When You're Only Lonely

John David Souther was a jazz man, playing sax and drums in Texas.  But he had his ears open to other Texans, especially the sounds of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison.  When he wound up in Los Angeles, he literally picked up a guitar left at his house by a musician friend, and found a new musical expression.  He began hanging out at the fabled Troubadour club (and the Sad Cafe next door) and made some interesting friends among young and aspiring musicians, including Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Don Henley and the other eventual members of the Eagles, and especially Linda Ronstadt, with whom he had a romantic and musical relationship.  Together they all created the dominant LA sound of the 70s.

Souther became a songwriter for them all, sometimes singing on their records.  He made his own albums for a smaller public, which included me.  I practically memorized his Black Rose album in particular.  But it wasn't until 1979 that he had a breakout hit with this song, "You're Only Lonely."  With obvious and admitted inspiration from Roy Orbison, there's some Buddy Holly in it as well, especially live.  Souther's voice is different from Orbison's but also remarkable, and he seems to sing with such ease.

This is about the only piece of video of Souther singing this song I could find--a live performance outdoors at the Farm Aid concert in 1986.  There's some sound problems, a few microphone squeals, but the song gains in performance what it loses in sound quality.  (There's another YouTube video of the same performance that replaces the audio with the 1979 studio recording, but it doesn't really work.  The tempo is slightly different, and it comes off a bit lifeless.)  This to me is a fitting companion to the song that inspired it, Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely."

The Chain of Extinction

"Save the Whales" became the most successful environmental campaign, when the Blue Whale, humpback whales and other whale species were threatened with imminent extinction.  The polar bear has likewise become the icon of the climate crisis.  It still faces likely extinction.

The Earth is undergoing what scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in the planet's known lifetime.  Normally, just one amphibian species goes extinct every thousand years.  Now it may be as many as 45,000.  And extinction rates among "many other groups" (writes Elizabeth Kolbert in her 2014 book The Sixth Extinction) "are approaching amphibian levels."

There are different contributing reasons for various groups and species, though humans are most often the final cause.  The climate crisis is the greatest overall threat but there are many others.

As human civilization cuts itself off from daily contact with the rest of life, all this goes on almost invisibly.  So one question is, which of the potentially iconic animals (or plants) will go extinct first, and shake some sense into us (for however long it last)?  The great apes?  Tigers?  Polar bears?

There's a new candidate now, which suggests an ominous problem for the near future.  That species is the Monarch butterfly.  The annual count in California, where the western Monarchs winter, was down 86% from the previous year.  This represents a 99.4 percent decline since the 1980s, and an all-time low for the Pacific Coast.  The population is below 1% of what it once was.

The more numerous Eastern Monarchs that winter in Mexico, also showed more than a 90% drop since 1996.  There used to be billions of them.

The Western Monarchs wintering in Marin County were estimated at some 10 million butterflies.  The population is now less than 1% of what it was. Scientists suggest that once it drops below 30,000 butterflies, the species is headed for certain extinction.  It is very close.

If it occurs, the Monarch extinction will be due to particular circumstances that are part of a general trend: pesticides, loss and fragmentation of habitat, and effects of global heating.  Butterflies are among sensitive species and sites that are specifically threatened by the proposed Wall on the southern US border.

 And new studies show the butterflies are not alone.  A much-ignored February headline:Insect numbers are collapsing around the world, which could cause the "catastrophic collapse of nature's ecosystems" and threaten "the survival of mankind".

"More than 40 percent of insect species are declining - and the rate of extinction is about eight times faster than that affecting birds, mammals and reptiles. Based on current trends, insects could be extinct within a century.

Insects make up two-thirds of all life on earth by number. They pollinate plants, enrich our soil, and provide food for larger animals in the food chain. Their loss would be devastating to both agriculture and the environment."

Or as Edward O. Wilson succinctly put it, these are "the little things that run the world."

This analysis of data collected in 27 studies fingers the usual suspects: habitat destruction, pesticides and the climate crisis.  In both habitat destruction and pesticides, the prominent culprit is industrial agriculture.

A member of the European Parliament's agriculture committee succinctly explains why this continues:

"What might accurately be dubbed insectageddon is being driven by the agrichemicals industry. This situation is compounded by compliant politicians and policymakers who fall prey to lobbying pressure and then refuse to implement science-driven policy to protect wildlife. This has meant that over the past five decades conventional farmers have forgotten the natural systems they once relied on to control pests. Non-organic agricultural systems are highly dependent on chemicals, so feeding a vicious circle."

This is no longer a matter of family farmers spraying a harmful pesticide.  It is saturation on industrial scale.  In his 2012 book Apocalyptic Planet, Craig Childs describes exploring an industrial cornfield in Iowa where he saw no living thing other than corn.  This method kills pests but also life forms that replenish the soil.  Soon not even corn will grow here.

The growth of GMO agriculture is part of this death spiral.  A serious mistake is made when scientists and others lump together anti-GMO advocates with climate crisis deniers as examples of "anti-science" superstition.  The safety of genetically modified food is only part of the issue.  Most of the damage is being done by the intensive use of pesticides on GMO crops, and the spread of genetically modified seeds.  It may not be anti-agrichemical-sponsored science.  But it is the science of life.

The loss of an iconic species is felt emotionally.  Some ordinary beauty leaves the world.  I remember a childhood in which butterflies of all kinds and colors were plentiful in my back yard, including Monarchs and Monarch look-alikes.  Now here on the North Coast we feel fortunate to see one large butterfly for a day or two each year.  That's not a scientific comparison, but it suggests the loss we feel.

But it's more than what we feel.  It's what we eat.  It's what we are, whether we choose to see it or not.  It's the world that sustains our species.  And we're destroying it, while obsessing on real but comparatively much less important news.

The Voice

"Only the Lonely" is the quintessential Roy Orbison.  Reportedly the first song and recording to be made with Orbison's particular (and spectacular) voice in mind in 1960, it became the template for the Orbison sound.  His subsequent parade of classic hits took him into the late 60s, but his career went into a long eclipse in the 1970s.

 However, there was a second act in this American life.  His songs appeared in a few movies in the early 1980s, and he was rediscovered through his classic hits.  And suddenly there he still was--fully able to perform those hits, with that same unique and awesome voice.

In 1988 he was working on a new album produced by Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra.  Lynne was also producing George Harrison.  In the early 60s, Orbison and the Beatles had toured together in England.  Harrison got together an ad hoc band to write and record a song for the B-side of a single, and Orbison agreed to join up.  The band became the Traveling Wilburys, the resulting album became a smash, and Orbison was making new hits again.  His Lynne-produced solo album came out soon after, which included his first top ten hit in decades.  He was reportedly having a great time, agog at both the respect younger musicians and big stars were giving him, and the concert crowds.  He was in the midst of this ecstatic period when he died of heart failure in December 1988.

Just before the Traveling Wilburys happened, a concert by and for Orbison fans called "The Black and White Night" was created, and is the source of this video.  It consisted of Orbison singing his songs, with instrumental and vocal backing by some of the biggest stars of the day. Fellow Texan J.D. Souther did the vocal arrangements.  Among the backup singers are Souther, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and K.D. Laing.  Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen are among the instrumentalists.

What I especially like about this cut is the responsiveness of the crowd to Orbison's voice.  He seems to respond to them in turn by going higher on some of the high notes than he did on the original record.  With the tasty string section, it's a goosebumper all the way.

In my opinion it's about time for a remix of this concert--even on the CD, the background vocals are too faint.  Otherwise it's a great concert, and this is one of several songs available on YouTube.

The Disillusionist

The President of the United States has punishing responsibilities which require vast and detailed knowledge, historical perspective, an openness to expertise and the intelligence to quickly grasp complex information, as well as empathy, attentiveness to duties, statesmanship, personal charm and above all, persistent hard work.

The President cannot lie consistently and get away with it.  Don't be insane!

The President--or members of his family that he has appointed to official positions-- cannot engage in obvious corruption, using the office for personal gain, without immediate consequences.

The President must keep in mind the whole people of the US, and the leadership role of the U.S. in the world.

The President must keep in mind the future of the country and the world in every policy and decision.

The President must obey the Constitution and the principles of the separation of powers, in spirit as well as to the letter of the law.

And of course, the President of the United States cannot even appear to be beholden to a foreign power, particularly an adversary, let alone show favor to that adversary's interests while acting contrary to American interests.

But the current occupant of the White House has disillusioned most of the country and the world on all these beliefs, and more.  He continues to do so every day, and yet the next day, he's still there.

Gone are the illusions that well-established standards and norms that have lasted centuries cannot be violated with impunity.  So far there have been really no consequences, except to everyone around him, his party, our system of government, the country, the world and the future, which is rapidly slipping away.

Take the matter of lies.  His lies are quickly and regularly enumerated, but they are frequently so outrageous that calling him on them seems itself ridiculous.  He lies on facts, he lies about history, he lies about what he says people tell him, and he lies about himself.   He does not ever admit that his lies are lies, or that established facts are true if they contradict him.

Then there are the needless lies, the obvious exaggerations.  He can't respond to the suggestion that he doesn't work very much except by claiming he works harder than any other President ever has.

Lying that leads to more lies is a well known pattern.  Most people in the world no longer believe him, which seems a natural consequence.  "In the end deceivers deceive only themselves," Gandhi said.  But Gandhi would be disillusioned on that score, too.  Some people will "believe" what helps them politically (looking at you, Graham, and other Republicans) but above all, they will believe what they want to believe.

And that's the source of perhaps our greatest disillusions.  This occupant of the White House has empowered the bold expressions of racism and hate that may have seemed all but buried in the past.  He has empowered belief in what is manifestly not true, and actions predicated on those beliefs.

But is he deceiving himself?  Not every salesperson believes what they claim.  Still, even if he believes only some of his lies, he certainly believes that it is to his advantage to tell them.

Which leads us to another source of disillusion: the belief that the country would not permit the President of the United States to be crazy and remain in office.

The question of his mental health frequently recurs, in major papers like the Washington Post and New York Times, and recently in the new online version of a conservative publication that bit the dust, called the Bulwark. In it, Tim Miller asserts that this president is "hallucinating."

 C.G. Jung answered questions from a Texas psychologist in a series of interviews towards the end of his career in 1957.  Mostly he talked about his work, but he made one statement for a larger audience.  Obviously referring to the thermonuclear weapons threat, he said, "Nowadays particularly, the world hangs on a thin thread."  That thread, he said, is the human psyche.  A Soviet leader or an American President could plunge much of the world into instant hell.  "What if something goes wrong with [their] psyche?"

" And so it is demonstrated to us in our days what the power of psyche is, how important it is to know something about it," he said. "But we know nothing about it! Nobody would give credit to the idea that the psychical processes of the ordinary man had any importance whatever."

It is just as true today.  As a society, we know next to nothing about the psyche. The debate over the mental or psychological fitness of this man with his finger on the button is itself enough to demonstrate that this is so.  Our terms and discussion are utterly impoverished, and partly as a consequence, our country is powerless to deal with a President that may be crazy.  If any of us had previously believed otherwise, this controversy is another cause of disillusion.

Can we really say this man is hallucinating?  First of all, there's evidence that he's not making up all his own lies.  He has people to do that for him.  They tell him lies and he repeats them.

Within his own psyche he may find his embellishments.  For example, his persistent and lurid descriptions of women being taken across the border bound and gagged.  That's happened in movies and TV shows, so it could be a Reagan moment.  But it's also an image with a long history in so-called men's adventure pulp magazines.

George Orwell took note of this as early as the 1940s.  Villains were always foreigners--either enemies of the day like the Nazis or "Castro's Communists," or almost any foreigner from a British or American point of view.  The lurid magazine covers and stories inside traded on sadistic treatment of scantily clad women.  In some cases, Orwell points out, the magazine editor pretends there is a solemn purpose to exposing such atrocities, and uses them "as a plea for tightening up restrictions on immigrants."    

Craziness is its own subject.  Regardless of the degree of belief, lying is enormously destructive.  Ursula K. Le Guin quotes Socrates: "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul."  "Lying is the misuse of language," she points out, and notes that the reverse of Socrates' warning is also true: lies breed lies and confusion.  Evil in the soul induces lying.

Lying induces evil in the nation's soul.  And the evil in the nation induces lying.

As for crazy, it is possible of course to be crazy and not evil.  But in the combination of crazy and evil, it is evil that trumps.