Cry For US, Argentina

San Martin, Simon Bolivar, and all who fought for the liberation of South America from colonialism are with the protestors in the streets of Mar del Plata.



Liberator José Francisco de San Martín
(Photo by Jameson)


(See: Thousands protest Bush in Argentina )


Peaceful or violent, these South Americans oppose Bush's free trade proposal with the U.S. While this is an economic plan unpopular with many, what has actually fueled the fire of protest is Bush's image as an imperialist who unjustly invaded Iraq, not to liberate anyone, but to seize the oil reserves there and to assert the power of the U.S. Our torturing of prisoners, many completely innocent, our utter disregard for the environment, our arrogant treatment of other nations, all have made us more unpopular than ever. The catastrophe of Katrina, and the ever widening circle of corruption in the White House, add more evidence of Bush's failure, of Bush's lack of intelligence and his mindless and destructive policies.

Every day I realize more how horrible the Florida electoral mess has left our country. Had Gore taken the office to which the American people elected him, the disaster of 911 would have been prevented, as intelligence reports make clear. The economic woes and mushrooming deficit would not exist. We would lead the world in environmental progress and conservation. Like Canada and Spain, our country would be progressive, prosperous, and beloved by the rest of the world.

Cry for us, then, Argentina. We need your tears. We need them to clear our vision to change from the evil, selfish, unilateral path we are now following to a path of enlightenment that will earn us respect. Help us replace greed and arrogance with the Tango. Dance us out of this dark time, this discord and ignorance. Then, in three years, Happy Days will be here again.

See the spin-off letter from this published in the AJC, 11-12-'05:

Letter.

--Jameson

The Spirits Are Willing

Our Ghosts

As the glaciers melt, and the arms of World War II pilots rise out of the ice as if on Judgment Day, spirits are eager for this Halloween. The ghost of Nixon stalks the cold rooms of the White House. We can hear the clinking of ice in his whiskies. He wakes the current inhabitant at strange hours.
So many ghosts this year are new to it. The Tsunami, the hurricanes, the earthquake in Pakistan have undone so many. The war has undone so many. The ghosts of millions of birds take flight. They swarm about us crying flu like a hitchcock film.
My ghosts are many too. From Russian Hill in San Francisco, From the marshes of Moon River in Savannah, From the recesses of "Death's Dateless Night," they beckon me.

It is a time to wear masks.

Blowing in the Wind

October.

Time to get out the blowers and whip those leaves away. Right? Oh yea, you never put the blowers away, did you? The weekly whip up just goes on as ususal. Only for a few weeks you actually blow leaves, rather than dirt, dust, animal feces, bacteria, pollen, and what is known now in Air- challenged Atlanta as particulate pollution.

Yes, It's October and soap box time for Jameson. But don't take my word for it; read the well- documented

Facts about Blowers

This documented study for Sacramento (far less polluted than Atlanta) points out how Blowers

1) damage our hearing with their noise.

2) add significantly to air pollution-- each blower polluting more than 17 cars and then some.

3) Damage gardens with tornado force wind that blows away topsoil, seeds, and kills plants.

4) are slower in clearing leaves than grandma with a rake (this was a study!)


The list goes on.


My favorite article on dirt blasters is this one:

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Leaf-Blower Terrorism
By JOHN MILLER

They attack in the early morning or during dinner. A man, often wearing ear protectors, descends upon the neighborhood. Strapped to his back is the latest weapon in the arsenal of technological terror. The device triggers an ear-shattering whine that slices through the soft underbelly of neighborhood domesticity. The intruder reves up the pitch, generating a 75-plus decibel sound storm. Senior citizens tremble in fear, pets urinate beneath the bed and grown men curse. No one is safe from leaf-blower terrorism. Hyperbole, you say? Webster's defines terrorism as "the use of force to demoralize and to intimidate." According to the Environmental Protection Agency, today's leaf blower is loud enough to cause hearing loss, high blood pressure and numerous other afflictions in those repeatedly exposed to its savage voice. Palo Alto, whose well written noise ordinance prohibits leaf blowers, is faced with the terrifying prospect of actually having to enforce the law! The leaf blower's alleged productivity must be scrutinized in relation to the real costs involved, of which the most exacting is a noise so terrible as to negate any possible benefits of the machine. Leaf blowers exist because they create an illusion of usefulness. The leaf blower is a metaphor for power. To suffer a leaf blower attack is to submit to raw power, to face the frightening arrogance of the possible, to fall prey to technical irrationality.

Leaf blowers exist because their existence is technically possible and ours is a society unable to resist the temptations of Dr. Frankenstein and the boys back in the lab. Why does the Palo Alto City Council tremble at the prospect of demilitarizing the army of marauding gardeners whose weapons make noise terrorism the city's number one problem? Why do we even listen to attorneys brazenly demanding "rights" for leaf-blower operators, promulgating a charade of "reasonable compromise" and advocating "accommodation of competing interests" in an attempt to portray the leaf blower as bona fide and legitimate? Our reluctance to acknowledge that leaf blowers are a barbarous grotesquerie has little to do with the sanctity of private enterprise but reflects our compulsive obsession with giving the other fellow his due. Examples of this misguided magnanimity are only too plentiful. Take ghetto blasters. Simply another way of listening to radio. It's just too bad for those wimps who can't abide amplified sound on the sidewalks. Dirt bikes? A legitimate form of recreation, though destroying the environment only marginally less than recreational bulldozing. With such precedents, should we be surprised that the leaf blower has been accorded the respect, the deference and the legitimacy it does not deserve?

Must we acknowledge every viewpoint as if all were equally valid, no matter how destructive? Must we really take the absurd seriously? Genghis Khan? Why merely an agrarian reformer. The leaf blower? Yet another convenience. And so it goes... Such a diminished capacity to tell the good guys from the bad is a result of our apparent inability to recognize our real self-interest. Will our common values be those that evoke our historic respect for the rights and privacy of others or must we legitimize every creation of our fertile imagination that parades in the trappings of progress and technology, regardless of the consequences? Some may call my concern trivial and unimportant, yet according legitimacy to the leaf blower is a measurement, yes, - of evil. The leaf blower's legacy of callousness and spiritual impoverishment contributes to those more obvious evils that only too late do we realize have antecedents among the seemingly innocent and harmless fashions of the moment. Shouldn't we know better by now? John Miller is a public relations consultant in Palo Alto.

Interesting coincidence of names-- but he's not a relation, as far as I know.

--Jameson

Attacking Pittsbugh

As I took this photo of Rex menacing gay Philip Johnson's glass cathedral and plaza in downtown Pittsbugh, a security guard ran up to me and told me NOT to photograph, especially the building tops (guess he never heard of the web). Since 911, he began, we are aware of terrorists.

"You're not serious?"
I asked.

The guard bristled, 'deed they were. He moved his hand to his gun.

I smiled and moved on, as he watched me head back cross the Allegheny to the safety of the Andy Warhol Factory. Tourists. Terrorists. Those words are pretty similar, you have to admit.

Here we are in the land that used to be free. Each day the Texan appoints more evangelicals from Texas to take away those freedoms we've been taking for granted.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the Halls of Justice, indictments are arriving at last. No more delay for Delay. Time to frisk Frist. Scooter is scooting, and Rove will have to rove on over to the Grand Jury for some serious questioning. Bush is looking bushed himself. 2006. 2008. Hope?
As Tammy rains on Atlanta, as John Roberts assails Oregon for letting people die in peace, as I lose my train of thought to Fleetwood Mac and plans for trips to Kalani and Stockholm, the atomic clock ticks on.

Peace.

Jameson

Amazing Disgrace

As we hear the amazing stories of survival from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, we ought to consider just why God has saved those poor souls whose homes were destroyed. Our heart strings play a familiar sad song as Joan Doe stands before the rubble, the debris, and the tattered remains of her home. A fallen tree smashed her bedroom ceiling. Brown water pools around her and mold grows up what remains of a wall.

"I am lucky. God saved me. Thank God I'm still alive."

Should we? Thank God? What about the thousand plus who died? Why didn't God save them? What about the ones who were seriously injured or who lost family and loved ones? Are they lucky?

The hurricanes blow us right into the Problem of Evil, solved by the likes of Billy Graham and son who tell us that we shouldn't judge those who are killed or hurt, but just be glad for the good things that the rest of us receive. You know, God works in mysterious ways. We cannot understand the mystery. Just be good and you will get to heaven. Maybe.

For a definitive grasp of the philosophical Problem of Evil, click. What concerns me now is the immorality of thanking God for saving me when so many others are suffering or dead. It is the ultimate selfishness in the moment of crisis. It is no better than the athlete-- who has just won a competition-- thanking God. Why, we wonder, did he make losers of all the others?

Of course, if one really does believe in heaven and the blessed afterlife, one should logically thank God, the Christian-Judeo God that is, if ones loved ones do die. "Thank God. My wife died and now she's happy in Heaven. I wish He'd chosen me as well to go to that blessed Home in the sky." How cruel of God to leave all these good Christians in the swamp-- still prey to the Devil and the alligators.

Amen.

Out of the Frying Pan

As the world's glaciers and ice caps melt, as the seas rise and grow hotter, those who deny the reality of global warming look ever more foolish, more deceitful, and more immoral. The hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico are evidence of the gulf between the Bible-toting politicians and life. Even ostriches will lift their heads from the sand if you torch their asses.

Melting glacier Moreno in Patagonia
photo by Jameson


At long last many Americans are admitting that the Emperor has no clothes. Bush is in the Hot seat. And journalists are revealing to us all the corruption of Halliburton and other companies close to the president and vice-president's wallet. The horrific profits of the oil companies, ripping off those fleeing the hurricanes, are more fuel for the heat gathering around Bush.

In Nevada this week we watched the 20th Burning Man fire celebration. Never has the Burning Man seemed more an emblem of our world. And our foolish leader, thinking himself the oracle of the Burning Bush, offers no wisdom. He knows nothing of science. He is the living refutation of evolution.

Yesterday it was 100 degrees in Houston-- the hottest day before the autumnal equinox ever in that city. And 5 million people jumped in their cars and tried to leave. Only the roads jammed and the stations emptied of gas. And what do our leaders promise. More money. Lots more money. For Halliburton, Shaw, and Bechtel that is.

The flames of Hell -- they may not be myth anymore.

Geyser Music: Sigur Ros Flows

Last Tuesday Dar and I attended the transcendental performance at Atlanta Symphony Hall of Sigur Ros. It was not our first encounter of the band. We had seen and heard them before and Dar saw them first in Iceland. The review below "Like Sucking God's Cock" pretty much gets it. I think hearing them is like being transported to Iceland and the dramatic nature there-- far away from the cacophany of Bush's Ahmurikaa. Away from the pollution and the noise and the bravado. No war. No hurricane. But a sadness from afar at what is happening to the World. You can hear virtually the same perfomance at http://www.npr.org/programs/asc



Icelandic Geysir; the Original Geyser
photo by Dar




Listen:

NPR has a nice overview: Sigur Ros

My Favorite Video

Their latest video (click)


Here's my favorite review:

Sigur Ros : Takk

Like sucking God's cock. Or something

They play fewer gigs than Jesus throws "coming home" parties, their last record had no song titles and Jónsi Birgisson could walk around with "I'm the singer in Sigur Rós" stencilled on his forehead and still you'd have no idea who he was or what he did for coin. Not only that, but his band make music that sounds like elves rutting in ice castles or dragons bathing in geysers. Meanwhile, they win the award for "band least likely to break into a giggle mid-xylophone solo" with unrivalled ease. Oi! Work experience flunky! File them away in the "anonymous, glacial, misery gut muso" drawer. And shred that Oceansize review while you're at it.

Except saying such a thing is like hearing biology teachers giving sex education lessons – there is magic woven within the facts. Tagging them so neglects the love, grace and breathless passion that this, the Icelandic quartet's fourth album, has bolted to the girders of its monumental beauty. Choice cut 'Svo Hljótt' sounds like the bit in Lord Of The Rings when Gandalf dies reinterpreted by operatic mythical winged beasts, while the broody 'Glósóli' contains more nervous system-shaving shivers than a blowjob from an "up fer it" Archangel. If you imagine the noise God makes just before he eats a slice of cheese on toast, then comparably, that's how satisfyingly yearning the 65 minutes of 'Takk...' sounds. Ordinary people. Extraordinary songs.

James Jam

http://www.nme.com/reviews/sigur-ros/7761

Here come the Vultures

As the slime dries on the streets of New Orleans, another kind of slime is appearing. Funded by billions of dollars from Bush and the Congress, Halliburton and other big spenders are snatching up contracts to rebuild the Gulf Coast. To top off the windfall, Bush has proclaimed that these companies need not worry about paying workers a decent or competitive wage. Law suspended.

Enter Dick Cheney, Halliburton personified. Touring the area laid low by Katrina, that wry smile widened on the VP's face as he saw dollar signs everywhere he looked. What better thing to see after looking over a three million dollar vacation home as Katrina blew ashore. This was well worth flying back from Wyoming. Opportunity in the land of the free-- and unrestrained.

Exit the evacuees, aka, refugees. There in the big, generous state of Texas the poor-- and now homeless-- still await promised, undelivered relief. When will they be able to return to the city they love? Only after Halliburton gives them the green light.

Two weeks after FEMA failed to rescue the people of New Orleans, bodies still float in the sludge in the streets of the city. Vultures circle overhead. No, not birds, helicopters carrying Halliburton execs and political pals. What a banquet awaits them. They give a new and horrid twist to the words of Auntie Mame. Even Anne Rice did not imagine such vampires.

--Jameson

Hurricane Bush

Will America be able to dig itself out of the
damages wreaked by Hurricane Bush, the most
destructive unnatural disaster to ever hit this
nation?

Let's retrace the path of this storm:

First, Bush ignores the memo that says Bin Laden
determined to attack the USA. Ooops, he did what he
said he'd do.
Second, Bush  ignores information from Army Corps of
Civil Engineers saying that Lake Ponchatrain levees
need immediate repairs to protect the city. Worse,
he slashes $26 million from their budget. Ooops,
they knew what they were talking about.
Fact: Meteorogists have been saying for years that
tropical storms are getting worse because of global
warming. Bush's first act as President was to pull
the US out of the Kyoto hearings and to fight
tooth-and-nail any actions to reduce our impact on
the environment. He and his cronies won't even admit
global warming exists -- bad for bidness. Ooops, the
weather men got it right.

Next,  Bush  squanders a sizable national surplus by
giving tax breaks to super-rich buddies and by
starting a war-of-choice in Iraq. That'll show Daddy
whose balls are bigger.
Fact: following Hurricane Katrina there are now
untold billions of dollars in damages in New Orleans
and other Gulf cities; in NO, much of that damage is
caused not by the storm but by flooding from
ruptures in the aforementioned levees. Too bad
there isn't still a surplus to pay for
this. You can't prevent a hurricane, but
that's why we *save money* -- "for a rainy day." Too
bad we don't have a President with any sense of
fiscal (or, apparently, moral) responsibility; this
should come as no surprise, since every personal
business venture he has been involved in has ended
in bankruptcy -- the US economy is just another in
the long list.

Thousands of Americans gave their lives in an
attack on New York City that could have been
prevented were our President able to read and
inclined to do his job. Oh, well, he was on
vacation.
Thousands of Americans are giving their lives in a
war of choice based on lies and decit as Bush goes on
a lot of nice bike rides in the country.
Thousands of Americans now give their lives and all
their possessions in the aftermath of flooding that
could have been prevented were our President able to
read and inclined to do his job. Their
suffering could have been eased somewhat, and lives
saved, had our National Guard not been largely
deployed in the Middle East. Instead, the
President saws logs in Crawford and avoids talking
to Cindy Sheehan.


Where will our country be in 2008?
Billions and billions and billions of dollars in
debt, hated by a big percentage of the world and
distrusted by even more, perhaps still mired in a
war or involved in others, and trying to deal with a
crumbling infrastructure at home that we can't
afford to fix because of wars and tax breaks. Oh,
well, at least the oil guys and Haliburton execs
will be richer than ever.

dar

College Murder

Jackie O'Nastie protests the killing.
Speaking of Thanatos, The Woodruff Arts Center Board today voted to kill the Atlanta College of Art. We know who was Lady Macbeth in this murder, the half- million- a- year- plus president of SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design).

"Out, Out Damn ART!"

SCAD will consume ACA -- and most of us are unclear of the consequences for faculty, students, and alumni. There is no question that artistic freedom will suffer. Read the petition to stop the takeover-- last count 850 signatures-- with vital comments, by people who know:

Petition

A protest march is taking place as I write. How I wish a good journalist would uncover the dark side of this takeover, and the long, infamous history of SCAD and its cancerous growth. There is a somewhat detailed account of the takeover in the AJC at

Art school uproar


Here is my too tame letter published in the AJC, 8/24/05 :

The demise of the Atlanta College of Art is a great loss for Atlanta. That is not to say that the decision to turn the school over to the Savannah College of Art and Design has no merit. Atlanta is a business city and this is good business for the Woodruff Art Center. SCAD's vision, ambition, and material success are famous. ACA's reputation, on the other hand, is as a small, intimate educational institution known for high standards and rigorous study. ACA has always lacked the sort of broad vision of public success, eschewing graduate programs and high visibility in the community. This was its downfall.
In a perfect world there would be room for both an ACA and a SCAD. Serious artistic study could survive along with popular, attention-getting shows and entertainment. Unfortunately, in this case, quantity will quash quality.

The paper noted that I have taught at both institutions. Past tense.

--Jameson

Eros and Thanatos

Yesterday, the nation's newspapers were filled with obituaries for Six Feet Under. My favorite was in the Boston Globe:
A poignant, satisfying end for 'Six Feet Under'

Since there is no reason for me to rehash the story of love and death in Six Feet, I'd like to make some other observations, instead. I thought the next to last episode in which an Iraq war veteran, maimed almost exactly as Senator Max Cleland was maimed in the Vietnam War, was especially poignant. The soldier decides to commit suicide and the family of the soldier perpetuates the lies for which he lost his life. Claire's attack on the SUV-driving family is brilliant. Nonetheless, her Christian, Republican boyfriend comes to Claire's rescue when she needs it. Ball's insight into character and passion is as good as Shakespeare's. So too is his political acumen. His interplay of love and death, Eros and Thanatos, is equally brilliant: Jung and Freud haunt his dream sequences.

There is now, perhaps in part because of Iraq, a fascination with death. The Sept./Oct. issue of the Utne Reader features a cover story on death. Alan Ball is just one interview in a series of articles. I predict we shall see much written on the subject of dying in the year ahead.

The last scene of Six Feet Under is of Claire, youngest of the Fishers, driving from California to New York, as the future fast forwards before our eyes. The vast open road of the West is of course a metaphor for life itself. It could just as well be the view from the prow of a ship. It is the path, the Tao, the Way. And death is as much a part of the Way as love, sex, and adventure are. Claire lives to be 102, which is fitting, somehow. The artist lives longest and last.

Happy Trails.
Jameson

Lucinda brings us home-- or, still under the spell of the Mediterranean.

Rome--
  photo by Jack

After weeks in Europe, like ripe olives upland from the Mediterranean, we have fallen, pits and all, back to Atlanta.

Yet, tonight, Lucinda Williams
has brought us back to Earth from our sea voyage with such a performance that we are ready for anything.
When she sang "Lake Charles," all that magic from Louisiana came flowing over us like the water of the Delta over the levee. We were swept away. And when she sang "My Joy," Lord, we were all so filled with her joy that the quarter moon came right out of the clouds and shone. Lucinda Williams and her three-man band simply transcended, and we were all transported from the Botanical Garden and transformed, like the frogs whom she saw in the pond before the stage, into princes of the kingdom of music.

OK, I had too much wine. OK, I've just returned from weeks of Dionysian rule. Weeks of Revelry at Sea plus all those inland jaunts along the Mediterranean. Weeks of San Giminano Towers over Italy. Weeks of swimming, usually naked, in the sea of Ibiza or the beaches of Mykonos. Weeks of the splendors of civilization: Byzantium's Hagia Sophia, Rome's Pantheon, The Parthenon and Arch of Hadrian in Athens, or gazing at that noble, divine bust of Antinous.


Darryl Sips Retsina on our balcony below the Parthenon.

Yes, and dancing on the deck of the Millennium with lasers, and the music of the last few decades--- and last, this new uncharted century. Mardi Gras, Toga, Disco parties as our vessel divided the seas. And Istanbul greeted us with gardens, mosques, lamb, and the Bosporus. We were sailors of The Odyssey, and of the Sirens , filling the night at sea with our song.

Here are Photographs, mere images of an experience so aesthetic that all I can say is:
Life is a Banquet and we have feasted.

With Love,
Jack Jameson

Sailing To Byzantium

On the 22d of July we soar to Spain. After six nights in Sitges, south of Barcelona, we set sail for Ibiza, Italy, Istanbul, and the Isles of Hellas: Thera and Mykonos. As in the Yeats' poem quoted below, we shall sail to Byzantium and to the Monuments of Unaging Intellect.
For all the depth of culture, of history, of thoughts of mortality as we gaze upon the greatest art and architecture of these civilizations, there will be for us the added revelation of a renewed Europe. Spain especially will hold for us joy and a celebration of higher awareness. For almost three weeks we shall be free of the repressing hand of the U.S. -- of its obsession with control of the world, from oil to religion, to the detriment of all.
It would be exciting to think that Spain today, like Seville and Granada in the 14th Century, exalts all peoples and artistic visions. Then Jew, Moor, and Christian worked together to create the Alhambra and the Alcazar of Seville. I think that today Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Bunuel would flourish. In any event, Lorca, D.H. Lawrence, and Yeats shall accompany us on our journey.



http://www.uky.edu/Classes/A-H/322/yeatssailing.htm

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM

W.B. Yeats 

I.
That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees--

Those dying generations -- at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

II.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

III.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

- The Tower (1927)

Recalling Jamie Cullum and the Algonquin

While looking over details of our European Cruise and listening to Adult Alternative on music cable, Jamie Cullum's "All At Sea" (click for the you tube video) took me back to New York City in October 2003. What a great trip that was. Here's what I wrote on our return:

Jamie Cullum
from Wikipedia

October : New York City:
We had a dazzling three days in the Big Apple, including three amazing plays: Wicked, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Take Me Out. All were sold out and all got standing ovations that were heart felt. Ned Beatty as Big Daddy was stunning. The sets and story and singing in Wicked were over the top and over the rainbow, including those flying monkeys soaring over the audience. Soaring is the word.
Jamie Cullum at the Algonquin's Oak Room was a jazz and piano treat, his voice easily handling classic jazz songs. The New York Times accolades were correct. But best of all was our partying together at Jimmy's Corner after the performance. Jamie turned out to be a charming party boy, and his impressive knowledge of everyone from Mable Mercer to Johnny Mercer was respectable for a 24-year-old. He is eager to go to the Big Easy soon.
On Monday, we saw the awe-inspiring El Greco show at the Metropolitan. Room after room of the Master's best 70 paintings transcended description. We walked through a lovely autumn Central Park filled with New Yorkers sunning themselves after the bustle of the Columbus Day parade. Yes, we took in the Village and some good food too. So much to do, so little time. The Algonquin and our room with the bay window over 44th St. were comfy and the best service we've gotten in NYC. Our first class flight (yea, we got upgraded to 1st class again, like on our flight up) got us back to Druid Hills by midnight.
Here's a link to the webpage:

http://www.geocities.com/dargossett/2003.html

I also sent a note to Cullum:

Hi Jamie,

I'm assuming you're the webmaster. If not, guess you'll get this forwarded to you. It was a delight hearing you play piano and sing at the Algonquin Oak Room Friday night. But what made the night especially enjoyable was partying with you at Jimmy's. Of course I was impressed by your music and your fab band. But that you could put your knowledge of music into words was an added pleasure. When you mentioned Mable Mercer, whose enunciation and song I have thrilled in so long (since the 70's) I about fell off my stool. And Johnny Mercer too, whose home on Moon River in Savannah was where I once lived. The songs you sang were so gorgeous, deeper than I expected from someone only 24.

Finally, I love your journal. I've kept my own since I was 18. You are so spontaneous and "unspoiled." Guess it'll be hard to stay that way as fame takes hold. All I can say is how much fun I had Friday night and I wish you all the success in the world. Sorry the elevator skit didn't work out-- would have been fun to be on video with you. Thought it neat that you were always hanging out in the lobby of the Algonquin. Wasn't that a great place to stay? Let us know if you ever come to Atlanta-- or better yet, New Orleans. Man, You would lap it up there. Keep up the good music and the good personality.

Yours,

Jack

And here's what HE wrote in his Journal: for 11/10/2003: (day 1st, month 2d)

11/10/2003 - Simple and uncluttered


This city is dangerous. I haven't been to bed before 4am for 10 straight days. This is the reason why they call it the city that never sleeps. I crave sleep, and I probably need it, but every hour on the matress seems so pointless when there is so much to do here. Why is it that when your abroad you do all those things you really should do at home but never do. Example 'a' - I'm in the New York Public Library now! Ok, so there is free internet here, but this place is incredible. All I can think about is that scene from Ghostbusters though, I keep thinking I'm going to spot Slimer any minute.

Last nights gig was a stormer. Someone proposed to their girlfriend during a specially requested version of "My one and only love" which I haven't played since I recorded it on my first record "Heard it all before". She accepted. Do you think she would have declined if I had been singing "The thrill is gone"? It's so much fun to mess with people's destiny......

We found this great bar round the corner from the hotel called "Jimmy's Corner" which is covered with Boxing memorabilia and had John Coltrane and Marvin Gaye on the jukebox. We went down there with a whole bunch of people we met from the gig. That is what is so great about playing the Oak Room. It is just like being in someone's living room and you can't escape from your audience even if you want to. So the only option is to take 'em all to the pub.

It's weird being apart from eveything that is happening in the UK with regards to the album launch. All the newspaper articles and the TV stuff I'm missing. It seems like it is all about someone else. I get back from New York the night before the album is out. My days here are so different, very simple and uncluttered. I'm going to watch the England/Turkey game today in a Turkish Bar. Hopefully I'll come out alive.

with love from NYC

jc
x

Independence Day

As the 4th of July approaches, two more nations now give America a goal to consider. Spain and Canada are both granting marriage equality to their citizens. As our president talks about restricting such rights in a Constitutional Amendment, and as he considers his first choice for a Supreme Court judge to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, a swing vote in favor of gay rights, these two countries join a growing list of nations around the world who respect the freedom and equality of all their citizens. As we celebrate Independence Day here in the United States, we should think of the independence being celebrated in Europe, in Canada, and even in New Zealand-- in reality. It is time for us to practice what we preach. All Americans, straight and gay, deserve freedom and the pursuit of happiness.