What A Wonderful World
Imagine an 85 year-old bagging your groceries at a supermarket or the long lines, families in waiting, outside of any soup kitchen on Thanksgiving Day. Some people have ownership and power over their life and others don’t. For most life is what happens to us, something we deal with for better or worse, mostly worse; most have little to no agency in their world, marginalized lives, lives that we lean against but don’t defeat, as Fitzgerald wrote, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Or, as Faulkner wrote, the best that can be said is that we endured.
The world is organized and structured to preserve the wealth and influence of the rich, which means that in the US it is organized and structured largely to preserve the power, authority and influence of predominantly a White America. It does this to the degree that for those most fortunate there is almost complete insulation from the ill-effects of virtually any and every crisis or event. No event of any kind will change the social, political or business structure in existence – no CEOs or Board will be removed in the face of a systemic financial crisis, no event will lead to wholesale change in political leadership. There may be differences in party control but no such change will result in any systemic change to our political system or the laws and regulations enacted by that system; no event will result in a change of our social structure.
How wonderful for those most fortunate to believe that any increase in taxes on corporations or the wealth of millionaires and billionaires is a global catastrophe – a catastrophe that would in fact have no (perceivable or actual) impact on executive and Board compensation or would require anyone to forego any private club golf membership. Life must be pretty nice if these are your worries. Never have so few complained so loudly about something that has no perverse effects upon anyone other than that it suggests political orientation to be bending towards the interests of the many rather than the few; Alas, this must stop!!
So while the rich complain, the less fortunate endure, and often with incredible dignity. Let’s revisit the Punk music world. As we wrote in Another City Records – Authenticity, a recent article posted here, the Punk experience is one of inclusiveness and charity. Shawn Hopman, the founder and owner of Another City said, “Everyone has to find their access point, but once you do, you’re accepted.” Another City will sign bands only if they are supportive (most often with their own money) of organizations dedicated towards those in need. The Another City bands Snuffed and Ill Communication allocate a portion of their earnings towards Good Kids/Mad City and For the Children, respectively.
Wealthy White America complains about taxes, ignoring the fact that taxes are used to provide food assistance, educational opportunities, to pay for our roads and highways, our safety and security, our health care, our parks and recreation, items which are critical and impactful towards the lives of the majority of us. This of course is meaningless to the fortunate few because the massive amount of money at their disposal allows them to circumvent any condition that would be remotely bothersome. The rich can pay for whatever health care they might want, and for private air flights that require no TSA line. And, the money they live on is not generated by jobs, jobs that require daily commutes to the office. What is lived on is the cash generated from capital investment opportunities, cash taxed at a much lower capital gains tax rate than the tax rates for earned income of a majority of Americans. While the rich complain the less fortunate give back to their own, at least in the Punk scene.
Consider also Erick Williams, Executive Chef and Owner of acclaimed Hyde Park Chicago restaurant Virtue. Erick earned early accolades as Executive Chef of the Chicago restaurant institution mk, was recently identified by the New York Times as one of 16 Black Chefs changing food in America, has worked with a host of influential Black and White Americans, including Theaster Gates and the Rapper Common, and was a key participant at Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s recent Family Reunion event organized through Food and Wine Magazine celebrating Black cooking culture. Obviously Erick has a heck of a lot more than zero power and ownership over his life but consider also that every street-facing window of Erick’s restaurant Virtue carries a sign that in the particular and in the aggregate articulate the black experience in America, an experience largely defined by what Black people are deprived of: I Can’t Kneel; I Can’t Go To Church; I Can’t Have A Routine Traffic Stop; I Can’t Watch Birds; I Can’t Breathe.
The windows of Virtue recount the daily denial of the benefits of liberty in a land that flaunts its adherence to the ideas of freedom and liberty. What is being denied is what the fortunate few ridiculously but understandably take for granted: their idea that living is simply an exercise of imagination. This experience is one of “cans,” of what can happen or what can be done or what they can do; it is not an experience of obstacles, of traffic stops that go bad, of jogs that end in murder, of institutional racism subtle but pervasive, and of death and disease the natural and inevitable by-products of whatever, of climate change or fiscal restraint or the pandemic, literally of whatever.
Erick Williams is a successful restaurateur, who has earned his stripes because of his talents, but when he gets into his vehicle his experience as a Black American is no different than the experience of any other Black American. Talent and success are not barriers to incidents of racial bias. And Erick is a restaurateur who professionally and by inclination is focused on the experience of his customers, a desire to do what he and his team can do to make his customers’ experience a positive one. As such, Erick’s vision extends beyond the doors of his restaurant., so by nature his experiences include his customers’ experiences. Virtue is an inclusive experience, and serves the entire community, but because of its location and its focus on Southern Cuisine Virtue is frequented by many of the predominantly Black community in which it is situated, and that means that Erick and his team are far from insulated from the day-to-day experiences of his many Black customers, experiences where incidents of racial bias are a daily occurrence.
Jean Paul Sarte conjured through his writings a description of an “authentic” life, one where one’s existence is completely aligned with the person’s values and belief systems, a life led by the force of a realized internal value system. An inauthentic life by contrast is one often defined by an existence, consciously or not, pursued so as to avoid discomforts, a life realized through the power and effects of outside conditions. Authenticity is special; it is not just true or real, it is self-realization, self-actualization, a better state of being, a state of enhancement.
The Punk bands of Another City Records, and Erick Williams and his Virtue team, opt for inclusiveness, faith and charity. They choose to give in a world largely defined by taking, systemically created to benefit the takers. The people of Another City and of Virtue are the people defining a better world, an authentic world, a world operating within the confines our better values and virtues. As such there is no bitterness, just a desire for positive change where all of us can enjoy the fruits of a better world. There will always be rich people and poor people, but where the divide is so incredibly wide that there is no ability to see across the expanse, we all are diminished, and this has to change. At Ginger we believe this change can occur through the power and beauty of music and the arts, and the words and ideas generated by the arts.
We can apply E.E Cummings words to the world we envision: I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses; nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
Real beauty exists in giving not in taking.
