Month: June 2003

Somehow it never occurred to me that the word “cakewalk” was anything other than a figure of speech.

It’s odd how words can do that sometimes. Though every phrase obviously has an origin, it never passed my mind to delve into the meaning of this one in particular.

Part of it is, perhaps, geographic.

If I were asked, growing up, to wager a guess as to the meaning of “cakewalk,” my mind would inevitably have wandered toward something involving chocolate cake, icing, and my naked toes.

Until about two weeks ago, I’ll admit, my deductive reasoning would have led much in the same direction. But then, unsuspectingly, I found myself attending one.

My first thought: Oh God, I hate my feet.

My second: Do I have to?

From what I have gleaned after doing a bit of research, my first cakewalk was a somewhat amended version of the traditional.

As I learned, the cakewalk plays a part in American history as being one of the first dancing traditions passed from Black society into the American cultural landscape. It is said to have originated with the slave population in Florida, who developed the dance as a mockery of the more staid white dancing style of the mid to late 1800’s.

To exacerbate my reluctance, which I somehow managed to overcome, I’m not very schooled in the art of the dance. Perhaps running through a pile of sheet cakes didn’t sound so bad.

Go ahead, laugh. You’d laugh more if you saw me.

Let me explain. When I took ballet lessons in Kindergarten, my attendance was blatantly connected more to the penny toys we were rewarded with at the end of each session than to the acquisition of skill or grace on the dance floor. That acquisition, perhaps for the above-stated reason, never happened.

So what of these two left feet? The stress…

We began our cakewalk, part of a symbolic morale-boosting effort for Artbrew, with some warm-ups. Oh, and a few glasses of wine, necessary to alleviate my anxiety at the prospect of coming out as a challenged dancer.

A few “oms,” some stretches, and then on to the dancing, which was a cakewalk, I’ll admit–all nervousness aside.

Plus, there were prizes! Duh, you’re thinking, but remember I’m new to this. To make things more fair, or less competitive as I’ve read the original cakewalks could be, the allocation of prizes was left to chance. Meaning that I wasn’t eliminated for lack of coordination.

As I struggled to groove my way around in a circle, loose enough from the wine to be able to ignore my embarrassment, I watched the numbers that had been placed on the floor, one through twelve.

With each round, I grew nervous, half hoping that my number wouldn’t be called, as the winner of a given round was given the duty of leading the dance in the next one.

Though I didn’t take the cake, as it were, I did manage to make off with some killer bath soaps when my number was called, which I promptly used to wash the imagined confection off of my toes. In case you were wondering, which I’m certain you were…

Nobody eliminated me when my leadership skills in the circle were less than stellar, either.

And so, my understanding of a phrase or two, namely “cakewalk” and “that takes the cake,” has had the veil of linguistic ignorance lifted. They somehow, now, sound so much sweeter to the ear

Yes, I know, I’m cheesy. Oh well.

STEAL THIS SONG

Why did Homer write the Iliad and the Odyssey? Why did Chaucer write The Canterbury Tales and John Milton Paradise Lost? Why did Emily Dickinson write her poems? Why did the unknown composer of “The Londonderry Air” (better known as the tune of “Danny Boy”) go to the trouble of writing a song at all? Why did Mozart compose and compose in a frenzy of creativity even when he knew it wouldn’t solve his money problems? Why did Van Gogh continue to make paintings that would never make him a living?

I’ve been preoccupied with questions like these ever since Napster first came to light. Napster, of course, was the original music-sharing software, which allowed anyone with a computer to go online and make a perfect digital copy of a song, for nothing, by transferring the song-file data from the CD of someone who owned it. Let me repeat: Napster let you get the song for nothing.

Napster tried to make this a business, inviting people to subscribe to its service, but the music industry, terrified that music file-sharing would put an end to the sales of CDs and records, got a court order stopping it. While Napster was down, independent programmers devised music-sharing variations even slicker than Napster. They have names like Gnutella, Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster. They let anyone with Internet access share music with anyone else who has the same simple equipment. It’s called “peer-to-peer” or P2P sharing. (Ask your kids. They’ll explain it to you.)

Now the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in a pure panic, is going after the 13-year-old in his bedroom, the sophomore in his dorm room, and the grandmother in her den who are downloading all those songs for nothing. In a full-page ad in The New York Times last Thursday, June 26, the RIAA and other recording organizations announced that they will now sue anyone–got that? ANYONE!–who downloads files of copyrighted songs for nothing. They call such music file-sharing “stealing” and “piracy” and compare it to shoplifting. Expect the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), whose movie DVDs can likewise be shared for nothing, soon to follow suit.

The RIAA and MPAA probably have the law on their side. Yes, to get a copy of Eminem’s last album for nothing is to undermine the copyright laws and to take money out of Eminem’s pockets. Likewise, to download Norah Jones’s nice little album that won all those Grammys is to prevent nice little Norah from getting her full monetary due. And to pirate a song or film for nothing is certainly to snatch a buck from the giant recording and film-distribution companies.

To all of which, after giving it much thought, I can only say, “So what?” I don’t care if Eminem doesn’t get rich. I don’t care if nice little Norah makes nothing from her album. I don’t care if Paul and Ringo and the estate of Elvis never get another royalty check. I don’t care if EMI, Vivendi, Sony and AOL Time Warner never make another dime out of their recording subsidiaries.

The RIAA claims that if free music file-sharing is allowed to continue, musicians will stop writing music, since there won’t be anything in it for them, and we’ll all be the poorer for that.

That’s where I think the RIAA is wrong.

Which gets us back to Homer, Chaucer, Milton, Emily, Mozart, Van Gogh and “Danny Boy.”

My premise is this: True artists don’t care about money.

No, let me amend that: True artists may care about money, but money is not why they create art. Homer wasn’t in it for the money. Neither was Chaucer, and certainly not Milton. Emily Dickinson? Don’t make me laugh. Legend has it that Mozart was obsessed with money, but he was even more obsessed with making music and would have done it even if it meant starvation. Likewise Van Gogh. And the composer of the tune to “Danny Boy” probably came up with it while tending his sheep on an Irish hillside–he just couldn’t help himself. He certainly had no plans to buy a little villa in Beverly Hills with his royalties.

I like to think that Eminem and nice little Norah would likewise keep writing and singing songs, even if there were no money in it. I like to think they’re true artists.

This is what I hope will happen: Those who, like the RIAA and the MPAA, are trying to put roadblocks around the Internet will fail. The programmers and the kids (often one and the same) will stay a step ahead of them. Finally, the Internet police will give up. As a result, within ten, at most twenty years, every form of art that can be digitized–every song, every movie, every book–will be available for free to everyone who owns a computer. The recording, movie and book distribution industries as we know them will collapse, though there will continue to be a cottage industry for those who, driven by nostalgia, demand actual vinyl records and paper books, or want to watch movies in large groups at movie theaters instead of in their own, far superior, home entertainment centers. Art that cannot be digitized and passed through wires or the ether, such as sculpture and painting, will flourish, in part because of the very fact that it cannot be translated by Boolean algebra and is therefore extra-special. Art that depends on live performances–rock concerts, live theater, novel and poetry readings–will likewise flourish, and that’s how most singers, actors and writers will make their livings. Finally, art itself will be more malleable than ever, since every digitized novel can be re-edited instantly by anyone who receives it on his computer, and every song changed to suit the listener–much as those who recited the Iliad modified it with each retelling, often, I suspect, improving it. This audience-editing, of course, is already happening and can never be stopped.

What about the poor artists? They will continue to create art. Why? For the same reasons Homer and Emily Dickinson and Mozart did: because they want to be famous or because they need to be heard or because they have something they need to say or sing, or because, well, they just can’t help it. Maybe they’ll have full-time jobs doing something else, like selling insurance or folding pretzels, and will be artists on the side. Maybe the U.S. government will actually support artists seriously, for a change, as other governments do around the world. Or maybe artists will rely on patrons to support them, as Michelangelo relied on the Medicis in Renaissance Florence.

Speaking of the Renaissance, I also think this: In the end, the music we hear and the movies we see and the books we read will be all the better for their digital availability. No longer will music, movies and books be the products of greed. Now they’ll be the products of need–the need of the artist to make something special, so special that bits and bytes, zeroes and ones, cannot reduce it to anything less than art, and the money it makes is not part of its specialness. There is something in the act of artistic creation so satisfying, so far beyond the satisfaction of a full bank account, that we don’t need to worry that the rock bands or the novelists or the filmmakers will go away. Those who write potboilers just to make money (Tom Clancy? John Grisham?) and those who make bad music and bad movies with nothing but an eye to the bottom line (The Backstreet Boys? 2 Fast 2 Furious?) will probably go away forever. To which we can all say: Good riddance.

In ten years, maybe twenty at the most, the truer, purer artists will once again take center stage. And then we can all say:

Welcome home, Homer.

The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services announced the dismissal of Shelby County regional administrator Juanita White today citing “personal reasons” of White and the department as reason for her termination

DCS Commissioner Michael Miller made the announcement Friday at the state office building, 170 N. Main, following a meeting with supervisors in the Memphis office. The dismissal comes as the state office is conducting an internal investigation of botched investigations by employees into the deaths of several Shelby County children.

“This office has been through a lot in the last couple of years. This is a very humbling job and we hope to put someone in place who recognizes that,” said Miller.

Miller said other firings have not been ruled out pending the results of the investigation. A Davidson County regional director was also terminated two months ago for “performance and membership on the DCS team.”

Miller said that the Shelby County office has problems with supervision and training. “What we have had is a problem with preparing sufficient supervisory staff to guide them,” said Miller.

In addition to White’s termination, the department named Trudy Weatherford and Bill Hackett interim administrators. Weatherford, a retired DCS employee and former Child Protective Services program director, will head program management throughout the region. Hackett, currently children’s services assistant administrator will lead the Memphis office. Permanent replacement for the position is expected later this summer, chosen by a panel of community leaders, child advocates, and department employees.

Former DCS employee Diana Lowry first made allegations regarding White’s involvement in alleged cover-ups of the deaths of at least six children. Lowry, who was terminated in December 2001, had previously applied for the position of regional director. She has since withdrawn her application.

The investigation into the deaths, originally scheduled for completion in a week, has been delayed following the death of of 8-month-old Dewayne Butler last week. DCS received complaints about abuse of the child in April, but later dismissed the charges as unfounded.

Miller and other administrators met last week with members of the Shelby County Legislative delegation regarding the department’s progress with the investigation and the Shelby County office. Representative Carol Chumney has also planned a public hearing on DCS July 10.

An state audit of the department issued earlier this year listed several findings involving questionable transactions by White and her staff, including the more than $5,000 rental of a yacht club for a department event, expenditures for billboard advertisements, and T-shirts from the spouse of a department employee.

White’s firing comes after the resignations of CPS director Sherry Abernathy and Lou Martinez part of the child fatality review team. Department officials have said that both Abernathy’s and Martinez’s resignations were not related to the problems in the Memphis regional office, but were for retirement and other employment opportunities, respectively.