Week 52

Week 52.

That’s the first thing I saw as I was on my first cup of coffee this morning and I looked at my calendar.

Week 52, glaring, taunting, a source of uneasiness. A tribute to unfinished business. A signpost on a neurotic, eight lane highway where I’m constantly lagging behind, slower traffic keep to the right.

52, last card in the deck, time to re-shuffle.

I have a few thoughts on James Brown. You always hear “The hardest working man in show-business”, and the words “entertainer” or “showman” when you hear about James Brown. In my mind, he was a true artist. At the core of all of this showbiz and entertainment, the art part is the music. Even if you would have never seen him dance, never seen the cape act, never seen him sweat, the music would hold up on it’s own merit.

I hear the Reverend Al Sharpton talking about the night Martin Luther King died and how James Brown cooled down a possibly ugly situation and that is important. I appreciate the fact that he is a cultural icon.
I heard plenty of 15-30 second obituaries over the last two days and every single one mentioned “trouble with the law”. The media is a machine that reduces evrything to the lowest common denominator. The synopsis and the sound bites and video clips don’t begin to do justice.

Go listen to “The Big Payback” or “It’s A Man’s World”, “Cold Sweat”, “Please, Please, Please” or a hundred others. These records contain, joy, anger, fear, lust, sadness and swagger. They contain the stuff of life.