I ran into Joel Sachs today while I was munching on a stale-overpriced piece of mochi from my cup of Pinkberry. (Professor and Director of New Juilliard Ensemble)

We talked for a good 10 minutes. Though I didn't ask (nor was I even vaguely curious), he proceeded to bestow upon me an intellectual diatribe regarding my [in]ability to think - according to him, my "vast knowledge of history, literature, art, and music is impressively unimpressive." I am, apparently, unable to formulate a coherent intellectual opinion regarding any aspect of art without "falling" against a wealth of completely irrelevant contextual information. I am, apparently, able to tell you when, where, and why a painting from the 20th century was conceived and exactly what was going on in the world at that time; but unable to tell you why it is beautiful. Or even if it is. Furthermore, he said, I completely defy the old cliche "knowledge is power" because I replace that power with the inability to make aesthetic value judgements without separating content from context; the latter for which I am a junkie.

On a normal day, I'd usually tell him to either eat a dick or take a long walk on the short pier. But for some reason, this hit me hard. Nobody has ever accused me of not thinking before. Is he right?

Oh hell. Eat a dick.

Uh oh. This is when you know that your reputation is not quite what you envisioned it to be.

mysteriouslove06: hey my sister is coming to Juilliard this year
carloco69: oh wow nice. let me know if she needs help acclimating herself to the school.
mysteriouslove06: stay away from her.
carloco69: jesus...

The summer of Michael Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Rothko, and Alex Ross.

Having faked a facade of apathetic recovery while jointly losing an easy 25 pounds, I've found my immutable patience threshold to have evaporated into an ocean of quick-tempered hot oil.

Vonnegut says that beautiful girls "do everything they can to give lonely, ordinary people like me indigestion and the heeby-jeebies, and they wouldn't even hold hands with me to keep me from falling off a cliff." [Welcome to the Monkey House, "Miss Temptation")

No wonder they gave him a Pulitzer - that statement redefines the sociological implications of literary Humanism by the ankles of its fundamental roots. Ha.

"I've been here times before / But I was too blind to see / That you seduce every man / This time you won't seduce me" -Michael Jackson, "Dirty Diana"

The rest is noise.

Michael Jackson. My two cents.

Last week (a day after the MJ memorial), the New York Times published an op/ed article by Bob Herbert called “Behind the Façade” which made more-or-less raucously unsubstantiated correlations between the constantly-declining cultural hegemony of the United States’ (spiraling into an escape-from-reality) and the symbolic embodiment of American descent into fantasyland; namely, Michael Jackson.

The dude obviously hasn’t been laid in years. But I digress.

Cross-generationally speaking, the multiple allegations of child abuse and pedophilia will always remain taboo and inextricable from the truly eccentric weirdo that was Michael.

Not to sound intellectually immature and overly-defensive, but I don’t remember too much of a fuss in the classical music world when Maynard Solomon released his equally raucous and highly-substantiated article “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini” detailing with unarguably solid proof that yes, Schubert also did take a liking for little boys. Henry Cowell was imprisoned for four years for his sexual relationship with a 17-year old boy.

Of course, Michael Jackson was undoubtedly one of the weirdest fools on the face of the planet. But to Bob Herbert and my classical music colleagues out there attacking MJ, what can I say?

Maynard Solomon said about the music of Beethoven: “masterpieces of art are instilled with a surplus of constantly renewable energy – an energy that provides a motive force for changes in the relations between human beings – because they contain projections of human desires and goals which have not yet been achieved (which indeed may be unrealizable). It reaches as it does beyond the merely aesthetic dimension to touch the domain of the heart.”

Well, Bob Herbert, here’s my two cents, you cold fuck: for a jaded politico, war veteran, and witness of multiple genocides, the power of music is one that you might not readily comprehend – you are, undoubtedly, of the same camp that believe a $100 million private donation to the arts is gratuitously irresponsible. And for the record, you look almost as strange as Michael Jackson, dude.

It’s been a rough summer for me, in many ways; filled with emotional ups and downs. I wake up in the morning and listen to the emotional breadth of Michael Jackson’s output and I am not being sensationalistically pansy by saying that he gives me the energy to get through the rest of my day, in what-would-otherwise-be a pretty nihilistic existence.

It's going to be a long month. 6 months can pass by in 48 hours. Materialization of drastic realization spells danger with all the wrong letters.

Still listening to Michael. Very far from over it.

"Music is what happens when a smart, group-living, anthropoid ape stumbles into the evolutionary wonderland of run-away sexual selection for complex acoustic displays."

Or something like that.