Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

It sometimes seems to me that Law has been reduced to its most primitive condition, in the belief that is the only way to achieve a semblance of justice, to defeat Chaos. People increasingly need to prove themselves victims in order to achieve any kind of equity. This demeaning demonstration creates nothing less than a nation of powerless petitioners and petty litigants appealing to an unresponsive paternalism.

The von Beks learn, frequently the hard way, that if we’re to regain Paradise, we can only do so by making our ideals active, our sentiments positive, and our values demonstrable. It means self-discipline, self-reliance, and all the other values of our inner city streets where nowadays it takes real courage to survive and keep your aspirations and value system intact, where the drug economy supplies the work, the status, and at least the illusion of power.

The writer’s job is to turn the unspeakable into words — not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.