May 02, 2002 Brooklyn, NY
Hey everybody, It's that time of the month again.
The day after May Day finds me in a little bar in Brooklyn drinking an afternoon Red Stripe a good non-potent daytime beer....
The scale of New York seems impossible to capture it can only be witnessed. Just as those 8"x10" calendars hanging from magnets on the refrigerators of dilettantes cannot compare to seeing the actual brushstrokes of Marc Chagall hanging at the Met (and the Met is free, whereas the calendars will set you back $12.95). In our first hours here, Anne and I made an excursion to Ground Zero. Again, it is scale. There is no big-screen TV big enough to capture the view of devastation from God's own home entertainment system.
I remember seeing the World Trade Center in person back in 1998. For years I had thought the two buildings looked like the boxes that the Chrysler and Empire State buildings came in. Nothing better to do, I lay on one of the sidewalks between them as close to the center as I could surmise and looked up. From that vantage point, the two vanishing points nearly merged until only a thin ribbon of heaven was visible between them. At that time, there was a sculpture between them dedicated to world peace. I remember thinking it was ironic that a tribute to world peace would be placed so squarely at the center of world trade.
The sculpture itself was an abstraction of the globe. Looking as if Mother Earth herself had had molten gold poured upon her from atop the twin towers, like the Sherwin-Williams Paint logo (you know, with the can of paint raining down on the globe). It was a gilded Earth. As if an earth paved in gold was the multinational conglomerates' view of world peace. Or, it was as if there were medieval warriors atop the towers who had seen the Earth herself about to breach the castle walls and so poured molten gold atop her to keep her from storming the ramparts protecting world trade. The Anti-Globalization movement will not be stopped by such antediluvian tactics. See you in Kananaskis.
We all know the events that have unfolded in our recent past. We all know how the center of world trade has fallen to the force of a perverted faith-based initiative. Newsweek magazine even tells us it is now passe to discuss them.
The sculpture somehow survived and now stands battered in Battery Park, its meaning altered. It seems to be asking, "What have we learned?"
The abstraction of the Earth stands beaten - huge holes blown in her side. Her abstruse golden armor was no protection from the force of devastation a testament that greed and avarice will be brought down. And if we do not begin to do so voluntarily, the weight of her collapse will kill more innocents. There is a way to stop it. Far too many people died in the rubble at Ground Zero. May their deaths not be in vain. May we all see the symbolism of the monument at Battery Park for the wake-up call that it is. May the message not be cheapened by Teddy bears and aluminum-foil heart-shaped helium balloons.
So much has gone down this month I have imbibed such a variety of protest it leaves me confused and enthused. For example, May Day at Union Square Park: Fifty old communists sitting on folding wooden chairs with oxygen tanks and walkers surrounded by a multinational conglomerate construction zone using much of the strength they have left to hold their fists in the air as "The Internationale" is sung. "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!" There is a smattering of folding tables covered with tired photocopies of "The Little Red Song Book" held down by chunks of concrete. A band of businessmen, unaware that it is May Day, sit on the wall eating Thai food with plastic forks from Styrofoam containers. One or two young anarchists circulate flyers and otherwise look uninterested.
The wind is howling scattering the park with leaflets and song lyrics. But still "The Internationale" hangs in the air like stale smoke. The gas-powered generator runs out of gas mid-song, causing the sound system to sputter silent. Fifty elderly voices warble, "Arise! ye wretched of the earth!" and somehow cut through the sound of jackhammers erecting a new Office Depot. The soundman dodders across the front of the stage toting a red plastic gas can. Another handful of young anarchists dressed in black wander up and clumsily thumb through sheets of photocopied lyrics that are flying in the breeze. They too begin to sing: "Justice thunders condemnation!" The voices mix. The sound system sputters back on. The stale smoke dissipates and is superseded by sweet African incense. "A better world's in birth!" In the fleeting few moments of the third and final chorus, it feels as if we could actually win. It's a fine old conflict. Exuberance emerges.
Thanks,
Chris and Anne
June 10 2002 Somewhere North of Baton Rouge, LA
Hey everybody,
It is that time of the month again. This will be brief Sorry so late this month I have been at the
Kerrville Folk Fest for the past 18 days! Kerrville is hard to explain. Ya know how when you are driving across Texas say somewhere between Fort Stockton and El Paso and you're thinking "is thre any where on earth worse than where I am at this instant." I mean, if you just took a snap shot it is the most God forsaken spot on earth.
However, after about 600 miles you start to hallucinate you become hypnotized something transcendent begins to happen and before you know it you are transported to some new level of consciousness. You can see all of creation in a single protruding from a cactus. That is Kerrville. After 18 days of the hot sun, long nights, no sleep, forgetting to eat, not forgetting to drink, songs upon stories upon river trips upon, cold showers and forgetting not to drink the ranch water your delirium becomes divine.
That is why this whirled retort is so brief. I am now decompressing in Baton Rouge about to head for my former home New Orleans. Perhaps the debauchery of New Orleans is the only way to balance the Kerrville Folk Festival. New York City may be the city that never sleeps but New Orleans is the city that never sleeps alone. And in the words of Biff Rose, "If you can't make it in New Orleans don't leave."
Thanks you all for the correspondences. Keep it up more next time.
Love,
Chandler
* Canada Day * Calgary, AB
(Anne insisted that we celebrate her birthday where it's a national holiday.)
Hey Everybody,
It's that time of the month again. We're here in Calgary having our morning coffee fixing to drive out to Lake Louise. I don't know if you've ever been here but the Canadian Rockies make the American Rockies look like those landfills in Florida. Seeing the Canadian Rockies is the only time in recent history when I have been wholly awe-struck. This will be a well-deserved respite after a long month fraught with lots of hard travel, more fulfilling work than one can afford, and two major breakdowns (totaling $3400 US or $143,000 Canadian.) Roget's Thesaurus equates "fulfilling" with: "does not pay." This would be OK except that even after all the anti-
globalization protests, seminars and workshops we've been to this month it still takes money to live. Damn it there I was thinking we were doing a good job.
Anne and I have been here in Calgary protesting the G-8 Summit. Well, the summit wasn't actually in Calgary. It was in a remote compound 60 miles away called Kananaskis. There was more money spent on security for the G-8 than the combined gross national products of the
bottom 8 (or B8 if you will.) Upon arrival, the leaders of the G-8 were presented with fine Stetson Cowboy hats. (Calgary is the home of the internationally acclaimed "Stampede" after all.) The cost of the hat, combined with the first-class round trip airfare to Cowtown is greater than the average annual per capata income of an entire family in Bangladesh, Somalia or Haiti (all members of the B-8.) After 400 million dollars spent on security they did finally make one
arrest the 400 Million Dollar Man. Yes folks, the B8s are going to have to learn to tighten their belts again, but at least Murray Vanbumsickle has been incarcerated for the crime of spray
painting, "Make love not money!" on the side of an ATM.
So there was no violence, tear gas, or pepper spray. Therefore, DO NOT believe the rumors that the new hole in the face of Anne's guitar came from a barrage of rubber bullets. No, it happened in a song circle at the OM Fest when an overzealous festival-goer tossed a jug
of water to another, and missed. Not nearly as romantic I know, but still just as tragic. (her guitar is a 1968 Martin D-28 which she got for her 18th birthday she is the original owner, and it is the
only guitar she has ever owned. To view the damage visit www.annefeeney.com it should be posted soon)
The papers are calling Kananaskis the model for future summits: Meet in a secure compound significantly outside a major accessible city as opposed to Qatar, Siberia or the space shuttle (to create some kind of playpen for the protestors so they can feel as if they are
exercising their rights) infiltrate them with undercover cops dressed in black bandanas (how come we can't dress as cops and go to their meetings?) then pat the protestors on the head by printing a couple of papier mache puppets on the front page of the newspaper and no one gets hurt (or heard.) The Oiligarchy reigns supreme.
So look forward to this plan at future G-8 meetings as well as the IMF, GATT, WEF, NATO, OPEC, the UN, the SPCA, and the PTA hell if they could just get the NFL to meet in some secure compound surrounded by barbed wire, a no fly zone and four check points to get
in the protected sanctuary Oh wait they do it's called the Super Bowl. (Did you see it this year? They wheeled out a very old man masquerading as Paul McCartney to sing about "Freedom" flanked by a papier mache statue of the Iwo Jima monument and the World Trade Center Fire Fighters while the audience was being frisked. I only bring this up because football season starts this month.)
Here, Anne and I were expecting to get embroiled in direct action and flew out to Calgary to roll up our sleeves. However, the best direct action from this tour was back in Peterborough, ON. There, we had a rally in front of City Hall for affordable housing. We then wheeled a mock public housing Project onto the front lawn of City Hall. The group will proceed to live in that house until they are heard. You should have seen this house rolling down the street being pulled by a
dozen pierced 20-somethings chanting "The people United Will never be defeated." Unfortunately, I misunderstood their Canadian accents and thought they were shouting: "The pizza uneaten will never be reheated."
Truthfully, the Calgary protests were peaceful, kinder and gentler. We got to do shows with Bruce Cockburn, the Raging Grannies, Bread and Puppet Theatre and even met Jello Biafra in a punk club.
Marches, Meetings, Mantras, Minutiae, Mache. The front line of demonstrators were papier mache puppets, which made sense since the dignitaries at the summit were also papier mache puppets (protected by 60 miles of tanks, jet fighters and very nervous 20-somethings
armed with M-16s.) However, the front line of "protection" in Calgary was led by very photogenic, media friendly bicycle cops. Kinder Gentler Riot Gear, or maybe urban couriers gone bad. I envision the oil-thirsty big shots looking puzzled at the pictures of the cops on bicycles saying, "What are those things? Do they run on regular or unleaded?" I am sure they saw the footage of the protestors marching and singing folk songs. I know this because we
gave them ideas. They were photographed sitting around a globe divvying up the world's resources among themselves while singing Woody Guthrie: "This land is my Land, (here, I'll take Sri Lanka) This land is your land" (OK, you take Bangladesh.)
The newspaper called the protestors "self-absorbed" in that the protestors were armed with more cameras than tofu hotdogs. I found that notion kind of ironic since if the newspapers would actually report what is happening we wouldn't feel a need to create our own Indie Media Centers. I somehow picture these Multi-Media Magnates complaining "Hey! How come we spent all this money to consolidate all the news sources if these people are just going to go out and start their own."
Speaking of such thank you all for the correspondence during the tenure of this little newsletter an alternative news source of sorts. We look forward to a series of dates coming up on the west coast!!!
****
Anne and Julie are getting married in Sweden on August 10th. They are registered at the anarchist bookstore in Madison Wisconsin. Following a brief honeymoon in Ireland, Anne will resume hellraising by labor day weekend.
****
I will be attending my 20th high school reunion in August (yes, I graduated high school). I have to miss representing my adopted city of Pittsburgh in the National Poetry Slam in Minneapolis to attend.
Pittsburgh, PA 7-31-02
Hey everybody,
It's that time of the month again. I am down the street at my little neighborhood bar here in
my new-est hometown of Pittsburgh. Actually, I have spent more nights at Kerrville, TX's Quiet
Valley Ranch than I have in Pittsburgh. I guess now that I think about it, Kerrville's "Camp
Stupid" would be more like my neighborhood bar than the Pub in the Park. But the pub is two
blocks from Anne's house and on those rare nights we have had off I walk over here. Though
I have only been here about 5 times in 2002 I feel like a regular. Business must be off the
bartender just called ME by name.
Jeez, just since last month it has been Calgary, Hamilton, Pittsburgh, Washington, DC, Santa
Cruz, Seattle, Portland, Eugene, the Oregon Country Fair, Tacoma, Port Townsend,
Bellingham, the Vancouver Folk Fest, the Island's Folk Fest and just yesterday we arrived back
here to 'da 'burgh on what was apparently Vanguard's last flight. Tomorrow, I fly to Lawrence, Kansas.
And if all that is not enough insanity, Anne is both getting audited by the IRS and married to
a Swede! What I am trying to say is¡ up the street the paperwork is flying. The heat is
unbearable and the complex array of ceiling and window fans spray official documents around the house like Lance Armstrong's welcome home tickertape parade. We're talking immigration
files, marriage license applications, phone bills, and a receipt to some place in Copenhagen
called Havenjaakk's Haus of Sin (which I am sure is deductible.) Needless to say, I felt it would be a good time to head for the Pub in the Park.
It is no real surprise to me that Anne is being audited. I mean who can decipher the infrastructure that companies like World Com, AOL/Time Warner and Enron are built on. And if
you start dismantling that house of cards the whole economy would collapse, we'd count the cards and have tangible proof that the deck was stacked all along. The only solution is audit
folk singers.
Auditing a folk singer? That's like panhandling in a homeless shelter. I am sure the
auditor's annual salary is greater than all of the taxes owed by the entire roster of the American
Federation of Musician's Local 1000 for the fiscal year of 2002. But I guess it is what they
have to do.
therwise we would have to endure months of George W Bush's whiny rhetoric. "We will see to
it that these corporate criminals will hear the words "significant jail time" (note: once Bush
has uttered that phrase, the corporate criminals have indeed heard the words...) Forest W. Gump is better at Clintonspeak than Clinton. When you translate his "tough talk on corporate duplicity speech" he basically says, "As long as the crime was not committed before they
became an official cabinet member these crooks will see the inside of a jail cell."
Hmmm... see the inside of a jail cell... Now, I mentioned earlier in the letter, I was in Washington, DC this month and I noted a series of tours through a federal prison with shuttle
busses leaving daily from key locations in and around the executive branch office buildings. I
wonder if it is a coincidence.
Audit a Folk Singer Perhaps their thinking is "Arthur Andersen's accountants are better than
ours we need to go after people who produce numbers we can understand. "Let's see here you performed at the Nameless Coffeehouse for thirty seven dollars and eighty four
cents in tips. You spent $15 at the copy cat photocopy service and drove 316 miles to get there that means you made.. $243 in profit and owe us $3643.97 in taxes.
Perhaps the laid off Arthur Andersen employees have become desperate enough to
work for us now and we could say - well I made $37.84 at the Nameless Coffee House but due to a 14% investment in the copy cat photo copy service and the rest in the gas station hot dog division of marathon petroleum, we show a profit and should consider going public. So, we began offering shares in the flying poetry circus at $47 and after a successful run at the "The Neutral Ground, "The Common Grounds," the "The Shaky Grounds" and the "Grounds for Divorce" shares have now stabilized at a more reasonable $689. It is time for the CEOs to get out but not before stealing the tip jars from every barrista that ever worked at the "Burial Grounds." Then we would never get audited for it would be clear what a house of cards folk music is built on.
Me, I'd be happy to pay an income tax. I'd also be happy to pay a luxury tax. I'd be happy
to pay an inheritance tax. I would love for my offspring to pay an estate tax. But you do have
to have an estate, inheritance, luxury and yes, an income to pay taxes on it. Hell I would have
insurance if there was something worth insuring. Personally I've always believed that before
State Farm Insurance there were... Good Neighbors. (I have to add here as I sit in the pub in
the park that "Entertainment Tonight" is running a woeful piece on the financial troubles of
Michael Jackson.) But, in the mean time, I have no credit...'cept maybe the kind that matters...
"Barkeep, could ya put this next one on my tab? I am a regular after all."
****
Now that festival season is over we are slowing down a bit. In the big picture we are looking
for something that could get us to Texas before the year is out ¨C if any of you have any ideas
please let us know ¨C Also, we are thinking bout New England in November ¨C we have a date in Northampton November 9 that we want to build from.
****
Anne gets married August 10th in Sweden they are now registered at Arthur Andersen.
****
Chris' 20th high school reunion in Atlanta in August (yes he graduated high school.)
****
Look for a possible tour with Dan Bern in December
Indianapolis, IN September 1, 2002
(Labor Day)
Hey everybody. It's that time of the month again...
Well, it's been a great month for me. Anne and I had been on the road constantly since Mid-April, but this month I took off... Anne was away in Sweden tying the knot, so I went back to Stone Mountain, GA, to do a few solo shows and visit the folks. It was a nice coincidence that it happened to be my high-school reunion.
The notion of how we never change from high school has been written about interminably. I suppose it is for a reason. At my reunion, I found myself with an urge to smoke cigarettes in the bathroom. The reunion was not in Stone Mountain. No, Stone Mountain is apparently not a place one should be proud of coming from. Ya see, since I grew up there she has gone from being the backwoods confederate memorial and home of the Ku Klux Klan -- Martin Luther King said in his "I had a dream" speach: "Let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia." -- to being a black middle-class suburb of Atlanta. The town recently elected a black mayor. So my high school's response? Pretend we came from somewhere else... They decided to have the reunion in a rich white section of Atlanta known as Dunwoody. Oh, say, 20 miles from where I grew up. The food was bad and the drinks were expensive.
I had gone to the trouble of putting together a little photo album of pictures from the crowd I ran with. Not only were none of them at the reunion, no one who was there even recognized the people in photographs. Now, granted, most of the people I ran with are most likely in jail now or otherwise unreachable. But, all the popular people, the football players and cheerleaders of yore, were there clamoring for fresh awards. "Least Changed," and "Most Successful" were among the possibilities. Twenty years later, these people were still stabbing each other in the back to get meaningless awards.
Needless to say, conversations about growing up in the late '60s and early '70s in Stone Mountain, GA, with all of its history were going to be impossible. I felt like an alien. Come to think of it, I did back in high school, too. Yes, the notion of how we never change from high school has been written about interminably. I suppose it is for a reason.
The next day, I looked up an old buddy Larry -- whom I had not seen in years and who had not been at the reunion -- and drove out to see him at his place in the suburbs. We went down to his posh finished basement for cocktails and perhaps a dangerous stroll down that blind alley known as memory lane. He reminded me of a few incidents I had forgotten like my debate with "student government types" in which I suggested that they pave the football field to ease the parking problem in the neighborhood. Or the time we stole boxes of candy bars from the cheerleaders and sold them, like they did, under the guise of doing something for the school. Only our idea was to build a shelter over the smoking area (Yes, in Georgia we had
smoking permits.) We never did build the shelter but it made for good controversy.
We talked about the "manager" of the football team (BTW, "manager" is a fancy word for "waterboy" which is a fancy word for "ass-kisser") who hated us for these antics. Billy
Blythewood was a senior. We were eighth-graders or "sub freshmen" "subbies,"if you will. This guy was not only the waterboy but also the hall monitor and local fink. He prided himself in
having turned in eleven students on charges ranging from cutting class to smoking cigarettes. Early in my eighth-grade year, this guy actually locked me in the equipment cage after I talked back to him. Later, when I was discovered by several of the football players, I had a bucket of water poured on my head and then got covered with the powdered Gatorade mix. (Is it any wonder I attended five different high schools and actually graduated from a school for dropouts called Stone Mountain Adult? But I digress)
Eventually, we discovered the best way to deal with Billy Blythewood was to ignore him--to not recognize his authority. We just walked past him when he asked us for a hall pass or told us to come with him to see the real security guard.... Another method was to sing a little song we wrote about him. Neither one of us remembered much more than: "Billy Blythewood is the manager for the varsity football squad. He wears a letter jacket, but we know that he is a
fraud." We sang it whenever he confronted us. This had the effect of a stun gun. He would stand there immobilized, trembling. Then he would raise one finger and try to explain what an important job being the manager was while we walked off.
Anyway, enough about him. Back at my friend Larry's place, the night wore on. After a six-pack or so had passed, we managed to run out of anecdotes and found we had very little in common anymore.
He began waxing poetic about becoming prematurely middle-aged lamenting his subdivided life. His wife (also a classmate of mine) had left him a year earlier for a younger guy. We began talking about life hinging on the future rather than the past, AND THEN decided to take a stroll through his suburban neighborhood in the middle of the night. Along the freshly paved roads of Manor Oaks we walked, each dangling from our fingers the remains of a six-pack by its plastic rings. We wondered round cul-de-sacs, and past tasteful lawn statuary, snoozing SUVs, and mailboxes made to look like bird houses, past rolling trash cans lined neatly on the curb and bright blue recycling containers piled neatly with empty cans of Coors Lite.
We talked about the security of a security system and contrasted the insecurity of life on the road. Both choices have their chains, we concluded. Both chains can only be broken by understanding the alternative.
About the time we both began coming to some sort off an epiphany, we saw coming form behind us: the familiar blue lights of the DeKalb County Police Department. I suppose it is illegal to wander through the streets of the suburbs in the middle of the night contemplating
your own life and what it might become. Jeeze, ya might reach some conclusions that violate the Homeland Security Act. You might just find yourself with a desire to let the grass in your lawn grow past the required 2-and-3/4 inches. And God knows where that might lead.
The spotlight from the patrol car blinded us in our tracks. "I've seen the light" I thought. "And I'm going to jail."
A staticky voice pealed out between whirls of blue light. "Put your hands on top of your head." Larry and I looked to each other, stunned by both the overreaction and the familiarity of the
situation, and began to do as we were told. Then it hit me: Ignore it... Just like Billy Blythewood. I took another sip from my beer. The cop repeated his demand. Then I realized why it had hit me.
"Does that voice sound familiar to you?" I asked. "Is that" The officer adamantly repeated his demand as he stepped authoritatively from the patrol car.
"I think it is." Larry said as the officer stepped into the light.
Yes! Yes it was! It was indeed none other than Billy Blythewood. "The manager for the varsity football squad."
We both just started laughing - uncontrollably. "What's so funny?" he demanded in his best Clint Eastwood. It was clear he did not recognize us. Then as if cued by the Gods of Memory, we started singing his little song.
"He tries to impress the girls but we know they don't care at all The closest he'll come is the hole he drilled in the locker room wall."
His badge no longer seemed to matter. He became immediately powerless. As if by rote, he raised one finger up in the air.... The stun-gun still worked.
Larry and I looked at each other, shrugged and walked on down the road back to his house, listening in the distance to how being the manager really was an important job. From Larry's window, we could still see the blue lights twirling in the twilight. Billy Blythewood may still be standing in that same spot for all I know.
Such was my high school reunion. Now, it's back to work.
I am in Indiana at the moment we just participated in a Labor Day Parade. Yes, Anne is back in the States, and we are having a big party for her and her new Swedish husband, Julie, on the 7th of September. Then we have a few dates in the Baltimore area and Philadelphia. In October, look for us in the Midwest we would like to play Cincinnati, St Louis, and the Louisville area. If any of you have some ideas on places to play, please let us know. Also coming up is New England in November.
See you out there on the thin highways of fat America.
***********
Anne and Julie are having their US wedding party on the 7th here at the house (we have erected a circus tent in the back yard but Anne won't let me perform trapeze for her friends)
October 2002
Yes Folks it's the third anniversary of the Muse and Whirled Retort
That would make this Volume IV Issue I (hooray!) current subscription: 2500
Washington, DC
October first, year of our (well, some people's) lord: two thousand and two.
Hey everybody,
It's that time of the month again. There is a lot going on, solet's get started.... It's only 1600 words... get comfortable...
Here in our nation's capitol listening to the war drums beat louder. There's been a very odd rhythm created here lately. The hawks beat their drums while the doves march in the streets beating theirs. It ain't exactly music. Thousands dressed in black with helmets and shields marching past thousands dressed in black with helmets and shields. The main way you could tell them apart was the ones standing on the side were armed and the ones marching had better rhythm.
In Farragut Square, about 2,500 people gathered - Admiral Farragut
standing in the middle. Some anarchist climbed up and placed a peace flag in Farragut's outstretched hand. The man who said, "Damnthe torpedoes, full speed ahead," was waving the peace flag, pointingthe protestors toward the line of heavily armed cops. "Full speed a
head" David Rovics (http://www.davidrovics.com/>) For those of you playing along at home: a former bandmate and the voice and guitar on my Convenience Store Troubadours album
(http://www.primecd.com/cctroubadour.htm> )had climbed aboard a pickup truck with a sound system and was singing to an enthralled crowd. Anne and I performed a number to close out the concert and rally the group to march on to the World Bank. (http://www.ibewwebmasters.com/dc28.htm>
I loved the local news coverage asking penetrating questions like: "How have the protestors affected your morning commute?"
But they DID show our friend Jim Page (<http://www.jimpage.net/>) singing a parody of "This land" in which he comes full circle to say let's take this song back and finally sings the Woody chorus. Of coarse the news showed him singing the familiar chorus as an example of how tired the movement is. No, what is tired is lousy coveragelike that. What is tired is interviewing a drug addict banging on a plastic jug as the voice of the movement.
Would they ever go inside the World Bank and ask the janitor his opinion on debt relief and then present it as the future of the International Monetary Fund?
Let's see... This month saw the anniversary of September 11th, and as I watched the "must-see" commemorative specials, I foundmyself emembering where I was and what I was doing a year ago....
...And there I was thinkin' that the 20th century was never going to leave! He'd been hangin' round my house--sleepin' on my couch, puttering 'round my living room in his socks like Ozzie Osbourne (<http://www.covenantnews.com/baldwin020412.htm>), nothin' to say, burnt out, still an oil junkie, relivin' his past glory--aging chunky trophy wife, worthless irritating brats running around, small dogs soiling the carpet...
But then the 21st century flew aboard four airplanes right into my living room....
The pundits claimed his arrival united us all, and for a brief moment I believed thembecause for a brief moment we were united. The20th century had indeed left the house--I remember the moment well....
It was that split second right after the second plane hit...because up until then we'd all been clinging to the hope that the first plane had been some freak accident. But then, when the second plane hit we did indeed all unite--because for once we Americans collectively gasped, " What the hell is going on?"
All the pundits claimed that we had changed--but I want to know just how is it that we have changed? I mean besides the fact that you can no longer fly on an airplane with a pair of nail clippers....
Remember when all the pundits said we Americans would never go back to our reality-show lives, that the endless imagery of the Twin Towers falling would make us think reality itself was a goodenough show--and that Survivor would not survive--and there would be an end to shows like American Idol, Real World, and Who Wants to Marry a Republican?
But we have NOT changed. Even the American flags that once flew tattered on the antennae of gas-guzzlers have finally blown threadbare. New ones are consigned to the half-off bin at Wal-Mart, and so-called reality shows that depict a reality that I couldn't hallucinate (even during my drug days) are more popular than an Ecstasy-and-Viagra cocktail in a techno club.
But there was that moment that we all keep reliving: when the 20th century had indeed left the house. And in that moment, as the door shut behind him, I believed that the phoenix that we all knew would arise from the ashes of the 20th century might turn out to be a dove.
Then we saw Li'l W on the white house lawn, spatula in hand, wearing an apron that reads "United We Stand." Standin' in front of an giant George Foreman grill, big "We love to see you smile" smile on his face...serving up filet of dove and dove McNuggets. Made with his father's famous Texas Ranger bar-B-Q sauce.
And in that moment, I knew the 20th century hadn't left for good--No, Ozzie had just stepped out for a pack of cigarettes, and he was back in my living room! On a fresh oil jag, wearin' a T shirt with a picture of Saddam Hussein and a caption that reads, "This one'sfor my daddy."
And he plopped down on the couch, flipped on the war, like on NFL game day, bowl of chips in his lap, George still grilling dove in the yard-which is great, because Ozzie Osbourne's only claim to fame before starring in the most popular series on cable television was having bitten the head off a dove. Nows can you imagine being some Third World civilian, shaking in his bare feet that his country might be next... watching us watching a guy famous for biting the head off a dove? Trying to figure it out? It's as if Donald Rumsfeld had bitten it off himself... "Why do they hate us?"
Anyway...
...Ozzie, back on my couch, put on a red-white-and-blue Patriots jersey, slammed an oil can down on the coffee table, and shouted, "USA! USA! USA!" as the bombs began to fall.
As they fall, I think back to 9-11 and the pundits asking for that moment of silence. Every time I see the bombs falling--every time I hear those chants of "USA! USA!"--I wish SOMEONE would askfor another moment of silence, a year of silence, a millennium of silence.
But no one does.
And I realize that what they were really asking for with their moments of silence was for ME to be... well... silent.
And I was--well, as silent as I could be... as we bombed mud huts into the Stone Age. Giving birth to ten thousand more terrorists with each bomb that we dropped.
And now, the 21st century, who arrived with such a bang, now just sits there, laptop outta batteries, cell phone outta range. With all his instant communication, he fails to utter a word--`cept for some strained mumbles about an Indie Media Center, which go largely
unheard. Perhaps the 21st century, too, misunderstood what was meant by a "moment" of silence.
While the 20th is up to his same old tricks
"We'll prove Iraq has the bomb if we have to plant it on them ourselves."
"No, we can't find Osama--so Saddam will have to do."
Oh, what was it that P.T. Barnum said, "There is an American born every minute"?
I envision a new reality show, one much more wholesome. Perhaps it should be shot in black-and-white. It features George Senior, not Ozzie Osbourne, puttering around the summer house in Kennebunkport like Fred MacMurray. George Senior wearing a cardigan muttering to
himself what to do about those pesky kids: Neal and Jeb and Li'l George. We'll call it "My Three Sons."
Barbara, baking cookies in a Martha Stewart apron. Still feeling arrogant because she got HER picture on the one-dollar bill.
Millie is doing her doodie on rug.
Neal drops by to pick up his allowance. "Now, don't use all that on bail money again." She parries.
Jeb calls up and asks, "Daddy, if we introduce democracy into Iraq, does that mean Florida might be next?"
Li'l George comes over for his geography lesson. Dad tries to show him the difference between the Persian Gulf and the Persian cat.
And George looks at the globe as his father points. He sees the very place that civilization began--and something inside him stirs.
Something makes his tiny heart swell--just a little bit.
He points to Mesopotamia. Since he's the president, he gets one of those expensive globesyou know, the topographical kind....
He begins to caress the ridges with the curiosity of a child. His fingers follow the jagged ridges, gently petting the earth. He begins to stroke the Zagros mountains, his index finger nuzzling
across to the apex of Mount Sinai itself--and then traces the rugged seams formed by shifting tectonic plates, down to the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates--the cradle of civilization--to where man first became fruitful and multiplied, where God first gave man dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air and beasts of the field and over every creepy thing that creepeth over the earth.
He gets a lump in his throat. He realizes the implications and announces, "That's where the bombing begins!"
Civilization ends in the very place that it began....
Sometimes listening to George Bush is like reading the first chapter of Genesis (<http://www.thebible.com/>)in reverse. I mean, I know he has dyslexia and all...
"And in the end, the world was a shapeless chaotic mass."
"No, No, No, George, It's `In the beginning'--George, `the beginning!' Get it right!"
"And God said, `Let there be light.' And there was light...."
So George says, "We'll fix that!"
Is it any wonder why, in that region, as civilization was in its infancy, human beings wandering aimlessly through the desert found their liberation, their salvation, their hope, in a burning... Bush?
November 2002
October 30, 2002
St. Louis, Missouri
I have spent most of the month in the D.C. area mostly in Maryland, wary of my casual trespasses from bodega to liquor store to apartment complex amidst all of the sniper reports. The ordeal was happening all around me.
First we were told to be on the lookout for a white box truck. As fate would have it, I found myself driving a white box truck for a small theater company. Yes, I got pulled over for this infringement.
"Boy, I see you have a Florida driver's license."
"Ummm Yes, sir, I do."
"And whose truck is this?"
OK, I admit, even though it was the first time in my life I was actually thankful for being pulled over, I did indeed blow it. The truth is, I did not know whose truck it was.
"Ummm I dunno Ummm Sir, it belongs to a theater company in Bethesda I was, well I, uh No, sir I don't now the name of Yes, I am bald."
"So, do you live in Florida?"
"Well, ya see I don't, uh, really live in"
"And where DO you live?"
"Well, ya see, it's like this."
After about half an hour of this, they let me go.
Then the news reports the next day said to be on the lookout for a white van with a ladder rack.
Well, guess what the theater company had me driving next?
Practice did not get me any better. I was pulled over yet again
"I do not know where I live. I have no job. I am unsure of who owns this van. It has something to do with a theater company. I am doing the friend of a friend a favor and In the case? That's a guitar. No, really, it is. Open it."
Well, it was a guitar, and again they let me go. Thank God, they did not ask me to play it.
I admit: I did not mind the roadblocks and was in fact thankful for them but on the other hand I am genuinely thankful that we live in land that is free enough to have the possibility of a sniper.
Yes, I was thankful that such a horrible thing could exist. Freedom itself is dangerous. I hope it stays that way. What we really need is "Protection from all this safety."
The whole experience, combined with all of the reports of people no longer going outside, changing their lives, voluntarily relinquishing their freedom, led me to write this list of platitudes. I think we can all agree that Freedom is anything but free. Sometimes it is rather expensive.
If you would like to contribute to this list, please reply. You who read this newsletter are a wildly creative lot. I genuinely look forward to your response.
Freedom is:
being able to take flying lessons when you are of Arab descent.
She is a roadside diner -- open all night.
a full tank of gas.
a blank yellow legal pad sitting on the driver's-side seat of a $250 pickup truck, sold as is.
She is driving a white van with a ladder rack with a box of long-stem roses the sitting on the dash.
She is coffee black when on the run, with cream and sugar at sunset.
the ability to glance in the mirror and not notice yourself.
She is recognizing the wanton glint in a stranger's eye -- and not pursuing it, because you don't have to.
Freedom is dancing alone.
She dances with strangers.
Freedom is dancing with your lover,
dancing with your mother,
dancing with your ex.
On a cold day, Freedom is getting your tongue stuck on the frozen metal while giving a blowjob to a bronze statue of the city's fathers just because they need one so.
Freedom is using the word "blowjob" so that your list of platitudes will not wind up printed on a poster hanging in the bathroom of an insurance salesman living in the suburbs of a minor American city.
Freedom is free from want
a slave to want.
She causes premature reincarnation.
She is making eye contact with the blind.
She is drawing underarm hair on advertisements hanging in the subway then writing a letter to the ad company thanking them for printing the ads that way.
giving your hat to a total stranger just because she looks good in
it.
tipping well when you can't afford it.
She is waxing your moustache into a Salvador Dali just to let small children play with the curlicues.
Freedom is obeying stoplights you see on TV.
She is knowing that every morning is the morning after.
She is gathering a group of pedestrians for a rousing chorus of "No More Chanting!"
Freedom is thanking a god you don't believe in.
She is knowing that the world could be no more imperfect than if it were absolutely flawless.
She is losing a contest, shaking the hand of the winner, looking him in the eye, and saying, "No hard feelings."
Freedom is having hard feelings.
She is taking those hard feelings and tying them to a stick so that they can be used as a hammer to build a cathedral for the one who made you feel that way.
winning that same contest and spending all of the prize money on the runners-up.
She is giving credit to the space as one of the letters in the alphabet.
Freedom is a delicacy, a goal, laughter, a truth -- she is a weakness, a vice, a virtue.
She is burning your journals.
She is finding four pages ten days later lying unburned beneath the pile of still-smoldering ashes and considering it a sign to NEVER do that again.
She is the memories that the smell of bubblegum calls forth.
smoking cigarettes when you don't smoke, and not smoking when you do.
buying a raffle ticket and filling it out with the name of the woman who sold it to you.
Freedom is being congratulatory when she wins.
Freedom is filling your gas tank in Silver Spring, Maryland, when there is a white van with a ladder rack parked across the street.
Freedom is filling ten pages in the yellow legal pad found on the driver's-side seat of a $250 pickup truck.
Freedom is finishing the Muse and Whirled Retort.
******
Anne and I are planning a west coast trip in January starting in the Bay area and working our way up to Vancouver Island. If any of you have ideas, requests, demands if you are planning a political event, rally, riot, or Bar Mitzvah where you think the Flying Poetry Circus could fly, drop me a line.
We want to stop in Santa Cruz, the Bay, Redway, Nevada City, Ashland, the Oregon coast, Eugene, Corvallis, Salem, Portland, Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle, Chehallis, Bellingham, Orcas, Port Townsend, Vancouver, Victoria, Duncan, and anywhere in between.
If you know of a spot, please let us know.
*****
In the more immediate future, it looks like we have some dates off in the (loosely) New England area. If you have something we could jump into on Nov. 11, 12, or 13, please get in touch right away.
*****
Anne is headed for Sweden, Chandler the Deep South in December.
*****
For past Whirled Retorts, check out Antifolkonline.com.
****
Finally, here we are in St. Louis. My friend Wiktor brought his latest sculpture on a trailer and parked it in the parking lot of our gig last night. His international unveiling is Saturday in a so-
called hip area here known as U City. We're hoping there will be a national tour. Check this out:
<http://www.wsart.com/public/candidate.html>. No, really.
December 2002
This months headline: Anne and I are planning West Coast tour in January and February and a Florida trip in March. See the end of this little missive for details!
12 01 02 - Takoma Park, MD
Hey Everybody,
It's that time of the month again. And not only that, it's that time of the year again: where we all get a little spiritual with the upcoming holidays. Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Vurahmujjakki, Solstice, Ramadan, Liberace's birthday. Whatever it is for you. Happy ____________ to all of you who have helped us sooo much this year and what a year it has been!
So a holiday toast to all of you who read this little newspaper. Cheers to all of you who have put us up, hosted a house concert, let us turn around in your driveway. Salut to those of you who have brought your friends out to shows, forwarded the news letter on to your friends, and requested us on your local radio station. Salud to those of you who have helped fix the car, given us a ride, directions and filled our coffee cup. And here's to the rest of you out there who cross our paths or allow us to cross yours!
Driving through Needmore, PA trying to escape Pennsylvania the last thing I figured I needed was MORE Pennsylvania. I noticed they had a Needmore Christian School but no Needmore Art Museum, No Needmore local tavern but there was a Needmore Penitentiary.
A sign outside the Needmore Baptist Church with interchangeable marquee-style letters read, "Count Your Blessings."
I was thinking: I can't count my blessings.
Now, I know this sounds hokey, but a hokey sign requires a hokey thought. Perhaps it is the only way to defeat such banality since negative times negative equals positive, I just have to say it, hokey or not: "My blessings are infinite! I cannot count them all. Therefore, I say, "Stop counting your damned blessings and enjoy them!" There is not enough time to both count and appreciate your blessings.
And what is this "your blessings" and "my blessings" stuff, anyway? Shouldn't it be "our blessings?"
Now, I am bringing this up largely because it is December ya know, the time when many of us tend to get a little spiritual, if not downright religious.
Well, allow me to proselytize just a second here. But first, I feel a need to say in advance that this is meant as a holiday well-wish. It is not an attack on Christianity liberals do that often enough. No, quite the contrary. Isn't that novel?
Ya see, I was raised a Christian. I particularly like the first three or four books of the New Testament ya know, the direct quotes. (Jesus, why didn't somebody give that guy a pencil?) As for the Paul stuff well I mean, ya gotta wonder about a guy who would denounce homosexuality from inside a prison. But I digress...
Where was I?
Needmore penitentiaries? Infinity? No, it was... Oh yeah...
...Now, aside from all the really cool stuff Christ said it seems the most quoted bit is John 3:16, which, depending on your preferred translation, reads: "Whosoever believeth in me shall not perish but have everlasting life."
I never really liked that bit seemed rather "I, Me, My" for a guy known as the messiah and all...
So, I was thinking: Somebody on down the line must have gotten the translation wrong and by "me" it really meant "my teachings," or more, simply, "forgiveness"?
And what if the "whosoever" had nothing to do with `you' and `your' paltry sins and your pathetic 230-pounds-of-Haagen-Das-bloated-body-that-needs-a-special-electric-footrest-on-your-La-Z-Boy-to-hoist-your-fat-ankles-up-in-the-air-so-that-they-do-not-get-gangrene-while-you-watch-the-Anna Nicole show `you?'
What if the "whosoever" was well mankind itself?
"If Christ died for my paltry sins I figure he overreacted." (Chandler/Rockstroh, from "Mulch," 1990)
Really.
And most important: What if "everlasting life" was really about the survival of the species not the individual?
Perhaps Christ was not talking about joining your grandparents, Robert E Lee, Dale Earnhardt and your old dog Butkus at a giant Tupperware party in the sky where no one needs nametags, the potato salad never goes bad and nothing but Coors Lite is served.
What if the translation was something like:
"If mankind embraced forgiveness, then mankind could live on the Earth forever." John 3:16.
Even though if that were printed on a bumper sticker it would likely PISS-OFF some folks you'd likely end up with your tires slashed or your brake lines cut I'd like you to:
At least think about it while you have a happy holiday.
Hang with da folks Have some food propose a toast. And stop counting your damned blessings just be glad you have them!
