Thursday 5/19/22
Here's an example of not a good way to go. As I wrote the other day, there are people who want to take me on. They have this desperate, pathetic need because of their own insecurities, which I exacerbate by dint of what I am and what they know me to be. Even as they crave my approval. Solicit it. I don't give it, because I don't give false approval. If you're good, I'll say it. If you're not, I won't. Simple.
Most people are too scared to act on these feelings and they just try to trash me behind my back, like an unbalanced, toxic, sexist, incompetent everything-wrong-with-publishing, sinecure-drone, such as Katie Raissian at Grove/Atlantic, who cares only about clubbiness, skin color, gender, mediocrity, and being a stereotypical member of this diseased publishing subculture, but then there are others who can't control themselves, and they'll have this meltdown moment where they just go for it. Raluca Albu is a good example. Once you go for it, it's then going to go a way you won't want it to go--then again, the same is true if you're going for it behind the scenes, because I always know what's going on--and you won't be able to take back what you did. You're doing that with the absolute worst person in the world to do that with; because that person is going to be correct, in control, and you are going to be on the lower level, out of control, a seriously compromised, bigoted, immoral person, and everyone will know it, and know the huge gulf in ability and character. That's one of the things said here: It's not going to go the way you want it to. So don't do it.
Here we have a slice of near illiteracy that someone sent me, regarding a piece on Charles Mingus that I published. Now, do you really think you're going to know more about Mingus than I do? And what's one of the most salient points about Mingus? What do we see if we do something so simple as look up "Charles Mingus and Civil Rights" on Google? Whoa--that's a lot of results, right? Why do you think that is? Because this is one of the givens of the man's legacy. He took nothing from anyone who could hold him back or condescend to him, including the Establishment, and the white sector of the Establishment.
This is basic Mingus stuff. But if you're going to come at me, which, again, will just never go the way you want it to, shouldn't you maybe look up the most basic things about the subject first? And shouldn't you, even more importantly, find out what I know about that subject? Check to see if I've published voluminously on the subject in masterful piece after masterful piece? Maybe know who you're trying to target, because your life is that empty, your self-esteem so impoverished, so that it doesn't blow up on you? Right? Probably best not to assume I was just some guy who stumbled across this subject--any subject--for the first time recently and happened to write that one piece, like I'm some generic journalist pulling up the Wikipedia. I am not a journalist. I am not a generalist. I am a whole different kind of fish than any fish that has swam in these seas.
And finally, if you're going to send a note that intends to convey how intelligent you are, how in the know you are, and how wrong I am and poorly I've done, maybe master the rudiments of basic English, and not write at a level lower than that of your average second grader?
We're talking some fine prose here that this highly intelligent gentleman sent me. Again: It's just not going to go the way you want it to go. Half-wit fake intellectuals are tiresome.
nice to see Charles Mingus "in the news". not sure why you used him as a fulcrum for comments about race and society...he was phenomenal jazz musician...and i don't think it right or fair to mingle him with all those comments you made: "As an African American artist, he gave no quarter to the establishment in the 1960s." artists of the civil-rights movement ...Black Lives Matter. I realize that your is an Opinion piece, but you still get to play around facts and the truth. He was an artisit...don't use him for a political agenda...it is wrong to shuffle him that way. You don't credibility by leveraging C. Mingus as a black artist artist of the civil rights movement, and whatever else you've constructed. Unless you have evidence otherwise. His messages in language where in music and English, but he didn't have any axe to grind, as far as I know, and you didn't present any...so, it looks like a bad case of your usurping an individual and his talents and his life for another purpose other than celebrating him for who he was, which was, an musical artist.