Bernie Sanders, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

(Photo by Phil Roeder, via Flickr)

I’ve proudly displayed a Bernie 2016 sticker bumper sticker on my blue, slightly beat-up Subaru for a few months now. The amounts of little jabs at my ever-so-hip car-and-politics combo, middle fingers from people with trucks and confederate flag ornaments, and enthusiastic thumbs-up in the rearview that I’ve received in that time are more or less equal. I willingly and proudly became a stereotype in order to show support for the most exciting politician and, if you’d believe his words, revolution leader to come forth in my adult life. That this is only my second legal election is beside the point.

Actually, it’s definitely not beside the point. As the excitement of 2015’s historic “digital grassroots” campaign began to wear off, I started to feel a bit like the callow millennial voter I’d laughed off being pegged as at first. I began to find myself repeating the complaints of my parents and many others, things along the lines of “okay, Bernie, and what else?” No more common was this than during the Democratic Town Hall that was held last week; in such a one-on-one alternative to the gladiator fights of the debates, I was excited to see Bernie given the perfect chance and - more importantly - ample screen time to bring his message past the repetitive rhetoric.

And yet, he didn’t do that. In fact, he even fielded a softball pitch - almost literally “what does Democratic Socialism mean to you?”, clearly meant to coax this sort of detail - with almost exactly the line that my roommate predicted seconds before. "What democratic socialism means, to me, is that economic rights, the right to economic security, should exist in the United States of America," said Sanders, preaching to the choir with the intensity of a weathered pastor counting the number of sermons left before retirement. "It means there is something wrong and government should play a role in making sure that all of our kids regardless of their income are able to get a higher education." The words are strong and not without blunt truthfulness; they are also words that we’ve heard from Sanders many times before as part of the same grab bag of buzzphrases he’s seemed to pull from to answer every question while the camera is on.

What’s frustrating about this willingness to rest on his laurels is not just its contrast against Sanders’ repeated claims of a political “revolution”. It's far worse, in fact; it’s reflective of a confusingly unfocused late-game strategy that only seems to indicate a lack of planning for the campaign to have gotten to this point at all. These rhetorically charged messages, these facile castings of the government versus the kids, of income and class warfare, were essential to the establishment of the uniquely successful grassroots campaign borne of the Internet and a generation - my generation - more than willing to listen when things are put in such dramatic terms. Even now, they seem like great outlines, the kind of talking points that we cheered for when Bernie forced the hand of the election season into discussing them.

But we’re not in 2015 anymore, and that ingenious social-media fueled early campaign has given way to far less than its counterpart at the national stage. Bernie Sanders is not just an established name at this point; he’s the direct underdog-with-candor in opposition to Hillary’s “establishment” politics, and certainly able to be considered a big name in the election season. He’s eaten up a sizable - but not majority - portion of the Democrat preference. And here he is in a position many dreamed of but a year ago; live on national news, in front of millions, engaged in a one-on-one interview with the attention of not only the devoted, but the unsure and even the opposed. Here, of all places, he chooses to lean on the same surface-level quotables we’ve heard for the past year.

Granted, Sanders has always favored an easy grab for a head-nod over detailed explanations of his policies. Granted, he did do a solid job with litigative transparency later in the discussion when he compared his voting record to Hillary’s in big votes such as Wall Street deregulation and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Granted, even, that he’s continuing to appeal very strongly to my generation which - granted - does not have the real-world stripes that lead many to shake their heads at Bernie’s idealism and ask to see the economic receipts. 

That all is granted, but a truly successful presidential campaign does not choose to shoehorn its appeal into one voter-base, and especially not one that historically has had a problem with actually getting off its asses come election day. The millennial still in college is all ears, of course, but Sanders has both the opportunity and impetus now to expand beyond his niche as the “youth candidate”. Ironically enough, the oldest candidate is still having issues reaching those closer to his age. To the average American, “Democratic Socialism” still sounds like something on a spectrum between Marxism and a blind fantasy that willfully ignores the capitalist backbone on which this country was built and continues to (for the most part) prosper. That’s not to say at all that his thoughts are to be laughed aside. However, it’s becoming difficult to argue for an unclear and controversial concept that even its champion refuses to explain. Such a politically inciting idea should be something that Sanders is itching to support with the sort of numbers-don’t-lie evidence that would appeal to the right-leaning voters he stands to sway; as it is, he seems content to let it remain a vague clarion call for those who’d rather not think about the details.

Therein lies the frustration of attempting to continue feeling the #Bern at the start of 2016. As fringe candidate Martin O’Malley continues an impressively stubborn losing campaign that has, to his credit, never fallen victim to sensationalism at the expense of never really gaining steam, many formerly unswayable Sanders supporters - myself included - are starting to wish that an O’Malley vote wasn’t so out-of-the-question. Even more frustrating, the Hillary Clinton campaign that has never truly needed to steady itself is still going strong, even as its candidate continues to prove that she needs to calculate the public response to any opinion (see: Keystone XL) before settling on something that would offend the least of her constituents (read: donors). Against a Goliath with so many weak points worth an attack, Bernie is playing a rather bashful David.

When the opportunity to unpack “Democratic Socialism” for the entire nation went unseized, thousands of Sanders supporters nationwide - once again, myself included - felt the momentum of his campaign begin to stall. As the night continued, those same supporters watched O’Malley make the absolute most of his time on stage with the charisma they once expected from their hero. They saw an ever-confident Clinton beam with renewed assurance that no more surprise “damn emails” moments would be thrown her way. And, frustratedly, they ended their watch with a feeling of lack - a lack of confidence in their candidate and a lack of an undefined but expected moment of #Bern that never came. Again, this is only weeks before the primary vote and days before the Iowa caucus. The #Bern should be burning brighter than ever, rather than complacently flickering as it currently seems to be. As the primaries loom on the horizon, now is not the time for Sanders to come off as anything resembling complacent. And unlike all of the other debates that left his supporters wanting more, there’s no longer a “next time” to hold hope for.

I’ll continue to rock my Bernie bumper sticker with the pride of a fan, albeit one with slightly less conviction. I’ll still be out for the primaries to cast my vote for him, even as I begin to accept that I will likely not be able to do the same in the fall. I’ll be following the Sanders campaign until he’s voted out of the race, a conclusion that is beginning to seem foregone. But I’ll be doing so with the concessive frustration baked into me by growing up as a Chicago sports fan - that my guy, despite all of the hope once poured into his name, will not be coming out of this on top. And frustrating of all - it’s his own doing (or lack of doing) that’s sinking the chance for a Sanders ticket.

Aftershocks (a dream)

Exactly how we met -

the place, the feelings,

the moment in time -

still stands clearly 

in my mind

However, today

it is not important

Similarly memorable

are the years we spent -

the places we saw,

the people we met,

and the nights we’d lay out

combing stars to find Orion,

letting the night wash over

us

But none of that, today

is what is important

Not even the day

I heard the news -

that she’d been pulled

from a three-car pile-up 

at that god damn intersection

on her way home

to me

No, that will not

be discussed 

on such an occasion

What is important today - 

our anniversary - 

is the light she brought

into my world

and that still shines

on my every day

Like a stone slab,

my blinds had become

so accustomed to 

their setting,

that when she came 

to throw them back,

to fill my space with light,

the shock sent tremors

through my world -

aftershocks that

have not ceased

So today -

on the first of these days

that I must spend alone -

I will relish the warmth

of her aftershocks

and I’ll see her face

in the morning light

Hourglass

Even he who moves the clock

must feel time’s unceasing sands

as each independent grain

slips steadily through

his weathered fingers

And even fish of the sea

must sense the waves as they breathe

and unsurely cede their course

And those who run the gamut

from the honored to the damned

must feel the pointlessness of

any effort forcing fate

For all plans and schemes 

will someday weather to sand

and that little second hand

will surely tick on

And though one may try -

as humans so often do - 

no living soul will ever

force the hourglass to still

Everglide

Like a seagull,

you fly over

parking lots;

so high above

nothing but the

home you've known

Like a pelican,

you rest upon

the pulsing waves;

you need nothing

but the fish

and a blue sky

Flap your wings

atop a world

bound to itself

and turn toward

the setting sun

and everglide 

2015 in Albums: My 5 Favorites

2015 may well come to be seen as a transitory year in many facets of life, and few of those are so clear as in the world of music. With the last of the euro-tinged EDM that dominated the first half of the 2010s fading out of the public conscience, 2015 saw the sound of the decade began to solidify. The amalgam of southern hip-hop snare rolls, bouncy tropical house, the funk of the era formerly led by Prince, and the power ballads setting the stage for the late release of Adele was what permeated the culture. What’s more, we saw the complete dominance of streaming services in what may well be seen as the end of the digital download era. It was a year of diversity, a year of change, and a year of excitement as entrepreneurial artists seized the sounds of modern music software and instruments to create some incredible works. It’s my pleasure today to tell you a bit about five of the releases that defined my own year, as well as the year of many others.

5. Panda Bear – Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper

After the bleak Tomboy and a series of critically acclaimed releases as part of Animal Collective, Panda Bear looked simultaneously inward and outward for his fifth album, the ambitious Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper. Melding his signature psychedelic sound with hip-hop drum programming inspired by the likes of J Dilla and A Tribe Called Quest, Panda Bear comes face to face with his own mortality in a haze of bubbling synths and murky bass lines. First single “Mr. Noah” is the weirdest and catchiest song about a dog getting bitten on the leg that you’ve ever heard; follow-up “Boys Latin” uses delayed vocals to create a fog of tenor as Panda Bear laments on the shadow moving in. Between and beyond those two are a series of auditory hallucinations, with highlights like “Come to Your Senses” leaving the listener questioning whether they themselves had been swept up in Panda Bear’s stream. Late-game standout “Tropic of Cancer” finds Panda Bear grappling with death through the lens of his father’s mortality over an ingenious sample of “The Nutcracker Ballet”. My personal favorite of the album, “Butcher Baker Candlestick Maker” evokes the musical image of water streaming peacefully over rocks, with the ambient vocals contrasting as perfectly as the reflection of the blue sky.

4. Majical Cloudz – Are You Alone?

Don’t let the hip-hop tinged spelling of their name fool you – Majical Cloudz are dead serious about their craft, and their sparse yet layered music reflects their commitment. Lead singer Devon Welsh’s plain but powerful voice is paired with the flowing, minimal soundscapes of producer Matthew Otto to create a world draped solemnly in white, the color of the ghosts of the past. In comparison to their previous effort, the sublime Impersonator, Otto allows his electronic influences a little bit further out of his leash; brushed snares urge the momentum of “Control”, and an echoed but muted drum machine perfectly carries the ever-building title track. On that title track, the duo speak equally to a lover, a friend, and even the world of music itself; “Do you hear what I’m saying?” becomes frustrated and desperate in that context, though it is not belittled by any other interpretation. Therein lies the genius of Majical Cloudz – these lyrics are charged, but relatable. These instrumentals are familiar, but chilling, like a look back at an old photograph faded by age. By the time the album reaches the lonely sidewalk dirge of “Downtown”, Walsh has contorted his voice into the exact middle of a wail and a whisper from a mouth curled into a knowing smile. “If suddenly I die, I hope they will say,” he says turning toward the infinite city sky, “that he was obsessed, and it was okay.” That kind of raw honesty and emotion is the perfect vessel to deliver the kind of craft that Majical Cloudz deals in. You begin to feel the emptiness of the streets that they describe, and the magic of their collaboration seeps through the cracks.

3. Shlohmo – Dark Red

The aptly named “Ten Days of Falling” begins with a hazy synth that quickly blooms into an almost operatic series of organ chords, only to give way to a screeching minor synth line atop building electronica stabs as the listener takes a swan dive into Shlohmo’s hazy world. That flair for the dramatic is the driving force behind Dark Red, whose name accurately depicts the thick, cloudy smog that creeps from behind each piece. “Emerge From Smoke” takes a crushed arpeggio line and accents it with sparse, breathy bits that simulate a digital take on a guitarist’s slides. From there, Shlohmo adds his tightly controlled hip-hop drum sequences that landed him an acclaimed collaborative EP with Jeremih earlier this year and brought him into the same breath as the likes of Baauer and Clams Casino. The lines between electronica and trip-hop blur even further on “Slow Descent”, which begins somewhere in the VIP lounge of a club and ends up as a breakneck drum ‘n’ bass odyssey over half-time synth melodies. “Apathy”, the lone collaborative effort with D33J, is the furthest foray into the world of southern trap, but still retains the compositional and melodic tropes of Shlohmo’s dark, rhapsodic electronics. To deftly move between these worlds is to fully embrace the sounds of mid-2010s electronic music; to innovate as Shlohmo does is another beast entirely. By the ending chords of “Beams”, one has to gasp for air, finally surfacing from the brash waves of Dark Red’s sonic ocean with a newly invigorated appreciation for what lies in the murky deep.

2. Jamie xx – In Colour

Coursing through the veins of opener “Gosh” is the blood of 90s house infused with the intoxicants of early hip-hop turntablism; the dizzying speed changes that momentarily halt the track are clever nods to Jamie’s own past as a master of the spinning wax. Retrofuturism is the name of the game on the debut solo album from the quiet producer of The xx, and the way that Jamie pulls from the past in ingenious sampling decisions create a world all his own adorned with historic relics on every wall. From the 90s-indebted breakbeat of “SeeSaw” to the shrewd chorus of “Loud Places”, the producer brings modern sounds together in perfect concordance with the ghosts of years past. Nowhere is this better executed than the year’s least expected hip-hop masterpiece, “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” featuring the unlikely but perfect pairing of Young Thug and a sample of 50s acapella group The Persuasions. Though it’s hard not to be distracted by Thug’s amphibious and sometimes charmingly gross rhymes, the glue here is the masterstrokes of Jamie’s steel pans and perfectly compressed bass lines. In Colour at times feels like the ideally minimalist canvas art of an artist too long left behind the scenes, the craft of a perfectionist finally ready for exhibition. Each carefully crafted instrument has its place, and no song feels overcrowded; even relatively ambient tracks like “Hold Tight” use each individual chord in perfect tandem. By the ending stomp of “Girl”, Jamie has cleverly broken down the divisions between triplet and four-on-the-floor time while continuing to hone his signature sounds. The poignant chorus of “Loud Places” puppeteers a defeated-sounding echo of the past, lamenting, “I will never reach such heights”. If In Colour is any indication, Jamie xx will not only reach those heights, but also breezily surpass them.

1. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly

2015 was the year that the conscious American was forced into uncomfortable contemplation on the plight of their black brothers and sisters by horrific systematic violence against such names as Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, the Charleston church massacre victims, and countless others. From there, movements from #BlackLivesMatter to Concerned Student 1950 rose to echo the anger boiling over the pot, the sound of a generation tired of complacent maintenance of the racist structures of their nation. At the top of the year, Kendrick Lamar released his long-awaited follow-up to his acclaimed debut album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, giving musical voice to the frustrated and righteous fury of the black man and woman at exactly the correct time. The clear symbolic and chart hit was “Alright”, which found an exasperated Kendrick acknowledging the struggles that he and his kin face, but fortuitously exclaiming the now-iconic chorus: “we gon’ be alright.” Those words, bellowed over a pounding beat by Pharrell Williams, were repeated at countless marches and protests throughout the year, and will forever be contextualized as the anthem of a year in which black America rose with confidence to give a much-needed shake to dust-covered national attitudes. Behind the social support that elevates To Pimp A Butterfly, however, is one of the most perfect rap albums this side of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The album is strung together, loosely at first but taught as bridge wire by the finale, by a continuing poem that gives way to a chilling moment when Kendrick is revealed to have been reciting those words to the ghost of Tupac Shakur. This reverence to the history of black American music is reflected throughout the project’s running time; jazz (“For Free?”), funk (“King Kunta”, “These Walls”), and the tropes of classic rap (“Institutionalized”, “How Much A Dollar Cost”, “Complexion”) are seamlessly introduced to Kendrick’s signature lyrical style with increasingly impressive results. It’s a testament to his refusal to adhere to modern hip-hop standards that the closest thing to a 2010s trap “banger” here is “The Blacker The Berry”, a stinging indictment of the kind of hypocrisy that leads a black man to weep over Trayvon Martin and then turn around and kill one of his brothers in gangbanging. No moment here is too uncomfortable for Kendrick to tackle, most painfully displayed in “u”, a breakdown of Kendrick’s own inner demons underscored with the clinking of glasses and the choking back of tears to audibly paint a portrait of a man damn near broken under the weight of his own savior status. But he never does break, and in fact uses his own pain as steam to power the antithesis of that track – “i”, the positivity anthem that rap fans weren’t ready for when it released the year prior. The world wasn’t ready, but the unrelenting chorus of “I love myself” was exactly what it needed to hear. “i” is the beating heart of To Pimp A Butterfly, and it succinctly defines the modus operandi of the work as a whole: to lift. To Pimp A Butterfly aims directly at the heart of a generation with ears wide open for Kendrick Lamar, and it pierces. It leaves no white American unswayed, no casual rap listener able to ignore the historical context of the genre and the pain on which it was built. But most importantly, it gives a rally cry to a generation of black Americans desperately in need of one. As our nation moves toward a more cognizant future, the echoes of “we gon’ be alright” will sound from the many, and that positivity will shine a light through the darkness of our past.  

~

At the precipice

Collectively, we

find ourselves alone

and apprehensive;

all together, yet

wholly separate 

Each of us await

the precipice - and

how fast it has come!

On this, for once, we

we all surely agree; 

and yet, we've never 

felt such disconnect 

All together we

feel the sting of time

whipping past our cheeks -

how we've let it slip

And so we stagnate

hastily, we cede; 

rocks within life's stream

who're wont to float by

alone, yet as one

Ever so slight

Happiness, 

I've felt you

with my fingertips 

Just a brush,

ever so slight,

and never held

I've watched you

from afar, and

yes, I've felt 

jealousy

and wished that

you were mine

Happiness, 

you fickle thing,

the devil's in

your smile

You pull at me

from the corners

of my vision;

so sure to make

your absence felt

Ever so far

and yet so clear,

always on the horizon

but never my own