So I’m reading the paper a while back, and Alex Beam has a column in which he mentions that my pal Chuck E. Costa has been named the official Connecticut state troubadour for 2011 and 2012. Now, I live in Cambridge, which has an official poet populist (no laureates for us here, nosiree), and this got me thinking. I mean, I’ve been waiting for someone with real authority to take this troubadour thing by the horns – they’ve been doing this in Connecticut since 1992, but Massachusetts is virgin territory, state-troubadour-wise. But before we follow Connecticut’s lead, there’s a few things we probably ought to take care of.
It’s all gotta start with the uniform, of course. We troubadours have really let ourselves go, relative to, oh, say, the Renaissance. Chuck is a lovely man, and one of my favorite performers, but if you check out his official state troubadour photograph, he’s just a little underdressed. So first, I’m thinking: military. Epaulets the shape of guitar picks, striped pleated pants – six stripes, one for each string. That’s the dress uniform, of course. Daily-wear fatigues would be regulation troubadour camouflage, which, if I remember correctly, is coffee stains altering randomly with pastry crumbs.
And stationery – we definitely need stationery. The Massachusetts state logo would be part of it, of course, but the Office of the State Troubadour (OST) would have its own motto: “Victoria per carmen” (“Victory through song”). And then there’s the shield, which would feature, of course, a guitar on a field of small red dots, symbolizing the bloodstains you get when you prick your fingers with the ends of the strings. It lends a certain gravitas, I think.
Official responsibilities? You betcha. Obviously, the grand opening of each new musical venue requires the presence of the OST, in dress uniform. But that’s merely ceremonial – the real work begins with the yearly surprise inspection of each open mike. The regulatory malfeasance around open mikes is astonishing – half of them don’t even serve decent coffee anymore. It’s about time that we whipped them back into shape, and the state troubadour is just the guy to do it.
Now, some of you are probably thinking: in a state with three successive House Speakers simultaneously under indictment (or so it seems), do we really want to set up another office answerable to no one? And it’s true that there’s always the danger of the power going to one’s head. For instance, in Kentucky, the state troubadour received a bribe from coal giant Massey Energy to ban the performance of mining disaster songs (as if that would help). The obvious answer to the corruption issue is to ensure that the state troubadour is paid a sufficient salary that she won’t be tempted to show any undue favoritism, or, heaven forfend, be tempted by an offer to enter the private for-profit troubadour sector. (On the other hand, this hasn’t worked for any other Massachusetts state office, so maybe we just have to live with the risk.)
Now that we’ve got the outline of the office sketched out, I think it’s time to acknowledge that I’ve formed an exploratory committee to examine a possible run. I’m sure it’ll be a brutal campaign – the debates will likely be a source of considerable negotiation – but in the end, I’ll be gratified to serve my home state in this honorable office. My campaign manager will be contacting you in the near future about your interest in the position of municipal troubadour in one of our 351 cities and towns, which is by appointment only and controlled entirely by the OST. Campaign contributions would be most welcome.