Talk... Talk... Talk...

So, tonight CNN (and lovely Anderson Cooper) will be giving the Democratic candidates the opportnity to debate questions submitted by geek obsessed watchers through YouTube.

So, as a sort of experiment of my own, I've decided to join the insanity by blogging my own reactions to the debate on Washington's Cousin. So... if you're interested make a click over there and let's see how this goes.

That's what friends are for...

In the post I wrote last week (yeah... I apologize... very lax of me... no proper discipline here... sorry) I included a tune by Bruce Cockburn that means a lot to me these days because the single thing that has gotten me through the hard times, down times, strange times of the last two years is a small group of friends who lie scattered all over the country. There are three (in New England, Colorado and Los Angeles) whom I have known for 25 - 30 years and who know me as well as anyone on the planet, and in some cases, better than I know myself.

One of those friends is visiting me this week from New England. We are trying to catch up on thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams and we are discussing the possibility of doing some work together when we get to the end of this week of reconnection. It's a strange dynamic and I don't know at this point where it will go. What I do know, from just the few hours we've been together, is that, as always, Zach is as much a part of me as I am a part of myself.

There are a few other, more recent friends - in New Orleans, in Petaluma, in England - who have moved with me through my life and who put up with my bullshit like real troupers and who share their lives with me in a way that makes moving through life on the planet easier, more comfortable, and more endearing. These are people with whom I don't have the kind of history I have with my oldest friends, but they are people who I think, and hope, will be with me for the rest of this journey of my life.

The presence of Zach in my house and heart this week has me thinking, gratefully, about all of these people. I really don't think I would survive without y'all. I'm sure that I wouldn't want to.

You gotta have friends!

Live Earth Retro 1

Okay okay.... I haven't been doing a very good job with my "I will write every day" resolution but part of the reason for that is that there has been so much else going on in the world this past week that all I have time for is trying to make up for the time I've lost. Between the fact that the Fourth of July in the U.S.A. is a lost day (even if, like me, you spend most of it working) and the fact that the entire day I planned on spending doing work on Saturday instead got consumed by my obsessively watching Live Earth on something between four (as seen above with Melissa Etheridge, Snoop Dogg, UB40, and Sarah Brightman simultaneously breaking global and temporal barriers) and nine (the total number of different concerts) screens on my computer for 12 hours (with an additional 2 hours given over to watching the late night recap) I have spent all the rest of my available time sitting in front of my computer and battering out new work in the hope of pulling in rent, making up for clients who haven't paid me, and just generally covering my ass.

In any case... If you missed the Live Earth shows you really need to spend some time at the website where they are running lots of interesting song selections and lots of appropriate pro-earth propaganda.

The last time I spent an entire day watching world wide concerts was Live Aid back in 1985 and it proved the precursor to a HUGE burst of creative production that began with a music project only a month later, an ongoing production relationship that lasted for nearly ten years and resulted in the best production work of my life (so far), the increase of some wonderful long term relationships, the greater development of some others (y'all know who you are) as well as my first published writing and, ultimately, the 17 year relationship that still defines my life despite the fact that it met its demise over two years ago.

Some part of me, at nearly every minute of that 14 hours, hoped and longed that maybe this would not only be a day of breakthrough for the planet, but another day of breakthrough for me.

Happy Independence Day!

So it's that day when people all over the U.S. will gather about grills and burn animal flesh to consume in celebration of the birth of our country, then we'll listen to music and explode pretty firecrackers and celebrate the way this country was created - in the flash of powder and the slash of sword.

There will be a lot of war mongering for Dubya's current fantasies masked as patriotism and historical reflection, but it is Springsteen's recasting of an old Pete Seeger song that best describes the way I feel today. Our country was founded in the belief that we did not want to be oppressed by another power from across the ocean. It is time for us to acknowledge that the way to show respect for those we ask to protect us is to ask them to do JUST that, and to keep them safe from the wild excursions of greedy men who would murder innocent people and sacrifice innocent soldiers in order to gain their own selfish, greedy, despicable ends.

For a bit of historical perspective you can have a look at an old version of the same song by Pete Seeger himself. When Pete sang this on network television the war was a different one but the circumstances, the issues, the excuses, and the greed were pretty much the same. Even some of the players still haven't changed.

[Note 07/01/08: Having just checked this post I find that the You Tube version of this song has been removed, which is really very sad... As a replacement, here's Pete's version of This Land Is Your Land, a song I discuss below.]

Next... is what I think of as my second favorite patriotic tune, Ray Charles' version of America the Beautiful He begins this version with the third verse (a technique that Bruce uses a lot as well) because it's the third verse that has the most interesting concepts and it's the verse that is least often played. In this verse he sings of how the country was first founded and how those founders sought to create a better life.

I am proud to be an American. You don't have to know me very long, or read too much of what I write to know that about me. I believe in the grander ideas that the founders of the country believed in even when they themselves were not capable of living up to their own ideal. I also believe in the ways that we have improved upon those ideas over the years and I hold out hope that we will continue to improve rather than fall backwards in some sort of political and personal devolution. This is the hope I hold when the fireworks start popping.

Finally, on Thom's Happy Historical Holiday Hit Parade come two versions of what is absolutely my FAVORITE patriotic song, Woody Guthrie's answer to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," the beautiful, inspiring, generally misunderstood "This Land Is Your Land."

When I was a kid in Florida my dad took me to a live outdoor presentation of The Skipper Chuck Show and we were led in a rollicking rendition of this song and something about it stuck. That afternoon was one of those strange and almost unbelievably life changing moments. I truly BELIEVE in this song. I believe in the land based beauty it describes, and I believe in the struggles of the people it celebrates, and I believe in the love and determination of the poet/songwriter.

Springsteen's version comes from twenty years ago on the Born In The USA tour, and touches at the heart of what the song means to me but Arlo Guthrie's amusing version here is particularly special to me when he gets to the last verse and declares... "Nobody livin' can ever stop me as I go walkin my freedom highway. Nobody livin' can make me turn back! This Land was made for you and me."

THAT is what the Fourth of July is about!

NOBODY can take away your heart... Not King George in London in 1776 and Not King George in Washington in 2007.

Happy Independence Day!

Requiem Aeternum

Chris Roberts was a biker... a hot shot motorcycle rider... something that is not all that common in New Orleans, but something that he loved. He was murdered on Father's Day when he refused to let someone take his bike. You can read about him here. His murderer shot him in the evening, on Father's Day, and left another New Orleans baby without a parent. There are no official suspects or witnesses.

The folks at Confederate Cycle, where Chris worked, have created a video of his run out at the Bonneville Salt Flats a while back and when I discovered it this morning I just had to pass it on. There's nothing in it but pictures of someone doing what they most loved to do... but that's what living is really about and that's what we're missing with each person who is taken from us, whether in New Orleans, or Oakland, or Baghdad.

The video of Chris is here, and it's worth the time to watch and listen, and maybe even pray.

In the same paper this morning there was a story about someone else - this person, known only to those close to him because the police aren't releasing information - shot further uptown in a neighborhood not far from my house (in fact it's a neighborhood I went walking through the morning I was last in NOLA) and an accompanying story about the case against the murderer of Dinerral Shavers, the Hot 8 Brass Band drummer, being dropped because the witness wouldn't testify.

I didn't know any of these folks personally, but I miss them all. Their deaths have made my life poorer because of their absence in the world. I don't know how we stop this, but I keep thinking a lot about Gandhi's remark that you must become the change you want to see in the world.

I just keep wondering... Can I possibly change enough?