They Were On Hard Drugs

I Cannot Tell A Lie

Mark Rushton’s Perseverance in the Arts is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.

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Mark Rushton Gallery - for original paintings, metal prints, and tote bags.

License my music, sound fx, and illustrations at Pond5 for your creative project.

I’m on Bandcamp. And all the usual streaming services. I do all my streaming listening via Qobuz, a service that actually sounds great and pays artists.

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This week’s topics:

• Goodbye Notes

• Parson Weems’ Fable of the Deconstruction

• Julian Cope - “They Were On Hard Drugs”

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Goodbye Notes

While I continue to keep my mailing list on Substack - it’s a good platform for that sort of thing - but Substack’s Notes app, a combination of Twitter and 2008-era Facebook, got deleted from my devices this past week.

I tried to make it work, treating Notes like a magazine, but it was too much of a chore and I couldn’t stand the noise. 

The Notes algorithm seemed to promote Instagram and LinkedIn refugees who think announcing their Follower count is vital to their well-being.  Never mind the content, here’s my latest Subscriber Count.  That got old quick.

The other reason I left Notes was seeing the perpetually aggrieved. They’re on every platform, in different flavors.  There’s nothing wrong with being a grump, but if your cognitive dissonance requires you to write endlessly about how the First Amendment should be suspended for some people, I can’t be around you.

What kind of a writer or artist is against the First Amendment?  Apparently, a lot of them. And they’re writing on Substack Notes.

Is this the “Artificial Left” I’ve been hearing about?

My late father was very anti-war, even though he was drafted into the Army and was in the Reserves. As a young child, I remember going along with him to Friends meetings in Des Moines during the Vietnam War. He distrusted the military-industrial complex. He also distrusted the corporate media after seeing them repeatedly hypnotizing the masses to manufacture consent for every war and conflict after Vietnam. Our “freedoms” always seemed to be tied to some ginned up bullshit going on halfway around the world.

He wrote letter after letter to newspapers over the decades, expressing his opinion about every conflict, and giving a lot of historical context. If you need a bibliography for any of that, it’s in my mom’s basement.

I have thought about compiling his letters them into a book. It would be huge. And quite the history lesson.

His voting decisions were always framed around being anti-war, so a lot of the candidates he backed in primaries never made it on the ballot. And his choice in the general elections always upset one or both sides of the partisans.

It didn’t upset me. I knew how he was based.

One year, he had a sign for an obvious Democrat for one office and an obvious Republican for another office in the front yard. It looked like somebody was playing a prank.

I don’t look at newspapers anymore. I don’t watch “the news” either. I definitely don’t read anything on the internet, not with all the pop-ups. I do go through some aggregators, but as you can see I’m very sarcastic and question everything.

There are a lot of single issue voters out there. On all sides. But did you ever think that the politicians never solve certain matters because they know they can fundraise forever on the divisiveness? It’s a unique angle to view political matters from and, I think, an accurate take.

My dad kept a lot of junk mail around, mostly political candidates or various causes, and I had to go through all of it in the past 13 months. But the fundraising letters drove me a little crazy because I saw the same letters, over and over again. Always asking for money. Like a TV preacher.

Substack Notes wasn’t the right thing for me. I don’t think anything is right for me.

I do think it’s a good idea for everybody to take a step back from reactionary-based social media and to quit feeding the beast. How do you think the billionaires keep making their money?

Maybe it’s time to go look at some art.

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Parson Weems’ Fable of the Deconstruction

Parson Weems, and that wasn’t his real first name, conjured up the phony story, described as a “fable”, about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree as a kid and then later admitting it to his Pa when asked. 

Awww, isn’t that virtuous?

Weems made up a lot of stories back in the day.  Fake news and history revisionism were the orders of the day, and still are.  Most people will believe any story fed to them.  And Weems’ sugary fable was fed to school kids over the centuries. 

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story that is earning you money.

Grant Wood, the painter, whose biting and sarcastic sense of humor I caucus with, created the painting “Parson Weems’ Fable”.  To call this a brilliant painting is an understatement. 

As you can see in the painting, the curtain is pulled back, like when the Wizard of Oz was being exposed. It shows little Georgie, with a face off a dollar bill, having hacked a cherry tree.

Meanwhile, the slaves he will inherit are in the back of the painting, doing all the work.

Ah, that Grant Wood... 

I do like to question historical narratives.

Does it make sense that a bunch of guys in New England decided to start a war with King George III over a small tax on tea? 

When I was growing up, the sales tax in Iowa was 3%, and now it’s around 7%.  We’ve got property taxes, license fees, state income tax, the lottery, $10 a pack ciggies, people tied to oxygen tanks gambling at casinos, and every other method to wring money out of the workers.  I don’t see anybody rioting.

A while back, when the pro-weed crowd discovered Washington’s diaries had entries about him “sexing” his plants, you kinda wonder what was really going on in the 18th century. 

I get the feeling everybody back in the day was on various drugs, and that’s the way it’s always been. 

FDR’s grandpa, Warren Delano Jr, made his fortune by importing Chinese opium to the US.  He managed to get a lot of mothers and babies hooked on the opiate patented medicines.  Who knew that tweakers have been around that long?

And everybody’s on something today.

It’s like that Julian Cope song, “They Were On Hard Drugs”. 

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Julian Cope - “They Were On Hard Drugs”

I’ve always liked Julian Cope. I was never into Teardrop Explodes, but I liked his mid 80s slick garage-pop. By the early 90s, he had left record labels and released recordings independently, which made them difficult to find and follow. Cope began writing books about stone circles, Krautrock, and Japrock, and I’ve read some of them. I’m a huge fan of his 1992 album, Jehovahkill, as was Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant. Cope’s web site, Head Heritage, is fun to go through.

“They Were On Hard Drugs” was probably knocked out in an hour, and the lyrics are cheeky, but it’s probably true.

Listen on Qobuz: https://open.qobuz.com/track/237786848

Wear good headphones. I like Grados.

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