You gotta love Bob Dylan!
One of the most distinctive voices and culturally conscious songwriters of all time – in classic Dylan confidence – decided to inject a good dose of reality into the realm of modern technology and digital music in a recent quote.
Hmmm, it is a shame though that this painfully valid argument comes from a man whose own voice is one of the most flawed vocal instruments in modern music.
I HEAR YA Dylan! I really do. But goodness c'mon, if we only loved Music for beautiful quality and clear tone you would've been a long-dead fad decades ago.
But like I said – even though I'm apparently only hearing you with compromised fidelity – I hear ya...
...thank goodness words by themselves still count for something.
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In June, Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed writer for the New York Times wrote an opinion titled "Teaching Remedial Decency", on the lack of core decency within the American military and current White House administration. "There's no way to teach someone not to shoot an unarmed woman or child. If somebody doesn't already know why they shouldn't murder a baby, it's not clear that a refresher course will help.... The problem with brushing up on core values is that if you don't know them by a certain point you can't learn them."

I'm not sure if I believe in some innate deadline for learning value and decency – but it is obvious that our current crop of leaders (and therefore maybe the majority of constituents that elect them) lack the basic morals that foster respect and decency towards all people; even those who don't think, vote, or live as they do.

Another example of this deficiency was displayed by Senator John McCain last night on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. When asked for his opinion of the Middle East crisis between Israel and Hezbollah – he argued on behalf of Israel's actions that there is no "moral equivalency" between the 100 Israelis killed by Hezbollah intentionally, and the 600 Lebanese killed by the Israeli army by accident. He went on to enlighten us of the greater impact Israel's 100 has on its smaller population (I guess it's good to see his outspoken empathy for at least one minority group).

I don't care what political party you align yourself with – whether your flag has stars or crescents – whether you're an elephant or jackass or both – WE (all of us) are in a SAD place when the organized killing of hundreds of people is rationalized away in percentages and ratios as accidents or collateral damage.
28 Civilian deaths from just one raid in Qana, Lebanon last Sunday included:
one 75-yr old, one 68-yr old, one 65-yr old, one 55-yr old, one 45-yr old, one 45-yr old, one 39-yr old, one 31-yr old, two 30-yr olds, one 25-yr old, one 17-yr old, two 12-yr olds, two 10-yr olds, two 9-yr olds, three 7-yr olds, two 6-yr olds, one 4-yr old, one 3-yr old, one 2-yr old, and one 9-month old.
That same weekend Hezbollah launched a record 156 rockets into Israel – no Israelis were reported killed. Three days later Hezbollah launched a new record of 230 rockets into Israel killing one person.


It has never been more clear why Martin Luther King, Jr. insisted in the power of non-violent resistance. For generations, minorities in America stood against this country's oppression, bigoted laws, atrocities and murders without once resorting to firing a rocket or dropping a bomb. King didn't draw his line on a map or with a flag, he drew it with plain ol' human decency.
We miss you Martin.
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The Dave Matthews Band is quite familiar with the powers of seduction and inspiration. The magnificent quintet rocked my soul from 8 to 11 Saturday night on Randall's Island. Like pied-pipers, they lured the entire audience over a cliff of lullabies and ballads and "crash"ed us into the waves of their perfectly melodic jazz-rock anthems below. Weeeeeee! was the sound I seem to recall hearing the crowd scream on our way down. Here's what we got to hear during our fall...

One Sweet World [] Crash [] Grey Street [] Idea of You [] Hunger For the Great Light [] Pig [] What Would You Say [] So Right [] Cortez the Killer (with Warren Hayes) [] Dancing Nancies [] Warehouse [] Rhyme and Reason [] #34 (with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) [] Ants Marching [] Sister [] Slow Rider [] Stay



In a different display of seduction and inspiration – in October 2001 – Apple first announced at a special event the release of the very first iPod (which I still have - one of the nicest presents I've received from a boss).
I remember being at my desk at D'Arcy Advertising following Steve Jobs' presentation online. There was speculation of Apple getting back into the PDA business to compete with PalmPilot by bringing back a better version of a retired device – the Newton – which had failed 7 years earlier before PDAs were popular and when cell phones were still a novelty. By 2001, after returning to Apple, Steve Jobs had been performing miracles for computing with the releases of the iMacs, iBooks, G2 and iTunes; so perhaps Newton could be resurrected too. Apple events like this one had now earned a reputation for expecting the unexpected.

In front of everyone, Steve began talking about how important music is and how nothing in the market even came close to satisfying what people really want – technically or stylistically... and in his signature style of "oh by the way" anti-climactic drama he digs into his pocket and pulls it out. The iPod. And just like that, a company and brand that was the love of only a few geeky artists, designers and musicians, became an overnight star to the world.
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So here we are again at another NYC Summer heat wave...
...our favorite time of the year to remember one certain unchangeable law of nature - black is bad. We get to be reminded on a daily basis of how horrible and scary black-outs can be; how brown-outs are less scary but still undesirable. We get to remember that black absorbs more heat. And for some reason, newspaper photographers all of a sudden become inspired by black people taking to the streets in their sweatness. Almost seeming to suggest that this is what they do best. Children splashing together at crowded city pools; babies in diapers wasting the city's water supply as they jump under the spray of fire-hydrants (as if they crawled down to the Home Depot, bought a long-wrench, and popped open the hydrants all by themselves).

(photos courtesy of this week's NY Times and Metro)

This week, I finished reading Barack Obama's book Dreams of My Father. By the way it's great to see that he has joined the iTunes ranks and is offering a perodic podcast from his new office as the State Senator of Illinois. His book was an eloquent insight into his life's journey from Hawaii to Indonesia to New York to Chicago to Africa as the son of a black father and white mother from Kenya and Kansas. It stirred in me a reflection of my own struggles about the shade of my skin and the tree from which my family branches. It reopened dialogues within me that I have repeatedly left unfinished. So much so that I have to wonder why it seems instinctive for me to take notice of newspaper photographs? Am I just an observant artist by nature or have I become a scrutinizing minority by nurture?

Why am I tempted to critique society's dictionary and draw attention to all the associations of the word black with bad and the word white with good. Why do people prefer to be caught in a little white-lie as opposed to a bad one. Why is there no such term as black-lie? Is there some inside joke I don't know about that would mock me... "hahaha, c'mon Carlo, what other color would a bad lie be?" Why does it stand out to me that every kid growing up knows what color hat the bad guy wears and what color hat the hero wears. Why does it draw my attention every time I see a young black girl get on the train with her cream-faced baby doll, yet I constantly keep missing the young white girls on the bus who are cradling their brown-faced dolls?
And why does any of this matter for anything?

Perhaps all of that will have to wait for another day – whew! – can't you feel the mercury creeping higher just from all the black text in these paragraphs? Ahhhh - that's better. Well, thankfully today seems to be the beginning of relief for Gotham...


(photo and headline courtesy of this week's NY Times)
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