Marc Rostan's Funeral Pyre

I wish he'd had his uniform.

Saturday night I was still hanging around in Boardman, watching Chris Marker's documentary Sans Soleil at the end of a night with the family. Sandwiched around the primitive video games, Hitchcock-obsessed San Francisco travelogue, footage of the horrors of African guerilla war, dreamlike visits to Icelandic children, and a portrait of Japan where department stores display treasures of the Vatican and full-scale replicas of animals having sex is a meditation on memory and experience. Marker's idea is that nothing in history is ever accurate for memory, the foundation of history, is a creation of our minds...do we really impartially judge how thirsty we were (his example) or how much our eyes bugged out at a sight of awe, or how many beats our hearts skipped in acceptance or break? We consider all of our feelings and sentiments and retroactively devise what we should have felt. This means nothing in the past can ever be objective. We are in control of what we once did not control.

Sunday night Mom lit a fire in the backyard. I joined Mom and Dad with wine and (for Dad) cigars and we sat in companionable silence and laughter-filled conversation, depending on the moment, when Marc came out clutching a mass of papers full of informative references for the Debate Team. One by one, he dropped them into the fire, sending a coffin in Germany spinning and probably giving Ray Bradbury a twinge of heartburn over his dinner. The flames rose higher. Then, as we talked about some of the less-than-perfect days of his Boardman High term, Marc thought about the endless hours of drudgery under Mr. Ruggeri in the marching band. His uniform was gone, but he still had the plastic shoes he had worn all four years.

Marc dug the shoes out of wherever they were and dropped them into the pit. Dad thought they would create a smokescreen. Instead, a slow encroaching blackness overtook the white bucks (now Pat Boone was suffering chest pains), and the toes, once perfect ebony had been achieved, rose first erect, then curving back towards the tongue and laces, into a grotesque elfin sight.

Curiously, that day we had gone to a memorial service for Coy Cornelius, the Youngstown artist and patron who just happened to be the greatest barber I may ever let lower my ears. He had just opened a new, even more impressive salon-gallery...his first burned down itself a few years before...and was planning an open house when his medical problems overtook him. He kept a giant car hood in his lobby and a clock where the color wheel took the form of a metamorphosing primary shape, circle to triangle to square and back. We were there for an hour and people kept coming, all ages, all walks of life, and as I raised my glass of Moscato to the blue, puffy-cloud sky...a sky from a painter's dream...I wished I'd been there when he died. He was part of my growing up, and he cared about me and my family.

Marc has now passed his first phase of growing up. I've mentioned before how he had experiences I never did, and these benefited him not just for themselves and the knowledge they gave, but by how much more pain, disappointment, bitterness he felt and how much resolve surged within him. I don't know how much his memories were re-created in his id, or what he wishes he could forget, but as the shoes blazed into the Boardman night I knew he was conducting some kind of funeral of his own, a cleansing away of the facets of youth he no longer had use for, no longer cared to be burdened by, and wanted to let go so he could take another step towards manhood. I have come to understand a little better the way he thinks, how he differs from our parents and I and the rest of the world, and I shall never say any certainties about him...but he knows more about life at 18 than I did, and he knows what is worth remembering and what is only meant for consignation to the flames of time.

I am still figuring it out myself at 24, but like him, I know I'm on my way. I was shown the way partly by my parents, whom I can now have serious talks with over drinks stronger than beer, and partly through what I figured out in the Netherlands and Boston and California. I am finally becoming less narcisstic, less destructively emotional, more open and willing to learn from the amazing people out there in this world. And with Chicago now finally here, I am as joyous to begin as Marc is.

And in typical Rostan fashion, while Mom rolled her eyes, her three men sang in dysfunctional harmony as the embers flickered Bowie's profane version of the rites of the dead.

"Ashes to ashes, funk to funky..."

Afternoons With Mommy

Since the great migration is fast approaching, and the Lacan has been carefully, carefully read, I've decided to devote the end of my Boardman time to purer relaxation. Hence on long afternoons and evenings, Mom and I will drink white wine and watch her DVDs.

I might have my nose buried in a volume of Strachey or Johnson, she'll look over the ads and coupons or deal with the logistics of sending two sons to college, but the little TV in the kitchen will play work which makes her laugh, or wag her finger, or reach moments of emotional revelation or womanly hilarity she insists I pay attention to.

The Devil Wears Prada, which I took her to see back when it came out…strange to watch Vincent Chase and Patrick Jane as the not-as-important competitors for Anne Hathaway's affection…The Mentalist is also a little favorite of Mom's now, and I have to admit it's fun to spend an hour with a charming amateur detective who catches a killer without ever resorting to sexual psychology or forensic analysis. Meryl Streep is a master bitch (mistress bitch?), and Emily Blunt, oh, she's gorgeous, and I drool over her as Victoria Regina this fall.

Mamma Mia is too goofy, too slipshod, to be a good film, but oh, it's a hell of a lot of fun seeing the greatest actress in the world scamper through the hills of Greece singing ABBA while Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skaarsgard try to sing ABBA. Very few people are in pitch, and the story falls apart worse than ever on the big screen without the theatrical razzle-dazzle, but remember, this is a way for middle-aged people to get tipsy and reminisce and sing along to "Dancing Queen" and "Waterloo" and the rest of it. Can you blame them?

Practical Magic is a clever take on female empowerment and solidarity. The metaphors are a bit on the surface and again, the plot lags when it should really be picking up steam (Aidan Quinn's arrival in town), but it's a charming story. Nicole Kidman was only more beautiful in Moulin Rouge and Sandra Bullock, the epitome of "likable," has rarely been more likable. And going beyond the witchcraft angle, the film honestly captures the dynamic between siblings, how you can hold opposite positions and argue and drive each other insane and turn little things into brouhahas and easily resolve major issues while going nuts over little things, but still be there for each other with a bond of love. (And Kidman makes a great drunk and Dianne Weist and Stockard Channing were born to play middle-aged witches.)

Diane Lane was nominated for an Oscar for Unfaithful. If they wanted to reward her for making something special out of a semi-potboiler, they should have given her then nod for Under the Tuscan Sun, one of the better chick flicks of the decade. For a film about a divorcee reinventing herself in her own new Tuscan villa…trust me…it is not fanciful, unrealistic, or overly weepy. Instead, the situations flow on a raft of verisimilitude, and Lane looks and acts her age, handling the comic and tragic with a mind of wisdom and whimsy and a heart of the more malleable irons. Even the tiny bit of wish fulfillment in the finale strikes the right balance, as the plot has been resolved in a way perfectly echoing Robert McKee's dictum to give the audience what they want but never how they expect it. And looking at Tuscany brought back so many memories.

Gilmore Girls. She's seen every episode, and all I can say is there are few pleasures in the history of television more enjoyable than watching Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel do their thing. And when Liza Weil joined in, it was Neil Young adding his voice to Crosby, Stills, and Nash…Paris Gellar is the one character on TV I would fall at my feet for in real life. Biggest regret that Amy Sherman-Palladino didn't finish the show? No chance of a purely comic spin-off based around the Stars Hollow denizens…imagine watching Kirk drive Taylor crazy week after week!

I even got Mom to watch Far From the Madding Crowd with me one night. EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET THIS DVD. The already beautiful picture and sound become sharper, more distinct, more entrancing in digital transfer, and having actually read Thomas Hardy, the themes and characters are all the richer. This is THE great lost gem of the 1960s, and it may have driven Mom a little nuts, but she stayed until the end.

Days like this will not come along too more often. I treasure every minute, and if I could get her to watch Cranford, things would be complete.

Rock This Stadium in the Twilight Zone

Last night Chad Kimmel and I went to the Boardman-Cardinal Mooney game at Spartan Stadium. Attendance unknown, estimated upwards of 8,500. For those readers of mine outside the Mahoning Valley region, the Spartans and the Cardinals are rivals of mythical proportions, a dying-and-reviving steel town version of OSU-Michigan. The game itself was a three-hour turnover-laden epic, with four injuries in a row (one involving a gurney) in the fourth quarter, ending in a 23-17 Mooney win. The Boardman Band is still as bombastic as Mooney's is embarrassing. C-Dog is the same as ever, a man bursting with love and spirit who says the same thing twice in one sentence. But to be honest, when not talking to Chad, I found it very hard to pay attention to the game.

Besides occasional visits with old teachers, I had not gone to any Boardman events since the summer of '05 and the opening day game where Marc marched in the band, and the Winter Orchestra Concert two years before. There was a measure of continuity. Last night, I felt like I had wandered into an episode of The Twilight Zone where everything was familiar and everything had changed.

Same stadium, same Roman toilets, same gigantic scoreboard, same track where I ran embarrassing thirteen-minute miles in middle school, same BCMS where I would duck through the archways, run up the grand staircase facing the Southern Park Mall, and dash for the bus at 3:35 every afternoon for four years in the old nineties. But the people…the people aren't the same. Well, there was an unsettling familiarity observing the football players and the cheerleaders and the Boardman students in the stands. They looked like hiemlich versions of everyone I remembered from my high school years, not exact replicas, but all the old "types" being passed on to another generation. However, none of my old classmates save Mark Wilson were in recognizable attendance, and no teachers either. We might all be getting too old. Leaving for different, greener or browner pastures. Or time might have wrought on us long enough that every moment is now a memory so distant that the particulars have faded, and we're all murky shades lurking in the unconscious. C-Dog said about the same thing.

When I left Boardman for that lonely freshman year at Emerson, I thought my high school years would stay with the sharp etchings of a Dore piece, the most vital moments of my life. I was wrong. Europe in three and a half months told me more about myself than four years, and Los Angeles completed a metamorphosis worthy of Samsa. The values are different, the landscape has become not my own but THEIRS, their own personal testing ground, which may tie them closer to their home or give them the first energy needed to break free, as I did. So maybe the dispossession of last night was a great thing…more of my peers have also found new worlds, new peace.

The alma mater to "Finlandia" still lumps up the old throat though. Through toil and strife, we will remember thee.

A Bottle of Rose Instead

Dad grills salmon and Mom poaches it in white wine sauce. Either way, it's delicious. We had some last night with three kinds of vegetables for dinner, and this is a sign of how the simplest food is also usually the best. To accompany the fish, we each picked a wine and I cracked open a 2006 Red Bicyclette Rose. I like roses, those hybrids between the chilled white and room-temperature red, and I remember drinking a great deal of an excellent Ohio vintage last summer in Geneva-on-the-Lake during the Rostan family reunion, at first out of a desire to escape my personal embarrassment as Dad read out loud "And the Sailor Sails Away," my immensely sappy poetic portrait of the eight siblings written at age fourteen (when nothing I wrote was above average and most of it was horribly, horribly pretentious), then from shared joy as we celebrated our time together. (Marc gave me an excellent talking-to in between.)

My best poetry was written when I had a way to focus my subjects, and I simplified my language to make it unflourished, more direct, more conversational. The last poems I wrote were in 2006, one for my cousin's wedding, another for a gathering at a house in Jamaica Plain where the residents loved October, which happens to be my second-favorite month. December is the first, thanks to Christmas and worldwide sensations of love and peace and the promise that a year of accomplishment is giving way to a year of new discoveries and a renewed, just maybe, chance for one and all to change for the better, but October, the month of my birth, is also the most beautiful month if you're in the right spots, with the temperatures just right and the leaves turning gold against auburn-tinged trees and skies.

The girls who lived in Jamaica Plain loved October. They also loved to cook giant pots of soup and hold parties where everyone in attendance had to bring a vegetarian contribution to the giant pots of soup, and we would eat with salad and bread and cheese and some kind of dessert. Their house was at the end of a street right off the T stop, a nondescript shopping plaza giving way to a lane full of shadows, where their residence was always a beacon, glowing, welcoming, apart from the surroundings. We would eat by candlelight and play Carole King and Joni Mitchell and Cat Stevens on the record player and have the longest, deepest conversations…I remember an argument about C. S. Lewis where I was pro and an atheistic religion scholar was con.

Three of them. The one who first insisted I come there left soon after for the greener pastures of Allston and was replaced…I remember spending 45 minutes at her apartment one day to get a VCR we needed so Mike and I could watch Flash Gordon, only she had to take a shower and fix her dress and face before we could make the return trip.

Now, the main three hostesses, two of them went to Europe with me, one a charming bisexual, the other a gregarious powerhouse talent who starred in the one good film I directed the whole time I was at Emerson. She knew how to act Strindberg better than anyone I've ever met. The third, who replaced the insister…

And here's where the world of impressions left on the mind comes into play. I was reading Jacques Lacan today and he was musing on how we create our own reality but then must negotiate between this false image and actual existence. Existence, however, is the lifeblood of our delusional id, the most random things blowing up into our greatest importance.

The third I met the very first night I ever ate in the Emerson Dining Hall. We did not speak again for two years, but when I came to that house and introduced myself, she knew me already. She remembered me from that long ago, and that was the younger, insecure, much-overweight Andrew Rostan who did that. The more we talked over the soup and wine, the more I grew entranced, and she was the first woman where I ever had the nerve to ask her number.

We saw each other regularly until I left for Los Angeles. Not that we ever dated, but we did go out once for my birthday, and I bought her flowers when she made her big starring debut on the Emerson Stage…she was, IS, one hell of an actress. She wasn't beautiful in the conventional sense, but she had large, just-sharper-than-doe eyes and a curvy nose and soft brown hair and I couldn't help but be attracted to her seriously.

Not that I ever did a damn thing about it, because this was still Andrew-before-diagnosis-and-correction. We spent all this time as intimate as you could get without being a couple (at least in my personally biased perception) and she never had a boyfriend, at least none worth telling me about, but I could never bring myself to take the next step. The same paralytic fear of ruining the friendship where I finally learned that it doesn't make a difference in the long run, that the fear is worse than the deed.

She is still my friend and one of the highest people I regard, and we talk on the phone every few months, though last time our signal was lost and I called her back and she STILL hasn't called me back. But she's there and thriving and I'm here and thriving. The distance, though smaller, remains long. Do I still care for her? Yes...maybe not as strong as before, but still. Would I seize the opportunity if the stars aligned again? Possibly. But the opportunity may not come, probably won't come, and who knows what she thinks of me now. Besides, I'mheading for a new world as something of a new person, a person much more attuned to himself thanever, and I want the chance to meet women (and men...a guy needs friends)as the closest to the real me I've ever been. Not that I'll ever forget her. As Woody Allen said, "it's all gone except for my memories."

Memories of light moments of happiness from my final days, and of taking the Orange Line out to a cozy kitchen…where Red Bicyclette was consumed each and every time.

The 100th Post…A Johnsonian Contradiction

According to my Blogspot records, this is the 100^th post in my editorial box. Since I only started Mr. Rostan's Thoughts About Things three months ago, I can say that I successfully managed to amaze myself…and I want to thank anyone who has read any posts since I began. This blog never would have happened if not for my imminent commencement at the University of Chicago, which prompted me to find a new outlet for my literary thoughts, and at Lisa's suggestion started this up. Therefore, it seems only appropriate that my first milestone post relate to the man who helped get me into the university, Samuel Johnson.

I am currently beginning a short paper on Johnson, and as a sort of "taster" in research terms I decided to read a few issues of his periodical the Rambler, and something peculiar caught my eye. Johnson is probably the patron saint among authors for biography…his own biographies mixing history and literary criticism have won worldwide renown, and he was a great advocate against turning biography into hagiography or panegyric. He believed, and James Boswell quoted him on this, that the biography needed to present a full, unblemished, warts-and-all portrait of the subject, and that only concentrating on their highest morals or greatest moments resulted in seriously flawed works. In Rambler No. 60 he urged biographers to not hold back in giving honest descriptions of their subjects' flaws, and also asserted that you could read an entire history of a person from "pedigree" to "funeral" and not understand them or their character as well as if you had access to "a short conversation with one of his servants." For Johnson, the full spectrum of the individual in a world where we are communal in desires and lifestyles mattered greatly.

Hence my perplexity upon reading one of his most famous essays, Rambler No. 4, dealing with the role of the novel in society and how novels should be written. Johnson and I are on the same page in believing in the rhetorical value of literature and that the novel has the power to depict real life …indeed, it must, for an art designed for a mass audience has to be believed by a mass audience or else it loses value. But in this case, Johnson turns moralist, censor, almost totalitarian when considering how to harness literature's power as a tool to reach humans.

"{Modern fiction is} written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle…{it is} the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account. That the highest degree of reverence should be paid to youth, and that nothing indecent should be suffered to approach their eyes and ears, are precepts extorted by sense and virtue from an ancient writer, by no means eminent for chastity of thought."

It goes on, as Johnson instructs writers of fiction to focus on the promotion of virtue, to lambast vice in all of its forms, and to take care not to suggest virtue and vice can co-exist in the body of a person for good effect, as his direct contemporaries Richardson and Fielding were suggesting. In short, he is of the opinion that fiction MUST fit in with the prevalent moral code of the day, and therefore be, wittingly or not, a tool to promote ideology. How does this square with the respect for individualism and devotion to honesty he had for the biography?

Not wanting to attack Johnson's integrity, close analysis of No. 4 reveals a possible answer. In two significant paragraphs, Johnson meditates on the special power of the writer so important to the creative process. "The authors are at liberty, though not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals on upon which the attention ought most to be employed…It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art, to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature most worthy for imitation." A novelist can CHOOSE which parts of life he or she wants to depict.

A novelist as the same duty to honesty as a biographer, but a biographer is given an already-present series of facts, the life of the subject. They may interpret these facts as they choose, but they cannot ignore the facts. A novelist, with all life to choose from, utilizes honesty in a far more selective format. They pick which sides of the infinite expanse of life to document and explore in depth. You can describe the positive effects of honesty or the negative effects of adultery at length and never write a dishonest word. You may ignore the other sides of those coins, how there may indeed be vice in excessive virtue and so on, but this is omission, not deceit. Technically, still honest. You cannot fault a person too strongly for making a series of aesthetic choices. Johnson, genius he was, took this argument to the next level. It may be faulty, but it is rather accurate, and it fits much in keeping with his personality.

Finally, judging by Johnson's attitude toward his own and others' conducts, it is reasonable to guess that he felt even an immoral life could be an instructive biography by delineating the steps the young should not take, and if it were written with structure and style to subtly turn against the vices.

Or maybe it was an exercise in masochism, this famous psychological self-flagellator hoping his flaws would be put on public display by those who cared enough to tell the truth.

Two Visits to Bloomsbury with a Legacy Prologue

Lytton and Virginia

Today we were driving to suburban Cleveland for shopping at Legacy Village and Trader Joe's with a fine salad at the Cheesecake Factory in between when "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" came on the radio and I thought about a lonely, pre-secure night in Rotterdam sitting in the lobby of the hostel, half-drunk glass of dark beer in hand, musing over my happiness that my first solo European excursion, my testing ground as it were, had come off without incident, and a sting of sadness that the contingent of fellow Castle dwellers who had unexpectedly also arrived in town had not invited me out with them to any place in particular. At that moment a recording I have never since been able to find of Joe Jackson performing the song a capella, backed by some female gospel singers who kept intoning the word "stranger" over and over again, came over the hostel's p.a. I think about Europe every time I hear "If my eyes don't deceive me there's something going on around here," and so much of today triggered reminiscences, like the sight of people walking their dogs along the crisp road to the Castle, dogs who always looked at you with vague interest and never barked or roared, as friendly and accepting as their masters, while today I can't walk down East Parkside, a block over from my house in Boardman, without every dog barking to shake off the wood at me…is this what the technological seclusion of America has come to? And a scrap of conversation at the Apple store reminded me of how no matter how amiable he is, and he was one of the most genuinely nice people in the Netherlands, there are few things more embarrassingly annoying than hearing a gay man with a particularly lilting voice read an entire quasi-love half-heartbreak letter out loud while you desperately try to write.

I notice things which trigger other, past notices, and I've been in a noticing mood since yesterday when I read Virginia Woolf. She noticed things. To the Lighthouse is one of the greatest works of fiction ever composed, and its power comes solely from how her stand-ins notice details, changes in nature, tones of voice and unstill eyes and tilts of head, clouds on the horizon and the position of the silverware. A Room of One's Own sees her turn her eyes away from the commonplace to the grand sweep of history, and again she notices what few other people take the time to even train their eyes on for nanoseconds—the two sections where she conjures up Judith Shakespeare, for all their designed tossed-offedness, made my muscles freeze. I don't want to talk too much about A Room of One's Own because anyone who reads this blog could read the entire thing in an afternoon, but it will fill you with more of a love of literature than you previously had—which in my cases says something—and equal indignation against and sorrow for both sexes. The final thoughts about the unity of the mind, that a novelist must tap into both parts of their androgynous brain or else truly great writing can never emerge, point the way towards not just better literature but a better level of understanding between the sexes. Her assertion that true masterpieces can only come from those with unified minds who have accepted the fact—Shakespeare and Austen are her great examples, two people able to write with self-confidence and no sense of exterior pressure—is the one false note. The greatest books I have ever read came not only from Shakespeare and Austen but from drunks, chauvinists, racists, intellectual narcissists, and people with rather limited world views (in her estimation, for I would shrink from calling George Eliot limited). But she makes me believe that anyone with five hundred a year and a room of one's own—someone who has worked into a position of independence, experience, and enough self-determination and freedom from outside influence (which women sadly lacked)—could change the world. And her criticisms of Jane Eyre are smashing.

One of Virginia and Leonard's best friends in Bloomsbury was Lytton Strachey. When Strachey wasn't living with Dora Carrington (madly in love with him) and her husband Ralph Partridge (whom he madly loved) and competing in the Best Beard of the 20^th Century contest, he was proving himself the forerunner of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and The Onion. Eminent Victorians, written in 1918, is one of the greatest biographies ever written. Period. Just go in with a few modicums of knowledge about Cardinal Henry Manning, Florence Nightingale, Rugby schoolmaster Dr. Thomas Arnold, and General Charles Gordon (who amazingly did look like Charlton Heston), for his portraits rely on the accepted opinions and perspectives on their deeds for their witty power. Eminent Victorians is extremely political, Strachey's revolt against all the flaws of the Victorian mind by documenting what lay behind the devotion to progress for all mankind: oppression, scheming, self-centeredness, and hypocrisy. It was not that people had not previously recognized these traits in public figures, but no one quite like Strachey delved deep into the weaknesses of the progressive arguments before. The book still stands as a warning to conservatives and liberals alike, to always aim for the best but never enter situations believing in your goals' ultimate superiority, or worse, your ultimate superiority, for the results will be psychologically devastating. In its way, Eminent Victorians is a masterwork of anti-partisanship rhetoric and overall skepticism even among believers. In Strachey's world, the mixing of church and state, or morality and the state, only creates power-jockeying and ill-formed arguments where one's opinions are foisted on the world. Public service can drive one to monomania. Education is merely indoctrination into ideology. And the government, a fickle creature whose opinions change not from an overall goal to deceive but from constant reshufflings of positions and the conflicts between certain individuals, should never be trusted, always be feared. It sounds depressing…but it is sympathetic, somewhat hopeful that we might be able to figure it out…and it is also extremely funny. Seriously, seriously funny, mixing the long, slow, build-ups to the ultimate punch line brilliantly employed by the Onion and the social postures of Stewart and Colbert. I'm a Victorian diehard, but I can say now that I adore Lytton Strachey.

A Fourth Freudian Slip: You Should Know What Territory We’re In By Now, Okay?

So often in my life, my body breaks out into an urgent sexual response when a woman I am attracted to embraces me, even simply holds my hand. These responses are always kept under control thanks to mental fortitude, but usually JUST BARELY. This powerful experience emanating solely from a reaction to human touch makes more sense when Freud describes how the skin is the ultimate erotogenic zone, with its networks of mucous membranes and near-indivisibility from our inner organ system, including the sexual organs. Neurotics, of which I, still holding residual fears of sex, may well be one, love the skin. The exhibitionist shows it off, the voyeur looks at it intensely, and the sadists and masochists enjoy torturing it or having it be tortured. Pulling all of Freud's analyses together, my conclusion is that the neurotic's superego creates a repression in the id of the ordinary sexual desire and fetishizes the closest thing we have to genitalia without actually being an organ itself. The skin is the natural substitute, and since we can't have sex with the skin, we practice the other behaviors as compensation. It may not be as satisfying, but there's still nothing like making close contact with a nice girl in a black dress.

One of the major breakthroughs Freud made was his understanding of infantile sex drives, a condition we long wanted to think was non-existent. In infancy we develop our first inklings of sexual pleasure and form the impressions which will one day become our tastes and fetishes depending on future psychological evolution. Freud's insistence that the ego represses such knowledge into the vast domain of the id is weakened, I think, with refusal to give an explanation into WHY we repress. The suggestion that humans en masse do not want to accept the conclusion of childhood sexual instinct is too after-the-fact and general for my taste. My own thoughts are that as infants, we form strong attachments to various people and things in fostering the instinct, from our parents to pacifiers to stuffed animals. As our perceptions and intellect grow, our superegos feel shame that someone with intelligence could have ever been attracted to immature objects or created ideas which were just plain wrong (incest) from the perspective of the moral adult self. From sheer embarrassment, then, we engage in suppression, only to have these desires re-emerge when the id wants to have its way. Freud felt that an explanation of this force can explain hysterical amnesia as well…and again, isn't it sensible to conjecture that hysterical amnesia is rooted in embarrassment and guilt for what we have done or failed to do?

This above tendency in the mature adult mind may be reflected in a particular instant: the taboo against and punishment of thumb-sucking and similar practices by juvenile educators. Thumb-sucking is a recollection of using the mouth to take mother's milk and is often the first sign of a person's sexuality…Freud called it the first step towards masturbation. The authority figure for a child witnesses this behavior and the id, by sudden recollection, conjures up the memories of their childhood sexuality which prompt their shame, but now the ego recognizes they are in control of a situation where they can, through displacement, punish themselves by punishing others, and the superego approves.

When Freud goes on to discuss similar examples of auto-erotisim, he uses the following sentence: "Many (originally all) of my women patients who suffer from disturbances of eating, globus hystericus, constriction of the throat and vomiting, have indulged energetically in sucking during their childhood." Children suck to feed their sex drive through a symbiosis between the sexual instinct and the hunger instinct, both vital to our life force, and sexual repression may prompt disgust at food. It makes one wonder if anorexics and bulimics were thumbsuckers in their infancy, and if their tendencies may have joint roots with nerves about sexual identity. Have there been studies about this? If so, I would love for a reader to point me in that direction.

Freud describes how a variety of childhood instincts are components of the overall sexual instinct, among them cruelty. Children are cruel because they have not yet developed their egos and cannot fully understand how others are oppressed by pain. Cruelty comes from a desire for mastery which relates to the sexual life, where we all wish to be masters of our sexual destiny and, male and female alike (aggressively in males, defensively in females), we quake at the thought that our sexual self-possession may be taken away. Anyone who ever read Charles M. Schulz knows how thoughtless and cruel children can be…so much of the poignancy and situations of Peanuts were based around one character or group singling out another for derision or unknowingly hurting another through self-centered desire (usually Charlie Brown) or the uncontrollable aspects and randomness of existence weighing down on someone (again, usually Charlie Brown). No wonder Bill Watterson called it an amazingly melancholy, tortured cartoon, but one rooted in real life: we all have felt as hopeless as Charlie brown, as railing against life as Lucy Van Pelt, as misunderstood as her brother Linus, as eager for escape as Snoopy, and anyone who says otherwise is a born liar. But there may be more to childhood cruelty than a tie-in to simple sex. Freud's theories are mostly based around dialectical opposites, the ego and id and the pleasure principle most notably, and if much of our lives are organized around the pursuit of pleasure, we must be able to experience pain as well for symmetry. Only sensical.

The following two notes came, appropriately enough, on page 69…couldn't help but smile during my annotations. When I was in kindergarten at Paul C. Bunn, I enjoyed a game at recess where we would organize into teams and chase each other in aggressive, man-on-top-of-man tag. There was a girl named Venice with long, flowing blonde hair, and I especially loved to chase her and catch her, my arms wrapped around her torso and the edges of her locks. Freud found that in the glorious romping of childhood when we exert our muscles, many "experience the first signs of excitement in their genitals" when in close contact with playmates, often in wrestling, or in tag…I know that was the first time I, a child who loved swimming and baseball and games with other boys, ever found pleasure with a girl. (I ran into Venice eleven years later by complete chance at the YSU English Festival. She did not remember me or the game…possible repression?)

This part goes out to all the Emerson L.A. gang. Freud has much to say about what he did not know would one day be the horror movie. Anything which strongly affects children, he says, creates sexual excitement in the developmental stages, including sensations of terror. These sensations, thanks to the id, often continue into adulthood, and people ENJOY apprehension, fright, and horror and seek opportunities to feel them in situations where they will be kept under some restraint (unreality of the cinema, for instance) and thus translate to pure pleasure without pain. This may stem from our fascination with the "other," in this case the opposite sex. Horror films are all about the others, as the two competing sources of pleasure, sex and fear, are placed in opposition using a by-now well-honored code (brilliantly referenced in Craven's post-modern exercises in the genre). By increasing the taboo against sex in this matter, it leaves the pleasure, and the sex, that much more exciting.

Freud was very concerned about sexual tension, not in how we understand the term today (though he would have a field day with describing the dynamics of mutually felt but denied sexual attraction, and I wonder if there are any writings from him on the subject), but the actual physical tension which builds through arousal and indulgence and dissipates only with the sexual act itself. He did not know for sure how tension arose in a pleasurable circumstance like the satisfying of the erotogenic zones. The simplest explanation, for me, is that the ego creates the tension from nervousness that the id is in full alignment with our behavior, of taking pleasure to the extreme.

Finally, there is the superego's role in this. Sexuality involves energy, which the id is bursting with beyond all seams. The superego, as the great modifier of behavior, harnesses energy and in the neurotic will extinguish what it sees as the worst uses of it, creating unhealthy repressions. But on the other hand, if the superego is responsible for our guilt and shame, it MUST also be involved in creating the tension necessary for the act of sex itself! We all have our opposites.

I think I've written enough about sex for one week…and I'm sure whoever's reading this blog is also more than satisfied. So I move on to other researches. But I hope I've come across as a nice enough guy here…single, straight, and looking!

A Third Freudian Slip: Virgin on the Ridiculous

Continued from yesterday…unsurprisingly, there is a link between exhibitionism and the male artistic temperament. One of the motivations of exhibitionism is to confirm that yes, the genitals are still there and that we have them on our outside while women do…not. Much the same, as John Berger commented in Ways of Seeing, artists painted nudes almost exclusively for clubs of government officials, businessmen, etc., so after a defeat moral, crushing, both, or otherwise, a man could look at a painting of a gorgeous naked woman and be reminded, yes, he was still a man. Does this mean art can be a fetish? An expression of the subconscious? Or something else altogether?

In sadism, sexual satisfaction is based upon the humiliation of the sexual object. The old saying "You always hurt the one you love." I think I can be quite sadistic, because in my subconscious, I compare my once-flabby now-lean but not muscular body to those of larger men and my intelligence to the more accomplished wisdom of others. In some of my deepest fantasies, a weak man becomes strong by asserting his strength over…someone.

Now to get even more to the bone. I am afraid of sex. Not as much as I used to be, but the fear is still there. Hence today's post title is more than a clever rip-off of Caravan. I'm a healthy, sensitive, and admittedly well-liked man whom women find companionable. Shouldn't I be over my fears? Yet the idea of actually being in a room with a woman, stripped, revealed, ready to do what it is we both want (because I do want it) continues to fill me with trepidation. Freud's analysis led him to conclude that if a person gets into hysterics about sex, it is usually because they have an aversion to intellectually considering it, to the extended perceiving something so intimate and vital to our core needs. It's not that I have never seriously thought about sex, but I was brought up in a way where no guidance was given to me and further intellectual thought about the act was all on my own time. I never spoke with my parents about it too deeply and have only recently been informed about it more from friends I can have good conversations with. I've never even seen a whole pornographic film, much less read a nudie magazine! (Even Kat found this a sorry state of affairs.) Maybe someday I'll win moral champion of the year, but for right now, my mental inexperience, I know, is emotionally stunting, and the only way to get around it is to actively remove the block. I think the upside is that this has made me even more courteous and considerate of women, whom I already had enough respect for as it was, so by the time I finally have the opportunity, it will have to be with somebody who I have proven I can hold in high regard, and who hopefully feels the same for me.

Cutting My Hair

The greatest barber I ever had was a man named Coy Cornelius. Coy's barbershop was in an old mattress factory on the edge of downtown Youngstown, which doubled as an art studio/gallery full of his own paintings, sculptures, and decorative furniture. Coy was a silver-haired, thin-faced man who looked like a leading actor on a Canadian television show. He smoked, always asked plenty of questions about his customers' lives from genuine curiosity, and never gave a less than ideal haircut…he understood hair.

One day the mattress factory, which had become an increasing presence in Youngstown right as the revitalization began, burnt down. A horrible loss doesn't seem like a strong enough word. Coy kept going, cutting his regulars' hair at an establishment on Belmont Avenue somewhat reminiscent of Barbershop but staffed by women. Despite the ashes of his perfectly realized dream locale, his spirit never visibly flagged.

Coy had not been well for a period, and he passed away several months ago. I always dreamed that someday he would do production design for a movie or stage play I wrote.

Yesterday, I needed another haircut and went to where my father and Marc now get their ears lowered, William Leonard Extraordinary Gentleman smack-dab on Federal Avenue, a new business which has already been written up in the Vindicator. Lisa, the owner/barber, assured me I could walk right in, but I arrived to find she had a line of customers. I used my half-hour wait to wander through Federal Street and purchase a decent latte at the more-than-decent-looking Lemon Grove, a place I'm sure is jumping on weekday nights. This was one of the few times I'd gotten a look at the "new" Youngstown, where "quirky" stores and bars sit side by side with gleaming, modern or neo-classical arts centers and government buildings. There's still some pockmarked establishments and gaps, but it's a promising work in progress.

Eventually I started reading a Men's Health which had a fascinating article on how much food a man should eat to maintain a weight where his body is in shape and he can develop his abdominal muscles, my current goal. It turns out that based on my exercise schedule, I can eat more calories and MUCH more fat than I had thought previously. This will be an extraordinary help in planning my meals when I go back to living on my own. Coupled with my course list and my already extensive budget preparation, I'm entering Chicago with a sense of mission, purpose, and complete readiness I rarely could claim in Los Angeles. I've grown up.

Lisa is a great, GREAT barber. A gorgeous middle-aged woman (definite MILF territory) who cuts your hair in a white summer dress, black heels, and with a grinning, Miles Davis-esque man namedJimmy hanging around providing commentary and compliments to the customer. (I'm going to impress all the girls when I walk into church, he says.) Elvis Costello's greatest hits are pumped over the small speaker system. Lisa washes my hair, then goes over it with the scissors, marveling at its thickness, trimming it all around until it has reached evenness. Turns out it naturally curls up at the neck, and she smooths and shears that spot, as well, as my unruly sideburns, down to reasonable lengths, not stopping at the back until I know it feels exactly right. She even has me put my glasses on at the end so she can trim around them for comfort and appearance—no barber has ever done that! Needless to say, I'm pleased. More than pleased. So much that I get politely insistent at full force when Lisa tries to refuse my tip on top a $20 charge. For days like yesterday, every penny is well-spent.

Another Freudian Slip: The 24 Year-Old Virgin

In 1905, Sigmund Freud had psychology's equivalent of 1993 for Steven Spielberg, producing not ONE epochal, game-changing masterpiece but TWO. The Interpretation of Dreams is more famous if only for title and content, but Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality may be the most significant in terms of understanding how the human mind works. He certainly could never have created the extensive work on the Oedipus complex, the ego, id, and superego, and the pleasure principle without understanding sex and the libido. The ideas in the essays have been adapted, modified, or rejected more often than not in the past century, but like most of Freud, the ideas at their core are as sound as a church bell on Sunday morning.

The essays were the last and largest part of Chicago's assigned readings of Freud, and also the one I was most curious to read. I've mentioned this at least once on the blog before (see August 4^th), but, two months shy of 25, I am a virgin with very little practical experience with women, let alone romantic experience. However, my recent breakthroughs in my mental well-being have finally allowed me to not just accept this but try to move forward with the right mind and open heart I need. That being said, I wondered if Freud could tell me anything about myself, to say nothing of sex in general.

One of the key points I came away hit me early on in the first essay, "Sexual Aberrations," when Freud describes inversion/homosexuality. His tone and vocabulary when discussing why gays and lesbians exist, debating whether or not the condition was innate, were somewhat distressing, until I read his equivalency of homosexuality with adopting the character of the opposite sex—the stereotypical gender role. It took longer than it should have, but that passage convinced me Freud's ideas in defining the normal sexual life came not from a purely psychological insight but from the cultural mores and norms of his time. I have a feeling Freud deep-down had more ideas contradictory to the status quo, for he points out the ideal man-boy love of classical Greece and Rome as fostering civilization and flat-out acknowledges homosexuality is not the mark of illness or other abnormalities. But as a man walking a thin line in this essay already, he might have chosen not to be too explicit in that case. He WOULD get explicit on a subject common to all of us, straight, bi, or gay, the sexuality of children and adolescents and how it shapes us, which in the big picture was much more important, needed to be heard. His refusal to call homosexuality a disease was excellent for the time. (I also believe future problems involving the psychological classification came from Freud's unfortunate general terminology: as with his straight subjects, he keeps using the word "choice" in trying to analyze the gay mind.)

The sexuality of children makes sense because there is an innate sexual instinct within all of us. Freud made this discovery when studying homosexuals—another reason for overall importance—when he realized that many children develop "gay" attachments before eventually becoming "straight," while others undergo the reverse, and other stay the same for life. A child does not have a strong ego and is more swayed by the id, the almost infinite reservoir of all instincts and desires. They want what they want and are willing to try anything because they don't understand why they want it. As they age, and this is crucial in the latency period when real senses of self and other emerge, the ego grows stronger with each new perception, and eventually their more confident self-knowledge allows them to articulate in their minds and hearts what they TRULY want. Intimacy is, after all, a fusion of ids and egos alike, an overwhelming desire matched with intellectual knowledge of suitability.

"Disgust," one of the moral senses developing from the superego: a man is more than willing to kiss a woman but would not want to use her toothbrush despite little difference in relative cleanliness of the oral cavities. The mouth is a very personal part of the body…sex is as natural and important to sustaining life as food, hence our eventual idea of oral pleasures involving the part of the body from which food is ingested. We put great importance on the personal parts and set limits for ourselves, so I have to believe that the intense pleasure of a kiss comes from more than touching another mucous membrane on an etorogenous zone. In its own way, a kiss breaks a taboo, and that's a thrill.

Just as first loves endure, Freud says, so do the original impressions we make during childhood, when every perception allows the ego and superego to grow and reach more equilibrium with the id, thus developing the human personality. These strong impressions from our sexual learning curve result in the fetish: a search for a substitute sexual aim when the actual is unavailable, a substitute which can take on all the power of the primary. When we're young, we come to associate certain characteristics with the gender we'll ultimately be attracted to, and constant reinforcement makes these characteristics become almost indivisible with our ultimate desire, so youth does engender fetish. I know this to be true, and am unashamed to say it now, for I have two fetishes, both of which relate to my growing up in Youngstown, when I was reading everything I could get my hands on and absorbing a greater knowledge of the world.

There are, one, a group of physical objects, and two, a certain physical condition, the first absorbed from my mother's magazines, the second from copious Saturday morning cartoon watching, which to this day touch a part of my sexual instinct. I NEVER actively seek these visions, nor do I ever encourage them, at least not since my days of sexual immaturity which were cleared up by age sixteen. However, they are there, I know they are there, and they probably always will be there. This is acknowledgment of parts of my character, not an invitation or suggestion. It is useless to deny them unless they naturally fade away.

So Me And Fran Tarkenton Have Something In Common...

Today I spent two and a half hours reading Freud's "First Essay on Sexuality: Sexual Aberrations," a 2 1/2-hour jaunt through neuroses and kinks which actually says a lot about how social ideologies shape our minds and explained why I have the perversions I do, at least it made sense to me. Came home, had a heart-to-heart with my wonderful mother, sat down to read Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (and trust me, you'll be hearing about this SOON),., but decided to chekc the old e-mail before enjoying some more pinot noir and Bloomsbury fun.

Usually I like to see what Yahoo's top ten searches of the day are, and today revealed a name I hadn't seen in a long time...Fran Tarkenton. Hall of Famer who led the Vikings to three NFC titles, host of Real People which is partially responsible for the decrepitude of almost everything on network television today, and now owner of six businesses in Atlanta. Turns out Tarkenton is ticked off about Brett Favre's second un-retirement (put those words together and you'll understand why I'm ticked off, too) and that was making the rounds out of ESPN, but I want to get back to the six businesses in Atlanta. I know that because Fran (and I can call him "Fran" because we are in the brotherhood) wrote about it on his blog.

That's right, Fran Tarkenton has a blog! It's called Moving Forward With Fran Tarkenton and will be found at http://www.frantarkenton.com/. And I just wanted to write about this today because it really and truly gave me pause for a moment (like the article I read in The Economist this morning about how in some states you can have sex with someone under the age of consent but with their permission, later marry them, and STILL be on the books as an offender). When I was born, there was absolutely no way in hell that I might ever have some equal footing in the public world with someone like Fran Tarkenton. An ordinary son of two hard-working educators I still think are better than 99.999% of the species has some things to say, but will they matter as much as what Fran Tarkenton would have to say about something? But, and this may be the biggest reason I can support technological advancement while keeping my luddite tendencies, we are now at a point where communications have democratized the world, where evryone has a chance, no matter how profound or inane, to have their voice heard by anyone who takes the time to listen. It means the Iranis can Twitter and link their way to non-violent protest writ large. And it means both Fran Tarkenton and I have equal access to our opinions.

By the way, Fran Tarkenton write about Brett Favre on his blog, but that was posted back in May. In fact, that was his first post of the year! He has a grand total of THREE posts thus far in 2009, the other two supporting LeBron James and Michael Vick over some questionable acts of theirs...I guess running six businesses leaves you little time to write a blog. But he has one, and he wororks on it, and I work on mine, and people can read our opinions for what they're worth, and that's what matters.

And I HATE Viewpoint. I have enough of a hassle with the Internet. Why do I need little screens showing websites I have no interest in visiting popping up every time I click on a link?

Johnson's Napoleon and Rice's Heathcliff

Paul Johnson's biography in the "Penguin Lives" series of Napoleon Bonaparte was my fourth (and by far shortest) Johnson book and it proved every bit as enjoyable as his earlier histories and lives...the same dry wit, contentiousness, and ability to size up a human being and try to tell the cold hard truth about them (from a conservative's POV, of course). The Emperor, it seems, was inspired by Boswell's book on Corsica, taking the depiction of Paoli as a guide for how a leader should act. HOWEVER...big however...Johnson takes an overall dim view of his subject (no surprise from a man who could slam Tolstoy and Marx mercilessly and hail Calvin Coolidge as one of America's greatest presidents). While admitting Bonaparte's greatness as a military leader...although he was a bit unimaginative in overall tactics, using speed and cannonade over grand strategy...as a leader he was dangerous. An inability to understand the needs of the people, a belief he knew everything about everything, no sense of diplomacy or economic policy (Continental System, anyone?), incompetent government, and a style of command which was used over a century later as the basis for the totalitarian state.

Johnson is most distressed that people still see Napoleon as a paragon of the species, and not as an ignorant, incompetent, power-hungry egotist who laid waste to a continent. One of his recurring themes is our capacity to hero-worship the unworthy, as seen by future intellectual extolling of Stalin and Mao while their regimes were oppressing and murdering millions of their own citizens. Napoleon's deeds can be admired for their grand scope, but the man and his methods, Johnson argues, should be classed closer to Hitler than Churchill.

Interestingly enough, I also picked up a brief history of Nazi Germany which brought to light a fact I'd never been aware of before: Winston Churchill, maybe the most virulent non-Jewish anti-Nazi of them all, actually saw Hitler's behavior before World War I, including the Sudetenland seizure which provoked Munich, as in accordance with justice! The Versailles Treaty gave the nations rights to self-determination, and Churchill felt that Germany gaining control of territories which were already predominantly German and wished to be reunited with the country was only fair. His problem was with Hitler and the Nazi leadership, whom he had the foresight to see would not be satisfied with mere gains like that. Poland, which had a low, low German minority and no wish for incorporation, would thankfully prove to be a different story.

Lesson of the day? A person and an act should never be judged in tandem, but both considered on their own moral merits. How many of us have committed wrongs out of ill-judged desire or desperation?

I reread Charlie Gillet's extraordinary The Sound of the City just for fun...no more comprehensive chronicle of rock 'n' roll's first two decades has ever been written, and Gillet, following my number-one rule for non-fiction, makes his love for the music shine through in every page. I take umbrage with his dismissal of most of the Beatles' post-1964 output, but great minds, as the Genie reminds us, think for themselves.

Martin McDonagh's A Behanding in Spokane will be opening on Broadway next year. His first play set in America. Hopefully he'll do to us what he did to the English/Irish/Belgian contingents in In Bruges.

One thing I meant to put on the blog lately but forgot, a memory recalled by my completion of Jane Eyre. Listened to the Cliff Richard cycle last month and again heard the songs from Sir Cliff's Wuthering Heights musical Heathcliff...lyrics by fellow knight Tim Rice. "Be With Me Always," a song whose lines I shall quote at post's end, is one of his most chilling performances. Never mind that Richard was 56 when he played Heathcliff, he merges the terrifying lines with the deceptively quiet melody, and his controlled voice chokes back rage and passion. Find this recording!

Not much else today, getting ready to read Three Essays on Sexuality tomorrow and thus resting my brain. Why do people like my dentist suggest I wear lip gloss to keep a dried, ex-pimpled spot in my corner lubricated? Proper words people! And Spiegel has a fascinating report on the new universal income experiement in Namibia: every citizen gets 100 Namibian dollars a month, no questions asked. It was once an Onion joke about Iraq, now it's a working reality. I have found in my own life that when given responsibility, I rise to the occasion. A little more faith in human nature is always welcome...makes the world a better place.

Lastly...I did realize last night why I prefer books to movies in the end. Film is a group of people interpreting FOR YOU a text, a screenplay. Almost nothing is left to the imagination. The book is a one-on-one dialogue between you and the writer. It requires YOU to THINK, to interpret. And quite frankly, I enjoy thinking!

"Be With Me Always"

(John Farrar/Tim Rice)

May she wake in torment
Never to find
Any kind of comfort
In death
May her lies satanic
That corrupt even now
Bring her back to confront
Me again

These are words of hatred
Words of contempt
Only one who suffered
At the hands and the heart
Of a woman who stole
Both his life and soul

Be with me always
Possess me and haunt me
Take any form
Or take none
Be with me always
In flesh or as a ghost
And youll learn as the ages run
Learn what your sin has done

Who is my protector?
Whence comes my help?
Who is there to calm me
But she
God shall be my witness
That I pray she will know
Not one moment of rest
In the cold cold ground

Be with me always
Consume and invade me
Take any shape or disguise
Be with me always
To share all my despair
And to learn nothing justifies
Reckless inhuman lies

Here comes the night
The abyss unrelenting
Casting all reason aside
And I see in myself
All the things I see in you
Hear the savage I am crying
Be with me always...

Questions of the Day…August 17, 2009

There is a contradiction between Sigmund Freud's theory of the psyche and current prevailing thoughts on our character and self-esteem. For Freud, psychological problems are a result of conflict between the ego, id, superego, and the outside world. The latter occurs when the ego must adjust the desires of the id and the controlling moral sense of the superego to the necessary preconditions of living in a world with others. In effect, we are to partly shape our personality around the expectations of others. But many people would suggest that happiness comes from being true to ourselves (in a Mill On Liberty sense without hurting others) and not paying heed all the time to the expectations you don't create. Which is the truth?

Have I been giving Calvinism a bad wrap for a long time…along with so many others? In the Spiked Review of Books (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7264) Dolan Cummings redefines John Calvin's philosophy as not a hopeless, punishing take on Christianity where only a select few of us will be saved but as a way to the perfect freedom we all seek. For Calvin, the concept of total depravity with a core of irresistible grace meant that since God had already fixed our immortal destinies, we have the power, through free will, to shape our mortal existence: to work hard, to stand up for that which is right, to live lives of happiness for us and our loved ones, knowing that there is a higher power in charge and grace, if not for everyone, is present. Cummings and the Christian revisionist Mark Driscoll describe this as a message against the coddling of X and Y…we aren't good enough for that much, and we can make ourselves better through effort and faith. It is a freedom, says Driscoll, from the slavery of evil which can keep us in sway forever. And most of all, we always have the choice to give in to what we see as life's inevitable or take action. That's an attitude I can get behind, that I can believe in.

From The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature: "Being able to count on the knowledge and reactions of your readership is the sign of a restricted culture but also of a homogenous one." I stand for free expression and belief above all other things, but is there a level of value in restriction if it creates a public level of common knowledge allowing the debates which affect all of us to be reasonably waged? Wouldn't a more homogenous American culture be in a better place to accurately weight the merits of varying plans for universal health care if we all drew on the same body of information from intelligence sources knowing they could respect all levels of readership?

On the other hand, the interaction of ideas is vital to the development of all works of value, culturally, politically, and socially. In eighteenth-century England, the great precursor of the modern progressive era and follow-up to the Enlightenment, two great clubs were formed for such interaction, the Scribulerus (Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift) and the Literary (Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds). The latter included even more public figures, and both were extensively documented. How did their meetings, exchanges, and shared values help shape all three avenues of public life and expression…and are their effects still felt today as a testament to the value of mental brother/sisterhood?

Going Insane, 1963-Style

Kal is the only person I know (at least, the only one I know I've talked to on the subject) who watched one episode of Mad Men and did not make it part of his viewing rotation. He called the show "stressful."

Which means Matthew Weiner is doing his job. The greatness, brilliance, insert other appropriate superlative here, of Mad Men
is its refusal to turn real life into a heroic adventure (although Don's mystical cleansing in the Pacific at least felt near-heroic) or play real life for laughs (although in its best moments it is very, very funny). Instead, it IS real life. Not our real life in 2009 exactly, but like Trollope and Eliot…or, even more to the mark, O'Hara and Cheever, it perfectly depicts the spirit, morality, intelligence, and ethos of its age, and, in turn, every age. The characters make 1960s decisions with 1960s information and logic, specifically, Kennedy-era information and logic, but their dilemmas range from mundane to life-changing, just as ours do, and deal with the same concerns and worries faced in all generations: money, faith, the life's occupation, sticking to one's personal code, and sex and love…lots of sex and love. I watch Mad Men and in a way no other show makes me believe, I see people struggling my struggles and wanting and needing what I want and need. The only program which ever came close to this was the original The Office, but Gervais and Merchant concentrated on a few select aspects of existence, primarily the awkwardness arising when two different points of view collide, which was played for the most guilty laughter imaginable. Weiner also captures that awkwardness, but emphasizes how it disrupts and hurts us. On Mad Men, everyone is undergoing joy, pain, triumph, and heartbreak with every decision they make, and there are no answers, no promise of an ending, because real life offers no answers but we make and ends only with death. Of course it's stressful to watch!

And it's also demanding. What attracted me to the show from the very first episode was the wealth of details and how much "story" was behind every moment of "plot." I quickly realized Mad Men is more akin to a novel where every detail must be savored, every morsel chewed over and analyzed and left to judgment. The second season, which swept the awards shows and which I just finished, was a prime example. Small details introduced early on proved to be crucially important to what happened by the time of the season finale: a new employee's hiring, an engagement, a whispered word of passionate commitment on a drive to the suburbs, and most of all, a chest full of Heineken which threw the second half of episodes into a tizzy. Every story received plenty of air, plenty of big, gulping, marathon-runner-at-the-end breathing room, and the final result, while not upbeat by any means, was satisfying. It helps that there is visceral pleasure in the plethora of period detail (the recent Vanity Fair piece emphasized Weiner's exactitude bordering on OCD for all aspects of the show) and that the scripts are enacted by a perfect cast. Jon Hamm, handsome, assured, but reeking of both danger and guilt. Elisabeth Moss, now more gorgeous than ever, never less than complex to the point where her enigmatic behavior only makes her more hard to understand…and paradoxically easier to sympathize with. (Peggy Olson is one of the best-realized characters in TV history…her issues are probably more realistically dealt with than anyone.) January Jones, combining Grace Kelly's beauty, Maria Callas's emotionalism, and Audrey Hepburn's cool reserve. Vincent Kartheiser, smug and self-destructive and looking like the great Mark Phillips. I could go on, but why bore you? Or better yet, watch the damn show and see for yourself! (By the way, the supporting players who don't get as much time are just as carefully delineated…this is artistry writ large.)

In less than two and a half hours from this writing, Season Three premieres. The hints are that after 1960 and 1962, the action will occur in 1963, the year of The Feminine Mystique, the March, and the passing of everything Don, Betty, and their world knew with the assassination. I believe Mad Men's fictional…but how fictional is the question…drama will come close to the unsurmountable heights of that year.

And they filmed episodes at St. James's, which is even more awesome.

And I took the "Which Mad Man Are You?" quiz at AMC's website and got…Joan. JOAN? I mean, Christina Hendricks is personable (read: sexy) as hell, but as a straight, somewhat shrinking man, couldn't I have been Ken? Paul? Even Harry?

A Freudian Slip: The Homosexual and the Superego

I want to dedicate today's post to Tracy and Anne, Judy and Jon, Kal, Dave, Jonathan, Lisa, and everyone else who played such a greater role than I (to my shame) in fighting the good fight in the Prop 8 wars. Because, abstract as this may sound, I write with a spirit of hope.

In The Ego and the Id (1923), Sigmund Freud describes how the Oedipus complex was responsible for the formation of the superego, the partly-conscious, partly-unconscious mediator between the ego and the id. The ego is our outside self, the side of intellect, perception, reason, and conscious thought. The id is our inside self, the side of emotion, desire, unconscious thought…every single possible idea known to humankind. Without some sort of control, the id would consume us, for in trying to reach our id-fueled goal of total pleasure we would experience pain, either the pain of self (gluttony, alcoholism, other problems) or pain felt by pursuing our pleasurable ends at the expense of others (knowing we cause hatred or heartbreak, which will be psychically felt). But a life of pure intellect leads to complete repression, just as destructive.

The superego, according to Freud, comes into being when we resolve the Oedipus complex, where our most basic human need, love, causes us to desire our opposite-sex parent and feel antagonistic to, even unconsciously murderous of, the same-sex parent we identify with. The complex ends when we choose the path of further identification, an intellectual-emotional-psychic union, with the same-sex parent. However, what keeps this from being a choice of pure perceptive intellect is that not only are we allowed to still feel affection for the opposite-sex parent (since the same-sex parent we are linked to feels that same affection) but also the sense of our separateness from the same-sex parent is kept partially intact by our recognition that we can be unalike from them, indeed, that we must, for they have prerogatives we don't have (particular responsibilities as a parent and romances, to name just two). Therefore, the two emotional desires of the Oedipal period are still there, just transformed.

The job of the superego is to take our infinite capacity for thought, emotion, and desire and channel it into a reasonable form (an object, as Freud would say) which is acceptable in both our self-perception and the perceptions of others. The ego is capable of perceiving, including perceiving that others perceive the world as we do and thus perceive us, while the id is not. The id is stronger than the ego by possessing a wider range of thoughts. The only way the ego can maintain, at the least, equilibrium with the id is to create new venues for the same emotions which are intellectually sound. The superego, that unconscious part which sometimes manifests as the guilt-stricken prick of conscience, takes our desires and uses intelligence to make alternatives which to quote Freud tell the id "Look, you can love me, the ego, too. I am just like the original object."

Freud further states that the basis for both religion and social structures came from the superego. In the construction of alternatives to loving the mother or father too much, the superego hit upon the notion of an all-powerful being beyond our parents which we could aspire to be like. This being's goodness and overarching rules led to the concept of morality and restraint. However, we then hit upon the scenario where masses of people believed this, and the individual id sees these masses as rivals for the favor and affection of the all-powerful being…they're his children too, after all. Thus the superego goes to work again in the same way it resolved the Oedipus complex…it overcomes our jealousy and hatred by again spurring an empathetic identification with the other individual, and by learning to fit in with others, a true society is formed.

Except for the idea of God as a pure mental creation, I can relate to this line of thinking. But here is my discovery when this train of thought of thought is followed a little further. Apparently, the reason for homosexuality is that in the superego's transformation of the object, the aggression towards someone exactly like yourself is replaced an identification which, in turn, so fully replicates the original desire for the significant powerful figure that identification becomes…affection.

By the Oedipus complex, we feel the most hostility towards people of the same sex as us. Therefore, an even stronger superego is required to create identification, and only an immensely strong identification can become affection. When I take this conclusion and combine it with the fact that the superego is primarily an instrument of empathy, of funneling the personal into the extrapersonal by factoring in the perceptions of others and allowing for us to care about and understand others' points of view to thus keep our affections in a socially acceptable way…then the more identification that is needed means a HIGHER BURST OF EMPATHY must be built into the superego and thus the entire personality.

Or, in other words, it is reasonable to argue that gays and lesbians have more of a capacity to emotionally relate to others than heterosexuals do.

And that is why, in the end, the forces of love and inclusion will win the day over the forces of hatred and division. All the negative energy and anger in the world cannot overcome a people who have so much more and greater love on their side. I have to believe that those who welcome, who take the time to understand, who have just that more of an ability to care, will not let the opposition triumph.

Whenever the end comes, it will be one of triumph for the superego. Just as we would surmise. It may be our salvation as a species.

(And I know the opening illustration is a cliché by now, but it is so pure.)

Life is a State of Mind

Today, there is something which pisses me off almost as much as the people protesting Obama's "death panels," and that is the fact that Peter Sellers died in 1980. For the year before, in Hal Ashby's Being There, he gives a performance which joins the ranks of Burton, Streep, and Brando on the list of immortal film acting.

Sellers, clean-shaven, hair turned silver, his face almost expressionless but for the desire and sympathy he can't keep from his eyes, his voice the same as when he played Quilty and Muffley for Stanley Kubrick, spends the first twenty minutes doing nothing and everything. He goes through the motions, the speech patterns, establishes the limits and rudimentary code of values Chance the Gardener lives by. Then the pattern of his life is broken…a new situation emerges…and for the rest of the movie, Chance acts the same while the world reacts to him differently, for due to a weird but plausible change of events, this simple-minded man who knows nothing except how to lovingly tend a garden and anything they show on the televisions he can't live without becomes, potentially, the most powerful man in the world. The greatness of the movie comes from Sellers never breaking character, never being aware that everything has changed and that Chance's position in life has skyrocketed to imperial levels. He makes us believe that Chance is having ordinary (for him) conversations until he can get back to watching TV…conversations where he advises presidents and power brokers. At times, Sellers, with his dapper hat and suits, reminds me of a modern-day Charlie Chaplin, and Being There is the ultimate expression of Chaplin's visions of little fools triumphing over the mighty.

Being There is a very angry movie on one hand, but a celebratory movie on the other. Angry because of Ashby and novelist/screenwriter Jerzy Kosinzski's subtext: in a world where the mass media and the corporation seize more and more power, both forces suddenly find themselves paying absolute heed to a person who is COMPLETELY THEIR CREATION. Chance can neither read nor write, has no dealings with doctors or lawyers, does not have an intellectual understanding of love and friendship. He just likes to watch TV! But because the increasing mental force-feeding and social breakdown of the media-driven, corporate world is blinding us to see each other clearly, everyone who meets Chance thinks he's a genius, a powerful man of mystery, someone not to be trifled with. He is the ultimate expression of a fragmented, docile generation, and his ultimateness strikes awe into people, horrible as it is. Ashby and Kosinzski, to some degree, abhor this state of affairs where a virtual idiot can become our master while we lap it up…

BUT…though Chance may not have much of a brain, his "watching" gives him perception. He has a heart which makes him feel for others…Sellers may never have been more moving than when we see Chance cry at the end of the movie. And most of all, for all his creation, Chance is his own man with a highly individual point of view…and for that reason alone his ascendancy is a triumph. For the same media-driven, corporate world which created him is dedicated to homogenizing humanity and culture. The other characters are all either caught in this trap (especially Jack Warden's president) or are smart enough to be aware of it but unable to do much about it except try to influence things. Chance's power is that by being so simple, so direct, and so individual, his difference attracts people. His odd integrity makes others see him as someone special. They draw actual strength from his own strength, find happiness and fulfillment from his own happiness and fulfillment. No wonder that even the wary Dr. Allenby can't bring himself to tell anyone the truth about Chance when he becomes the only one who knows that "Chauncey Gardiner" is the opposite of what he seems. He is just as amazed and moved that a man like this can still exist, can bring out the best in others by merely being himself. The final message of Being There is that life is indeed a state of mind. We can live it as conventionally as we choose and play into the prevailing point of view. But if, like Chance, we live on our own terms and, while caring for and respecting others, never sacrifice our individuality, we find the best and simplest happiness of all…and we spread that happiness to others…and by changing others, we might change the world. Just as Chance does in the final scene, when suddenly the world starts marching to his tune. Why then, couldn't he…but I won't give it away.

Peter Sellers once said he was born to play Chance. He also said that he had no personality except for the character he was inhabiting at the time. How beautiful, how overwhelming it must have been to play a character whose personality does nothing but rejuvenate the lives of those around him, to play someone with a purpose.

(I also must praise Melvyn Douglas, who won a well-deserved Oscar as Chance's dying benefactor, a man of contradictory spirits and a pure heart.)

Reader, I Had a Hard Time Getting Through This

Had a marvelous three-hour, catching-up-with-everything lunch on Monday with Lisa and Gismo, during which Lisa defined one of the major differences between men and women. I struggled to finish one of the gaps of my Victorian lit knowledge, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), because I found everyone so passive-aggressive…the very quality which made her enjoy it so much.

Jane Eyre is one of those novels where everyone knows the story even when they haven't read it. Innocent governess, dark, handsome, mysterious, rich man, passionate love, Gothic secrets, melodramatic but happy ending. Women love this book, and I can see why…Jane Eyre is a feminist right at the dawn of the feminist era (remember, Seneca Falls was at the start of the decade), who holds true to her principles and ends up rich, happy, and in a loving marriage. Moreover, Jane's matrimony comes on her own terms. As Lucy Hughes-Hallett points out in her excellent analysis, Jane first rejects Mr. Rochester not because she doubts the sincerity of his love but because, with his insane wife still alive, the marriage is impossible. However, Rochester also at this point wants to turn Jane into a grand woman of the 1840's world, a bejeweled clotheshorse society queen like the fluffy-headed Adele dreams of becoming…something Jane is NOT. St. John Rivers proposes to Jane a marriage which will be legal, but has no passion. Jane cannot accept that. Then she has her psychosexual vision…one of the more pleasant freaks of nature in literary history…and returns to find Rochester widowed, blinded, mutilated. Now he needs her, and she can hold a measure of power over him. However, this is just what he wants…so happy ending!

The problem I had was a total inability to empathize with Bronte's populace, no matter how well she writes, and at her best she is terrific. The passage in Chapter XII where Jane stands on the roof of Thornfield and asserts her right as a woman, as a human being, to desire and hold convictions as much as any man, is one of the most spirited paragraphs in literary history. But Jane is a pill. Admirable as her self-possession and knowledge of exactly who she is and what she wants are…she's the opposite of Esther Summerson… these qualities also give her a superior air which fills up the entire book. She criticizes almost everyone she meets and often points out why she is in a better position than they are, even with the warm, loving Mrs. Fairfax. She takes a delight in arguing and contradicting, even with the saintly Helen Burns! And her relations with both Mr. Rochester and Mr. Rivers are fraught with her sarcasm, pride, and a sadistic delight in antagonizing them. For their parts, Rochester is a blustery man who plays a long, almost cruel game with Jane to test her feelings before finally admitting his love, and Rivers is so sanctimonious that even his acquiescence to Jane is laced with bitter hints of hellish doom, and he takes far too much pride in his self-denial. Every woman Jane personally doesn't like is a status-obsessed harridan, and the men, well, Jane is so wonderful that she takes no notice of men!

There are two ways of approaching Jane Eyre, however, which kept me reading until the end. I noticed both of them while making a deliberate effort to read the novel from a feminist point of view in preparation for an eventual dissection of The Madwoman in the Attic. First, the idea of the patriarchy. My initial problems with Jane Eyre came in the opening chapters, where the Reeds make Jane's life a Cinderella nightmare for no apparent reason. Then, I realized that Sarah Reed's unrelenting anger towards Jane stems from resentment over a patriarchal system: she was submissive to her husband, who insisted on taking his orphaned niece Jane into their home and extracted a deathbed promise from Sarah that Jane be raised as one of their own. Even from the grave, he still holds power over Sarah, and Jane is the living symbol of that power…her hatred only grows when her son John, Jane's total foil, lives a dissipate life which kills him early but leaves Sarah on the edge of ruin. The indirect influence of a patriarchal, oppressive society is felt elsewhere in the character of Mr. Brocklehurst, who sees women as sinful beings in need of correction and only as many necessities are needed to get by, and even in characters like Georgiana and Blanche, who are schooled to live up to a masculine expectation of the feminine and be good for nothing but looks and attractiveness as a wife…small wonder Jane holds them in disdain. Rochester himself is a victim of patriarchy, for it is giving in to his father's plans to keep the family and fortune growing that he makes the disastrous marriage to Bertha. However, Bronte's message is that you cannot deal with the patriarchy through unemotional retreat as Eliza does. You must hold fast and take a stand. You must be Jane Eyre.

Second, and I am stunned that Hughes-Hallett did not mention this in her introduction, there is a fascinating undercurrent of lesbianism in the novel. Jane may take a low opinion of her sex's character, but on her own personal level she has a strong fascination for even those she dislikes. This is most evident in the Lowood chapters. Jane's life becomes intertwined with that of Helen Burns, whom she sees as a saintly figure. On the last night of Helen's life, Jane crawls into bed with her, kisses her, and "we both soon slumbered," Jane waking up to find Helen peacefully on her arm…deceased. During Helen's final days Jane also befriends Mary Ann Wilson, whom she describes as giving her more of an education into "life" which she analyzes. Also, this may be stretching the point, but in my own soon-to-be-published novel a saintly woman's terminal illness sparks a sexual relationship with a dear friend. Times of crisis heighten emotions, and Jane's combination of love for Helen and increased worldly knowledge may have led to…? Jane also practically worships Miss Temple to the point where she never thinks of leaving Lowood until Miss Temple herself departs to marry a clergyman…an event which shakes Jane mightily. At Thornfield, Jane becomes obsessed with Blanche Ingram, drawing her portrait, unable to stop looking at her, and peppering even her criticisms and documents of Blanche's cruelty with praise of her beauty. It is as if in Blanche, Jane finds her female "other," and cannot help being entranced. Jane also describes her cousins Diana and Mary Rivers as ethereal goddesses who first emerge out of mystical candlelight in the darkness, and her caring for them goes beyond any feelings for St. John…the same for the woman who loves St. John, Rosamond Oliver, who is somewhat shallow but has enough goodness in her for Jane to gush a little. Finally, there is Bertha Mason. Jane has a fear of ghosts…her own repressed emotions which come out by and by through the novel…but after she confronts the wild, raving, "living ghost" of Bertha, a woman full of assertiveness and energy, she realizes how much passion she possesses and wants. It is this which nearly makes her forsake her ideas of Godly duty and stay with Rochester, and which does make her reject Rivers. Indeed, I wonder if this equation of ghosts and Jane's sex drive is proof in a way that Jane did sleep with Helen. How poetic that her first and probably only night of lesbian passion turns another into an actual ghost, though through no fault of Jane's own…but enough to keep her mystified until she can confront the ghost again, do penance (her flight from Thornfield), and atone.

And my female friends can attest I am NOT one of those particularly sleazy heterosexuals turned on by girl-on-girl action. This is academic thought, inspired by my own emotional reaction to the Victorian culture of repression. Charlotte Bronte was definitely a great enough writer to examine such feelings and do so in the subtlest ways possible.

Reading a Book So You Don't Have To: Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Shopping

For starters, I own over 30 CDs by Miles Dewey Davis III....but only one of these three listed?!

The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD is the definitive book for any jazz fan. It is not comprehensive, for it does not cover recordings currently unavailable to the general public, but it provides a vast commentary on the history of jazz and the greatest examples of the music, and its British authors, Richard Cook and Brian Morton, are "cats" of the most purring order, combining genuine reverence with a recognition that jazz is, above all, music of fun and discovery.

Cook and Morton select about 200 CDs as the "core collection," recordings any jazz fan, really, any music lover, should attempt to acquire. For those of you who don't have time to peruse the 1,400 pages of the Guide, I have taken the liberty of putting Cook and Morton's Core Collection online. Hope that somebody out there might be turned on to this extraordinary music the way this man was at 13 when he heard Bitches Brew for the first time.

(This may be out of the blue, but Chicago put me in the mood.)

Cannonball Adderley
Somethin’ Else
Air
Air Time
Henry “Red” Allen
Henry “Red” Allen and His Orchestra 1929-1933
Mose Allison
The Word From Mose
Louis Armstrong
The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings—The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (1936-39)
Art Ensemble of Chicago
Art Ensemble 1967-68
Albert Ayler
Spiritual Unity
Chris Barber
The Complete Decca Session 1954-55
Count Basie
The Original American Decca Recordings—The Atomic Mr. Basie
Sidney Bechet
Shake ‘Em Up
Bix Beiderbecke
Bix and Tram
Ran Blake
The Short Life of Barbara Monk
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
A Night at Birdland, Vol. 1 and 2
Paul Bley
Time Will Tell
Arthur Blythe
Lenox Avenue Breakdown
Ruby Braff
Calling Berlin: Volume 1
Anthony Braxton
Eugene
Bob Brookmeyer
New Works/Celebration
Peter Brotzmann
Machine Gun
Clifford Brown
The Complete Blue Note and Pacific Jazz Recordings (1953-54)
Dave Brubeck
Time Out
Kenny Burrell
Ellington is Forever, Vol. 1
Gary Burton
Hotel Hello
Benny Carter
Further Definitions
Serge Chaloff
Blue Serge
Teddy Charles
The Teddy Charles Tentet
Nat “King” Cole
After Midnight
Ornette Coleman
Beauty is a Rare Thing (Atlantic 1959-1961)—At the Golden Circle, Stockholm
John Coltrane
Giant Steps—A Love Supreme
Ken Colyer
Club Session With Colyer
Eddie Condon
1927-28
Chris Connor
Sonny Criss
Sonny’s Dream
Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis
Very Saxy
Miles Davis
Milestones—Kind of Blue—In a Silent Way
Vic Dickenson
Gentleman of the Trombone
Eric Dolphy
Out to Lunch!
Arne Domnerus
Face to Face
Kenny Dorham
‘Round About Midnight at the Café Bohemia
Dave Douglas
Convergence
Roy Eldridge
Heckler’s Hop
Duke Ellington
Never No Lament (RCA 1940-1942)—Ellington at Newport 1956—New Orleans Suite
Bill Evans
Live at the Village Vanguard 1961
Gil Evans
Out of the Cool
Art Farmer
Portrait of Art
Ella Fitzgerald
The Cole Porter Songbook
Chico Freeman
Destiny’s Dance
Bill Frisell
Have a Little Faith
Jan Garbarek
Dis
Erroll Garner
Concert by the Sea
Charles Gayle
Touchin’ on Trane
Stan Getz
Focus
Dizzy Gillespie
Birks Works
Benny Goodman
At Carnegie Hall 1938—The Complete Small Group Sessions (RCA 1935-39)
Dexter Gordon
Our Man in Paris
Stephane Grappelli
Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, Denmark
Grant Green
The Complete Quartets With Sonny Clark
Lars Gullin
Danny’s Dream
Charlie Haden
Beyond the Missouri Sky
Jim Hall
Concierto
Scott Hamilton
Plays Ballads
Lionel Hampton
1937-38
Herbie Hancock
Head Hunters
Barry Harris
Magnificent!
Coleman Hawkins
The Stanley Dance Sessions
Julius Hemphill
Flat-Out Jump Suite
Joe Henderson
The State of the Tenor
Woody Herman
Blowin’ Up a Storm!
Andrew Hill
Point of Departure
Earl Hines
Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington
Billie Holiday
Lady Day Swings!
Dave Holland
Conference of the Birds
Freddie Hubbard
Open Sesame
Dick Hyman
Forgotten Dreams
Abdullah Ibrahim
Yarona
Ahmad Jamal
Cross Country Tour 1958-1961
Keith Jarrett
The Koln Concert
Bunk Johnson
Bunk’s Brass Band and Dance Band 1945
J.J. Johnson
The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson
Thad Jones and Mel Lewis
Consummation
Sheila Jordan
Portrait of Sheila
Stan Kenton
City of Glass
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Rip, Rig, and Panic/Now Please Don’t You Cry, Beautiful Edith
Lee Konitz
Motion
Steve Lacy
5 x Monk 5 x Lacy
George Lewis
Jazz in the Classic New Orleans Tradition
Meade Lux Lewis
1927-1939
Humphrey Lyttleton
The Parlophones, Vol. 1-4 (1949-1959)
Wynton Marsalis
Black Codes (From the Underground)
Jackie McLean
Let Freedom Ring
Marian McPartland
In My Life
Brad Mehldau
The Art of the Trio
Helen Merrill
With Clifford Brown and Bill Evans
Charles Mingus
Pithecanthropus Erectus—Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus
Roscoe Mitchell
Sound
The Modern Jazz Quartet
The Complete Last Concert
Miff Mole
Steppin’ Around
Thelonious Monk
The Complete Blue Note Recordings (1947-1958)—Brilliant Corners
Wes Montgomery
Incredible Jazz Guitar
Lee Morgan
The Sidewinder
Bennie Moten
Band Box Shuffle 1929-1932
Paul Motian
Sound of Love
Gerry Mulligan
The Original Quartet
David Murray
Ming…Home
Fatz Navarro
The Complete Fats Navarro on Blue Note and Capitol
Joe “King” Oliver
King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band: The Complete Set
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band
1917-1921
Greg Osby
Banned in New York
Charlie Parker
On Dial (1945-1947)—Charlie Parker (Verve)—The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall
Evan Parker
The Snake Decides
Joe Pass
Virtuoso
Art Pepper
Meets the Rhythm Section
Oscar Peterson
Night Train—My Favorite Instrument (Exclusively For My Friends)
Michel Petrucciani
Solo Live
Bud Powell
The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1 and 2
Django Reinhardt
The Classic Early Recordings in Chronological Order (1934-1940)
Max Roach
Alone Together—We Insist! Freedom Now Suite
Shorty Rogers
The Sweetheart of Sigmund Freud
Sonny Rollins
Saxophone Colossus—A Night at the Village Vanguard—This is What I Do
ROVA
Bingo
George Russell
Jazz Workshop
Alexander von Schlippenbach
Swinging the Bim
John Scofield
Quiet
Artie Shaw
Self-Portrait (RCA 1938-1954)
Archie Shepp
Four for Trane
Wayne Shorter
Speak No Evil
Horace Silver
Blowin’ the Blues Away
Zoot Sims
If I’m Lucky
Jimmy Smith
Groovin’ at Small’s Paradise
Wadada Leo Smith
The Kobell Years (1971-1979)—Divine Love
Muggsy Spanier
1929-1932
Tomasz Stanko
Leosia
Bobo Stenson
Serenity
Maxine Sullivan
Close as Pages in a Book
Sun Ra
Jazz in Silhouette—The Magic City
John Surman
Tales of the Algonquin
Art Tatum
The Art Tatum Group Masterpieces, Vol. 8
Cecil Taylor
Jazz Advance—For Olim—The Tree of Life
Clark Terry
Memories of Duke
Mel Torme
Swings Shubert Alley
Lennie Tristano
McCoy Tyner
The Real McCoy—Time for Tyner
James Blood Ulmer
Odyssey
Warren Vache
2gether
Kid Thomas Valentine
Kid Thomas-George Lewis Ragtime Stompers
Sarah Vaughan
Edward Vesala
Lumi
Bobby Watson
Love Remains
Weather Report
Mysterious Traveller
Eberhard Weber
Yellow Fields
Ben Webster
Music for Loving
Kenny Wheeler
Music for Large and Small Ensembles
Mary Lou Williams
Free Spirits
Tony Williams
Life Time
Phil Woods
Phil Woods/Lew Tabackin
Larry Young
Unity
Lester Young
The Complete Aladdin Sessions
John Zorn
The Big Gundown