Being the continuation of InstaPunk and InstaPunk Rules
The Voices that Haunt Our Dreams
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
How this post got started…
No secret that my sleep habits are a lot like That Man’s, the one so many Americans love to hate. I’ve been losing my optimism about 2.0 for a long time now, not because I don’t trust his resolve or motives but because the pessimism is a powerful force I’ve struggled against all my adult life. Which began too soon, as I’ve described elsewhere. Like him, I’m running out of time in the natural human sense of it. More still to do than likely years to do it in. My sleep comes only in chunks, punctuated by dream-induced wake-up calls that send me to the keyboard and the net and the pile of work sitting there in the in-basket.
I sympathize with the champions of MAGA who are sounding so tetchy and miserable at the moment. They’re convinced they must keep trying to impress on the low-attention-span voters in their audience just how important it is to understand the depth and depravity and dastardly deeds of the Deep State. But I don’t need to be reminded. What I need are reminders of the buried goodness in us that might still resurface and prevail against a tsunami of obsessions with grievances and death as a cure-all.
Complicating my sleep/work cycles is the fact that the input software I must use has become progressively (irony intended) more obstructive of my efforts to type in the words and edits that used to be accomplished without constant interrupts by new algorithms in system software point releases I can’t prevent from installing automatically. I don’t believe in coincidences. Too many of them in a short period of time lead to an unprovable inference of conspiracy. I would be more qualified to have a conviction about this than almost anyone, because I have been writing more than anyone else for half a century now. I’m pretty knowledgeable when it comes to assessing field conditions of the turf writers play on.
Getting so hard to write on Facebook now that I’ve been reduced to posting principally with reels requiring only a couple of sentences of setup. Except for this, I’m losing my day to day focus on “the news” in favor of seeking out sleep background transmissions that minimize the bad dream ejections from sleep. Lately, the sounds I use to put myself to sleep are increasingly musical.
The advantages are that it works pretty well, and writing posts about music is a lot easier because they can be done with straight video links instead of charts, tables, graphs, and maps of the omnipresent disaster terrain that cries out for explanation.
Not from me. Not right now anyway. Last night I searched the ROKU music category for voices that wouldn’t intrude on my Zzzz-time. Found a good long documentary about Linda Ronstadt, whom I hadn’t thought about lately. Then, about an hour in, I woke up anyway, realized the documentary was worth actually watching, and here we are. This will be about Linda Ronstadt, and the many voices she has given us over the years. Plus some other musical context that should deepen our appreciation of her as an iconic member of a unique genre of music.
Ronstadt had been a late discovery of mine in terms of her career. She was identified as ‘country,’ although it was obvious her pure singing talent was a distinct cut above most female country stars. I heard her on the radio, and the country label didn’t ring true, but neither did any other label. Then, completely by accident, I heard a couple of songs from this album and became an immediate fan. Why does a girl with a German surname suddenly go all-Hispanic like this?
You can come back for more of this later, but I’m getting specific next…
The song that sold me instantly.
I thought immediately of signature love songs in French, German, Italian…
one more that needs no translation. Other songs just as strong.
Which leads me back to the documentary I almost slept all the way through. Here it is. The whole thing. The first minutes alone are as beautifully American as anything gets..
When your first two testimonials are by Dolly Parton and Bonnie Raitt,
in almost exactly the same terms, you’re a unique force of nature…
Yeah. I’m suggesting you settle in right here and watch the whole thing. Subtitles could be all over the lot… ‘The legacy of Two Grandfathers,’ ‘The Melting Pot that Rewrites the Rainbow Paradigm,’ ‘The World-Absorbing Power of American Exceptionalism,’ ‘The Rugged Individualist as Apotheosis of Ecumenical Roots’ and even more pretentious promulgations of lessons, patriotic preening, and manipulative propaganda. But not here. Not today.
Just watch the video. Make your own situation room full of photos and maps and news items connected with color-coded yarn tying one possible meaning to another. That would be your business. All I’m giving you is an introduction to a remarkable and beautiful American life.
What did it do for me? Sent my old brain on a search for the other voices women uniquely offer to show that hearts are stronger than words and music styles because they sing to our own needy souls.
That self indulgence is confined to the considerable chunk of this post that is Below the Fold. Meaning all of the most important stuff was communicated in about 800 words, and only that long because writing here is less horrendously difficult than writing a thoughtful Facebook post. The words have to come out somewhere, and I get to decide what goes in here.
Enjoy Linda Ronstadt. A great lady.
_______________________
Below the Fold
Yes, there are all kinds of great women singers who have added their distinct voices to the book of love, including joy and heartbreak. The language used doesn’t matter, or who wrote the songs, although it is kind of amazing the extent to which all these wide-ranging talents have American connections if not roots. All I’ll say about that in these anti-American times is that these ladies are all the proof anyone needs of just how exceptional the American dominance of western culture has been. Would the world be better without it? I think not.
Now for a little tour of highlights from participating countries of origin. They all enjoyed huge successes here and vast audiences in life and in death. Why this is, in large measure, a Thank You note to all of them…
France
Humphrey Bogart once locked her in the bathroom. He was scared of her.
Germany
She could fall in love again in English too.
Greece
This one’s in Italian. She knew all the languages of romance.
Slight problem here. Special relationship and all that. Let’s just say it’s probably one of these three, depending on your age and stuff:
Points scored for partly in French…?
She’s still with us. That’s one out of three.
In a few years time, she said it all.
American-Americans
If the English get three, we better get three four:
No one better ever*
No one better ever*
No one better ever*
*Except maybe this one
And, obviously, Linda Ronstadt is also the best ever, with and without asterisks. You have your lists, I have mine. A competition(?) anyone can participate in, that being the true heart of the American Way.
P.S. Couldn’t resist this rousing rollicker as a closer…
This is what I call an omnibus post. That is, it will contain many links to what I have published here and elsewhere previously. Not going to apologize for that. I don’t mind asking you to read a variety of approaches to the same gigantic topic. It’s a topic so big we’ve all become accustomed (or trained ourselves) to deal with it only in pieces. But the pieces are all part of a larger whole that has grave consequences for the culture as a whole. A great many people aren’t going to like what I have to say here, but it’s time it was said. I won’t be mincing words. If you feel like contending with specific points I am making, you’re well advised to read what’s at the links before you cut yourself the easy break of dismissing this post as irrational or wrongheaded or over-generalized. It isn’t. It just won’t be popular. A word about the word ‘general’ as it used in vernacular expressions like ”in general” or “generally speaking.” We all do generalize, mostly without acknowledging that whe...
Conflicted identity and media image woes By now we know if you’re a Democrat, getting elected isn’t about who you are, what you’ve done or haven’t done. It’s about how people see you. The factors that can do in a candidate are often more subtle than the pundits of the professional wrestling circuit called the mainstream media. Why we think it’s time to help the world’s most uninformed voters about who to elect as their next nominee for President. We’re not going to get all racist and sexist about it. The decision points we’ve discovered are all based on the individuals involved, not the immaterial fluff like experience or political philosophies. We’ll start right at the top and give you one simple thing to bear in mind before you try to pick a winner for 2028. Kamala Harris Not about the word salads or the escort thing. Too Desperate. Gavin Newsom Too Lyle Waggoner. Times change. Bernie Sanders Too ‘Little Big Man’ AOC Too prematurely passé Gretchen Whitmer Too Lily-White J...
Did the District Attorney of Philadelphia propose blowing up Trump’s White House Ballroom and auctioning off pieces of the rubble to cut the deficit? The Answer Provided by Google’s AI Assistant: Yes . Our topic today is Larry Krasner and his record as the District Attorney of Philadelphia and apparent higher political aspirations. Our purpose, though, is not purely political. It is to provide a demonstration of how Artificial Intelligence applications can be used in personal research that goes deeper than the media ever do. It is also to show the pitfalls of relying on such applications without a dogged determination to be thorough. The programmers behind the computer “intelligence” are always there, and they are just as human and political as, well, the elitist geeks who write the code. There are always two big questions to answer before undertaking what will be a long and complicated post on a complicated topic. First, Can I do it? And second, Do I really want to do it? This t...
Invocation of Nemesis by the Summoners Click on Rosie. Thought I’d get this part out of the way right up front. I’m reminded of Oscar Wilde’s famous quip about the upper class British sport of fox hunting: “The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.” As it happens, I’m working on two different posts at the same time this morning. This one and another one about the sad PR plight afflicting the unfortunate middle child of the three worst First Ladies in American history. . What the posts have in common is that the dominating element of both stories is a function of female psychology and can only be understood in those terms. There’s also the irony that Wilde’s jibe can be applied with some justice to both predator and prey in the two posts. Because I’m going to admit at the outset what most of the MAGA faithful won’t. You are right that Donald Trump is responsible for much of the imminent danger we are facing as a nation. Without his arrival on the political scene 11 years ...
Yeah. Click on the blue headlines. There are two precursor posts to this, both still in-process. I’ll finish and link them later. One is about the death of the historical novel, which mirrors a lot of other deaths in our culture. The other is about divorce, an absolutely transformative and deadly factor in what has become of us as a nation. What does that leave us with? The end result of our progressive devolution, largely invisible to all, because it is a function of the variable we tend to think of as a constant, human consciousness. Which it isn’t. I’ve written quite a lot about the consciousness problem over the years, and Instapunk Returns, as well as a couple other of my blogs, contain 5+++ years worth of thoughts on the topic. I’ll be sending you to those posts here, providing you with an excerpt, usually the lede, a sample graphic or two, and a link. The order is roughly chronological. I’m not going to give you any particular setup from piece to piece. The relevance to the main...
Happy Independence Day No. 250! I’m planning to do my part for the year-long celebration of the still remarkable birth of the United States of America. Just starting to realize that the number of us who remember the last big anniversary in 1976 is getting smaller every day. Why I have some special ideas about focusing on the moment of transition, that is the tick of the clock last night when the 249th year became the 250th. A kind of time capsule that may be buried now but dug up later to see who were way back when you were still as young as you think you are now. My credentials for the job. Quite a few actually, but the most important one today is that I was a working participant in the official Bicentennial celebrations back when I was still young. I wrote a post about it almost 10 years ago, ancient history in today’s 24/7 chronometer dial. In honor of the ones no longer with us from that time, I dug up the old post from the Wayback Machine and put it back together here a...
I accidentally discovered an apt new term to describe what’s going on right now. I was having fun with a recent Breitbart post referencing one of CNN’s duller voices. Atheocracy. Kind of perfect. Nailed home by the sudden leftist welcome of support from the Satanists in opposing the Texas Abortion law. Not to mention Cher’s redefinition of democracy as anything which enables a woman to get her way in every way she desires. A simple definition of Atheocracry. Every belief system involving the divine is non-scientific, worthless, and necessarily to be crushed out of existence. So we can all always do whatever we want, no matter who gets hurt. What happened? Dr. Doolittle’s Pushmi-Pullyu. Often Characterized as a sexual stalemate. Men and women have battled for control of society forever. Both sexes (there are exactly two) have competed for power for over thousands of generations. Thurber’s War Between Men and Women. Jeez. That’s been a while ago. Feminists believe ...
It’s kind of a big deal when the NYT slips a story through the paywall. Why this one? I was going to leave this story alone or tag it with a quip at Facebook when I first read about it at Gateway Pundit. They’ve already dumped it from their morgue of recent posts, but there were two more stories this morning that changed my mind. One at Breitbart about an on-air TDS one-liner at Fox Sports and another about the hairdresser’s lawsuit in the sports newsletter leaked through the paywall of the New York Times. The Times piece is excerpted above. The Breitbart post is a mere throwaway item, located far down the Main Page of the website with no names mentioned. Here’s a quick clip of the show Breitbart was referencing: I think both publications sense that something significant is going on here, but they just don’t quite know what it is. That’s when the title of this post occurred to me. “Tempest in a Foxhole.” Mixed metaphor obviously. Tempest in a teapot is a standard dismissal....
Mad Max as you’re supposed to want her Having finished my Mad Max post yesterday, I realized I had confined my discussion of the ‘Instant Gratification’ problem to the MAGA fainthearts. Their inability to look far enough forward to envision consequences is far less than that of the whole half country full of Democrat apologists and Trump haters. Shouldn’t I address that fact in some comparable terms to what I just wrote? I guess so. The easy answer is referencing the two recent Mad Max sequels provided to us by Woke Hollywood. But I haven’t seen them. I had no interest in paying to see them in a theater. At one point I did put one of them, Furiosa I think, on my IMDB watch list. I received a notification that it would be briefly available on one of the streaming services and I did tune in to watch. Lost interest about 15 minutes in, by which time the old rules had it a good movie should have you hooked. I was not hooked. It was just the same cinematic backdrop as the Road W...
Comments