The Abstract Distraction

I invited an unexpected seepage of weirdness to slip into a recent Google session when I searched on:

useful information

After the first three hits (related to URL registration and possible Ad Sense spending) the next three were all about useless information -- with accompanying link. Did I get that right? I asked for useful and the Google engineers thought I meant the opposite of what I asked for?

Now I can imagine that it gets discouraging to look at query patterns all day and witness the inarticulate way how people attempt to satiate their info-hungers. I too stand witness to the fact that Google illiteracy is prevalent not only among people who hate searching but people with advanced academic degrees who never stop.

But until the national debt is closed by taxing Internet access by the minute there's little incentive to trick Google into opening the discovery door for you to pass through. Heck, I'd settle for a second-rate mind-reader if it could even identify the door someone with my curiosity passed through the last time a similar question was asked.

The pit in my stomach fills with this familiar lesson -- information is: (1) an abstraction for most, and (2) unlike other abstractions like "strategy" and "happiness" and "victory" it doesn't have an identifiable outcome or range of possibilities that enable it as a worthy achievement or desirable goal. Our best hope for information is to consider it a verb and leave the rest of it to the actions we'll take -- not on its behalf but our own.

The Abstract Distraction

I invited an unexpected seepage of weirdness to slip into a recent Google session when I searched on:

useful information

After the first three hits (related to URL registration and possible Ad Sense spending) the next three were all about useless information -- with accompanying link. Did I get that right? I asked for useful and the Google engineers thought I meant the opposite of what I asked for?

Now I can imagine that it gets discouraging to look at query patterns all day and witness the inarticulate way how people attempt to satiate their info-hungers. I too stand witness to the fact that Google illiteracy is prevalent not only among people who hate searching but people with advanced academic degrees who never stop.

But until the national debt is closed by taxing Internet access by the minute there's little incentive to trick Google into opening the discovery door for you to pass through. Heck, I'd settle for a second-rate mind-reader if it could even identify the door someone with my curiosity passed through the last time a similar question was asked.

The pit in my stomach fills with this familiar lesson -- information is: (1) an abstraction for most, and (2) unlike other abstractions like "strategy" and "happiness" and "victory" it doesn't have an identifiable outcome or range of possibilities that enable it as a worthy achievement or desirable goal. Our best hope for information is to consider it a verb and leave the rest of it to the actions we'll take -- not on its behalf but our own.

The People? Nah.

The People? No.

Since the Great Depression politicians, poets, and folkies have found their populist voice in overtures, ballads, and oratories of, by, for, and to the people -- or "the people, yes" as Carl Sandburg wrote in riffing Whitman and Ma Joad echoed in the Grapes of Wrath. Our our present official worst-since-the-Depression rhapsody we too have been quick to demonize the wealth barrons of our tines. It's not a tropical depression. It's not a foreign invader. It's a force of human nature so the benders and shapers of blame and innocence are working overtime to establish the ground rules of the new rhetoric. But the countervaling hedge against evil? It's not so simple anymore.

Even within the Bill Moyers Bastion the discussion separated "the middle class" from "workers." Can you imagine FDR parsing the flegling suburbanites of his day from the truck drivers and the janitors? In our day the dissection is complete. Look at the language of Obama. In Berlin this summer we were "a people of improbable hope." This is a level of obtuse meaning that would cause any self-respecting rabble-rouser to button up their own mute buttons. That doesn't mean Obama can't raise consciousness or crowds. But it does mean that we are long past the barricades of bifurcation.

In November 1968 the great polarizing President-elect promised to "bring us together." Even in his most unifying of moments President Obama knows what a hollow note this would sound -- to supporters and detractors alike.

The People? Nah.

The People? No.

Since the Great Depression politicians, poets, and folkies have found their populist voice in overtures, ballads, and oratories of, by, for, and to the people -- or "the people, yes" as Carl Sandburg wrote in riffing Whitman and Ma Joad echoed in the Grapes of Wrath. Our our present official worst-since-the-Depression rhapsody we too have been quick to demonize the wealth barrons of our tines. It's not a tropical depression. It's not a foreign invader. It's a force of human nature so the benders and shapers of blame and innocence are working overtime to establish the ground rules of the new rhetoric. But the countervaling hedge against evil? It's not so simple anymore.

Even within the Bill Moyers Bastion the discussion separated "the middle class" from "workers." Can you imagine FDR parsing the flegling suburbanites of his day from the truck drivers and the janitors? In our day the dissection is complete. Look at the language of Obama. In Berlin this summer we were "a people of improbable hope." This is a level of obtuse meaning that would cause any self-respecting rabble-rouser to button up their own mute buttons. That doesn't mean Obama can't raise consciousness or crowds. But it does mean that we are long past the barricades of bifurcation.

In November 1968 the great polarizing President-elect promised to "bring us together." Even in his most unifying of moments President Obama knows what a hollow note this would sound -- to supporters and detractors alike.

The Queen's Gospel

Last week my wife and I had the pleasure of seeing Julia Fordham, possessor of one of the world's dazzling voices. It's rare when she comes to the northeastern U.S. As my wife pointed out we are spoiled as witness bearers. Such epic singing in such an intimate setting. It is a voice famous in all respects except fame and I must assume that Julia decided a long time ago not to perform for that fickle guest.

On this tour she has the backing of a piano, drum and bass trio that catch the elliptical notes that she sends into orbit. Their backing vocals are tight without sounding too sessiony or pre-cooked. The playing is attentive, never indulgent, and surprisingly original. For instance we were treated to the first ever drum-fill pounded out on the palms of the drummer. That's right. He clapped through the break.

As good as these arrangements and executions the road to our mesmerizing trances is the instrument of Julia. She snaps, and squeezes, and limbos, and bellys and flirts in and out of diagonals and loopings and motions only as lovely as the sounds pouring out of her. As classy as her elegance as a performer she is equally engaging as an entertainer. The musical presence is operatic but the jokes swivel out from the bar stool. The voice is precious but Julia is not. Her stories are grounded in a rapport that only a theater major who happens to be your drinking buddy could possibly stage (-- and pull off as she did when her microphone drooped out of range on her opening number).

The other improbable force at play when you take in a Julia Fordham show is just how broad a reach of genres her tonal scale covers. She is a category of one and I'm no less stumped trying to name it than the last time she played in Boston. Gospel, folk, blues, pop ... every style is transformed by her lucid flow, beguiling charm, and exquisite timbre.

Please visit her Myspace page. And if you're fortunate enough pay her a personal visit should she grace a venue near you.

The Queen's Gospel

Last week my wife and I had the pleasure of seeing Julia Fordham, possessor of one of the world's dazzling voices. It's rare when she comes to the northeastern U.S. As my wife pointed out we are spoiled as witness bearers. Such epic singing in such an intimate setting. It is a voice famous in all respects except fame and I must assume that Julia decided a long time ago not to perform for that fickle guest.

On this tour she has the backing of a piano, drum and bass trio that catch the elliptical notes that she sends into orbit. Their backing vocals are tight without sounding too sessiony or pre-cooked. The playing is attentive, never indulgent, and surprisingly original. For instance we were treated to the first ever drum-fill pounded out on the palms of the drummer. That's right. He clapped through the break.

As good as these arrangements and executions the road to our mesmerizing trances is the instrument of Julia. She snaps, and squeezes, and limbos, and bellys and flirts in and out of diagonals and loopings and motions only as lovely as the sounds pouring out of her. As classy as her elegance as a performer she is equally engaging as an entertainer. The musical presence is operatic but the jokes swivel out from the bar stool. The voice is precious but Julia is not. Her stories are grounded in a rapport that only a theater major who happens to be your drinking buddy could possibly stage (-- and pull off as she did when her microphone drooped out of range on her opening number).

The other improbable force at play when you take in a Julia Fordham show is just how broad a reach of genres her tonal scale covers. She is a category of one and I'm no less stumped trying to name it than the last time she played in Boston. Gospel, folk, blues, pop ... every style is transformed by her lucid flow, beguiling charm, and exquisite timbre.

Please visit her Myspace page. And if you're fortunate enough pay her a personal visit should she grace a venue near you.

Animals are Panicking (we spook easy)

I'm not sure it's a safe distance. But there's something about the cognitive impairments of outsiders like me that can score a ringside arrangement at the main event -- the end of wealth as we know it.

We feel no pain -- only wonder that we have the season box all to ourselves, reclining in seats that couldn't be scalped in markets gone by. The anxieties of looming job losses, spiraling health costs, and threadbare necessities? That's garden variety stress. But the anxiety as a flashpoint for pain? That can only be suffered by a "player" -- someone having financial self-destiny wrested away by nothing more diabolical or mysterious than uncertainty -- the fear of not knowing what's next.

Even spectators like me get that the asking price is under water. How far the mighty markdowns have fallen. How shallow the argument that market forces were meritocracies. That globalization tamed Darwinian impulses and imposed its own self-correcting cycles, capable of absorbing bubbles, and feeding new safe havens for tomorrow's betting pools ... um ... I mean hedge funds.

The spectacle? It's the late, great 2008 global meltdown. Even when the parachutes won't open and the main attractions have long since stampeded for the exits I can't take my gawking eyes off the stage of our sub-prime time together. So trickle-down was more convincing as a theory. So rising prosperity did not lift all boats.

And about us being in it together? It depends more on how you define who "us" is.

Certainly the panic is not based on the manufacturing arm of the treasury. This is the new century. There is no tangible or electronic material that can't be over-supplied into distribution. Liquidity is not the problem in our most fluid circumstances. The problem is that mutual self-interest isn't holding that liquidity like it used to. Instead we're squirreling away our acorns in mattresses that are about to inflate even faster than the gas prices on escape routes from low elevation areas.

Speaking of evacuations how must those folks in Galveston be feeling knowing that their town was wiped off the map twice -- first by Hurrican Ike and then by this great capital flight of universal distrust.

I think what fascinates and saddens the most is how this calamity was not due to natural causes, or an act of war or terrorism, or a scarcity of some precious resource. In the war room of foreseeable doom scenarios this one wouldn't reach the radar. Menacing foreign powers are doing as poorly as us and oil at $88 / barrel doesn't even elicit a Bronx cheer?

We are not made of sterner stuff. We cave at the instant the alarm sounds. We have no more spine than the politicians we indulge to shield us from what we need to understand: That $700 billion rescue package? That's $700 billion we have yet to be taxed on goods and services not yet produced. But what's another breatheless emergency on top of another cash infusion?

Here's one stab at defining the future of certainty by a dumb, numb bystander: Until we're as certain about the "we" as the "it" in the "we're all in this together, we're not getting anywhere.

Animals are Panicking (we spook easy)

I'm not sure it's a safe distance. But there's something about the cognitive impairments of outsiders like me that can score a ringside arrangement at the main event -- the end of wealth as we know it.

We feel no pain -- only wonder that we have the season box all to ourselves, reclining in seats that couldn't be scalped in markets gone by. The anxieties of looming job losses, spiraling health costs, and threadbare necessities? That's garden variety stress. But the anxiety as a flashpoint for pain? That can only be suffered by a "player" -- someone having financial self-destiny wrested away by nothing more diabolical or mysterious than uncertainty -- the fear of not knowing what's next.

Even spectators like me get that the asking price is under water. How far the mighty markdowns have fallen. How shallow the argument that market forces were meritocracies. That globalization tamed Darwinian impulses and imposed its own self-correcting cycles, capable of absorbing bubbles, and feeding new safe havens for tomorrow's betting pools ... um ... I mean hedge funds.

The spectacle? It's the late, great 2008 global meltdown. Even when the parachutes won't open and the main attractions have long since stampeded for the exits I can't take my gawking eyes off the stage of our sub-prime time together. So trickle-down was more convincing as a theory. So rising prosperity did not lift all boats.

And about us being in it together? It depends more on how you define who "us" is.

Certainly the panic is not based on the manufacturing arm of the treasury. This is the new century. There is no tangible or electronic material that can't be over-supplied into distribution. Liquidity is not the problem in our most fluid circumstances. The problem is that mutual self-interest isn't holding that liquidity like it used to. Instead we're squirreling away our acorns in mattresses that are about to inflate even faster than the gas prices on escape routes from low elevation areas.

Speaking of evacuations how must those folks in Galveston be feeling knowing that their town was wiped off the map twice -- first by Hurrican Ike and then by this great capital flight of universal distrust.

I think what fascinates and saddens the most is how this calamity was not due to natural causes, or an act of war or terrorism, or a scarcity of some precious resource. In the war room of foreseeable doom scenarios this one wouldn't reach the radar. Menacing foreign powers are doing as poorly as us and oil at $88 / barrel doesn't even elicit a Bronx cheer?

We are not made of sterner stuff. We cave at the instant the alarm sounds. We have no more spine than the politicians we indulge to shield us from what we need to understand: That $700 billion rescue package? That's $700 billion we have yet to be taxed on goods and services not yet produced. But what's another breatheless emergency on top of another cash infusion?

Here's one stab at defining the future of certainty by a dumb, numb bystander: Until we're as certain about the "we" as the "it" in the "we're all in this together, we're not getting anywhere.