RedBoat

Pool and  Idiot Wind

"Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble..."

The chorus of Meredith Wilson's classic piece that introduces the fictional town of River City, Iowa to the mesmerizing talents of Professor Harold Hill in "The Music Man" is as well suited today on the self-induced hysteria of #RUSSIANS as it was back then at the peak of the Cold War in 1959. Hill uses the new pool hall as his hook so skillfully in public square that Wilson wrote what basically amounts to a rap song built solely on rhythm that builds to a hypnotizing crescendo.

If you've never seen it watch the master work:




Some of my fellow bloggers, Occupados (and former micro-bloggers) in these backwaters of dissent from the conventional wisdom still can't find their way out of vodka drenched pool halls in St. Petersburg let alone off the public square of disappointment that they've been had with a bummed cigarette of "game theory" Russiagate like an issue of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. The simple bold truth was obvious from the beginning of this Russiagate episode: The contamination of the American Way was never from, as Washington media puts it currently, foreign adversaries. It was from within. All you needed to do is ignore the Professor, turn off the TeeVee, cull your social media, and read a book - like Marian does as the town's librarian to discover the truth about this raving, singing huckster Hill. It's much easier not to actually look at the flimsy evidence of a cyber attack coordinated by the Kremlin and Wikileaks and instead make memes out of campaign hanger-ons like Carter Page or George Papadopolous. It's easier to believe the con because it offers an escape, a magical "think system", from the reality of what American Exceptionalism across the planet has conjured up at home all these decades. Fear and loathing + hysteria did not prevent the election of Donald Trump during the 2016 election and it will not be the antidote to Trump in 2020 (that's where we are headed btw, not "IMPEACH THE MOTHER****er", sorry freshwoman from Southwest Detroit). You don't have to play the White Album backwards to figure this out. Just pay attention. Keep track of the narrative that's sold like band uniforms with glossy promises of an exiled Trump daily on cable TeeVee or wherever 'Democracy Dies in the Dark' or whatever scheme Jeff Bezos has cooked up to sell subscription paywalls and sign up the villagers to installments of his periodical #RUSSIANS! over at WaPo.

Idiot Wind

As I write (off the top of my head,lol) a wind storm is sweeping the Great Lakes with formidable gusts. The Dylan song "Idiot Wind" from "Blood On the Tracks" comes to mind. Some may call that song a screed - a litany of epic complaint - about how useless it seems to shout at the gales of mass ignorance and willing self-deception that brought us the Vietnam War. Or maybe it's about an ignorance induced by the cult of celebrity that even Bob Dylan felt trapped in at the time. Whatever, the wind sheer can't be an any better companion to "Trouble in River City". We complain that nobody listens to us like self-styled Cassandras on cheap blogs. But it's a wonder that we still know how to breathe bracing against the raging Idiot Wind all around us and the reality of our true condition as a collection of wandering late stage Americans:

"I ran into the fortune teller
Who said beware of lightning that might strike.
I haven't known peace and quiet for so long
I can't remember what its like.

There's a lone soldier on the hill;
Smoke pouring out of a box car door.
You'd never know it just to look at him;
In the final end he won the war
After losing every battle.

I woke up on the roadside
Daydreaming about the way things really are.
Visions of your flaming town shoot through my head
And are making me see stars

You hurt the ones that I love best
And cover up the truth with lies
One day you'll be in the ditch
Flies buzzing around your eyes:

Blood on your saddle.

Idiot Wind
Blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

Was gravity which pulled us down
And destiny which pulled us apart.
You tamed the lion in my cage
But it just wasn't enough to change my heart.

Now everything's a little upside down;
Matter of fact the wheels have stopped!
What's good is bad, what's bad is good
You'll find out when you reach the top:
You're on the bottom."


On this very blustery day in America take a listen to the epic live version about the Idiot Wind we all find ourselves blown through attempting to figure this shit out: