~ ~ ~



Jasmine knows it should never have been about him, the small struck-down man. It should have been about what he stood for; she knows that. But she can’t separate the two nor, she finally reasons, should they be separated. Democrazy, as she calls it, isn’t about abstractions, it’s about the humanity behind abstractions, the candidate’s persona that becomes inextricable from accompanying convictions.

She doesn’t believe that she has the right to leave Los Angeles, the scene of the crime. She drifts back into a music business that’s on an altogether different level from when she was managing hardscrabble Andover bands in London trying to get a hit single; now everyone’s an Artist. No one makes singles but rather magna opera with librettos delivered in spectacular gatefolds, right up to the altogether new pretension of librettos disappearing and gatefolds going blank. Her role never has been about aesthetics. It’s about managing the lives that have gotten as extravagant as the product — bands with private planes, dressing rooms with liquor and drugs and candy of a designated color, naked girls of every color in closets wrapped in red bows. On the rare occasion when someone tries to coax her from music back to politics, she answers, “No one’s ever going to assassinate a songwriter, even in this country.”


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