Seven

Stop the madness America. Stop. Stop. Stop. No more American Idol. What America needs is less mind numbing television and more truth. Ah bugger.

The more I think of just the name of the series, American Idol, the more ridiculous I think it is. Now I'm not mocking the performances, the work, the toil these people, many of them incredibly talented. What irritates me to no end is the American Idol machine. So corrupt. So ugly. So inartistic. Unatural. That singing, something that people listen to or do to feel emotions should be taken and put on display in a way that it is simply left to commodity and popular opinion is infuriating to me. I was on Union square several months ago when this fat 350lb. black woman was struggling with her bags. She was in her 50's. Nothing to do, I offered her some help. She told me she was just crossing the street. The traffic flowing south on Broadway and Fourteenth St. is not a place to drop bags in the middle of the street I thought fine and helped her. I then asked her for a light, as a kind of payment. I had one but she seemed an interesting character and I thought, I'll light a cigarrette and listen to her five minutes and go on my merry way. I was standing there on the corner observing the hustle and bustle and she started telling me she was a singer. I told her I played music and sang too. I played something from my phone to her. She liked it and started singing Arabic. My curiosity piqued. A young black kid in his twenties stopped and listened. This was all going on where the shoestore is. Hundreds of people are walking by us and me and this guy have a free concert. He told her it was beautiful, and that he wasn't happy especially since his mother had recently died and it touched him. So she started singing again, this time in english grasping the kid's hands. I stood there wanting to leave but she had grasped my hand too. I was annoyed only because I had to leave at this point. But one thing kept me there, the human pain and the relief in the sung poetry, I couldn't tear myself away. The kid's eyes glossed over. She was singing and she had a voice. Weeks later I saw her singing in the subway on chance. I stopped for a moment to listen but I didn't end up saying anything. She had said it all. Where is this in the American Idol show? Cheapened by phone calls, commercials, contracts. Where is the human contact? And under what circumstances are we given this human contact, this soul touching? Under the influence of people making money while people sit at the television. There's no desire by the masses of people watching this crap to go out and listen to musicians in places. The young receive their musical food from television. We don't go to listen to music anymore, very few people sing anymore. We hear them on the subways now. The poets have moved there into the filth of the subway system. Perhaps it's fitting.