Author: Jay Leonard Schwartz

The Gist and Jest of Jazz and Death

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dadaism , , , , , , , ,
'Summertime Jazz' by Jay Schwartz“Over all, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things that he knows of and senses in the universe.”
– John Coltrane
 
“I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
– Woody Allen

 

As a writer and someone who tends to ‘feel and think’ his way through life, I have certain subjects I often feel compelled to write significantly about since they intensely stir the very core of my existence. Today, I’m referring to jazz and death – the former with love, the latter with fear. Time to connect the dots.

Please note that this essay is not the big magnum opus I plan on writing one day on these topics, but merely my attempt to broach related issues of an existential nature (breathe, breathe, breathe). In fact, I’m quite aware that in all likelihood I will probably never write what I’d like to, since I’m mindful of the fact that any attempt to do so would fall short … simply because jazz and death are both larger than life. Moreover, descriptions of jazz are just as elusive as rationalizations of death. Most literature provides the gist, but misses the jest. That’s where I come in.

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Free Dada Riot

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dadaism , , , , , , , , , ,
'Dada Hero' by Jay Schwartz Dada is like your hopes: nothing.
Like your paradise: nothing.
Like your idols: nothing.
Like your heroes: nothing.
Like your artists: nothing.
Like your religions: nothing.
-Francis Picabia
 
“In those days we were all Dadaists. If the word meant anything at all, it meant seething discontent, dissatisfaction and cynicism. Defeat and political ferment always give rise to that sort of movement.”
– George Grosz

 

How often do you bang your head against the same wall? Why is it so hard to learn some lessons? Why are we addicted to stupidity and denial? Why are we suckers for flights of fancy? Why do we allow our egos to get the best of us?

These question are easily answered, but require large dollops of mind altering ‘faith’ that are not easily swallowed. In fact, by nature our egos detest blind-faith in anything. So instead we moan, groan and bitch about life and learn to mentally masturbate ourselves into insanity and denial.

Now, no one said life itself was easy. In fact, no one said anything of any nature! We arrive in this plane of existence with no guarantees. We have no receipt for the deeds of past lives; we are born with a clean slate. Our whole lives are ahead of us … followed by our inevitable deaths. Whether we will be granted another ‘go’ on the carousel of life is a matter of speculation … especially for the blind leading the blind.

In the meantime, God (fill-in this space with of your choice here or enter ‘not applicable’ if you are an atheist/agnostic) gives us different talents, abilities and proficiencies to help us get by in terms of finding happiness and maintaining our sanity. Yet, we regularly misuse or ignore these capacities, preferring instead to enslave ourselves to a system we call ‘the establishment’ that sucks away on our life force on a daily basis. This ‘golden calf’ keeps us distracted from what’s important in life, while it encourages us to look over ‘there’ to what we are ‘without’, rather than over ‘here’ to what would constitute as ‘within’.

Yet for some, questions persist …

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Dada Bing Dada Boom: The Art Of Human Ineptness

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dadaism , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Dada Payload by Jay Schwartz“What we call dada is foolery, foolery extracted from the emptiness in which all the higher problems are wrapped, a gladiator’s gesture, a game played with the shabby remnants… A public execution of false morality.”
– Hugo Ball
 
“Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.”
– Hans Jean Arp

 

The other day I found a large dead cockroach laying upside down in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the post office. It was a variety of which I had rarely seen in the years I’ve lived here in Salonica, but very close to the type of palmetto bugs that are the norm in Miami, where I was born. I had no idea how it had gotten there, but I nonetheless had the distinct feeling it must have fallen from the sky. It certainly hadn’t mailed itself to Greece.

The sight of it took me off guard and I pondered its possible existential meaning for a few moments before I continued down the street towards a distant bus-stop. While riding the bus, I thought about the life of a cockroach … and its end, whether by poisoning, being cannibalized by other bugs, or falling victim to a crushing flip-flop. I confess trying to find some Zen-like answer for its sudden appearance in my life at that particular moment. In truth, I never found an answer, and in fact I still have no idea why I even feel compelled to write about it in this post.

It was just one of those insignificant transient moments in life that shake you to your very core. In the words of ‘Billy’ Shakespeare, however, it was really just ‘much ado about nothing’. Yet, even today, it’s still hard to just let go of the significance of that ‘unprocessed’ moment … because it remains an insult to both my ego the super-ego. (Note: the id conscientiously objected to comment.)

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In A Dada Vita (Rethinking Kindergarten)

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dadaism, Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , , ,
Dada Kindergarten by Jay Schwartz“Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man’s normal condition, is Dada. But the real dadas are against Dada.”
– Tristan Tzara
 
“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.”
– Soren Kierkegaard

 

In his ‘Dada Manifesto’, Tristan Tzara questions how it’s possible for anyone, or any institution, to expect to put order into the chaos that constitutes the “infinite and shapeless variation” of ‘man’. He suggests that Dada was “born of a need for independence”, and of “a distrust toward unity”. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps …

To me, the state of mankind has fallen from grace. Whose conception of grace I can’t say for sure, but I would suggest our own state of godliness, because at this stage of our evolution we should know better. Yet, the more we divide ourselves according to the lines of nationalism, politics, religion and even art, the more a large portion of us becomes mired in denial as to our own humanity.

Where did we as a society go wrong? When did the ‘art’ of being human change from ‘form to function’? Perhaps it’s time we should hold a candle to (pregnant pause and drum-roll) … kindergarten and its schizophrenic type orientation to social order it embeds in children.

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In Dada We Trust

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dadaism , , , ,
'Dada Scrap Talk' by Jay Schwartz“You’ll never know why you exist, but you’ll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.”
– Tristan Tzara
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
– Winston Churchill

 

Warning: the following post contains dubious comments on DADA, globalism and organized religion. As such, those who are lactose intolerant should refrain from drinking milk while reading this text.

It strikes me odd that evolution has not sought fit to endow us humans with some form of hook on which to hang the countless labels that are hung on us as soon as we are born. As we draw our first breath in this world, the paperwork is already being processed, branding us with all manners of societal tags such as nationality, religion, sex and sometimes even class. Our freedom to choose our affiliations or even our belief systems are stripped from us way before we even have a clue … even in societies that supposedly espouse personal liberty and freedom.

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Dadaisn’tism: Copious Habeas (and other assorted frothy nothings)

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dadaism, Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , , ,
Dada - Jasyaspora by Jay Schwartz“I know that you have come here today to hear explanations. Well, don’t expect to hear any explanations about Dada. You explain to me why you exist. You haven’t the faintest idea.”
 – Tristan Tzara
“I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired, that’s all there is to it.”
– Thelonious Monk

 

It’s not easy tipping the planet back on it’s axis. Somewhere along the way, our way of life fell into a form of ‘gimbal lock‘. With reference to the Apollo 11 Moon mission, I could explain what this condition means, but doing so would detract from its poetic ‘bombasity’. And, after all, what would be the point of enjoying poetic license if I couldn’t take liberties with the ‘unliberated’? Which brings me to the point of this post …

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Field-Notes On Nothing To Speak Of

Jay Leonard Schwartz Defying Expectations , , , , , ,
Juan_Gris_-_Portrait_of_Pablo_Picasso_-_Google_Art_ProjectPity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.
– William Blake (The Human Abstract)

 

Tongue-tied and cross-fingered pretty much describes how I feel sometimes, especially when the obvious, is obviously not so obvious to the oblivious. There are some things that should just ‘go without saying’. Yet, when compelled to wag my tongue or bang out a few words on what might best described as a ‘duh’ no-brainer to me, I’m stumped and incredulously stupefied into a state of verbal impotence.

Since it’s always good advice not to ‘push too hard’ and risk a brain aneurysm, I’ve decided to share with you some simple observations I’ve made regarding the past week’s daily dander in my life. I’ll call them ‘interpersonal field notes on intrapersonal relations’. Make of them what you will and feel free to connect the dots. Associate freely at your own risk. At least they are better than droning on about ‘nothing to speak of’.

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Don Dada (When Words Fail)

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dadaism, Defying Expectations, Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Hoch-Cut_With_the_Kitchen_KnifeEclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
– Ralph Ellison
Thought is made in the mouth.
– Tristan Tzara

I think the time has come to rewrite the dictionary. It’s not the words so much I have a problem with, as much as it’s the way we use or misuse them – some words as dictated by our standard dictionaries and so-called reference material, other words as dictated by the mainstream media (MSM). In both cases, we have established a penchant to parrot ad nauseam that which we hear or have been taught, very rarely taking liberty or poetic license with the same words, as I often do on this blog, more often than not in a wholly and ‘pseudolly suitable un-surreptitious’ manner.

Take for example the words ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’. There are succinct published definitions to be certain, even in 10 words or less. Nevertheless, the ultimate application of their definitions is best defined by the actions of government officials, intelligence gathering agencies, the military, law enforcement personnel, and an entire legal profession of dark suited pontificators. Of course, Big Business interests figure into this conspiracy of terms, as well, but let’s not get paranoid!

So, it seems to me that no one really know what democracy means anymore. Countless definitions exist, but in reality the term has come to mean different things to different people. Perhaps it no longer matters, since the concept has very little ‘personally redeeming value’. In most cases, what you can count on, but can’t look up in your ‘Funk & Wagnalls’, is that both ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are defined at the street level … when they are lost.

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A Phoenix Imploding

Jay Leonard Schwartz Poetry & Prose , , , , , , ,

Prodigy-InfernoA Phoenix Imploding

Fanning the flames of a prodigy’s inferno, self-pity looks on as art burns.

Anger consumes reason.

Bitterness ignites the mind-set.

 

Consumed with the rage over jilted aspirations …

The eye stutters …

The tongue is blind …

Speaking in volumes of disdain, spitting dissension.

 

Wracked with spasmodic thoughts on unfinished words.

Impotent intentions char on slow burn.

Wisps of smoldering passions dissolve into ‘misforgivings’.

A primal scream of guttural inflammation belches forth raw talent.

“Such a waste” cries a vanishing muse …

 

Choking on bile …

Lashing out in all directions …

Twisting, jerking, shrieking, mourning the living and grieving over stillborn dreams.

A phoenix imploding.

 

Why so much anger?

The will to cause such pain.

Too busy blaming ancestral arsonists to reach for a glass of water.

Choosing instead to smother candescence with incendiary fury.

Burn that ‘self-loathing’ down …

……………………………………………………………………

 

Suggested Viewing

 

Suggested Reading

 

The USNSA: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength

Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma , , , , , , , , , , ,

USNSA-No Room Transparency“Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”

– Henry David Thoreau

“You can’t have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience … We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”

– Barack Obama

 

Dystopia, Data-Mining and Distraction

This past week was a wake up call for many Americans living in the United States of the National Security Agency (USNSA) – a dystopia of their own making. Yes, yes, revelations came to light that ‘the powers that be’ had obtained a secret court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allowing it to basically gorge itself on tens of millions of phone records of Verizon customers. Surprise! Big Brother may not be watching, but he is listening. A short time later, information concerning the government’s PRISM program was revealed. It basically empowers the National Security Agency (NSA) to data-mine the emails and chat records of both Americans and foreigners abroad from some of the largest Internet based services, such as Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Google (SkyNet) and other web-based giants.

Of course, all of this should come as a shock to no one … except the obvious clear majority of easily led American ‘sheeple’ that believe the internet, or their phone lines, for that matter, are ‘private’, and that their personal data are protected under a supposed ‘right to privacy‘ guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution … (insert pregnant pause) … oh wait , sorry … such a right is not actually expressed in the Constitution. Chalk that up to yet another American collective misconception … or perhaps to good old Uncle Sam, an apparent trickster of sorts.

Makes you think twice about ‘cloud computing’, doesn’t it? Sure. Go ahead and back up all your data online. It’s safe and secure – and makes it that much easier for the NSA to access. And trust me, it’s not doing so for the Lulz. Similarly, you can understand why some folks stuff money into their mattresses; banks are neither safe nor secure. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and ask anyone that has ever had the misfortune of having the long-arm of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ‘beam into’ their savings accounts to settle a tax matter or two.

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