Our youngest son and his friend, Simon, are visiting us this Christmas season. With our son’s return strains of original music are again wafting throughout the house. He and Simon are composing on their computers.
It may be a return to fresh music, but everything is different now. In many ways there’s no return at all. Gone is the need for a quiet space to record in. Gone is the thrashing drum set, the pounding, melodic bass, and gone, too, are guitars. Everything you can imagine can be generated on the computer.
So there’s hope for me yet, right? Suddenly, I don’t have to be able to play an instrument well to be a musician. But I would have to learn the program. And that might be more difficult–like learning to pilot the lunar module. For now I’ll stick with the noise I can disgorge from a bass and guitar.
Manny and Simon are fine musicians in their own right, but they have embraced this new frontier. It’s like having a studio’s entire recording apparatus inside a laptop. Apparently, there’s no limit. A couple of weeks ago Manny played me his latest number, on which were 50 tracks. Fifty! The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was recorded on four-track equipment with engineers making reduction mixes, where the four tracks from a machine are mixed and dubbed into a single track on a master four-track recorder.
And now–that is to say, next month–we’ll have an entire nation’s governing apparatus inside the House of Representatives. I know: That’s only one half of one of our three branches of government. But it’s also 435 tracks–the majority Democratic.
Our criminal president, our commander-in-chief, who can’t be bothered to defend us against ongoing Russian interference in our elections because he’s in the Russian mafia, is the number one cheerleader for the looming government shutdown.
Our feckless Senate, fawning all over the president in his defense, is laughably useless.
And our Supreme Court has yet to be tested in the weightiest of any decisions to come.
That leaves the House rowing an aircraft carrier.
It will be fascinating to observe exactly what the House can and cannot accomplish. I’m not holding my breath, even if the House’s flipping is a step in the right direction.
More broadly, these days, it seems as if everyone is rowing an aircraft carrier. Life can be difficult.
A toast, then, to 2019: May it bring rest; and may it be a year of many steps, finally, all in the right direction.
What is laughably useless is opinion pieces after opinion piece constantly inflicting derision of anything Republican or of our President. Even more laughable, the very same authors stay mum on what is the debacle of California which is ran by a super majority of Democrats. While you glote of some charade desires of congress and Russian interference, California has been ran off course. As a reminder the following are recent headlines you seem to deliberately avoid to address; Ca DMV, high speed rail, water, population exodus, inflated real estate, your Governor stating “fiscal oblivion” is eminent without concessions and reform, and most baffling, Ca ranks 41st on educational spending, but ranks 1st on prisoners! I realize these topics are humdrum in comparision in the desires of some to link the President to Russian Collusion and their disdain cannot allow the acceptance they lost in 2016. Fact is, contrary to what you believe in those delusional attempts and views, neither party is meeting expectations and representing the constituents. So start rowing Joesph, because that aircraft your on is nothing more than the party boat with a bunch of paracosm drunks at the navigatingational helm and you seem to be the captain.
GOP clown car President does not have the basics of decency or leadership. USA is now a global laughingstock
We need real, moderate, thoughtful leadership not ideological strangulation shutdown.
but don’t worry. GOP is throwing itself out of office.