Wheel in the Sky

by Jim Washburn

Is karma real? Back in my early 1980s days as a journalist—a big-tent term which included Walter Cronkite, cameramen murdered by Somoza goons in Nicaragua, and prissy rock critics such as myself—I had occasion to review the band Journey. They were one of the biggest acts in the world then, so I was obliged to hate them. Big hair, grand gestures, a sound like 20 gallons of homogenized milk: they pretty much epitomized corporate rock.

They played the Forum. At the same time, I could also go see George Van Eps play in OC Pizza parlors. George was the pioneer and master of the seven-string jazz guitar; he called it his lap piano and his spontaneous improvisations were complex wonders of moving chordal voices, like a horn section plus bass all going at it at once. He sounded like at least three guitarists, and he made it seem effortless, scarcely batting an eye as his fingers flew.

Then there was Journey’s Neal Schon at the Forum, going through the requisite frenetic ecstasies of the guitar hero, grimacing and lurching about the stage as if every precious wheedle-whee note had been personally wrenched from the crucible of a Bessemer converter. Reviewing the show, I described Schon at one point, “eyes closed, mouth open, his head thrown back as if expecting a hot dog from God.”

That line was my first greatest hit. You didn’t know rock critics had greatest hits, did you? It’s a phrase I’ve heard quoted back to me for decades, and not always while I’m playing guitar.

Of course, it had a devastating effect on Journey, with each multi-platinum success after that tarnished by the knowledge that some guy sitting in the windowless, tobacco-tinted Features section of the Register didn’t like them. Even the $35 million the band (which appears to have ousted more members then it’s had; vocalist Steve Perry’s job was most recently outsourced to Filipino cover band singer Arnel Pineda) earned on its most recent tour must be scant recompense for the pain I’ve caused them.

But now there’s this: I’m going through a difficult time. People I love keep dying. My profession is withering, and some of the remaining publications I write for are taking three to six months to pay. My wife and I have to move from the house I’ve rented for 33 years, with literally tons of records, books and stuff in tow. The whole world seems to be running out of money, water and sense. And my left elbow hurts like a mofo, like there’s a bone chip gnawing away in there.

I wake up early each morning, just so I can get a jump on wondering, “Why fucking bother?” 

And the soundtrack for all this? Popping into my head unbidden throughout the day comes, “Wheel in the sky keeps on turning, Oh I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow ...”

I’ve had similar bouts of badsongittus, but usually it’s something at least borderline tolerable, like the Pipkins “Gimme Dat Ding” or Johnny Mathis’ “Bye Bye Barbara,” not a goddamn power ballad. Why this in my time of woe? Where’s my hot dog, God?

Another thing adding to my discontent is President Barack Obama. The honeymoon’s over. The bloom is off the rose. He’s doing some things that, were it still Bush doing them, I’d be apoplectic, like his continuance of the military tribunals; his withholding of more prisoner abuse photos; his continued militarization of problems that don’t have a military solution; his taking single-payer off the health care table.

How he arrived at these positions may have involved days of late-night soul-searching, and his conclusions may be more nuanced, but the result is much the same as when Bush signed off on similar positions with his “So sue me” smirk. However the conclusions are arrived at, the Afghan and Pakistani civilians killed with our bombs are just as dead.

Back when he was Candidate Obama, friends argued with me that he was just another Bill Clinton, whom they’d considered a genial huckster for America’s corporate and imperial masters. To some, that was even worse than the Republicans’ barefaced contempt for the public good, because it masked the rot and venality at the core of our system and perpetuated the belief it could be made to work for us.

Me, I’m not such an absolutist. It’s comforting to the human mind to think everything can be explained, that some cabal controls our world, that all senators are corrupt, etc. But what’s the saying: Man makes plans, and God laughs? There are certainly powerful people who try to steer our destiny, not without some success, as evidenced by the rich in this country growing remarkably richer while most working folk founder. But there are too many competing interests, too many variables, too many millions of interweaving human stories that make up our society, for it to ever be more explainable and controllable than it isn’t. Thinking there’s some unseen guiding plan behind the chaos of modern life is like looking at the Amazon basin and saying, “Fertility God makes it so.”

There are corporations trying to do good; persons in positions of power who don’t relish power; public servants who serve the public, and, conversely, tree-sitters who only serve their own egos; and persons who only show up at anti-globalization protests to meet chicks. We are each of us a cluttered admixture of charity and self-interest, fear and love. How could we expect our society to be any different?

Which is a roundabout way of saying, no, I don’t think Obama sits around with the rest of the Illuminati deciding how to bamboozle us next. I think he’s well intentioned, and the best president of my lifetime. He just needs to be a lot more than that.

For starters, he needs to heed more of the inspiring words that have issued from his own mouth. He didn’t stand at a podium and say, “I’m going to restore a convenient particle of our moral standing in the world,” or “Let’s lift the veil and restore opacity to government.” He talked about doing the right thing, in good times and bad, and bearing the cost of it. He’s still talking, but the walk is wobbly.

On the torture photos, he’s making the same point Bush administration officials did over the Abu Ghraib photos: that they’ll inflame animosities towards us and place our troops in greater danger. Probably true: that’s one of the reasons why torture is counterproductive. It makes more people hate you, which means more people you have to torture, which makes even more people hate you ... I can see why Obama doesn’t want to place our troops in greater danger, but maybe the burden wouldn’t be on them if everyone could see that those responsible for the decision to torture faced justice.

(I have to add here that, while the news cycle is obsessed with the Nancy Pelosi Lying Circus, little news space has been devoted to charges that much of our torture was driven by Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pressing interrogators to produce a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq, to justify the invasion. This pressure continued even long after Saddam had fallen, so this was about as far as you can get from the Jack Bauer “ticking bomb” scenario used to justify torture, you know, after years of them denying they were torturing. Cheney, by the way, now claims the “enhanced” interrogations did establish such a link. And if you torture an Eskimo long enough, he’ll own up to an Alaska-al-Qaeda link, one more reason why experts don’t think torture is effective.)

On Obama’s watch, we’re still occupying two nations; and still killing their civilians with our bombs, plus kids and other innocents in Pakistan, a sovereign nation with which we are not at war. That’s not exactly endearing us to the locals, either. What’s our message to the world there: that, to protect our innocent citizens we’re willing to kill a bunch of yours?

Obama’s raised our military budget when for every sane reason I can think of we should be reducing it. He’s reinstating military tribunals, new, improved, not quite so unconstitutional as before! He’s invoked the national secrets act to thwart legal justice. He’s still allowing gays to be tossed out of the military. Jon Stewart made an excellent point on his show: To gain whatever advantage we can in the War on Terror, we’re willing to abandon centuries of American moral and legal standards, to torture people, yet we can’t abide having a gay in uniform, even if he’s one of the rare guys who speaks Arabic, so we could know what the prisoner being tortured is saying?

On that, healthcare and other issues, Obama’s making wrong, compromised choices. With so much on his plate, I think he’s taking wrong advice on which fork to use. Justice. Fairness. Reason: we’ve tried the other stuff; let’s give them a try.

Of course, maybe he’s now privy to secrets that would chill our hearts. Those treacherous Eskimos! Or maybe Al Qaida’s teamed up with Gamera, who even now is using his fiery turtle breath to melt the polar ice caps. See, Sen. Inhofe was right all along!

Did I mention that my elbow hurts?

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