Hiding In Plain Sight

 

 

Two of the most enigmatic characters whom people have written 1000s of pages about (and made a ton of money) whilst never actually understanding their subjects are Bob Dylan and Franz Kafka. In the next few words I will do what no expert has managed to do (and have taken my money under the false guise of having been able to do so).

 

 

 

Bob Dylan is known for his ‘phases’- finger-pointing protest singer, rock ‘n’ roller, Christian etc yet what people fail to take into account is the creation of Bob Dylan. Robert Zimmerman created the persona of Bob Dylan for whatever reason but one thing is for certain, the persona is not the man. In each of Dylan’s ‘periods’ the other ‘periods’ are also present however, are often overlooked for some sweeping generalisation. As people we are complex with different aspects to our personality. By creating ‘Bob Dylan’ Dylan could let different aspects of his personality come to the fore and go to extremes whilst not revealing the person beneath, the same way when you meet important strangers one is charming and only slightly annoying but when one meets one’s own friends one becomes annoying and only slightly charming (ask my friends). The extremities and the obsessiveness (aka passion) with which Dylan follows these tangents plus his idiosyncratic and ‘weird’ behaviour are all symptoms as what is known as Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of Autism which generally effects those with greater than average intelligence. Read a handbook about it and then think of the real Dylan behind the personas and it all fits. That’s how simple it is.

 

 

 

Many with greater than average intelligence also suffer from clinical depression which brings us onto Dr Kafka.

 

 

 

Kafka struggled with his academic work, only got a job through a relative and wrote ‘incomprehensible nightmarish’ books. However, if one was to read his journals and/or letters one would see that, as with Dylan, Kafka had what is known as Asperger’s. With Asperger’s one generally has difficulty understanding the ‘basics’ of social convention. In one of his journals Kafka writes that at drama club a girl came up to him and told him he was attractive (bear in mind the journals were started when he was 27). What did she mean? Did she like his face? His ears? His personality? Kafka later asks his journal seemingly unaware of the emptiness of the platitude. Combine this with a messy ending of an engagement (it was all done through the courts then), working in the legal system and his, seeming, inability to understand daily life and his role in it (especially with family) and then reread The Trial or The Metamorphosis and one can see that Kafka’s works of fiction were merely an attempt to understand the real world and are reflections of how he experienced it whilst dealing with Asperger’s and clinical depression.

 

 

 

So to summarise, the great mystery of Dylan and Kafka, and to categorise with which people seem obsessed, is that there is no great mystery. They were/are just two guys with what is known as Asperger’s Syndrome creating art which reflected their worlds.

 

 

 

It’s that simple.  

 

 

 

‘till next time 

 

The Children’s Crusade

 

In the year 1212 it is believed that a group of children left France to march to regain control of the Holy Land by peacefully converting Muslims to Christianity. The children, it is believed, were sold into slavery.

Tonight there is another Children’s Crusade happening. Survivors of the Floridian shooting, where children were murdered in a massacre of the innocence are marching on, proverbially, Washington. The children are clear in what they want, they want to protect the lives of other children.

 

One problem with this and that is adults.

 

Congress is increasingly becoming a cess pit of self-interest, mistrust and corruption. After the Republican member of Congress and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot (not fatally) the news was awash with amazement as members of Congress from both parties were seen talking and embracing each other. What was going on? What is this ‘common human decency’? what place does it have in politics?

 

The facts of the Florida shooting are not known and people are speculating as to the mind of the person whom carried out the murder, the role of law enforcement, education and so forth. These are all deep and complex issues which will take years to be understood, if ever. However, this has not stopped the conspiracy theories. One of the leaders of the Children’s Crusade is just some kid who wants children to be protected. However, Right Wing media have attacked the child’s integrity calling him an FBI Plant, something which members of the Trump family have endorsed.

 

Trump himself has blamed the FBI saying that the Russian Investigation (wait, who mentioned this?) means that the kid could commit murder. The FBI is a massive organisation and having 100 agents, give or take, looking into possible corruption of the US political system by a country which has Gulags for homosexuals, tries to colonise its neighbours and threatens other countries with nuclear weapons aka not the kind of people you’d want to have for dinner, would not affect any other investigation and/or work.

 

The last US election was between two people whom have shown themselves to be self-serving nasty people whom only care about themselves. With the Koch funded new Republican Party Congress is mired by self-interest.

 

The Left, by default, blame the guns and look to ban certain hand grips and blah blah blah ignoring that the President who passed the most laws to protect gun owners in terms of background checks, gun trafficking, guns in public, assault weapons ban and gun lobbying was Obama. If anything, Obama can be seen to be the best friend the NRA have ever had, not only did he pass laws to protect them but also saying ‘Obama is coming for your guns!’ is the biggest fundraiser for the RNC (Republican National Committee).

 

So here we have a Democratic Party who has protected more gun laws than any other party, a President who is only concerned with alleged Russian collusion (I and 99.7% of the world do not know the truth on this. Mueller is well respected so let him do his job and if he says yay or nay accept what he says and move on- of course it is more nuanced than that and of course, as we have seen in the last year, people don’t move on), a Congress which serves special interests and a few children who are being demonised for surviving a shooting and trying to prevent it happening again.

 

Support the children tonight.

 

‘till next time (which seems inevitable)      

Let’s Talk Numbers

 

 

Over the last 12 months Donald Trump has praised the US economy for its robust strength; lowest ever, highest ever blah blah blah. Then, the other night, the DOW fell over 1000 points equating with x amount of dollars. The explanation given is that as workers are paid more the profit levels are lessened.

 

Ok, let’s break this down.

 

In 2008 Barak Obama inherited an economy which was teetering on the edge of Great Depression era depression. Obama brought in his own equivalent of the Glass-Steagall act separating commercial and private banking meaning that banks cannot gamble with your life savings. America is still feeling the effects of 2008 ten years later and after having to bring in these laws (repealed by Clinton with policy copied by the British New Labour paving way to Boom and Bust) to save the economy and start to rebuild and improve with the minimum wage becoming nationalised at $10.10, health care and so on.

 

Obama’s first year did not show record highs as he inherited a mess and it was only in his second year that his work started to bear fruit. Obama left office with the US in very robust position. Along comes Mr Trump whose first year shows growth and yet as his first year becomes his second year his labour starts to bear fruit (cheeseburgers in his case) and the DOW plummets. Much of Trump’s success is a continuation of Obama’s success as he inherited Bush’s collapse and so on and so forth. Trump’s big campaign promise of The Wall (oooo!) was a continuation on a wall which was started by George W Bush and continued by Obama, in fact all that Trump can claim credit for in the first year is having the highest number of lies told in one year (lies which take 5 seconds to disprove) and the lowest approval rating   plus an investigation which could tear apart the government branches as we know it.

 

Herodotus said ‘Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances’ and another example of this can be seen in the franchise Star Wars. The latest film took $1.3 billion and the one before it $2 billion. Yet, fans have come out to show their displeasure for the latest film. However, people point to the Box Office takings and say it was a success and so far two new trilogies have been planned, one by the people who made Game Of Thrones to make it more ‘adult’. With standalone films about Solo, Fett et al  plus new novels, toys etc  (George Lucas rather cleverly knew that the money would be in the toys so when the original films came out he took less pay and instead took the royalties for the toys) coming out Disney predict big things, based on the Box Office takings. However, the Box office is more to do with the brand than the quality of the films. In China the film took $7 million as, for some reason, China was never given the opportunity to embrace religious soldiers rebelling against an authoritative Empire meaning that on the strength of the film alone the Chinese public said no thanks with it closing after a couple of weeks.

 

The economic success of Trump and Disney’s Star Wars is built upon previous factors such as brand loyalty and now both have had their chance to make their own mark it will be interesting to see where their respective markets go from here as ‘be not deceived…for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’

 

‘till next time

 

 

Questions/comments welcome at  thegreaterfool2016@yahoo.com

 

 

Molly’s Name

 

‘Maybe someday your name’ll be in lights

Sayin’ ‘Johnny B. Goode tonight!’

 

Chuck Berry

 

In the recent Aaron Sorkin film (stop reading now if you don’t want to know, I still remember when Sherlock Holmes ruined Anna Karenina for me) a lady named Molly Bloom (not the Joycean character as is made clear in the film, this is a biopic) rises, literally, from the broken spine of her potentially Olympian skiing career and becomes one of the most famous and infamous poker game hosts in the US. The game has film stars, rappers and, it turns out to her surprise, Russian mafia.

 

Ms Bloom is arrested, after publishing a book about her life, and is under suspicion of having information of the mafia. She, it turns out, does not but she has a hard drive and a phone full of messages from politicians etc and all of the other game players offering to leave their wives for her, political scandals and so forth. When Ms Bloom’s lawyer tells her that she can recover the money that was taken by the law enforcers, with interest, and have immunity she replies, ‘all I have left is my name’.

 

Her lawyer then likens this to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible which has been previously mentioned as he has set his daughter extra homework (fun guy) and all stands explained except…what?

 

The Crucible is a play about McCarthyism set in Salem, a close-knit community in Massachusetts, in 1692/93 which is plagued by accusations of witchery (which witchery?) which turns out to be false. In the play, one character says

 

‘Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!’ 

 

In the 17^th Century, in a time when a small community was all that there is one’s name aka one’s reputation, was all that one had ultimately as once the name was besmirched then it could rarely be redeemed. However, this is nonsense as what one really is is one’s heart, soul and mind yet one can see why life would suck, to use the teen expression (do teens say that? I’ll ask Roy Moore, Roman Polanski et al and other men whose names have been ruined and yet who are still successful wealthy men) if your reputation was ruined (the last Taylor Swift album is all about it) yet in the modern age it is relatively simple to do what could not be done in the 17^th Century- jump on a boat, plane etc and take your heart, soul, intellect, those who love you and whom you love, and start anew (I imagine it would be easier if you had the $5 million offered to Molly) and yet we still live in times bogged down by names. Celebrity is still the religion of the 21^st Century and celebrity is, essentially, having your name known. Not all fall into the trap. Robert Zimmermann created Bob Dylan to protect his true self (and make people write endless books asking ‘why did he change his name?’) and his recent private life is something of a mystery. He is living as a private citizen, not all over twitter or TV or the media showing that it can be done. One can be a success and protect one’s self without having to sell their soul to protect their name.

 

And, anyway, if one was so concerned about one’s reputation would you let all of your failings be laid out for all to see in an autobiography and a film?

 

‘till next time

The State Of The Union

 

At the 2013 Correspondents Dinner the last American President President Obama said

 

‘Of course, everybody has got plenty of advice.  Maureen Dowd said I could solve all my problems if I were just more like Michael Douglas in “The American President.”  And I know Michael is here tonight.  Michael, what’s your secret, man?  Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy?   Might that have something to do with it?  I don’t know.  Check in with me.  Maybe it’s something else.’

 

This coming from a man who ran a sincere presidential campaign built around the concept of change (yes we can!) and whom, to paraphrase, Chuck Todd writes as he writes in his book The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House, believed that he himself was the incarnation of change.

 

Aaron Sorkin wrote The American President before creating a television show called The West Wing in which idealistic liberals come head to head with the political reality and win some and lose some along the way.

 

Hermann Hesse’s book Steppenwolf, and many of his books, is about a man who has lived his life in his head. He is smart, he is wise, he has almost clockwork sexual intercourse once or twice a year (if memory serves) and he is alone. In the book he is approached by a lady much younger than he and embarks on a journey of self-discovery in which he abandons his aesthete ways and becomes involved in the sensual pleasures less as a voyeur (in the non-pejorative sense of observing and not participating) and more as one attempting to keep up or in the words of Jack Kerouac ‘I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me’.

 

However, in this there lies a problem which is illustrated by Obama. One goes into something as an intellectual exercise and then is confronted with reality. One of the things that I admire most about Obama is that he attempted to balance the idealistic with the realistic and in doing so improved the lives of millions (before you object try raising children knowing that if they or you are sick you may be bankrupt as you cannot afford insurance and they and you may die) although, as with Nixon et al, not everything he good can be seen as being good or bad.

 

Another of Hesse’s books holds the key. The book Siddhartha (Siddhartha is to the Buddha as Brian is to Christ in the Monty Python film that is to say nothing) is about a man who attempts to find enlightenment through the ways available. He tries the aesthetes way, he tries the sensual way, etc at all times going to debauched extremes (debauched does not always have to do with over indulging, one can also under indulge and be just as damaging as the book shows) before finding, as with the Buddha that the truth lies in balance.

 

Taking this into account one can say that one should enter into something as an intellectual idealist but also this should be balanced with empirical experience for things are not always what they seem. Sometimes the real world can give a greater perspective to fantasy and sometimes what we try to achieve is much less than what can be achieved, as Leonard Cohen wrote ‘The goal falls short of the reach’ so if you are one, or you know someone who does, who attempts to reach higher ideals whilst existing within the empirical realities you should let them and help them on their way or in the words of Aaron Sorkin

 

‘Let Bartlet be Bartlet’

 

‘till next time