this is for you, bi11.

 

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i think Bob Dylan wrote this song… and i think it’s called The Price:

 

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Warren Zevon’s song…

as ever, headphones are probably best.

 

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Randy Newman’s song…

 

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Michele Shocked’s Anchorage, recorded this afternoon… when i really should have been finishing up some paying work. this is all very seductive, till i run out of money.

 

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a cover recorded this evening when i was supposed to be working. the very first note is off, and it’s pretty messy.

To Love Somebody, by the Bee Gees circa 1967

 

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here’s a cover i recorded this afternoon of Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey, though i completely altered the chord structure of the song. best listened to in headphones, or a decent sound system.

 

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Over at Crooks and Liars, Susie Madrak writes that Ben Bernanke “squeaked through” his re-nomination in the Senate. The vote was 70 to 30. In almost any other context, that would be seen as an overwhelming majority. So what’s the difference? My sense is that this reading of the vote – reading, that is, a supermajority+ as if it were closely contested – is an expression of the degree to which the two-party system is generally aligned with the dominant financial powers represented by the Fed. Bernanke “squeaked through” only relative to the unbroken history of bi-partisan support for the Fed. That this vote was still well beyond a supermajority (60-40), even in light of the Fed’s catastrophic ‘failure’ (all predictable malefic consequences of institutional corruption are referred to, at worst, as ‘failure’) to restrict the development of Casino Capitalism, is a ringing testament to how uncritical this bi-partisan support is. Or put in another way: it is a testament to how intimately the two-party system serves the interests of the dominant financial class.

distinctions only matter when the difference recognized makes a difference. Chomsky has described this in saying that a fact worth discussing must be both true *and* important. an unimportant truth needn’t be engaged.

so what’s the difference? what makes a distinction important?

Chomsky again provides the model, in explaining why awareness of the failings of one’s own country is more important than awareness the failings of someone else’s, both failings being equally true. In short, the failings of one’s own country are, politically speaking, within one’s realm of influence. Here, if we borrow from Stephen Covey, we might formulate a general rule: important facts (i.e. distinctions) are those that lie within one’s realm of influence, as a distinct subset of one’s encompassing realm of concern.

All relevant distinctions are thus a product of this more fundamental distinction between influence and concern. Making this distinction is the first step to being something other than an underling, both personally and politically. It is, in fact, a recurrent principle. As progress on all levels occurs in steps, the distinctions that matter are exactly those that pertain to the step you are facing.

so, for example, the distinction between Confucious and Buddha is true in any case, but only matters – is, in other words, only a distinction worth making – to those who might be, for example, in the position to use one or the other of them as an exemplar. otherwise, the point is entirely academic. to put it generally: fruitful distinctions are driven by some basic need. hence THEY say “need facilitates fulfillment,” because need creates the foundation for making important distinctions, and important distinctions fuel the step by step process which alone fulfills.

recorded this past evening.