I Offer My Knee To 45

I feel I owe you more of an explanation. I kinda sorta took a little more Clonazepam (anti-anxiety) than may I should have last night and was listening to "Zigeunerweisen" and "Variations on a Theme by Paganini" and such, and a performance of Beethoven's 9th came up on the "We bet you'll like this" column. I was fairly mellowed and thought 80 minutes of uninterrupted music would be nice. The Clonazepam did what weed used to do for me...made me listen to the music, concentrate on what people were doing, playing, singing. Ricardo Muti conducted the Chicago Symphony and it was just mesmerizing. It wasn't as if it were the first time I ever heard...hell, I've sung it and sat through rehearsals for it. But it was a totally immersed experience. Muti is fairly predictable in what he wants from an orchestra, but he's important for a wannabe conductor like me to watch. Frankly, I was in tears in the first choral section and broke down at the end. It was an overwhelming experience. Beauty...human inspired and produced beauty. I watched the video of the national anthem today...so-so...and then heard the crowd booing and while I couldn't anything distinctly, I knew there was a lot of hate being shouted and directed in entirely the wrong direction to the entirely wrong group of people. I heard one of the most beautiful works of art ever created last night and heard the absolute worst of human utterances today. I've with that forever (indeed, we all have), but I think I never had the experience of hearing the joy of that music and the joy in the audience applause so close to such an ugly, vile, disgusting response to a personal belief. Beethoven never heard his 9th; I wish with all my heart the athletes didn't have to hear that shit being shouted to them.

Today was the day that National Football League players decided to show solidarity and flip off racial bigotry in this country and generally hand a big "FUCK YOU" to the nazi-in-chief. He, of course, didn't get it. He tends not to unless something goes his way. Happily, that's happening less and less.

Someone shared a video of players on one knee and staff behind them arm-in-arm in solidarity, a right guaranteed in our Constitution. "Taking a knee" has been compared to flag burning. Flag burning gets people riled up, but it's protected speech, according to our Supreme Court. Somebody sang the national anthem and the place erupted in hate...screaming, cursing, and that is covered by the Constitution, too, but it finally made me give up on this country. I wrote under the video:

"I wish I could just die already. These fucking people are so ignorant, so stupid, so unamerican. The biggest sacrifice any of them made was buying tickets for the game...and for the beer that's already in them. I just don't want to be part of the asshole's (and assholes') country anymore. You're going to tell me not to quit. Fuck that. I've worked for rights all my life. I'm fucking tired. There are those my age who are still trying to influence the government. My experience, while fulfilling and gratifying, shows me that they don't really give a fuck and, like the people in this crowd, don't and never will understand. You need to do my work for me. I fucking quit."

A person I feel particularly close to wrote back and suggested I should just take a break.  I replied that I did and it didn't change anything.  But I felt this person was owed a better explanation.

"We have been forced to grow tough skin through no fault of our own. We have had every ignorant statement, every hateful threat, every bit of indignant treachery hurled at us when we least expect...and for some of our tribe, it has been much worse. Until Jerry Falwell took over, usurped, and bastardized Christianity, I ascribed it to ignorance. Falwell and Robertson turned gay hating, gay bashing, gay fearing into a cottage industry, one that they both discovered changed their cottages into mansions. At our expense. And at the expense of anyone so stupid as to send these horrendous excuses for human beings all their money. I took the abuse, I tried to rationalize it, I tried to be patient, I tried turning every cheek I had, I tried to forgive them the suggested 70 x 7 times. And nothing changed. "So today, hearing about the church people who were shot and one killed, I found myself thinking "good." At least a few of them will actually be victims. (I DO feel differently about the people killed in Charleston.) I could muster no sympathy, no positive feelings for them, even the person who died. I heard the vile roar of a disgusting mob and decided I'd had it. I will love and encourage Christians and pay no attention to the xns. I will love and encourage my friends and other people I know here and pretty much disregard everyone else. I will devote my time to the chorus I direct and to the silly music I do through the week. As Constantine tells Skeeter in "The Help," "Everyday you wake up not dead in the ground, you gotta ask yourself this question: Am I gonna believe all the bad things those fools gonna say about me today." No, and I think I'll stop listening, too. If the decision is bad, then I made the wrong decision. If I can no longer love or believe or tolerate what's going on in this country and choose to turn my back on it, it's because I can no longer justify working to change it. That's for younger people to do. "I, a lily white boy from a lily white community, demonstrated, wrote letters, sat at a lunch counter to protest the treatment of people of color in our country. I vehemently protested the Vietnam War...NOT the soldiers who were sent there, but the war itself and then the increased lying by Johnson and Nixon. I have demonstrated and written letters regarding marriage equality. And I'm fucking tired. And it's as if anything I did, anything I believed, hasn't mattered. So, yeah. I've disconnected. I'll still be here...how can anyone leave this oasis? But I tried for years to make a difference and am ultimately discouraged by my failure."

I do not like the United States anymore and truly wish I could leave, but I can't. So I shall spend my remaining time in my apartment. Fuck it all.