Is The Desperation Really Quiet, Or Do Our Ear-buds Simply Block It Out?

"The mass of men (sic)," as Thoreau famously wrote, "lead lives of quiet desperation."  Superficially, it's just a really good aphorism; in the real world, though, it may be a matter of life or death, sanity or madness.

My father (to whom I seem refer more and more often, but don't psychoanalyze me, okay?) had another view.  It may simply be an obverse/converse corollary of that Thoreauvian view; it struck me in my youth as exceedingly cynical, but now I'm not sure. His truncated version was "If all of the wealth in the world were to to be re-divided equally among everyone, within 5 years it would all be right back to the way it is now."  Here is the actual quote, from J. Paul Getty's As I See It:

"If all the money and property in the world were divided up equally at, say, three o'clock in the afternoon, by 3:30 there would be  notable differences in the financial condition of the recipients.  Within that first thirty minutes, some adults would have lost their share, some would have gambled theirs away, and some would have been swindled out of their portion...After ninety days the difference would be staggering.  And I'm willing to wager that, within a year or two at most, the distribution of wealth would conform to patterns almost identical with those that had previously prevailed."

Setting aside the breathtaking cynicism (okay, I guess I mostly still think so) and cocksureness--such as the fact that apparently JPG thinks his wagers are more surefire than those of the great unwashed,  I'm reluctantly coming to see some glimmer of truth there.

I currently find myself on the "good" side of a situation that also makes me feel like Snidely Whiplash (Oh, come on, Boomers; Dudley-Do-Right's arch-nemesis...?).   I'm not tying Nell to the railroad tracks, but I am in the position of foreclosing banker, and it shakes me to my Liberal, One-World roots.

The specifics are unimportant.  I hold the mortgage on a property, the terms of which the putative buyers are unable to maintain.  After months of falling behind and desperately trying to catch up, it is apparent to me, if not to them, that it'll never happen and that they're simply wasting what money they have.  It's a sad and unfortunate situation I wish not to be in, and I'm trying to extricate myself in the kindest and most expeditious manner possible.

I wasn't going to write about this, exactly.  I was going to write about a bit I heard on Wait, Wait.... yesterday, about how Americans are falling behind the rest of the world in basic and necessary reasoning, logic and connection-making skills (those may be Department of Redundancy Department examples, but I like a trinity when making lists).  I wonder if the underlying reason is that (at least nominally) that admirable American indefatigable optimism, the up-from-the-bootstraps, rags-to-riches model is so deeply ingrained in the national psyche that we can't assess the likelihood of it actually happening for any particular individual, such as ourself.

One example of this failure, which blows my mind each time I see it, is signs supporting Republican candidates and causes stuck in the windows and, if they exist, front yards of people for whom the R's have done nothing, and will do nothing, EVER, except to nurture that elusive and in most cases illusive dream of success and, by the way, scaring these folks into voting for them by instilling a fear that our trend toward Socialism (really?) will deprive them of even the meager holdings they have.

It's probably true that, as Browning put it, "A man's (again, sic--when will those dead guys learn?) reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what's a heaven for?", but, Jeez, that has to be tempered with some cold- and clear-headed examination, some risk assessment, or folks are just going to continue to vote for empty promises of future wealth that, they are told, absolutely shouldn't be taxed now. They'll continue to make decisions based on fantasy and assumption of achieving The American Dream, whatever that is anymore.  More likely, they'll end up in the greedy clutches of slimy bastards like me, gleefully tossing them into the mean and bleak streets that are their more likely destination than a penthouse on the Upper East Side, or even a three-bedroom ranch in small-town Vermont.

This week's songs, then, are concerned with desperation, hope and hopelessness, money, and numbers.  Seems to me that often our desperation and hopelessness--if they're not the result of love unrequited or just gone wrong-- spring from lack of money, or our general innumeracy (we might can't read or write so good, but we can't add for shit, either) when, again, we are faced with risk assessment or reasonable, logical, sensible choice-making.  As Greg Brown says, "Life ain't what you think it is, it's just what it is."

Here they are:


All The Desperate Men                                                          John Stewart
Gorilla, You're A Desperado                                                  Warren Zevon
Desperado                                                                               Eagles
Doolin' Dalton/Desperado (Reprise)                                      Eagles
Desperadoes Waiting For A Train                                          Jerry Jeff Walker
Desperadoes Under The Eaves                                               Warren Zevon
Desperadoes Waiting For A Train                                          Nanci Griffith
Desperado                                                                               Linda Ronstadt
House Of Hope                                                                       Toni Childs
Losing Hope                                                                            Jack Johnson
Hopes On Hold                                                                       Ruben Blades
Hope In A Hopeless World                                                     The Staples
Hope                                                                                        Monty Alexander

When Numbers Get Serious                                                    Paul Simon
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)                        Fabs
Wrong Number                                                                        Doobies
Roll Another Number (For The Road)                                    Neil Young
Rikki Don't Lose That Number                                               Steely Dan
Numbers On Paper                                                                  Mose Allison
No Face, No Name, No Number                                             Traffic
Wrong Number                                                                        Aaron Neville
My Days Are Numbered                                                         Al Kooper
The Mighty Number                                                                Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
Lost A Number                                                                        Nils Lofgren/Grin
I Got Your Number                                                                  Boz Scaggs
Feel Like A Number                                                                Bob Seger
Be My Number Two                                                                Joe Jackson
You Never Give Me Your Money                                            Fabs
You Pay Your Money And You Take Your Chance                 Bruce Cockburn
Blue Money                                                                              Van Morrison

You may have noticed something over time:  I'll often play several versions of the same song, if I love the song and the versions.  I also have tongue in cheek fairly often; this week it's Zevon's "Gorilla...." and Neil's "Roll Another Number...," which is obviously not about numerals, but may be about calculations.

I'll be at wool.fm on Tuesday from noon till past two, from the looks of things here.  Hope you'll join me.