Inutil Paisagem

Cibelle came onto the tiny stage at Joe's Pub last Wednesday with a spacy gypsy spirit that I had not seen for a long time. (Yeah well even David Byrne showed up.) She used two microphones like she'd been doing it all her life, singing into one, cooing into another, equipped with an echo fader, and it became her second self, opening that wormhole that Stephen Hawking tried to close last week. She didn't care that her dress was about to fall off of her breasts all evening. Her body seemed constrained by clothes, and that Pink Floyd version of Jobim's "Inutil Paisagem" was like too haunting. I'm drawn to artists who simultaneously take themselves seriously and all at once make a mess of it all--it's an attempt to show you something about the fragility and strength of the creative act.

Well now that the Boston mess is over, there are many contradictions to mull over. The Democrats seemed more effective than last time because they presented a united front, something accomplished by banning all dissent and debate. They managed to put forth something of a seriously left argument even though they really didn't let the left into the process. Very little direct reference to the war, the Patriot Act, Middle East policy. But Kerry surprisingly called out the administration in veiled terms, and suddenly seemed a thousand times more charismatic than Al Gore. Undoubtedly because he has it in him, somewhere. If you check out this streamed broadcast of the speech he did before Congress in 1971 as leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War you can see his potential for, yes, visionary thought. Democracy Now! | Flashback: A Rare Broadcast of John Kerry's 1971 Speech Against the Vietnam War Before the Senate



So where do we go from here? Right now, Bush's announced strategy is to attack Kerry's "left-leaning" and ineffectual Senate voting record. But so far he won't go near the Jane Fonda-era Kerry. Because he won't even want to invoke the image of Kerry in uniform? Or is he saving it for later, closer to November?

It's becoming increasingly obvious that as a country we are re-living the 1971 moment--the issues and situation are closely parallel, with the only random element being 9-11. But to counterbalance that is the much clearer and readily available evidence of the utter corruption of the Bush administration.

We never really worked out what happened thirtysomething years ago. I'm not sure we will now, but, like a blue moon, it's coming back to haunt us, and we're going to have to settle something or all the stars will be crossed in a bad way.