CW143

I was at a friend’s wedding in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this month. We were in a hotel there for a few days. It was very nice.

I was wandering around one of the mornings and found myself getting into the MIT zone—that’s where that Google picture is from. I thought, of course, of my song “MIT” from Maya Properties.

I’ve written too often already about writing that album, that last stretch of being stoned on marijuana still being radical. 2012: four years—not for lack of trying—before I managed to quit.

It’s relevant here because I was actually singing “in my tea” at first. It was the first song of the night, still light out, and I had just smoked for the first time that day. I.e., I was as high as I could get. High enough that it was a little scary.*

*A nontrivial facet of what I was addicted to: fear that I controlled, fear I had chosen.

I think the song, for me anyway, is less about the understandable ambivalence—given that so many of the innovations end up in the hands of evil corporations and governments as tools of surveillance, war, destruction of the environment, &c.—about science and technology. It’s more like the joke of watching someone accidentally write a song about that ambivalence. Which is to say, for better or worse, it’s another song of mine that’s about songwriting.

That’s probably wrong too. It’s probably red herrings all the way down. Maybe what’s important is that they have friends to swim with. 💕

“MIT”
You and me
You and me
Some say tea
Can’t be beat
I am writing this
MIT
MIT
You’re the school
That builds the weapons
For the military
MIT
MIT
Please don’t sue me
I just made that up
The words came like a mystery
In a cold rain
In the main
On the green train
Live free or blank
Blank in the brain
MIT
MIT
You’re the school
That builds the weapons
For the military
MIT
MIT
Please don’t screw me
I just made that up
The words came like a mystery
Do you ever have to ask the Lord forgiveness?
Do you ever pass for artist as a spy?
To be looking in your eyes
MIT
MIT
You’re the school
That builds the weapons
For the military
MIT
MIT
Please don’t sue me
I just made that up
The words came like a mystery

“Live free or blank”:

Whoa, weird. I didn’t remember that. See my last lyrics post (CW141).

Given that today’s song expresses mixed feelings about MIT, I want to clarify something. People dunk on Boston, at least in my circles in the last twenty years, without reservation. But I don’t abide it; I rise to Boston’s defense.

I’m from an hour north of the city. For me, growing up, it was “the city.” I’m not saying there aren’t reasonable things to critique about Boston—e.g., its racist history—but I suspect some of the elitist derision I could set my watch by has more to do with Boston being the beta to New York City’s big alpha. I don’t know, maybe that’s in my head.

Within jazz, going to school in Boston and then moving to New York is a thing. For me, Boston is the magical jazz-school place. So many incredible people have taught there or studied there! (Or both.) Heavy New York players commute to Boston to teach.

It’s something to do with my identification with “the lab,” with the basic research, as it were, of music. I’ve gravitated to education over properly having a go in the music business. I love open exploration without attachment to a particular outcome. I like trying new ideas more than trying to make something succeed in the marketplace.

All this to say, given my particular associations (and proximity bias), if I lived in a city, it would be Boston. Or near it.

I’d live in Cambridge.

My apartment’s up in here:

This is my favorite bookstore:

Here’s my fantasy: I live mainly in Brattleboro still, but I have a teaching job in Boston. Somehow I have enough money to rent a second apartment in Cambridge that I’m only in a couple nights a week. Trump isn’t president. The Republicans have collapsed entirely. Things that were (very) wrong are being made right. America isn’t over.