain it, you have to know you're there. The difference between a memory and an experience is then and now - a consistent realization of one's epiphanies positions you where you should be. It’s between the creases of emotion, waiting to be released or shaken out.

air in the sun

2010-02-23T11:08:00.001-08:00

Find me lying beneath a spaghetti yellow sun. Remind me that when I was young, and just a boy, I wanted to know this particular feeling – I wanted to be in this exact place. I beat myself from the inside out until the world reversed it. Here, always alone, I remain detached – forlorn and worthless. These are not my words, but they are the world’s actions. The freedom this brings has less time to breathe than I can estimate, and if all I receive is a reflection of that, it is more than I’d have otherwise. Unnatural or destined, I’ll never know, but before I return again, the warmth cannot be merely air, hot from the sun.

the shovel, the pen

2010-02-22T09:57:00.001-08:00

Deliberate efforts of a lesser heart find a way to bury oneself. Life is much bigger than we care to admit, regardless of the systematic attempts to make it small – easier to process one’s days and years. The arbitrary feeling of being close to someone is the dismissal of value. Arrive at nine, complain it’s not eight, and talk about how you wish it were ten, but you’re not patient enough to simply let time move. Instead, you detonate. Time has limitations, while moments are endless. Endings are only good when they are already written. Write yourself a stronger heart.

is

2010-02-11T12:16:00.001-08:00

As everyone knows, there are people who all too often perceive only what they want to perceive. Removed from a singular experience, it is rooted in self – the flaws of self. It is a predisposition. It is a prejudice against all mankind, and anything reminding a hair trigger memory of past negativity is subject, even if that anything is a wraith. It exists before the event is instigated, and helps develop the demise that is subconsciously wished for and predetermined. It is a fear of truth, and even more so, the denial of it.

A lifetime occurs up to a point of realization, and depending on the strength of one’s own being that realization can either free them or imprison them even more. The road to freedom takes the courage of someone willing to feel and be felt – the drive to be better than what they are – the willingness to stand in front of death and say, “you cannot kill me” – the audacity to stand in front of a god and say, “I can love as much as you.”

Anything less is cowardice. It is a brink that is overcome only by those who follow their hearts and understand their own minds, and the evident influence that either voice has upon them. Anything less is not living – it’s choosing to die – it’s the defeating choice of the insecure. Stay, and it is impossible to refute. Run, and it’ll bring satisfaction to one’s fabricated mind that they are on a safe path, but where that path leads is the same miserable timeline that had existed before the awareness frightened the very soul that they claim they have.

The selfishness that is required to disregard another’s dire health is too singular for humanity, and lacks the empathy normally found in the human heart. The ability to close one’s mind to revealed truths is stubborn ignorance. The ability to close one’s heart to revealed truths is self-destruction. Those who do not see their own self-worth tend to be blind to others’ value, and since they take their own lives for granted, they treat others with the same lack of appreciation.

The weak don’t like to be challenged – the courageous request and savor it. The timid fear communication – the strong seek understanding. The desperate delusion that is necessary in order to claim innocence and lay blame on another after admitting their own guilt for the crime is not only tragic, but it also summons pity when the laughter at the absurdity has ceased. Defending against phantom bullets is the instinct of those who have been historically wounded by the real thing, and there is no defense against such deep-seated psychology, even if you are holding a flower instead of a gun.

When we are children, we can make anything into a toy, but as we grow older, the world and its inhabitants stomp out the imagination that once flourished. We allow this effect because we don’t know it’s happening while we’re still trying to figure out life throughout our youth. And once the loss is realized in adulthood, it seems impossible to ever regain it. But this is a conscious choice. It is one of defeat – of death – of misery. As children, we do not know what is possible and what is not because we believe anything is possible. As our years pass, we convince ourselves that it is childish to believe such things. We push against it with our cynicism, negativity, and pessimism – we reject it because of our scars – but what nobody realizes is that this perspective is the true definition of immaturity. And with that, you can destroy the entire world by closing your eyes.

devastation road

2010-02-09T20:35:00.001-08:00

The colored gels change minute to minute. The heavy shades are drawn upon the window like charcoal, but they are wide open to let in the light. The blind man wipes his clear eyes to clear his vision. The quiet man squirms, winces, and screams as he pulls out each splintered rusty blade. I’ll never believe in such a thing again.

I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. There – now it is true because it has been said enough times.

A godless promise at the bet of death is too much hope – a blank statement of death at birth is careening callousness. The blatant cowards remain safe in their mediocre pasts, laid out in the middle of Devastation Road – waiting for that easy thing they can keep outside with everything else that doesn’t challenge them. Don’t touch that! It’s dangerous, don’t you know?

It’s a mockery, as well as a tragedy. It’s nothing – now never was. Tell a story well enough and people will believe, but what they believe is a fictional conquest of misery – sitting and thinking and forcing everything dead – doubting the ability to weave something immortal.

From red to blue to black – minute to minute – counting until one’s watch stops. The blind man thought he saw something, but nothing was actually ever there except the blackness of realizing he was a fool.

the last strides

2010-02-06T07:59:00.000-08:00

The worst is behind me, and it won’t catch me again. Once decided, it simply is. Eventually, everyone will notice, but when nobody cares that something has disappeared, its value is all its own. If my steps forward depended on someone else’s legs, I would have been stranded and dead a long time ago. To understand, you must be confident enough to stand close enough to risk feeling lost. We know we will come out of it, but what change will be seen when we reemerge? Who will believe it?

One day to the next, we live and die with day and night, wake and sleep, and while we walk around through our days, what do we believe? It hurts to stop and have life swirl around you, but with enough will, everything slows down and fragments into pieces small enough to swallow and absorb. The tiny sporadic freckles on my ghostly body do not mean my entire body is brown – the scars do not make me ugly. You don’t have to see or feel the pain and suffering of a man, you merely have to see who he is and what he has become because of it. However, he has to see it before anyone else can ever believe it.

necessarily shining

2010-02-03T17:42:00.001-08:00

Once there – once shown to exist – a belief in something has been realized and thus, the truth can never cease to be present. Anything overwhelming creates doubt. Unruly happiness can rebuild walls as quickly as it can tear them down. Anything foreign that challenges who you are will cause you to retreat to more familiar ground.

Life happens suddenly.

When it’s inside and has taken hold, it will eventually cause you to turn the focus on yourself out of necessity. It’s a revealing, demanded. To know who you are is to feel a weighted obligation to be that person – a responsibility of nature. I am that man, and this road back is a destined one. Dreams are not dreams if your eyes are open.

familiar stranger

2010-01-31T12:18:00.000-08:00

Fifteen years is a lifetime. Everything that has been learned must be applied at the most crucial time. It has been preparation for this. Complete solitude is independence, even from self. We must reach it in order to start again. The fight is within when we are without understanding.

When the parachute hits the ground, we realize that the exhilaration of life we just felt now must somehow be retained and applied to where it is we’re walking. It is on the crack between life and death that brings the experience of truly being alive. And that’s merely when you have the safety of a parachute.

The only explanation is that this is the nature of things. The only thing I can determine is what is ahead of me. What is behind me has not been forgotten, but it has been forgiven. I have seen what I buried – I don’t need to damn it after the dirt has been thrown. It is not the guilt of others that settles the mind – it is your own guilt that must be reconciled. I can beat on my own heart, but I know the mistakes I’ve made, and I know why I made them. It does no good to dwell when there is work to be done.

Pieces of the last circle will most certainly be at the beginning of the new one. The possibilities have been shown – everything is obtainable. This is the life I want, so this is the life I will have. It has already begun.

calamity self

2010-01-30T12:41:00.000-08:00

The worst disappointment is that of your own. When you know you have failed yourself, you most certainly have disappointed everyone else. The severity ranges, but the deep disenchantments have a way of leveling you off. You have suddenly done something very wrong, and there is nothing you can do about it. The guilt overrides sleep. You doubt yourself and who you are in actuality. You begin calculating your worth.

I raised myself on disappointment. I was conditioned to believe I was no better than who anybody else thought I was – said I was. From kids to teachers to cops – when you are told you’re this or that, you eventually begin believing it. As time goes on, you might even subconsciously create situations to instigate the letdowns. The self-destruction is still being repaired.

And then I created this person that was only as good as he thought. I fail, and at times, I am no good at all. My only satisfaction is that I know I give the effort, and most of the time I do succeed. But it’s the failures that define you to anybody you disappointed. Including yourself. Especially when there’s real harm done.

When you feel defeated by things you can’t control, you lose confidence in your ability to have control. You lose faith in everything else – everybody else. Nothing seems possible. Add another lightning strike and it’s as if a black hole had just formed in the middle of your chest. There’s no escape from it, and given the right circumstances, you become detached from yourself and act in a manner that would shock even those who know you best. You have lost yourself on your own journey.

In “Twilight of the Idols”, Nietzsche claims that whatever doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger. I don’t see it that way. The survival is the evidence that refutes self-doubt. It is the realization that you were already strong enough to endure the ordeal. If it is a significant one, you’ll most likely be weakened by it first – destroyed even – before you are able to get back and beyond where you were before. If it is death, you return with all that you’ve learned from your own disappointment and survival, along with the appreciation for life to actually use it.

i.e. artwork

2010-01-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

framed nature

2010-01-28T16:20:00.003-08:00

This is foreign – in the temporal, and in the collective disruption of the minds that inhabit this place. The one-way conversations when nobody is around – the phantom music that move the socked feet across the sterile Matisse tile floors – the immense hopelessness that resides in the lonely paired rooms. The pacing is slow – the anxious stagnancy – the detachment from the branches. It’s palpable, and I have been included, reduced to a pencil.

“I want you all to know, I’ve never killed a child,” she says loudly to a crowd of yawn.

“Come on, come on,” she scowls and winks and repeats and answers.

He will not sit down – he keeps waiting.
She’s trying to maintain her balance, taking each step with care.
Her husband’s dead.
She loves skiing, but she’s never been.
The cartoonist is drawing cowboys and indians, and the British navy.

“First, let’s smell the paper,” she beams.

“Everyone says it’s the best,” she says into the phone.
“In the west!” she cackles and winks and repeats and answers.

Everything is blooming. Framed nature is all around, between doors. We all know, and I laugh a little on the inside, but it makes everything hurt a little more.

winter remarks

2010-01-28T16:20:00.001-08:00

The dead ivy still clings to the red brick. Brown leaves still attached – remnants. The instigating wind beats the neck and chest and face – running the nose, watering the eyes, chapping the lips – fingertips are frozen even wrapped in leather. Bird nests are exposed on bare branches. The white and black stray cat crawls under just-parked cars to feel the heat from the engine. The snow, salt, and wheels beat the street to pieces. The stress of a holiday tears off layers of the cracking, dry skin. The ice makes it hard to keep your footing. In winter, everything is vulnerable. In nature, everything is inevitable. There will be warmth again, and there will be green.

the belly of self

2010-01-28T16:19:00.002-08:00

The trauma – the concussive shiver between cold stone – the darkness. The storytellers speak of it as if one is torn to pieces – ripped apart – separated from themselves. There is nothing left for anyone else, and there is hardly anything remaining for one’s self. The strength of the pull is dependent upon the weight that has been carried to this point. The gracious solitude is where peace produces life again. The shouts come from beyond these walls built by circumstance – some for support – others for themselves – but they are all left out without prejudice. The obligation of the wounded is to heal, and nothing matters until the collection of self is complete.

the bend breaks

2010-01-28T16:19:00.001-08:00

The bend breaks, and the faucet flows – the boxer’s bloody nose find a way to pointing fingers, and no witnesses are there to see the tragedy. The sin, the apple, the serpent – we have defied, and now we are aware of our naked bodies and see-through souls, but when it is unexpected, the time for celebration is cut short by shame and banishment. You cannot hold truth in the realm of time – Life does not care if you are ready to meet your death or not – your decisions have brought you to this point, and life is revealing itself anew.

If you’re not prepared, you will either run or hold on. The city is burning, but the heat dwindles the further you pull back to watch all the flames – further until you are unable to observe any individual structures. They’re still standing strong, but the distance makes them shiver. It is safer that way. It’s practical, and an exercise in contention.

This is the price we pay for being alive. It is not free if you are truly living it. It may be easy to simply avoid it, but compare the two worlds and decide which one opens possibilities of grandeur, and which gives you that safe sense of yes, this is my life – I can control it all and deal with these status quo feelings that exist in the hairline crack between the window and the pane. The invisible breeze through an open window can blow the curtains down – known.

Thank God for the apple, and then condemn him for his own condemnation.

waiting for what will be

2010-01-28T16:18:00.002-08:00

Things happen in life that make everything else that happened previously – that once seemed so big – suddenly appear to be quite insignificant. There are no explanations for anyone – it goes beyond words, and stays within a private mind that desperately tries to rid of the horror, the tragedy, and the pain. The life you wanted – the life you’ve been dying for – is meaningless for now. All that has ever been given must be retained, remembered, and brought back in. The future kneels to now – the magnitude holds it here until time is able to smooth the ripples in the cloudy water.

And then it will be time. Perspectives will be aligned. Everyone will know nothing, but they will clearly see everything standing in front of them. It must be because it exists. It must be because it can’t be anything else. It must be because it will be.

nearly today

2010-01-28T16:18:00.001-08:00

The questions come. They are wild punches thrown in the dark. There is confusion and separation of self from self. A month later, there is realization.

I am close. I know it. I am walking on top of a picket fence. There is danger all around me, and I can smell my own death. I dream about it, and wonder if that has replaced the transcendent.

Here I am, at the door. I have everything I need. I know what needs to be done – this is what I have survived for. This is the moment I live up to my own standards. This is the time that I am born.

birthday dirge

2010-01-28T16:17:00.002-08:00

Don’t believe in me. I am a hypocrite and a failure. I am helpless. I am not worth the printed word. I cannot be this any longer. The insanity of it should reach absurdity before I lose my delusional mind. I’ve lost my way, and I don’t think it matters if I correct it. Care has been stored away. The only thing that will remain open is a memory of self. The January moon and February reminder will bring cold and dark days. In March, the rain will come and wash the blood from the streets.

the false trespass

2010-01-28T16:17:00.001-08:00

The slow solitude frantically gathers its thin fingers into knots and drops to its atrophied knees, and prays. “Life is nothing tomorrow. I’ll never live to see fifteen.” It weeps upon a crying child – a crying man – and it is mocked by those who determine the death of images that they believe to be impossibly true. The insistent line is packed with regret – snort it and pretend to live.

They will not be forgotten, understood as frozen statues – secrets in place to be revealed by the intrusive eyes that never lie, never deceive. Never remind anyone of their admitted guilt, for they will lose history and begin to defend it anew. Tear it down with a smile and the rubble will slap your face purple.

Dangle dreams away from dreams – the comfort it brings is the ignored introduction of uncharted destruction. The day the jackal is allowed to roam – encouraged by the amusement of the unconvinced, taking their own life for granted – is the day of hopeless remorse. It will come without warning, and the slow solitude will fall hard once more, uncertain of the exact wrong, but sure of the guilt. “Spring will not arrive this year.”

See the breath? I am sweating. Whatever I can lose, he says I should bear no account of. If it is not alive, it is either dead or it never existed. The vivid memory can be wasted no more than a life, and with such ease, we can detach imprinted pieces and swollen phrases and total breathlessness with a few crude shoves. “I’ll only do this once, and I’ll be alone no more.”

and suddenly

2010-01-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

And suddenly, everything is exactly where you wanted it to be – in place and what you’ve asked for. Things have shifted to uncertainty in regards to imprisoned terms and meaningless standards, but it is consumed by the trust in self and what is self-evident. Let the appreciation dictate – let the revelations and the redemption mend this wound – let the constant memory bring you into a decreasing circle – it all falls down to just one element.

Because the wind blows, I fly – no matter the altitude – just as long as I allow myself to be off the ground at all times – as long as the weight of what is certain is the hub, free from everything that makes this road lopsided.

positive order

2010-01-28T16:14:00.000-08:00

This is the world I have created. It is as if I had invented specific feelings. I am now convinced that yes, I can predict some things before they happen. I can even toy with time on occasion. I know without knowing, and there seems to be no logic in how things are born in this mind – this is the death of the impossible. It simply is – energy moves life – existing from the birth of the inconceivable. I have determined it true, and the document of my stated life will be given, not taken.

There is no comparison to all I know – this is the life I want. This is the exact place I found a minute ago. I feel the sleep, and it is lonely. These sorrowful echoes are caused by the happiness I have created, and it is with this that I have become a hypocrite as a rational man.

The Rants - 2009

2010-01-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

Here is a collection of writings from last year. "The Rants - 2009" by Chad Cheatham. An entire year's worth of prose, chronologically ordered to enhance the arc of the year. Enjoy.

PDF HERE

i.e. cheatham & The Immortals - No Cessation

2009-10-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

The long-awaited i.e. cheatham release is now available at the website:

i.e. cheatham

photo

2009-07-07T17:14:00.000-07:00

The Crutch Summer Dance Party

2009-05-16T07:09:00.003-07:00

AT BAR DEVILLE - JULY 23

We're going to try this again. This time, it should actually happen. There will be great music, little clothing, and sweat. Summer in Chicago will be celebrated that night. Babies will be made...

i.e. cheatham poster #?

2009-05-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

poster art

2009-04-18T16:54:00.002-07:00

another moxie motive submission...

i.e. poster artwork #2

2009-04-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

more ideas. not all will be used...

i.e. poster artwork

2009-04-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

Some poster artwork for i.e. cheatham's anticipated album, No Cessation...

The Crutch Spring Dance Party Podcast

2009-04-01T23:40:00.000-07:00

The Crutch is alive and well - just doesn't like the spotlight. He came out of hiding to put this together for you all. There are some real gems in this mix. Careful when listening though – it will be very hard for you to sit still while this podcast is playing. And go buy the music. The numbers indicate where in the podcast the song starts.

Download it HERE (file size: 35MB)

Otis Redding – Shake
Joey Dee & The Starliters – Peppermint Twist (2:28)
Rufus Thomas – Walking the Dog (4:13)
The Shangri-Las – Sophisticated Boom-Boom (6:32)
*The Strange Boys – This Girl Taught Me a Dance (8:25)
Sonic Chicken 4 – Shalalalalove (11:25)
King Khan & The BBQ Show – Too Much In Love (13:53)
Les Sexareenos – Everybody Sexareeno! (17:09)
The Dirtbombs – Chains of Love (19:26)
Shirley & Lee – Let the Good Times Roll (21:39)
The Robins – Smokey Joe’s Cafe (23:58)
The Mar-Keys – Last Night (26:32)
The Bar-Kays – Soul Finger (28:58)
Sly & The Family Stone – I Wanna Take You Higher (31:12)
The Staple Singers – Respect Yourself (36:14)
The Deadly Snakes – Nasty Boots (39:34)
Ray Charles – Night Time is the Right Time (42:26)
The Dominoes – Sixty-Minute Man (45:48)

48 minutes, 19 seconds of bliss.

*The Strange Boys just released their debut on In the Red Records - called And Girls Club. Dig it.

artwork submissions

2009-03-31T23:24:00.001-07:00

Moxie Motive is coming out with some new material soon. They are releasing a single, "Greater Good", at their next show - May 8 at the Empty Bottle. I've submitted some artwork for both their show, as well as their single's cover...