Yesterday is the anniversary of my mother’s death in 1973. I was in California when the call came; she had been struggling to survive breast cancer for more than five years. She was working on the English language version of Costa-Gavras’ State of Siege and set up a KEM flatbed editing console in her home near Woodstock. She made it with just hours to spare, finishing her work on the dubbing and being rushed to the hospital in Kingston. She was 58.
Somehow the deaths of so many people in my early years trained me (or I used to train me) to view the world as a series of logical (or terrifyingly random) steps where I balanced risk against running out the clock. Often I chose the latter, playing it safe even as I failed to understand that time is malleable only if you seize it. Now, I regret some things but surprisingly not the timid choice. Instead, I notice the very center of these moments is illuminated by the shared tragedy of our cluelessness. What wins over and over again is the joy of our mistakes, which probably are not what they seem.
Today I listened to a conversation with Robbie Robertson, the leader of The Band who died a few days ago at 80. The podcast was recorded at Shangri-La, the recording studio producer RickRubin purchased several years ago. I knew some of the group from my days in Woodstock, but not Robbie; the recording was welcome as a way of cheating the time I never had as it filled in some of the blanks I’d inferred but never really knew. Best of all was his sense of humor, direct and inevitable in its clarity. Did he know he had written a great song when it emerged like The Weight did? No, that’s not how it works, he suggested. It made sense in a simple way, the steps across the Millstream that took him and us forward across the trickling brook.
Sometimes it seems we have to let go of some things before we can get to a clearing in the path ahead. Such it is with Donald Trump and the Republican primary. For 7 (seems like forever) years we’ve been trudging through the muck, and suddenly there’s a glimmer of the possibility of redemption for our eventual way out of this vile soulless mess. Two moments: YouTube TV’s new Multiview feature and Fox News’ interview with former Attorney General Bill Barr. Multiview offers a four-way grid of the major news channels, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and BBC. I’ve long since muted the audio on these channels but added back the Closed Captioning titles as a way of scanning the screens from time to time. What do I give up? The natural distaste for the relentless posturing of the Fox right. But after a few hours of the rhythm of Hunter and the Woke talking points, you see how much it reminds you of the other leftish channels. In this world of dueling lower-thirds, new patterns emerge.
Give up your solely partisan perspective, and then the potential of this endless contest begins to moderate. That’s when I’m faced with a choice of listening to Michael Cohen on the NeverTrumper network (MSNBC) perpetually hawk his book, or do what I did: switch the captions to Bill Barr. Here’s a guy who singlehandedly destroyed the facts on the Mueller Report, yet now has become a devastatingly analytical force against his former boss. He thinks the New York and Georgia indictments may not have legs, but that leaves the two federal cases in Florida and Washington DC as slam dunks. Barr pulls no punches. If Trump had played the political cards he had in the 2020 election he would likely have won, but instead he went off the deep end and is now facing the rest of his life in courtrooms. Chris Christie narrates the split screen in realtime, popping up everywhere on the grid including Fox to call Trump a coward for skipping the debate. The Barr/Christie ticket may not win in the primary, but it’s captivating the TV election.
It’s a sucker’s bet to think Trump is toast. Clearly there’s a sea change in the usual suspects and how they tiptoe past the glaring contradictions of their position as the first debate arrives on Wednesday. Will they vote for Trump if he’s the nominee? Who needs this bunch of weasels, we cringe. Barr sidesteps the issue by saying Trump will not be the nominee. Oh really, with a 40 point lead 6 months before the first votes are cast? Time slips and slides as we wonder what is going to change. Take a load off Fanny, take a load for free; Take a load off Fanny, And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me.1
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