AMERICAN IDOL/IDIOT

We All Have Our Media Crosses To Bear

I grew up listening to the radio and recordings. When "the idiot’s lantern" invaded my air space in 1948, I was nearly immune to its 'charms'. I found, even as a child, radio broadcasts more imagination provoking and intimate. Rather than trekking down this "culture industry" path of Theodor Adorno’s myself, I can’t resist quoting the following happy bit from J. M. Bernstein’s Introduction to Adorno’s The Culture Industry:

Adorno shows how the forms of behavior the culture industry offers to people have a perverse character of making them practice on themselves the ‘magic’ that is already worked upon them. The human is now only a secret writing, a hieroglyph beneath the masks culture offers: ‘In every peal of laughter we hear the menacing voice of extortion and comic types are legible signs which represent the contorted bodies of revolutionaries. Participation in mass culture stands under the sign of terror.’ [12]

     As far as serious improvised music (aka ‘jazz’) was concerned, Adorno didn’t have a clue; but otherwise he is fun to read. His political stance is too much for most analytical philosophers of aesthetics to take; but my reader (readers?) should know how I feel about most analytic philosophical writing on aesthetics. I’m not exactly sure what Adorno meant by the bit that Bernstein quotes, but ‘I feel him’ as they say—perhaps that’s all we can say when “stand[ing] under the sign of terror”, an ineffable, Wittgensteinian, quietist position. "Whatever?"

I’m in a happy, Sunday, Frame of Mind

I’m listening to the great Arthur Prysock this morning. Until a few days ago, I thought that he was just a Mr ‘B’ imitator. Both ‘B’ and Prysock had wonderful instruments of course, great voices. Billy Eckstine in addition to being a great vocal stylist and singer (there’re not the same) had one of the great bands of all time. I had the thrill of seeing Mr ‘B’ and the Divine One in person, singing duets with Count Basie’s orchestra. Bud Powell was on the same stage—Birdland All Stars on Tour. Chet Baker couldn’t make the gig, he was detained in Philly.

     Must attend to some more music. I think some Mahler and Schoenberg will fit nicely after Arthur Prysock. Perhaps Schumann would be better? There is no ”better"; only more, only something different.