Wyeth's World

Andrew Wyeth - Detail of a Helga Portrait 

BBC documentaries sometimes have a way of disappearing from YouTube, so enjoy this while you can.  It's Michael Palin's beautiful, admiring documentary from 2015 on Andrew Wyeth, and the places and people that fascinated him in and around Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and coastal Maine.  There is even an interview with Helga Testorf, the immigrant home health care worker, and subject of a series of frank, intimate paintings done between 1972 and 1985 that Wyeth intended to keep secret until after his death (even from his family), whose premature discovery by the art world in the mid 1980s (Wyeth died in 2009) generated a storm of attention, speculation and controversy.  Helga's take: Wyeth's fascination with painting her unseen by the outside world was an effort to re-capture a purity in his painting, free from the expectations and input of patrons, the art world, his family, including his wife Betsy who remained from the earliest days of his career to the end a motivational and deeply involved partner in the business of his art.  This, I can see.

After watching the documentary, I was very moved by one of the comments on it.  Arthur Trauer wrote:

That was just fascinating and beautiful.  The paintings take my breath away and all the people were so interesting and supportive. 

My time is short now, I’ve always been sick and poor and there is so much I’ve missed.  Thanks for bringing all this into my small world.

I don't know if it's proper to quote someone's YouTube comment without permission, but it's rare to see a simple lovely thought so perfectly expressed.  I feel somewhat spoken for by Mr Trauer's comment.  Something about the tenor of these days makes me feel that about 99% of us have always been sick and poor and there is so much so many of us have missed.  And we're thirsty, and we deserve to drink.   May 2020 be the year we begin to be quenched.

Andrew Wyeth - The Witching Hour (1977)

By all means

Nathan J Robinson of Current Affairs makes a strong case for justified skepticism about "sources" from the Warren campaign who claim Bernie Sanders told her in a private meeting between the 2 of them while Warren was considering her run for the 2020 nomination that "a woman could never be president."  Asked to comment on the story, Warren herself appeared to confirm it in so many words, sharing with a reporter that Bernie Sanders expressed doubt to her that a woman could win the general election in that meeting, and that she disagreed.  Reading the headlines about it yesterday I was already skeptical.  This doesn't sound like the Bernie Sanders I know.  If it were unequivocally demonstrated to be true in the sense that is being darkly intimated,  it would paint a disturbing picture of an uncharacteristically obtuse (and hypocritical) Sanders that could only lead either to stubborn denial or to appropriate disillusionment on the part of his supporters.  Is that what "sources close to the campaign" are prepared for?

As things stand, although the Washington Post reports that a witness characterized Sanders' remarks as cautionary based on the near certainty that Trump would not let a little thing like accusations of misogyny stand in the way of misogynistic attacks on a female opponent, there is a sense that given that it was a private meeting, Warren would have us know that what Bernie said to her is his word against hers.  As Nathan Robinson points out, this being the case, we can only go by what we know about each candidate in order to assess the validity of the rumor.  Based on what we know, the story is lacking in verisimilitude.  The burden of proof is greatly on Elizabeth Warren, and frankly given her demonstrated repeated capacity for opportunistic fibbing, I do not feel remotely persuaded to believe her in this highly improbable instance.

I will let Nathan Robinson's article make the case.  What I'm left with is a queasy feeling about Elizabeth Warren who until this point has been my unqualified second choice candidate.  A distant second, to be sure, but alone in that position.  I've had qualms about her from day one, but the ugliness from her camp this week has engendered involuntary uneasiness in me about the prospects of Warren and her circle in the White House, let alone as the victors of the democratic nomination.  The rumors of Sanders' unwitnessed discouragement to her was only the second volley this week against Bernie Sanders' lead in the race-- the first involved Warren expressing disappointment in Sanders for a rumored okayness on his campaign's part with his canvassers disparaging Warren's chances in the general election to voters on the basis that her supporters are chiefly white, wealthy, well-educated with a habit of primary and general election voting regardless of who the democratic nominee is, whereas Sanders' voters are more diverse, less wealthy, less likely to have secondary education and less likely to vote except for Sanders in the general election. Warren herself did not express disbelief at the basically untrue rumor (the talking point was proffered by a volunteer and not approved by the campaign which instructs its volunteers not to disparage Sanders's primary opponents).  But aside from the truth or falseness of the charge against Sanders*, once again we have the Warren camp only too eager to let rumors fly and the chips land where they may.

Although the Warren campaign has strategically volunteered this "detail" of her private conversation with Sanders on the eve of the final debate before the Iowa caucuses, it has not volunteered a context in which the words were supposedly uttered.  In light of this we are free to imagine.  Giving this version of the truth a reprieve from the burden of proof for a moment, could a context for such a sentiment have been a discussion of strategy for ensuring the success of a progressive agenda as a way to defeat Trumpism in the 2020 election?  The only conceivable way I can imagine Bernie Sanders entertaining the difficulty of a Warren candidacy against the master of misogynistic manipulation of a rabid Republican base would be in the context of strategizing a progressive victory.  Might Bernie Sanders, the perpetual organizer, in a moment of weakness, knowing the strength, determination and resources of his own movement, the uncertainty of hers and the limited time he has left to see a progressive platform ride a wave of grassroots momentum to victory in this critical time of wealth inequality, drumbeats of war in the middle east and impending global climate catastrophe have posed a choice to Elizabeth Warren as she considered her own run for the presidency: Do you care most about the cause or do you care most about the glory?†

Bernie Sanders has been a consistent voice for workers, women, the poor, the LGBTQ community,  veterans, people of all colors, genders, religions and walks of life for 40 years.  His current campaign has raised the hopes of millions of voiceless Americans. His entry into the 2016 race came only at the assurance from Elizabeth Warren that she would not challenge Hillary Clinton.  It's good to remember that Elizabeth Warren, originally a self-described "die hard Republican" who became a Democrat only in the 1990's, and still a "capitalist to her bones" was a latecomer to progressivism and her commitment to it has rather shallow roots.  Perhaps nothing exemplifies this in quite the way that she has so cavalierly risked the coalition necessary for change to finally come to ordinary Americans, and to the world.

Elizabeth Warren is a Harvard law professor and a United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 15th largest state by population in the country.  Her status is due in no small part to her gifts and talents.  But the incidents this week are sharp reminders that she is also a fierce competitor who will sacrifice truth, judgment and/or principle if it will contribute to her victory.  This might be good for Elizabeth Warren, but her rather reckless disregard for the hopes and aspirations of the supporters of her fellow progressive has left me very distressed and doubtful about what a victory for her would mean for the country.

~~~~~~~~~
* And some might argue that if it's true, So what?  It's not like the talking point is a lie. More like a mildly inconvenient truth:  Warren's supporters ARE overwhelmingly white and ARE more highly educated and they WILL vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee in November, whereas a sizable contingent of Sander's supporters — the otherwise disenfranchised whom Democrats need on their side to win in November— are demonstrably much more likely to vote at all only if Sanders is the nominee.

† Sam Seder of Majority Report imagines an intriguing alternate scenario: Assuming the Sanders-Warren meeting happened after Warren's bizarre unsuccessful attempt in the fall of 2018 at spinning the results of the DNA test she voluntarily underwent in response to Trump's needling of her as 'Pocahontas' that on the contrary conclusively refuted her career enhancing claim of Native American ancestry, might Sanders out of kindness have opted to more gently discourage Warren from opening herself to further humiliation on that score by proffering the less personally embarrassing to Warren but still problematic issue of Trump's success at wielding misogyny against female opponents?

High Art

Some ballet to start the new year.  The street vendor scene from Duck Soup (1933) with Chico and Harpo Marx and Edgar Kennedy:

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians

A concert from the beginning of the decade to mark the end of it--  Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians (written between 1974 and 1976) performed by Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion in a free concert at Chicago's Millennium Park, August 22, 2011:  

Just another summer night at the park in the Second City.

If 61 minutes of Reich isn't quite enough for you (as it wasn't for Chicago), here is the other piece performed that night, Double Sextet which Eighth Blackbird commissioned from Steve Reich for the occasion:

Extra credit:

Lithium & Capitalism

Bolivia has been among the poorest countries in South America for generations.  In 2006, Juan Evo Morales Ayma, an Aymara by heritage, became the first indigenous President of Bolivia.  A socialist, he was elected to 4 terms-- 2 more than the constitution of Bolivia allows, but his socialist policies were successful and popular with his constituency.  Bolivia happens to sit on the largest reserves of Lithium in the world, a piece of minor trivia that has become of critical importance with the advent of electric cars.  Morales had promoted the development of lithium as a source of wealth for Bolivians-- potentially as a material to be used primarily by Bolivian companies in the manufacture of batteries for export-- and had recently canceled a high profile deal with a German company that was intending to mine and export the metal as a raw material at a lower cost, of greater benefit to non-Bolivian capitalists.

Morales resigned and fled the country to Mexico on November 11 of this year under extreme pressure from the military.  Morales' family was threatened and wound up fleeing to Argentina before his house was ransacked and burned. Within hours of his departure, Sen. Jeanine Añez, a somewhat obscure politician from a small right wing party representing the interests of wealthy Bolivians of European stock and their foreign allies declared herself president.  These details are not coincidental. 

I urge everyone to watch this very instructive interview of Morales conducted by the Intercept's Glenn Greenwald in Mexico City.  Its 50 minutes contain a great many truths about our contemporary situation-- particularly the reach and current interests of the United States and its ruling class-- that call for urgent reflection (with an eye to subsequent action).

Dear Reader

Merry Bezosmas everybody!  Welcome to unspeakable (as heck).  I know you have questions.  I will answer them.

Q: Why "unspeakable (as heck)"?

A: Because "unspeakable" was taken.

Q: Why "(as heck)"?

A: Because I was raised to not swear in titles.  Although I would still one day love to write my great American anti-corporate novel: The Fucking Genius.

Q: Why "()"?

A:  What is this, the third degree?

Q: Why doesn't everyone know about unspeakable (as heck)?

A: Some are not as well read as yourself.  Until they are, I keep the place a bit of a secret, which seems to favor the prolificacy of my writing.  I don't know how eager I'd be to continue putting pieces of myself out there if I thought other eyes might be on it, reading it, judging.  I sometimes contemplate the dissonance between the drive to publish pieces at a regular monthly rate that is greater than 0 versus the preference to not be read and it occurs to me that harmony could be restored by not publishing anything at all.  You might think I'd at least publicize to family, friends and acquaintances, but for one reason or another I never have.  I've only told 2 people in my life that I have a blog that I post to (once because it came up in casual conversation and the other time just to plant a seed of knowledge about it in the mind of someone other than myself) but they did not ask where they could find it and I did not volunteer the information. The failure to remember to apprise people of the existence of the place has turned into a determination to keep it under wraps for now.  Originally, I kept it secret as an experiment in how public a non-publicized blog actually is.  I used to wonder about the likelihood of anyone asking me if a blog they came across by chance was mine before I told them I was blogging.  After several years of accumulating page views, I can now safely say that at the rate it is actually stumbled upon based on blogger statistics, it might become a household name by 2582.  On the other hand, life being a series of uncertain events, there may yet be a peculiar day in my lifetime when someone by sheer luck comes across a post of mine, recognizes me by details I impart in it and reaches out for confirmation.

Q:  I found you as the result of a google search. How do you manage to get high enough ranking to be noticed?

A: I wish I knew. In terms of rankings I always aim for my posts to be Number 1 but as readers will attest, it’s a pretty sure thing that they’ll be Number 2.

Q: How much do you get paid to do this?

A: I get out of it what I put into it.  No money changes hands.

Q: You have several original posts each month, month after month going back a number of years on your site.  Are you aware that Google admin has been known to completely remove blogger sites without warning-- that your work could vanish in an instant at the will and whim of an admin? 

A: It is an unfortunate fact, easy to forget,  that my content once published is no longer mine but the property of Google, an obscenely large and vastly powerful operation that is in the sole business of growing itself without limit, whose interest in the fruits of my free labor in the creation of content of substantial quality and personal value to me, is -- to say fickle is to be generous.  No one who is not an owner in our type of society, works, creates, lives except at the will of the owners.  I think this is wrong but this is the situation we find ourselves in in 2019 when we post on Blogger.  I have found moments approaching fulfillment creating my blog, for reasons that are as mysterious to me as they must be to you (and would be to Google as well if the question were pondered by their algorithms).  Creating my blog is both the bane of my existence, and my existence.  It is a big contentious world out there and I know it is partially populated with people who reflexively respond to questionings of conventional thinking and morality or to satirical, impassioned, fringe, experimental or alternative points of view with offense who will now and then complain to Google about them in a desire to destroy them, and that the Google admins responding to complaints do not get paid to treat the creative expression of blogspot content creators with care but rather, solely to promote the interests (in limitless growth) of Google, which jibe with their bloggers' interests only coincidentally if ever.  Where they are judged to clash or if they are not judged to be worth bothering to judge, Google wins.  Those are the terms.  There is an appeals process that I understand sometimes works in the blogger's favor.  It is entirely possible that in acquiring Blogspot in 2003, Google aspired to live up to a responsibility to preserve the online record of the creativity of those humans who provide content for it.  It's possible that a spirit of profound responsibility to protect and preserve the space of public expression that a blog hosting service perhaps truly ought to be yet thrives within the bosoms of Google and the Blogspot admins who maintain the site.  But I'm not so naïve as to think it will be that way tomorrow.  I've lived far too long to expect to be treated with care if I one day find my writings at unspeakable (as heck) in a "disappeared" situation, but for me and for my fellow creators of content for Google, I deeply hope for care from Admins (or Cosmic Void help us, from the algorithm that is surely being written to replace them) if I need it from them.  In the meantime, I back it up.

Q:  Who edits your posts?

A:  I know, right?

Q: Why did the post I read 2 years ago change without any indication?  Do you have no journalistic integrity?

A:  Sometimes, I'm wrong or grammatically incorrect, or prone to perpetrate a mixed metaphor, a solecism or a malapropism or two.  Sometimes when I discover an error, I correct myself after looking at it long enough.  This is not the New York Times or Wikipedia. I don't think people should come here looking for truth, but I'd like them to find it.

Q: Who do you support in the upcoming election?

A:  Labour all the way.

Choice Notes

I am on a personal mission to make Jeff Bezos a pauper by withholding my patronage from his businesses.  It won't happen overnight but I'm in it for the long haul.  My wife shares my opinion of the man who may be not be the only asshole billionaire but is certainly at the extremities-- but she can compartmentalize her feelings about him from the act of ordering batteries for a car fob from Amazon when you can't find them anywhere nearby or going to say Whole Foods when the usual place doesn't have currants.  It's a mixed marriage but love knows no bounds.  

For her, I was at the local WF on the currant mission recently.  We had split up.  I was hunting for the currants while she was going to grab another item she couldn't get at the usual store.  Suddenly, I became aware of something heavenly happening on the sound system.  It was a chorus of voices-- I couldn't tell if they were women or children -- singing a refrain of "Oh"'s that soared up the scale only to be followed by a line coming back down in an immediately captivating melody.  After hearing the refrain a few more times, it dawned on me that my need to know the name of the song was urgent.  This being Whole Foods, and the unfamiliar music having a confidence and a vaguely (to my ears) classical vibe about it, I assumed it was an entertainment for wealthy folks that I was surreptitiously overhearing by being in the store.  I retrieved my iPhone* and set my SoundHound app on the job, and after a momentary grinding it came back with Choice Notes by Alex Winston.  Nothing about this new information dissuaded me from my initial impression that this was rich people's music.  Alex Winston?  Never heard of him.  I had visions of some continental European guy in a studio in Paris directing a chorus of French school children in a musical confection for the aristocracy.  My glee at having the information felt a little bit dirty.  When I got home, I snuck an opportunity to look into the matter and was relieved to be somewhat disabused about my prejudices right off the bat, first of all about Alex Winston himself.  She's American:

The setting of the video is Detroit (Winston is from the suburbs) and specifically an area reclaimed by The Heidelberg Project of Detroit artist and activist Tyree Guyton and his band of young artists from the city. I've lived in those environs of Detroit, and I know what a Michigan autumn does to you.

Aside from its great charm, two things struck me about the video.  First, its age.  How did such a thing exist for so long without once entering my consciousness?  Second, and even more striking is the high volume of comments posted by fans whose experience echoed mine: they heard the song in one or another national chain store-- many of them as employees-- went through a period of urgent wonder about it only to either, like me, eventually pull out their music identifying app to track it down or to rediscover it by accident online-- one of my favorite rare pleasures in the world. Another contingent of commenters were Europeans who heard the song on advertisements.  Did it exist only for corporate commercial contexts?   

It's no mystery how once aware of it, corporate musicologists would be all over it.  There's no denying the strong hooks it gets into you by virtue of its alluring sound and structure.  Also, as an independently produced piece of music it's competitively priced. But where were the rest of us?

I don't have an answer for this.  I also don't really have a point in writing about it other than to take an opportunity to ponder why some music grabs us, how it affects us, and whether there is more to that interaction than delivery of pleasure.  In the case of this particular song and me, I detect traces of deep seated nostalgia that the song evokes in me.  Musically, I respond to the harmonies and pleasant dissonances, the easy way it straddles moods and modes between minor melancholy and major exuberance,  the wall of voices,  the texture created by the interplay of the timbres of each instrument.  Lyrics are not usually the first thing I notice about a song, and there was no exception here, but on multiple listenings, the matching of phrases to music strikes me as above average. There might be something to my initial impression of the song as a kind of delicacy that was slumming a bit by availing itself to my ears.  I stand at the threshold of a song I'm learning to hear, and from this vantage, I somehow see other roads I might have gone down.  If the song itself is old when I first hear it, something about the lost time gives the acquaintance an extra poignance.  After ten years as a stranger, this song finally grabbed me by the shoulder and made me pay attention.

Plus it's got a good beat.
~~~~~~
* Once Bezos is destroyed, Apple is next.