I only have one more thing to add to yesterday’s tribute. WATCH THE VIDEOS CONTAINED IN THIS LINK.

Let’s run it down:

A young, beautiful Michael Jackson? Check.

A younger, leaner and meaner James Brown? Check.

Marvin and Aretha? Check.

Rick James? CHECK!

Barry White? Check (yourself before you wreck yourself).

My work is done here. Enjoy!

Love, peace, and soul.

This hurts.

A genuine American icon has left the planet. (NYT obit here.)

People born during or after the ’80s might know Don Cornelius mostly from name-checks in interviews, songs and clips on YouTube. And there is nothing wrong with that. But for us older folks, we knew the man. Some of us grew up with him.

If a picture can sometimes speak more eloquently than words, a video can function as a truth bomb that tells you all you need to know. Check it out:

I only have a handful of comments. The Hair. The Glasses. The Shirt. The Pants (did you see those Liberty Bell Bottoms flowing when he moved up that line?). And The VOICE.

Simply put, Don Cornelius was a man who managed to do precisely what he was put on this earth to do. And better, he epitomizes the American Dream (the actual one, not the boilerplate that rolls so odiously off politicians’ tongues). If you read about his life, and you should, you’ll learn (as I did) Soul Train was entirely conceived and created by Cornelius, via a pilot that cost $400 of his own dough. Four hundred bucks to build an Empire. What a bargain. For him; for all of us.

From the NYT obit: “ ‘Soul Train’ was developed as a radio show on television,” Mr. Cornelius told The New York Times in 1995. “It was the radio show that I always wanted and never had. I selected the music, and still do, by simply seeing what had chart success.”       

He said the show was originally patterned on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” but with a focus on black music, fashion and dance. “There was not programming that targeted any particular ethnicity,” he told The Associated Press in 2006. “I’m trying to use euphemisms here, trying to avoid saying there was no television for black folks, which they knew was for them.”  

That’s America.

Or, more to the point, that was not America. Don Cornelius helped bring the music to the masses. Art that transcends trends and time will eventually, inevitably find its way forward. But sometimes tomorrow, or ten years from now, is not soon enough. In this regard, Cornelius helped American music and culture advance and evolve. If this meant we had to suffer through opportunistic but plasticized parodies like K.C. and the Sunshine Band, it also meant our country got early reads on everything from the latest James Brown or Marvin Gaye, to a necessary platform for never-ready-for-Prime-Time (in Honky America) rap music. Cornelius cultivated, and maintained, a street cred and kept it real for several decades. Not many artists are capable of that; and here was Soul Train, dedicated purely to the proposition of exposing worthwhile artists to a broad audience. That’s it.

Dig this history lesson:

Here is what I had to say on the occasion of David Carradine’s death, wherein I fondly recalled how those Saturday afternoons in the late ’70s and early ’80s provided entertainment and insight (full tribute here):

I can’t say I’ve watched a single episode of Kung Fu since the early ’80s when it was syndicated on Saturday afternoons, just after Soul Train and just before Soccer Made in Germany. This was sacred stuff for me and my Pops: we hunkered down and got it on. And just thinking back, for the first time it occurs to me, thank God America was so much more of a melting pot in those days. Soul Train, Soccer Made in Germany and Kung Fu? That’s some serious, if appropriated, cultural import right there. And the point is, it wasn’t self-conscious or anything we were even cognizant of; it just was. I say this with a nostalgic twinkle in my eye, considering my understanding (and appreciation) of these shows might have been a tad different if, for instance, I had any clue what those cool sing-song chants the large crowds were singing (in German) actually meant, or the act that most of these hip dance moves were approximating. But even then, I knew it was a stretch, at best, and awkward, at worst, that in the Kung Fu show, Carradine was (of course) supposed to be half-Chinese, leading to many of the bigoted taunts his character suffered. It certainly strained credulity on one hand, but also tended to make the portrayal that much more human. Credit Carradine for managing to pull that off. Mostly, this was righteous Shaolin shit, and it was of its time (’70s) and I was its ideal target audience: a young Catholic who heard priests talk the talk each Sunday but appreciated seeing the message carried out, albeit funneled through a pseudo-mystic far-East-via-Hollywood filter.

Soul Train, Kung Fu and Soccer Made in Germany: a righteous trifecta that imparted some necessary non-WASP perspective. Who knows how much of that soaked through and influenced my artistic and sociopolitical sensibilities (I reckon that one answers itself), but this is one of the (many) reasons I love/d the ’70s and endorse, without irony, an era when freak flags were flown high and a sense of inclusion combined with the atrocious wardrobes, drugs, music and malaise to contribute to a vibe that has never been duplicated. Look at the most popular shows on TV right now and tell me if we are wiser, hipper or happier today.

Don Cornelius will be remembered –and should hereafter be celebrated– for giving a voice to Black America. He should also be acknowledged –and praised– for making White America less white. Trust me, this was a very necessary and very good thing. It still is.

And above all, as always: Love, Peace and Soul.

The world just lost some. And we need it more than we ever have.

2/1/12.

2112.

Get it?

Since none of us will be around a century from now to celebrate the official day all planets of the solar federation may rest easily with the knowledge that control has been assumed, today seems an appropriate occasion to bust out the air guitars.

I have tangled happily, lovingly, with this album’s legacy in the past. A full analysis can be found here. (But be careful, reading that could lead you here, which might in turn lead you here and down the rabbit hole you go…)

Highlights (or, depending upon your tolerance of ancient school prog-rock with a capital Pretense, low-lights) below:

It’s difficult to imagine how music might have sounded in the ‘70s and, by extension, today, if Rush had not made 2112. If Rush had never made 2112, they certainly would never have had the opportunity to make their masterpiece, Moving Pictures. While few bands can boast about creating two genre-defining statements, the reality—almost impossible to believe today—is that Rush almost never got the chance to make the first one.

Considering the first, 2112, led to the next, Moving Pictures, it makes plenty of sense for Eagle Rock’s Classic Albums to focus on both as the alpha and omega of Rush’s slow (and in hindsight, inevitable) ascension to superstardom. Rock fans and Rush fanatics could, and perhaps should, immediately ask why each album does not merit its own feature. It’s a fair question, and the simple answer is that they do. But the 50-minutes of bonus material mitigates the concerns and, in a sense, each album is ultimately given about an hour of loving examination.

For anyone not familiar with the Classic Albums series, the segments feature interviews and input from actual band members, which makes them equal parts compelling and imperative acquisitions for casual as well as hardcore fans. This one begins, appropriately, at the beginning, when bassist/singer Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson are teenagers in the Great White North, emulating late ‘60s legends like Cream and Led Zeppelin. Along with original drummer John Rutsey (who later left the band due to health reasons, which were exacerbated by concerns of an exhaustive touring schedule), the band released their eponymous debut on their own label, and it may have disappeared into the Great White Nowhere, except a disc jockey in Cleveland (that great rock and roll city!) began playing it. After Rutsey exited, stage left, the band fortuitously auditioned an unknown Neil Peart, who became principal lyricist and eventually established himself as the premier drummer on the planet.

Rush’s follow-up, Fly By Night, fared well but their ambitious third album, Caress of Steel sold poorly. After an endless and thoroughly depressing series of gigs, which they not so fondly referred to as the “down the tubes” tour, there was genuine concern that their label might drop them. At this point, as Lifeson recalls, “there were one of two directions (to go): give in to the pressure or go for it.” The band all agreed that despite admonishments (and/or insistence) that they create a commercial-minded, radio-friendly effort, they were going to do it their way and feel good about it, no matter what the outcome.

After putting the finishing touches on their fourth album the band, and producer Terry Brown, strongly suspected that they’d captured something special. They were right. 2112 went straight to #1 in Canada and broke into the Top 75 in the US. Just over halfway into the decade, when many of the old guard progressive rock bands were out of ideas or on hiatus, Rush delivered one of the genre’s definitive anthems. 2112 is a harder edged music combining the proficiency of their influences with an aggression that captured the actual urgency attending the sessions. This album sounded—and still sounds—at once familiar and forward-looking, putting Rush somewhere on the sonic spectrum in between Led Zeppelin’s adventurous, riff-laden workouts and Pink Floyd’s deliberate, almost chilly precision.

The band, and Brown, reminisces about the music, how it was created, and the way(s) it was received. The rock media, which had not paid Rush much attention, now took notice and generally found the Ayn-Rand inspired storyline (the multi-track suite, filling up all of side one, updates Rand’s early novel Anthem and places the narrative in a dystopian future where music has been outlawed and long forgotten) unfashionably right-wing — an indictment the band found perplexing, and continues to be amused about. In these interviews, each member (particularly Peart, who wrote the lyrics and undoubtedly regrets his youthful shout-out, in the liner notes, to Rand’s “genius”) makes a convincing case that the inspiration had everything to do with artistic freedom and avoiding compromise, and less than a little to do with politics or social statements. Of course, plenty of pundits (then, now) find Rush –in general—and prog rock –in particular—pretentious, but the sentiment informing this particular album has more in common with the much celebrated punk rock ethos, with the added bonus that the band are actually quite capable musicians.

Curiously, the songs “Tears” and “Lessons” are skipped, although some welcome time is spent on the lighthearted ode to herb, “A Passage To Bangkok”. Likewise, the dated but not quite embarrassing “Twilight Zone” (which manages, all these years later, to sound almost charming in its way) is discussed while actual clips from the episodes referenced in the verses are shown. 2112 remains important as much for what it enabled as for what it did: it is no exaggeration to claim that we would never have gotten to Moving Pictures without it. The band agrees with the assessment that 2112 was the effort where they found their sound which they perfected over the course of their next several albums.

2112 remains the album that made possible what Rush would become, and it inspired both peers and pretenders to emulate their purpose and passion, if not their scarves and kimonos.

Who was he?

I think the same question each time I see him (every day: the same man in the same spot, holding the same sign that tells everyone who he is, now—begging the question: who did he used to be, at some point in the past?) at the intersection he has stood at for several months now: the cardboard sign he holds both question and answer: Homeless veteran (the explanation), can you put some pocket change in this plastic cup (the question). The sign says he is a veteran. Okay. And even if he isn’t actually a veteran, he has been homeless long enough to be a veteran; or if he is not actually homeless, he has been acting the part long enough to earn the title. Either way, it is time for a promotion.

And so, I think, this is the problem with the homeless problem: it wasn’t (some of us learned—too late) the ones who hustled or even approached you who were down and out; they were the ardent ones, half the time they weren’t even homeless; it is the ones you never even saw, even when they sprawled on the concrete right beside you, the ones who were down, the ones who were out, the ones who had nothing to ask for, nothing to say, nothing to do except wait, sit it out until time or the whiter man’s burden delivered them that eventual, inevitable verdict. It was the ones you could afford not to be afraid of, the ones who could not even hurt themselves, because they’d already dug as deep inside as their ashen fingers could reach, the ones too dead to tear out their hearts, but not dead enough to unloose their souls, the ones who learned (too late) that death was only impatient for the fools who feared it, it had all the time in the world for those who the world owed nothing except the decency of an overdue death.

Could that be me?

The ultimate fear, the oldest worry. Who knew how it happened, who could make sense of it? And yet. These people do not wake up one random morning, on the streets and out of their minds. Or do they? If you believed the signs the man on the corner held, the government did this to him—and could do it to anyone else: that was his message, his mission.

The problem with the homeless problem is that these people who don’t see you and can’t see themselves are all chasing something they can no longer name: memories. Or, even worse, it is the memories that are chasing them, speaking in tongues they long ago ceased to understand.

A memory:

Newark Airport. That shithole. A place has to be exceptionally beautiful, appalling, or incomprehensibly pointless in order to be easily remembered years after a brief visit.

When I was a kid, (I couldn’t have been much older than ten) my father and I had a layover in Newark airport. Even then, I was perceptive enough to understand that this was no place I ever needed to return voluntarily.

An unassuming older man (at any rate, he was noticeably older than my old man, which made him old) sat in one of those impossibly plain plastic chairs, with his pants leg rolled up. It wasn’t until we got closer that I realized two things: he was alone, and he was scratching at a series of scabs on his shin. For some reason he looked our way at the moment we passed him, and after sizing us up, he stood and amiably approached my father.

“Sir, did you need someone to help you and your son carry your bags?”

“No thanks, we’re okay,” my pops replied, looking ahead and picking up the pace.

The man was persistent. In the space of fifteen seconds—my father denied him three times—my emotions slid from the appreciation of possibly having someone carry my suitcase for me, to the vague, uneasy sense that my father was being somehow rude, a jerk, to the unsettling awareness of recognition. I sensed something I’d seen plenty of, but never before in any person older than myself: fear. I saw it in his eyes, and felt it in my insides.

As we walked away my old man waited until we were at a charitable distance, then looked at me meaningfully and offered the somber assertion: That’s as low as you can go. I asked him to elaborate, as was my style, and he was either unwilling or unable to add anything to his observation, as was his style. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what my father was saying, I understood him perfectly. It was because I understood him that I needed him to say more, to talk to me a little longer about it, about anything, anything to interrupt that silence and the sudden thoughts that accompanied it.

It’s easy to believe that people like this exist for our sakes: they are dying lessons on how not to live, warnings of what could happen if you weren’t careful and found yourself scratching at scabs in the world’s ugliest airport. We forget, or we don’t allow ourselves to entertain the idea, that these people have histories; that these shadows and signposts don’t happen to serve a purpose for anyone else; they were once actual people themselves.

I realize, now, my father was wrong about one thing. That’s not as low as you can go. You can go lower, a whole lot lower. But perhaps it’s more disturbing to see the ones that are on the way down, it’s somehow easier to accept the ones at the bottom of the ocean; it’s the ones who are sinking, who are still within reach, who are drowning noisily in front of you, who sometimes have the temerity to ask you to hold out a hand. These are the ones we can scarcely tolerate, because every so often we look at them and see ourselves.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

L’amour de l’art fait perdre l’amour vrai.

I did not say that.

Although that is the sort of thing I might say, since I am the sort who feels obliged to quote the books I’ve read and I allow art to remind me how to relate to myself.

The love of art means loss of real love.

Some people, sometimes, choose to make their lives more complicated. Life, sometimes, decides for them; sometimes life gets there first.

To win? To lose?

What for, if the world will forget us anyway?

I didn’t write that. A poet wrote that. I’m no poet. Poets are always looking for things, like heroes. Who wants to be a hero these days? Who can afford it? The world could be—and might very well already be—full of folks who will ring changes and do their part to shake up the constricting and crazed institutions that keep us chained, bound and complacent. There are lots of these people, I’m sure: tons and tons of them. But the thing is, most of us are too busy trying to live. It’s enough to just survive without seeking to pursue such lofty, such poetic propositions.

This is the new poetry: the more things stay the same, the more they change. Here is our art: haikus of horror in the cities, sonnets of sin and corruption, limericks of deregulation, free verse free trade, rhymed lines of laissez-faire, and the emboldened ghost writer, Death, forever at work on our collective life stories.

These days we look for poetry in all the wrong places. Some of us even believe we are gazing more deeply into the murky waters of existence when all we are actually seeing is our own reflections.

And so (I think): A life is not unlike a novel: too often they are eager to please, predictable, safe. I think: you should, therefore, feel obliged to occasionally ask yourself complicated questions. Such as: what are you doing to keep things interesting? What can you do to generate momentum, keep the narrative flowing?

Listen: When some of your best friends are people who exist elsewhere—characters in books you’ve read, musicians you’ll never meet, people from the past who died decades (even centuries) before you were born, or people you knew intimately who are no longer around—it might be time to ask some complicated questions.

Who are you?

That is, or should be, the first question, as well as the last question, and it should be asked as often as possible along the way.

You see, all men are islands. After all, no one else is inside you when you’re born, no one is going with you when you die, and between those first and last breaths, the decisions, actions and accountability are your own. All, all yours.

So: you find friends, you seek solace in yourself, you learn to discern redemption through the aimless affairs that comprise the push and pull of everyone’s existence. You realize, in short, that you are going through it alone, so you should never go through it alone. You can’t run away, and the farther you run, the closer you get to yourself. And you’re all you’ve got.

If you are fortunate enough to figure this out early on, you find friends: the real ones who exist in your everyday world, and the other ones who have been there all along, the ones you can always turn to, wherever or whoever you happen to be.

Please talk about me when I’m gone. That is the title of this memoir. It is also the presumptive title of any memoir. More, it’s the unwritten title of any work of art—a desire to have those thoughts and feelings articulated, read, understood, appreciated. More still, it’s the often unexpressed message of any individual life: we want to be discussed, loved, and celebrated after we’re no longer around. Mostly we do not want to be quickly or easily forgotten.

When you hear voices, or find yourself talking to people you are not sure can hear you, you should cut yourself some slack. We’ve all been there—or will be at some point. We’ve all, on occasion, looked up to the clouds and wondered if there was a kingdom beyond the skies, the place some of us were told our dearly departed looked down from. Haven’t we all, on occasion, taken comfort from a one-way conversation we forgot to be self-conscious about? Aren’t we all, at times, unable or unwilling to entirely abandon the idea that someone else is listening?

And so: you talk. And maybe, someone listens. Anyone might be listening up there, and that’s more comfort than anything you could ever find in a church. And so: you talk. Say something; everything. Say anything you need to say to survive.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

What he said.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

How long will it take? I did not ask, because I wanted to make every second count. It would be over quickly enough; it was already happening entirely too soon.

It’s okay, I said as I held my dog, flanked by friends and the friendly technicians who split their time between extending or improving lives and facilitating peaceful endings.

“He won’t feel any pain,” they assured me, and I knew it was the truth since this was not the first time I had found myself in this situation. Another dog, another occasion, and the excruciating decision to restrict pain by hastening death. Another time, at a place all dogs hate to go, perhaps because some part of them suspects that someday the person standing over them at the examination table will be the same one who administers that final injection.

I had already watched another small dog slowly go to sleep, just like they said he would. Barely moving when we carried him in, he snarled once the doctor reached for him: an instinctive gesture or perhaps a final, indignant affirmation (I am still alive!) and, as we covered him with kisses and kind words, the calm, considerate doctor reminded us that there would be no pain; it would, in fact, be quite pleasant. This stuff, he said, putting the needle down, would make our dog –could, in fact, make any of us– feel better than we’d ever felt, that this stuff was illegal, and expensive, on the streets.

Another day, different doctor, same drill. My dog’s heart was failing him. It was supposed to be a sluggish, gradual decline; the type you can sluggishly, gradually prepare for. But something had happened (I seem to recall words like torn and internal and bleeding) and my dog could scarcely breathe on his own when I brought him in. Seeing him, panting heavily and near panic in his tiny, oxygenated crate was the second-most pitiful sight I’ve ever endured. I left the room so they could give me the diagnosis: it was dire and I had minutes, not hours, to make a decision. The moment my dog saw me as I rushed back into the room that default setting took over and all my own concerns evaporated.

(Stay strong, I did not need to tell myself, because I had been here before. I had looked down, yet another time, at another pair of eyes: impossibly lucid and beseeching, charging me to make sense of, or at least assuage, a kind of suffering that cannot be conveyed with words.

And once again I heard that reassuring phrase, or well-meaning mantra, that somehow articulated every hope, fear and aspiration a moment like this can contain. It will be okay, I said, smiling down at those eyes. Eyes I had looked into too many times to count, eyes that told me more about myself than anyone would believe, eyes that, until this moment, I could not imagine never being able to look at again.)

Okay.

It gets very quiet while time and place and the guarded feelings that enable us to function all fall away and you concentrate every thought into one simple, implausible objective: peace. You think it and you will it and for a moment that might be forever you become it in ways you’re never able to talk about later, even if you are inclined (and you aren’t, especially). You shiver but are calm; you are entirely in the present tense yet you are also somewhere else, somewhere deeper inside that, somehow, connects you to everything else you’ve ever known.

It will be okay, you whisper, actually believing this because it is not even your own voice you hear. You don’t know if this is you, or your mind, or the actualization of that other place (you are hazily aware) you have managed to access, understanding it is not anything you can anticipate or comprehend even though you have been preparing for it (you realize, abruptly) your entire life.

It’s okay, you say, and maybe your vision is blurred or your eyes are closed, or probably you are seeing more clearly than ever before, but now you recognize this voice and, as you look down at eyes that can no longer see you, understand, finally, that you are talking to yourself.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but my grief has made me, against all previous likelihood, into a half-assed mathematician. Numbers were never my bag, and I’ve got the report cards to prove it. And yet, ever since 2002 I repeatedly find myself going over similar calculations.

There are the obvious, inevitable examples. For instance: this is the second anniversary of her death; it was therefore seven years since her first operation. Then, with a combination of improvisation and OCD, other variations ensue:  I was 27 then; my sister’s son will be 27 when I’m 57, which is two years younger than my mother when she died. My grandmother has been dead for 31 years, and my mother was 38 (I was 10) when she died. Her funeral cost about $(insert amount here) , which would buy (this many) trips to (this place). If we went to the various hospitals and treatment centers approximately fifty times over the course of five years, at roughly fifteen miles per trip, this distance would get you from DC to Chicago. If we spent x hours at those various centers, collectively this represents about y% of our lives. We ate in the hospital cafeteria roughly twenty times, or enough to pay 2% of one of the cashier’s yearly salaries. And so on.

And then, this: if I get diagnosed at 54, like my mother did, that means that effective immediately I have thirteen more years to enjoy a cancer-free existence (although those malevolent cells could already be coursing through my oblivious veins even as I type). Interestingly, these equations—and the scenarios they induce—seldom extend to my old man or my sister. It is, I reckon, disconcerting enough to apply these exercises to myself; it is intolerable (or, at least for now, not possible) to project them onto anyone else.

I can barely balance my checkbook, yet here I am, a poor man’s Pythagoras, my busy brain co-opting or pre-empting the confusion and consternation cancer yields. And just like the bad old days during Algebra exams, I apprehend much less than I’d like. For example: how might my mother have lived if she’d known she was never going to see sixty? How would I have lived? How might I do things differently (i.e., better) if I could know how far off, or how unacceptably close my own death will be?

Once again, it gets back to God, the Prime Mover with an advanced degree in these metaphysical matters. Or at least it prompts a concession to—or yearning for—some immutable force that organizes, if not explains, the mystery of being as well as the when’s, what’s and why’s of how we come and where we go.

But every dog has its day, right? Take my dog, for good measure. I knew he was going to die (he died when I was 38, which was six years after my mother died…). I know I’m going to die. My friend’s children will die. Puppies and kids not even born will have litters and grandchildren who will one day die, and it’s not easy to declare which ones may go before their time because none of us knows how long we’ve got once we get here.

And up there, somewhere, that benevolent, or oblivious, or non-existent—depending on which courses you’ve taken, in life—entity is balancing the books and crunching the numbers and checking His work, using the magic red pen to cross out errors or correct any formulas that are inconsistent with the bigger picture, which itself is an open book, and always a work in progress.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

A.M.: Departure

Early, at the airport.

Look around: some of the pretty people, many of the mediocre, and the rest of us, all sizes and shapes: men trying to look like the human mannequins who sold them their suits, women with bodies stolen from a Robert Crumb cartoon.

I can’t help overhearing the woman across from me who has not discovered her indoor voice, agitated and unabashed, wire growing out of her ear to prove she is not, in fact, arguing with herself. To tell the truth, she is yelling—there is simply no way around it.

And look at this joker, walking in purposeless circles, mouth in constant motion above the ice cream cone he’s carrying in the hand not holding his carry-on. Not everything I just described is accurate, I realize, as I see how he’s sizing up the innocent bystanders: his circles are serving a purpose after all—he is seeking out the amateurs. I myself am more or less an amateur, but I’m not as much of an amateur as he hopes I am. Direct eye contact is out of the question, yet I’m practically daring him to say something just so I can ignore him. After all, if 9/11 gave us anything, it ensured that all the actually dangerous people now avoid airports. But then, there’s no reason to invite annoyance. Just because he can’t hurt me doesn’t mean he can’t kill me with kindness.

Some of the people in airports are leaving town to escape their problems; some are heading toward their problems; and the rest are either unaware or unwilling to accept that they are the problem. These are the otherwise inscrutable citizens who shout into cell phones even as they bump and grind down the unfriendly aisle.

As I warily edge my way forward, trying not to touch or eyeball anyone, I am certain the capricious airline gods have assigned me a middle seat between the ice cream man and the woman whose main problem seems to be herself.

No one should be happy to be on an airplane at 7 AM. No one should be happy to be awake at 7 AM. Unfortunately for me, it appears that the only two people happy to be awake, in the air, and alive at 7 AM are on this same flight. Sitting directly in front of me. Speaking. Loudly.

What could anyone possibly have to say, to someone else, on a plane, at 7 AM?

Like virtually all of us, they are required by work to be here. Unlike virtually all of us, they are inexplicably tickled about it. And there is only one conceivable excuse for being delighted to be on a business trip at 7 AM: money. To be fair, they don’t seem to be talking about money—yet—they are talking about love. Then again, if they are actually enjoying this ritual, love is just a metaphor for money.

And then, before smug self-approval allows me (for once) to shut my eyes in peace, there is the maddening intrusion of alternate explanations. Perhaps this exultant young man in front of me is in the unfathomable thrall of fate. Perhaps, against all possibility, and in accordance with the inviolable intricacies of Cliché, this fortunate fellow has met the stranger meant to be his soul mate.

And then: perhaps if I did not always sit here, moping and miserable, I would meet my soul mate one of these mornings, enabling me, finally, to make some sense out of these strictly-business excursions. After all, isn’t this how it always happens?

(Dad, how did you meet Mom?

You’d never believe it, but we met on a plane!)

Why shouldn’t that be me?

It could.

And yet. It’s not likely. After all, any time I’m on a plane at 7 AM, the smart coin is on the certainty that I’ll once again opt to remain silent, in my shell, eyes ironed shut, wishing I was anywhere else in the world.

Up in the air, alive, the sun shows off all it can see, up here where to be or not to be gets decided every second. I look around at befuddled businessmen, suppressing panic attacks because they can’t use their cell phones. The woman next to me, hunched over her laptop, keeps snatching suspicious glances in my general direction. I am, of course, reading what’s on her screen, but what does she expect? The stewardess stares me down sweetly, daring me to accept a cup of coffee that was most likely brewed last week, reheated this morning, and has spent the last several hours roiling around in its airtight cask, asphyxiating on its own fumes. Politely, I decline.

Just as I’m drifting off into a cantankerous catnap, the pilot interrupts the silence to announce that air traffic control has not given us the go-ahead for landing, whatever that means. Even up here you can’t catch a break, even the unfriendly skies are backed up, impeding forward progress, inviting exasperation. Even up here the clouds won’t part until the big money has cleared customs and changed hands.

In the air less than an hour, there is collective anxiety amongst the people who can’t plug something in. The second tires hit the tarmac it quickly becomes a contest to see who can turn on their phone first. How did people exist in the world before cell phones? Before e-mail for that matter? Before computers? I lived in that world. Recently. And I have no idea.

Touchdown. Everyone leaps to their feet, elbowing each other for the honor of not getting off the plane first. I pretend to be patient and enjoy making the woman next to me, who obviously can hardly stand not having her portable computer opened and available, wait her turn. After a few near rumbles, shouting matches and rugby scrums in the aisle, I stoically join the clustered masses on the concourse, reluctant but ready to throw myself on the mercy of the big apple that will chew me up and spit me out before I even know what hit me.

Welcome to the machine, the man moving past me does not say. I’m in too much of a hurry to stop (like always, like anyone else), but there is something so familiar about him that I’m compelled, despite everything I’ve learned, to pause and look behind me: he is still there, off to the side, shabbily clad, immediately recognizable by his contrast to everyone around him; he wants to approach one of these businessmen, but all of them are walking too fast, too deliberately, too purposefully.

Automatically, the doors move aside and frigid air earnestly greets everyone headed its way. It takes about five seconds (as always) to feel the cold and then the money dread: if it weren’t for the money, it wouldn’t take much—in a strange city, lost, alone. Cold. Broke. That’s how shit like starvation and sleeping on grates gets started. Quiet in the corners, huddled under bridges, working the frenzied crowd for a friendly face, hoping for the handout that never comes.

There is only way to get through mornings like this: drink heavily. Right now the coffee and orange juice are kicking in, caffeine battling c-vitamins, engaged in a Dostoyevskian struggle for my soul. Or, at least, my nervous system. A million little meetings imploded into one agenda, it becomes an endurance test to see who will blink first and ask for a bathroom break, or delegate more action items for the unfortunate underlings lucky enough not to be here. Mostly I try to maintain eye contact with the most important people and stifle the incessant anxiety that someone might ask my opinion or a question I actually know how to answer. Not unimpressed, I watch possible futures unfolding from the projector, purgatory via PowerPoint.

P.M.: Arrival

These day trips ask a lot of you, almost so much that you find yourself fondly reminiscing about the good old days you never knew, the days when horse-drawn carriages signified cutting edge business travel, days when people might have fantasized about a few hundred miles in less than an hour, not anticipating planes that make your mind feel microwaved.

Outside. Of course the line for taxis is indefensible. One look at this mess and it seems safe to wager that it will take longer to get a cab than it just took to fly a few hundred miles. On the bright side, the cab and its driver are both clean and smell inoffensive, even nice, even (dare I say it?) sexy. And yes, it’s an odious—smelling—stereotype, but until we cease to be surprised by a painless experience in a pleasant-scented cab, we’ll continue to appreciate them as the exception and not the rule.

I don’t wear the seat belt in cabs—cabs never crash; besides, why attract attention? Why give potential tragedy the time of day?

Moving fast—too fast for any circumstance other than getting me where I needed to be, and I wasn’t even in a hurry—each person he passes and each grunt of approval I offer signify the following, mutually understood assurance: every car in the rear view is another ten cents tacked on to the twenty percent tip he’s already got working. We each appreciate the rules: if I was in the car beside us—if I was anywhere on earth except his backseat—we’d be mortal enemies, but as it stands, we are on the same team, this is our war and we’ll endure much and suffer stoically and make it to the promised land, one man together.

True, some cab drivers don’t want to talk; (some don’t speak your language, some may not even speak) but some want to talk, some want to talk very much indeed, and will initiate the action and then wait, like de-fanged cobras, ready to pounce, aggressive yet harmless, at any opportunity. In fact, with some folks you get the vibe that they are so starved for conversation, solidarity, or just that elusive human touch, that they would not only waive your fare, but pay you if you’d let them pull over and shoot the shit; or even better, slide into some bar and order a round of anything on the rocks, or best, take you to their modest but clean and adequate abode, where their plain but polite wife would whip up some of the best home-cooking you could never pronounce or even describe other than to say it was as impossible as the entire incident. In sum, it’s unlikely.

And yet, they are out there all the same, waiting.

Am I sleeping? No, but I can see a building that I’ve never noticed before, waving to me from the side of the road. It wants me to notice, as if I’m not going to notice. Office buildings, especially ten-story monstrosities, do not just pop up overnight, do they? Even in this town, where anything is possible, this couldn’t be happening. But there it was: people, who had presumably been up and at ‘em since before the sun came up, streaming in from the three story parking garage, putting in their time before they’ll enjoy a well-earned rest: dinner, maybe a cocktail or two and several hours of somnambulant sit-coms before the nightly newscasters lulled them to sleep.

Sleep. Somehow while I’d been asleep, the dirty work of industry had struck again. Overnight, it seemed, a miracle of the modern age had occurred: clandestine plans had been approved, blueprints implemented, construction commenced. Trees had been felled, brick and mortar meticulously amassed, offers had been made, salaries negotiated, moving vans hired, new houses occupied, paychecks deposited, kids sent to imprudently priced daycare, new dentists and family doctors consulted, second children conceived, extramarital affairs instigated, divorce papers served, summer softball leagues formed, cutbacks announced, departments laid off, stock options doled out and quickly cashed, inestimable hours and dollars spent on alcohol, cigarettes, dangerous as well as non-addictive drugs, pornography—always the pornography—and unused health club memberships.

Industry and big money are all about initiative; they don’t sleep until the job is done. And the job, of course, is never done.

Cooked on the surface but still raw inside, it’s all in a daze work as the cab carries me down the home stretch through disorienting yet familiar streets. Survival suburban-style; a metropolis in transition, trying its best to live up to the image it was designed to imitate—sprung from the minds of forward-thinking people who are trying to recreate the past. On the corner high school punks stand beside a phone booth, making no calls; a quick right turn and I’m feeling the money dread as we cruise past several blocks of four car families. Being outside the city is safer, particularly if you prefer the sound of crickets to cop sirens. Eventually, I am deposited in the middle ground of this middlebrow town, and for lack of any other options, I am relieved.

And yet. This is supposed to happen later, with wife and kids and a basement to be banished to after hours. I’ll deal with that later. I think.

My front door is the one mystery to which I have the key, but for some reason I still feel as though I’m sneaking up on a stranger every time I return from a trip; I’m not sure who I expect to see, who might be hiding from me, who possibly could have found the way into my modest refuge from friends and memories.

With Pavlovian precision, I make my way to the medicine cabinet and pour myself a bracing plug of bourbon. It’s more than I need or deserve, I think, but I don’t want the bottle to suspect I was unfaithful in another town, waiting for my return flight for instance, in a cramped and crappy airport bar. If this were a movie (I think, mostly in the past, but even today), I would grab my crystal decanter, filled with obviously expensive spirits, and administer that potion the old-fashioned way, needing no ice cubes, especially since I would never get around to drinking it, as it’s only a prop, a cliché. No one reaches for that tumbler these days (except in movies); the question is: did they ever? Even in the ‘50’s? Or has it always been part of the script?

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Anyone who happened to miss this piece by Lakhdar Boumediene, entitled My Guantánamo Nightmare should check it out, here.

Here is a taste of the sickening, yet predictable torment this innocent man endured:

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily — but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never — for a second — considered this.       

The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the beginning. Bosnia’s highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the five others. We were tied up like animals and flown to Guantánamo, the American naval base in Cuba. I arrived on Jan. 20, 2002.   

In 2008, my demand for a fair legal process went all the way to America’s highest court. In a decision that bears my name, the Supreme Court declared that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” It ruled that prisoners like me, no matter how serious the accusations, have a right to a day in court. The Supreme Court recognized a basic truth: the government makes mistakes. And the court said that because “the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore.”   

It provides me little pleasure to be reminded of a post I wrote almost three years ago that touched on some of this, and it certainly is sad to think we are slowly, begrudgingly accepting some measure of responsibility for the lives we’ve destroyed. None of this had made us safer and it has all been done –and is still being done– in our names.

“A perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm.”

That quote, attributed to a former CIA official who courageously remains anonymous, seems about as perfectly succinct a crystallization I’ve yet read regarding the mindset (the official one shared by the insiders as well as the unofficial one prevailing amongst the blissfully ignorant who don’t care to ponder what happened, how it happened, and why it happened) of the circumstances that precipitated the blatant, persistent torture of detainees. Oh, I mean “enhanced interrogation”, as the mainstream media dutifully scribbles at the behest of the bad guys.

Even the usually reliable Michael Kinsley has recently gotten in on the act, proving that there are some story lines so aggressively promulgated that no one working for the MSM is entirely insulated from their influence:

Indignation comes cheap in our political culture. Polls give the impression that the proper role of voters is to sit like a king passing judgment on the issues as they pass by like dishes prepared for a feast. “No, I’m not in the mood for waterboarding today, thanks. But I think I’ll have another dab of those delicious-looking executive-pay caps.” Prosecuting a few former government officials for their role in putting our country into the torture business would not serve justice or historical memory. It would just let the real culprits off the hook.

The reason this is so specious is that even today the New York Times still can’t quite bring itself to call these acts torture, (Repeat: The New York Times. This is the paper heralded and derided in equal measure as the voice of liberalism, no matter how laughable that claim.) Let’s not dance around the topic: editorial sanitizing of this magnitude is analogous to describing rape as an “enhanced fornication technique”. Does that seem over the top? Imagine if some pundit (not to mention average citizen) dismissed the horror of rape or even made fun of it? This is what tough guys ranging from Rush Limbaugh to “Mancow” Muller have done with the torture “debate”, turning one of our darkest hours into a farce, milking it for laughs as well as a measuring stick for how pro-America one is. Their heads would explode from the irony if there was anything inside their skulls to detonate. To Muller’s credit, at least he was willing to take the Pepsi challenge; although his ordeal was over before he could cough out the words “I’m a contemptible shit stain”. While it would be delightful, on purely karmic levels, to see some of these bellicose scarecrows, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, O’Reilly and Beck attempt to last more than ten seconds on that table, it is beside the point, and further cretinizes what needs to be a sober discussion.

Certainly, anyone who has the temerity to insist that this practice (let’s call it drowning) is emphatically not torture, without ever having enjoyed it at the hands of a friendly, much less unfriendly, interrogator, richly deserves to be accordingly humiliated. But we all know that great white chickenhawks like those listed above (not to mention their craven yet rabid cheerleaders) would fold like a rusted lawn chair in a matter of moments. Anyone paying attention (and anyone obtuse enough to not already take the word of the people who understand these issues: the people from the United States armed forces) could have learned almost a year ago that Christopher Hitchens issued a definitive take on the matter. “Believe me, it’s torture,” he wrote. (And he should be given appropriate kudos for having the integrity to test the waters, so to speak, before feeling fit to pronounce what was, and was not, torture. Then again, he is not only embarrassingly more intelligent than these buffoons, he is also interested in the truth, something no one mentioned above could ever be accused of.)

Kinsley continues:

Between April and November of that year, there were dozens of articles about torture in general and waterboarding in particular in major print media outlets, on the Web and on TV, many describing it in detail and some straightforwardly labeling it as torture. Millions of people saw these reports, knew that torture was going on and voted for Bush anyway. There is no way of knowing how many of those who voted against him were affected by the torture question. A good guess would be “not many.” (Not me, for one, I’m sorry to say.) Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, never mentioned waterboarding.

And? To be certain, Kinsley is correct in the sense that while, on an ascending scale of wrongheadedness, it’s not appropriate to single out some lower-ranking scapegoats, and it’s not enough to “merely” bring the higher-ranking officials (e.g., the despicable lawyers and the leaders of the previous administration who gave them their very clear and unambiguous marching orders). There needs to be a wider net cast, and one that does not exonerate the Democrats who also whistled past this political graveyard. Indeed, the American populace, to a certain extent, is implicated here. But, as with the Iraq war, it was our supposedly free press that failed us the most: we know enough now about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al to understand we could and should have expected the worst; while this does not mitigate their criminal misdeeds, we should not pretend to be shocked (or even particularly appalled) at the non-revelations of how they combined their extreme political pettiness (Machiavellian ruthlessness) and their general ignorance of the mess they were creating (“Bring ‘em on”, “last throes”, “stuff happens”, et cetera). But at the end of the day, it was the press who didn’t ask any tough questions, who didn’t expose or promote the obvious truths rotting right out in the open, like a fetid carcass.

And then there are the sociopaths, the ones who you actually fear believe not only in the apocalyptic fantasies they peddle, but feel they are the appropriate (even the chosen) ones to answer the challenges. Here you have the Kissingers, Weinbergers, Fleischers, Gingriches. These are seldom the ones behind the wheel (although some of them would jump at the chance), these are the ones riding shotgun, whispering not-so-sweet nothings into the impressionable ear of the idiot in charge (think Reagan, think Bush), the ones content to practice their dirty work long distance.

I have a special hatred in my heart for these smirking Iagos, the well-paid political hacks who reside inside the fortified cocoon of spin and subterfuge. The ones who are neither powerful enough to make the decisions or brave enough to do the damage; these are the ones who put on business suits before hitting the battlefield, talking points echoing around their half-empty heads. Their masters, the flies, crawl into the shit to lay their eggs, they are merely the spawn that emerges from this waste, camera-ready smiles frozen on their faces. They are born into this, never capable of playing on the field or willing to cheer from the sidelines, they are the equipment managers, the ones who want to be near the action but not close enough to get caught in the crossfire. These are the spokespersons and professional apologists; the career insiders.

Some are born into it; some are paid to do it. Some, like the irredeemably despicable Liz Cheney, are born into it and get paid (quite handsomely) to do it. But to single these scumbags out is like blaming rock musicians for the dumbing down of American culture. The fact of the matter is that if people weren’t willing or able to be duped by clowns like Karl Rove, then clowns like Karl Rove would have to find another line of work.

And it’s finally taken the one issue everyone used to agree on to illustrate, without the slightest possibility of misunderstanding, how far Republicans have slinked off the Reservation. Lampooning this new low is, of course, easy and would be amusing if it was not so pathetic and sickening (still, there has been no shortage of potshots, all of them quite worthwhile, some of them absolutely indispensable). Even the most battle-scarred political junkie has to marvel at how hurriedly the hardcore Right is dumpster diving into moral depravity, all for the sake of propping up their tattered and increasingly absurd ideology. While Andrew Sullivan and Frank Rich (embedded above) are always on the money, John Cole has a definitive take, here.

Considering what they have done with virtually every other aspect of the Bush years, I honestly expected them to do what they did with the trillions of dollars of spending and debt that happened with a Republican congress and a Republican President Bush- first, pretend it didn’t happen, then after being forced to acknowledge it did happen, claim that everyone was doing it and blame the Democrats and scream about Murtha and Barney Frank, and when that didn’t work, just pretend that it was “other” Republicans who aren’t “real conservatives” (Move along, these aren’t the wasteful spenders you are looking for) while ranting about earmarks. That is what they did with spending; I figured they would do it again with torture.

But they didn’t and they aren’t. Instead, they are mobilizing and going balls to the wall in defense of sadism. It is really quite amazing, and a testament to just how sick and detestable and rotten to the core the Republican Party has become.

It’s fortunate that in spite of the institutional apathy we still have indefatigable watchdogs like Glenn Greenwald tallying up the lies, spin and systemic deceit. He offers consistently refreshing proof that real progressives are not in the tank for Obama or any politician, but remain invested in holding elected officials accountable. There are dozens of other semi-high profile scribes out there, mostly representing the dreaded blogosphere. The old guard recognizes it is in their best interest to actively marginalize these voices, though that stale strategy is inexorably losing steam. The only people who disdain the bloggers more than politicians, of course, are the high profile (though increasingly endangered) Op Ed scribblers. These indolent bovines, along with their brethren–the so-called mainstream journalists–seem happiest when covered in the mud and slop their masters make for them. There are notable exceptions; for every Charles Krauthammer there is a Dan Froomkin; for every George Will there is a Frank Rich. For every twenty jejune Maureen Dowd columns, there is the all-too-rare exception.

The rest of the media, forever in the backwards shadow of the insular, elitist (yes, elitist) inside-the-Beltway circus, can’t (or worse, does not want to) figure out that the sources they quote (all too often anonymously) are waging war on the six-to-twelve hour spin cycle, so the details are massaged accordingly. And so we have Cheney getting equal, or more, air time than Obama, with the network nitwits breathlessly asking “Who is right?” That Cheney is getting so much play is not in itself a big deal; it’s undeniably newsworthy, and if he wants to dig himself deeper into his depraved ditch, I’m sure we all have a few shovels we’d be willing to lend him. In fact, he is unintentionally doing the country a large favor by backing himself further into a corner (not that he has any choice with the prospects of war crime trials, however unlikely, looming): he is drawing an unmistakable line in the rhetorical sand in terms of the rule of law and the ways it was trampled on his watch.

The problem is not that he is making his case convincingly; it’s that the Democrats (“led” by the half-witted and choleric Harry Reid) are scared enough of their own shadows that when a high-ranking (no matter how unpopular) Republican plays the terror card, they tremble with Pavlovian precision. The spectacle of Reid being played like an accordion, while spewing largely unintelligible tough talk (“Can’t put them in prison unless you release them”) was a new low, even by the minute standard he has set during his mostly feckless tenure.

The other, larger problem is that the media is obsessed with the us-and-them, false equivalence sham. It’s irresponsible enough to allow equal air time for obviously self-interested charlatans like Cheney and Gingrich; it’s incompetence bordering on dereliction that they ignore available evidence for the sake of sensationalism. To take just one of the more insidious examples, the notion that torture (although we won’t call it torture) was effective and saved thousands, perhaps millions, of lives is risible on every level. The simple fact that we got the info we needed from certain suspects before we tortured them should be a slam dunk for overdue accountability. The fact that the aforementioned torture was inflicted not to save lives but in the desperate attempt to coerce an acknowledgment of the fabricated tie between Sadaam and Osama is sickening as it is irrefutable. Even worse, and this is perhaps the most contemptible aspect of the disgrace that is Guantanamo, all of these so-called arguments rely on the erroneous assertion that all of these detained individuals represent the “worst of the worst”. In other words, it’s explicitly understood, in the Cheney version of this story, that every single person we’ve captured is guilty. Of course, even a cursory examination of the case files reveals that more than a handful of these people, aside from never being charged with a crime, had no ties or connections to Al-Qaeda. There are many examples, here’s one.

Where is the media in all of this? Busy handicapping the spin as a legitimately alternate perspective. Impartiality, in today’s media, means allowing liars to lie with impunity and letting Americans decide for themselves which “side” is more convincing. No wonder more than fifty percent of Americans have indicated that torture is acceptable in certain circumstances. John McLaughlin himself actually uttered the words “not all waterboarding is the same” on a recent show. Thanks for clearing that up for us, big guy. Virtually the remainder of the chattering class has been perfectly content to keep their readership on a need-to-know basis. Not taking a principled stand is one thing (only people who find actual inspiration in movies like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington expect more than this from our supine press), but to actively disengage with reality is unconscionable. If only these posers had sufficient shame, or awareness, to understand how poorly they’ve performed in the service of our nation.

Obama, as Matt Taibbi points out here, has gone from not exactly distinguishing himself in this matter (as well as waffling on the mostly lucid and unassailable take he offered on the campaign trail) to clumsily ensnaring himself in this mess to, against all probability, upping the ante. Count me amongst the people who are willing to give him some more time, and some additional benefit of the doubt (certainly, he inherited this disaster and only the most naively optimistic folks on the left actually expected he could waltz into office and change this fiasco overnight). Count me also amongst those who are puzzled (at best) and disillusioned (at worst) by his behavior. By hanging back and letting the Cheney pushback gain traction, he immediately made his task a lot harder than it had to be. Rookie mistake? Let’s hope. By ostensibly trying to avoid politicizing the matter (as if that is possible in contemporary America) he all but guaranteed it would be entirely about politics. And thus far, the bad guys are winning. It’s early still and Obama has shown himself to be a master of the long game, but it’s difficult to get a good read on how (or why) he’s allowed this opportunity to slip from his hands, and into the oily, scaled claws of Darth Cheney. Inconceivably, the attacks that happened on the last administration’s watch turned out to be the gift that keeps giving. Only in America.

Lastly, there are the rest of us. Part of the equation, one hoped, in electing Obama was to begin moving past the Bush debacle as quickly as possible; in this regard, any warm body (well, any warm Democrat’s body) would do the trick. But Obama, his eloquence and affirmations aside, spoke forcefully about reclaiming the rule of law and undertaking the imperative task of restoring America’s standing in the eyes of the world. Part of that promise entailed renouncing, without equivocation, the types of travesties that in a pre-9/11 world would never happen on U.S. soil. That was part of the evolution of a democratic nation, we learned from our past mistakes and, as unforgivable as they were, we moved on. The Bill of Rights and that little thing called Habeas Corpus guaranteed (at least in principle) that if atrocities occurred, they would be recognized, denounced, and those responsible held to account. Mostly, it reassured the world that anyone on our soil would be treated in accordance with our laws. As quaint as it may sound to 21st Century ears, Americans once overwhelmingly endorsed this quite simple proposition; it was, in effect, the bulwark our freedom was built upon.

As we now know, 9/11 changed everything. 9/11 gave us the terror card, still the only dark ace up the sleeve of the detestable GOP; as we’ve seen in recent weeks, it still trumps the house (of Representatives). 9/11 gave us Guantanamo and the bottomless pit of moral putrefacation. 9/11 gave us Jack Bauer who, along with Walker, Texas Ranger, will keep us safe and ensure that America remains unfriendly turf for evildoers and liberals. How else, really, to explain the hysteria that attended the announcement of some detainees possibly being moved to maximum security prisons within the U.S.A.? Only a craven populace spoon-fed the aesthetic sensibilities of Prison Break could possibly conceive a scenario where these hardened (yet untried) criminal masterminds band together to bust out of their chains and wreak havoc on the pastoral American heartland. The same simpletons obsessed with owning guns, it seems, are afraid to actually use them if the situation ever arose. But that’s a joke anyway; only people who steer their mental ships to the ill-winds blown by Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News could really get weak in the knees imagining escaped al-Qaeda agents roaming their gated communities.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead, more people were horrified by the possibility (not to mention the certainty) that innocent civilians were plucked out of their offices or homes and spirited away overseas, held without charge and tortured without compunction? How about, instead of imagining our children being savaged by terrorist outlaws on the loose, we contemplated the possibility of our children being held, in a foreign country, with no legal recourse, and indicted without a trial? Without even being told what they supposedly did? These are the dark fantasies Kafka imagined and Orwell anticipated, but the point of such dystopian fiction was to depict the worst case scenario so as to shake slumbering citizens awake.

A perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm.

Here we are, in a scared new world, with atrocities having been committed in our names. Those most culpable keep on rattling the sabres of insanity, strutting like peacocks on a TV screen near you. The journalists watch their own backs while their bosses are too busy watching their profits dwindle to process more bad news. The politicians fear nothing more than losing their status, and will be accountable enough to go on record once the dust has finally settled. Almost everyone else reclines in silence, well-fed and secure behind the wall of sleep.

Words need not be minced here: the Criterion Collection treatment of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s trilogy is an essential, if overdue cultural event. The high-definition digital restorations are reason enough to rejoice; the bounty of extra material is a genuine feast for ravenous film fanatics. Along with the now-obligatory commentaries and making-of features (always worthwhile, here revelatory), we get video essays, documentaries, interviews, short works by the director and an accompanying booklet that is both informative and lustrously packaged. This is, without question, the DVD reissue of 2011.

For those uninitiated, the colors, taken from the French flag, and the number three figure prominently throughout the films on the literal levels, obviously, but they resonate on subtle levels, as well. Three films, three locations (Paris, Warsaw, Geneva), three exquisite actresses (Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irene Jacob), three concepts taken from the French Revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity.

Taken individually, each film succeeds spectacularly—and in spectacularly separate ways—as a standalone work. Being a trilogy, filmed at a superhuman clip between 1992 and 1994, the thematic concerns and not-so-random coincidences add up and interact in ways that still exhilarate even—or especially—after multiple viewings.

The single theme threading these three works is the act of connecting. Human connections, missed connections, chance connections and the types of inscrutable flukes that invoke both fate and faith. The colors that give the films their titles are utilized in myriad ways to comment on the connections and coincidences these characters experience.

In Blue (1993) events unfold in sudden and shocking fashion: there is a car accident and Julie (Binoche) awakens in a hospital to receive the news that her husband and young daughter have both died. This level of grief is almost incomprehensible; in Julie’s case, it’s even worse. Her husband was a famous, beloved composer, so there will be reporters—and their questions—to contend with. Worse still, a question she declines to answer: Is it true you wrote your husband’s music?

Suffice it to say, a script or an actress not up to the challenge would make a farce out of such forceful material. Thankfully, this is the role Binoche was born to play: her fragile beauty and approach (she manages to be minimalistic and naturalistic) are uncannily affecting; she does not disappear into her character so much as she succumbs to it and the demands it places on her.

Over the months that follow she discards her possessions, refuses to see friends and drops a musical score (in progress) into the mechanical jaws of a garbage truck. As much as she tries, she cannot obliterate the world; she cannot obliterate herself. Gradually, the music and its meaning returns to her: initially she resists but it is there, unavoidable, when she closes her eyes. During these moments time stops and the screen goes black as an unseen orchestra shrieks, reminding her who she is. In what might be the definitive scene she pulls herself out of a swimming pool at night, embalmed in a dark blue glow. She hears the sudden burst of notes and slowly sinks back into the water, covering her ears and curling into a fetal position. The camera frames her from above, suspended in her sorrow. The rest of the film becomes the story of her life: finding freedom from the things she can’t (and shouldn’t) remove from her world.

White (1994), an anti-romance of sorts, is the lightest—and slightest—entry in the trilogy. The use of color, so easily conveyed in the frozen Warsaw winter, is perhaps the least subtle as well, but the simplicity itself provides its own commentary. In fact, there is considerable nuance within the ostensibly straightforward story. If Blue deals with a curious kind of liberty, White grapples with the notion of equality. In both cases, the concepts focus on the personal rather than the political, although the troubled relationship depicted in White functions as a clever social and political commentary. The failed marriage between Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) and Dominique (Julie Delpy) is, in some regards, merely the delivery device for what is in actuality a tribute to Kieslowski’s Poland; the real love story—in the script and on the screen—is between the director and his country.

Red (1994), as many who have seen it multiple times would agree, is not simply the ultimate triumph of Kieslowski’s career, but one of the supreme cinematic achievements of the last quarter-century. As a technician, Kieslowski is awe-inspiring; as a deeply compassionate artist, he manages to instigate in the viewer feelings ranging from discomfort, amusement, empathy to, ultimately, catharsis. As the film—and trilogy—concludes, certain scenes and situations come full circle granting a closure that satisfies on aesthetic levels, as well as profoundly personal ones.

For example, one does not know exactly how to interpret the ending of White (which, on its own, works: the lack of explicit closure provides an enigmatic sort of grace); by the time the final seconds of Red unfurl we understand fully what happened and what is going to happen. At the end of each story, we see a close-up of the protagonist: on each face there is a tear and a smile. How is this possible? Or, how is it possible that this is neither forced nor affected? Any viewer is presented with ample justification for how such an audacious and potentially cloying strategy is executed.

Certain films don’t require a plot summary; you’ve either seen them or you should see them. With a film like Red we should dispense with matters of whether it’s worthwhile and assess the rarefied air into which it elevates itself. How many movies have you seen, or even heard about, that you could say are perfect? Every shot, each character (both the construction and casting), the soundtrack, the story, what makes it to the screen and what is intentionally left off? Red richly embodies the special potential that cinema can attain: incorporating music, literature (the script), image and action, the endeavor is at once an approximation of life and something more. It is artifice, but like the best creation, it functions as a reflection on existence and a sort of paradigm to which we might aspire.

Kieslowski, in other words, succeeds entirely on mere artistic levels, but his recurrent themes of compassion, connection and reconciliation achieve a synthesis so fully realized as to seem transcendent. Transcending what, exactly? The limitations of the medium and the limitations of our imaginations and ability to conceive liberty, equality and fraternity in ways not reliant on superstition or dogma. Ultimately Kieslowski, who eschewed explicit political and religious tautology, is making a case for faith that is wholly human—and humane.

“I feel something important is happening around me,” Valentine (Irene Jacob) confesses to her new confidante and friend, the retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant). “And it scares me.” The judge says nothing at first, but takes her hand softly in his. “Is that better?” Her response, a smile, confirms the positive connection that has restored both of them. It’s also the crucial moment missing in each of the films up until now: finally, after disappointment and disillusionment, we see two very different people who are able to support and encourage one other. Although something miraculous does indeed seem to be afoot, it is this very simple, human gesture that suggests a more profound solidarity.

The events that follow, set in motion by a violent storm—making earlier, subtle allusions to Shakespeare’s The Tempest more explicit—represent an epiphany within an epiphany regarding the nature of the judge, God and the director, all of whom may be the same entity within this film and the entire trilogy. It practically goes without saying that each film also functions as an ongoing commentary on the act and process of creation—and the relationship between art and artist.

After completing this project, Kieslowski was understandably exhausted. He announced his retirement from filmmaking, but within a year was already contemplating a new trilogy (based on Heaven, Hell and Purgatory—proof that Kieslowski was incapable of thinking small). Sadly, he died before he had the chance to see that project, and subsequent ones, through. Although he died entirely too young (at 55) and it’s alluring to contemplate how much more profundity he might have offered us, there isn’t quite the sense of sorrow we feel with other premature losses. What more, in the final analysis, could Kieslowski have done? What more did he need to do?