Divining History Through Music

(or, What Will The Aliens Think?)

Something has been a recurring theme in my deeper thoughts through the years that I've been able to have deeper thoughts -- that is to say, since I was about twelve or so (born old, aging well, for the most part, but I digress).

As I have gone through life listening and looking about me, I have noticed the odd connection between the times and the music thereof. Music in 1974 was well out of the drug-induced stupor of the sixties, which had its own brand of music -- music that made a statement, and a very strong one. Music that I listened to in 1974 was different than what everyone else was listening to. My Mom (waves, "Hi, Mom!") had brought home some new music that caught my ear. It was Ragtime. Scott Joplin: The Red Back Book, and Joshua Rifkin plays Scott Joplin (I'm not certain of that last title, but I remember it all very well...)

I had discovered Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass by this time, and I thought the sun rose and set with them. I even got to see them at the (now closed) Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos, CA (I even found the autographs I got from that show).

Now, at that time, Ragtime music (yes, it deserves very much the same reverence as Progressive Rock, Rock and Roll and John Philip Sousa -- with all of which I grew up, but...) was just another happy sound in my life. I loved its intricacies, and yet its simplicity made it accessable to a budding and very impressionable young musician who could pick up things by ear (but couldn't sight-read his way out of a croissant). It was magical. It wasn't until much much later in life that I would draw the connection of the sound of the music to the era in which it flourished.

It's by and large happy music. Very very happy-go-lucky, in almost as much as people were having a good time, they were also trying to forget their problems. And it had all the markings of the bars in which it was most often played.

Now it was considered most often "coloured people's music", as near as my memory and recollection of research can divine. The good, upstanding moral white majority wanted nothing to do with it, by and large -- or so they gave the impression. It's quite obvious that this wasn't true; the Gershwin Brothers were influenced by it; and hey, what about Porgy and Bess, hm?

And has anyone listened to the sounds of music between 1890 and 1910? Ragtime draws some blindingly obvious connections to them. I think these people wanted to remember, to bring back the good times that the music embodied.

As I grew older, I started, of course, listening to the music which was popular at the time. I mean, really, who wasn't listening to the radio when they were growing up? Anyone growing up in 1976 thru 1980 was probably tuning into a top-forty AM station and catching all the music that was happening. "Fly Like An Eagle", by the Steve Miller Band; "Love Will Keep Us Together", by The Captain & Tennille; "The Things We Do For Love", by Hall and Oates. All very indicative of the times in which the music was written, very laid back, not too terribly much of an edge to it, but not so dull as to be a waste of time. It was pop. Popular music, the stuff that MOST of the universe listened to.

By 1978, the glory of our country's bicentennial had waned a tad (even though it really should have carried on through 1989), and harder elements began to filter into the mainstream. Firstly, AM/FM radios had become more commonplace, replacing the AM-only boxes which had been the norm. Secondly, youth yearned for more of an edge, more of a voice, and they got it -- in AC/DC, Van Halen, Rush, War, the Scorpions, and of course the plenitude of punk bands which were beginning to form, such as The Clash and others. The Progressive Rock swung into the mainstream with music from Styx and Supertramp, among others.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter was elected out of office to be succeeded by Ronald Reagan, and music changed again -- it got harsher, more shocking (along with the attire which went with it) in reaction to what was being passed down as the status quo. The world seemed just a bit darker. We started getting some serious creativity arising out of a generation who hoped to change the world and turn the establishment on its ear, to tell it to take a hike. In 1984, for example, we got some serious proof that the world WASN'T ending at this time, that imagination was still strong, and that we were still drawing on the lessons taught to us by the previous generation as far as how to go about changing the world (and, of course, how not to). We saw the rise and fall of Blondie, and the Police finished up on about the same note (with the notable exception of being wise enough to bow out gracefully and go their own separate ways). The Eagles had split up, and Don Henley and Glenn Frey were making their own directions. Each of these groups addressed a certain kind of angst in the newer generation, whether it was a worldly concern or a personal one.

From 1984 to 1988, with Reagan re-elected, we took a slight downturn again, but people never lost hope. We got some good -- and very poignant -- music from the likes of David Bowie, U2, Peter Gabriel. We also saw a comeback from Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Jackson Browne and several other "cause musicians" -- the ones who come back and perform for causes such as the Christic Institute, Amnesty International and others who attempted to further the restoration of human rights.

In 1988, we got George H. Dubya. What is astounding, musically, is that for the next four years, we didn't seem to have a musical direction, a trend that is reoccurring now. I mean, sure, out came cRap music (the 'c' is usually invisible), with its explicit lyrics, and an attitude that, to this day, I find horribly oppressive. But it's dark, and it communicates through a generation that feels as though it has no hope, nothing to move toward, nothing that it can possibly contribute that will make the world a better place to live. Even the Cause Performers were losing hope at that point, or the people were losing enough hope that they didn't want to see false ones raised.

I will also note that, while it was dark during Clinton's terms in office, it seemed that creativity was somewhat encouraged. We got alternative rock out of it, those pieces which basically took a musical ice pick and shoved it firmly through the ear of the establishment, and we got grunge rock -- the whiny self-serving anthems of Generation X proclaiming that no matter what they try to do, nothing seems to work.

...and since Dumb Dubya got shoehorned into office (I still don't know what he's doing there, anyone? Anyone? Bueller? ...Bueller?), we're back into the doldrums. If anything, the music has become more self- serving (in the case of the mellower stuff), or more violent and socially condemning (in the case of cRap). By the same token that the music is teaching our children to lose hope, to lose faith in the goodness of the mortal race inhabiting our planet, the children are not stupid. They are picking up on the general malaise that is affecting our country in general.

I have some degree of faith that somehow, the people are going to wake up, and when they do, and they smell the artificially flavoured pasteurised coffee food product, I wonder what tales the music will tell then.

Maybe my friends and I should start writing it now. Maybe we can nudge it in the right direction.

Got a match?

Gore Vidal, Last Defender of the Republic

(but then, you knew that.)

A friend of mine from high school sent me this particular article today. Normally, I don't pay too much attention to this sort of thing, as the word 'republican' offends my senses in roughly the same way as might the defensive discharge of a skunk at close range.

Normally, too, I'm not wont to reprint copyrighted material. Song lyrics seem to be an exception, but thus far I have not been duly chastised for having done so; I'm not in this to make or steal money. I'm doing all this stuff to make a point, usually one associated with a piece of artwork or a fleeting mood which associates well with said lyrics or other material. Most copyrighted artwork is kept purely so that I can have a pretty looking desktop. Google makes a great search engine for this stuff. But I digress...

However, this is really worth a read. It's an unauthorised redistribution of a Los Angeles Weekly article for the week of 5-11 July 2002 (note: I am not a glutton for punishment; if anyone on L.A. Weekly staff finds it reprehensible that I am posting this on my website in the hopes of making a few people a little more aware of what's going on in this country, please, by all means, feel free to contact me. My contact information is easily enough located, or just bug the webmaster (me), and let's have a meaningful discussion about this...).

I think Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were absolutely brilliant, driven men; I would that the human race would once again spawn such inspired minds capable of putting themselves in positions of leverage to further the good of the world by overthrowing the tyranny in their vicinity. Recruit me. I'll help in just about any way I can.

Franklin said it best: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for temporary safety in a time of crisis deserve neither liberty nor safety."

We are sitting on a powder keg that is must waiting for some idiot with a match to light it (hey, can I borrow a match?).

Without further ado, it's an interview with Gore Vidal. It was, to me, a rather enlightening read. Enjoy. I invite comments from anyone abroad as to the veracity of the foreign perspective of America.

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HE MIGHT BE AMERICA'S LAST small-r republican. Gore Vidal, now 76, has made a lifetime out of critiquing America's imperial impulses and has -- through two dozen novels and hundreds of essays -- argued tempestuously that the U.S. should retreat back to its more Jeffersonian roots, that it should stop meddling in the affairs of other nations and the private affairs of its own citizens.

That's the thread that runs through Vidal's latest best-seller -- an oddly packaged collection of essays published in the wake of September 11 titled Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated. To answer the question in his subtitle, Vidal posits that we have no right to scratch our heads over what motivated the perpetrators of the two biggest terror attacks in our history, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and last September's twin-tower holocaust.

Vidal writes: "It is a law of physics (still on the books when last I looked) that in nature there is no action without reaction. The same appears to be true in human nature -- that is, history." The "action" Vidal refers to is the hubris of an American empire abroad (illustrated by a 20-page chart of 200 U.S. overseas military adventures since the end of World War II) and a budding police state at home. The inevitable "reaction," says Vidal, is nothing less than the bloody handiwork of Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh. "Each was enraged," he says, "by our government's reckless assaults upon other societies" and was, therefore, "provoked" into answering with horrendous violence.

Some might take that to be a suggestion that America had it coming on September 11. So when I met up with Vidal in the Hollywood Hills home he maintains (while still residing most of his time in Italy), the first question I asked him was this:

L.A. WEEKLY: Are you arguing that the 3,000 civilians killed on September 11 somehow deserved their fate?

GORE VIDAL:I don't think we, the American people, deserved what happened. Nor do we deserve the sort of governments we have had over the last 40 years. Our governments have brought this upon us by their actions all over the world. I have a list in my new book that gives the reader some idea how busy we have been. Unfortunately, we only get disinformation from The New York Times and other official places. Americans have no idea of the extent of their government's mischief. The number of military strikes we have made unprovoked, against other countries, since 1947-48 is more than 250. These are major strikes everywhere from Panama to Iran. And it isn't even a complete list. It doesn't include places like Chile, as that was a CIA operation. I was only listing military attacks.

Americans are either not told about these things or are told we attacked them because . . . well . . . Noriega is the center of all world drug traffic and we have to get rid of him. So we kill some Panamanians in the process. Actually we killed quite a few. And we brought in our Air Force. Panama didn't have an air force. But it looked good to have our Air Force there, busy, blowing up buildings. Then we kidnap their leader, Noriega, a former CIA man who worked loyally for the United States. We arrest him. Try him in an American court that has no jurisdiction over him and lock him up -- nobody knows why. And that was supposed to end the drug trade because he had been demonized by The New York Times and the rest of the imperial press.

[The government] plays off [Americans'] relative innocence, or ignorance to be more precise. This is probably why geography has not really been taught since World War II -- to keep people in the dark as to where we are blowing things up. Because Enron wants to blow them up. Or Unocal, the great pipeline company, wants a war going some place.

And people in the countries who are recipients of our bombs get angry. The Afghans had nothing to do with what happened to our country on September 11. But Saudi Arabia did. It seems like Osama is involved, but we don't really know. I mean, when we went into Afghanistan to take over the place and blow it up, our commanding general was asked how long it was going to take to find Osama bin Laden. And the commanding general looked rather surprised and said, well, that's not why we are here.

Oh no? So what was all this about? It was about the Taliban being very, very bad people and that they treated women very badly, you see. They're not really into women's rights, and we here are very strong on women's rights; and we should be with Bush on that one because he's taking those burlap sacks off of women's heads. Well, that's not what it was about.

What it was really about -- and you won't get this anywhere at the moment -- is that this is an imperial grab for energy resources. Until now, the Persian Gulf has been our main source for imported oil. We went there, to Afghanistan, not to get Osama and wreak our vengeance. We went to Afghanistan partly because the Taliban -- whom we had installed at the time of the Russian occupation -- were getting too flaky and because Unocal, the California corporation, had made a deal with the Taliban for a pipeline to get the Caspian- area oil, which is the richest oil reserve on Earth. They wanted to get that oil by pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan to Karachi and from there to ship it off to China, which would be enormously profitable. Whichever big company could cash in would make a fortune. And you'll see that all these companies go back to Bush or Cheney or to Rumsfeld or someone else on the Gas and Oil Junta, which, along with the Pentagon, governs the United States.

We had planned to occupy Afghanistan in October, and Osama, or whoever it was who hit us in September, launched a pre-emptory strike. They knew we were coming. And this was a warning to throw us off guard.

With that background, it now becomes explicable why the first thing Bush did after we were hit was to get Senator Daschle and beg him not to hold an investigation of the sort any normal country would have done. When Pearl Harbor was struck, within 20 minutes the Senate and the House had a joint committee ready. Roosevelt beat them to it, because he knew why we had been hit, so he set up his own committee. But none of this was to come out, and it hasn't come out.

LAW:Still, even if one reads the chart of military interventions in your book and concludes that, indeed, the U.S. government is a "source of evil" -- to lift a phrase -- can't you conceive that there might be other forces of evil as well? Can't you imagine forces of religious obscurantism, for example, that act independently of us and might do bad things to us, just because they are also evil?

Vidal: Oh yes. But you picked the wrong group. You picked one of the richest families in the world -- the bin Ladens. They are extremely close to the royal family of Saudi Arabia, which has conned us into acting as their bodyguard against their own people -- who are even more fundamentalist than they are. So we are dealing with a powerful entity if it is Osama.

What isn't true is that people like him just come out of the blue. You know, the average American thinks we just give away billions in foreign aid, when we are the lowest in foreign aid among developed countries. And most of what we give goes to Israel and a little bit to Egypt.

I was in Guatemala when the CIA was preparing its attack on the Arbenz government [in 1954]. Arbenz, who was a democratically elected president, mildly socialist. His state had no revenues; its biggest income maker was United Fruit Company. So Arbenz put the tiniest of taxes on bananas, and Henry Cabot Lodge got up in the Senate and said the Communists have taken over Guatemala and we must act. He got to Eisenhower, who sent in the CIA, and they overthrew the government. We installed a military dictator, and there's been nothing but bloodshed ever since.

Now, if I were a Guatemalan and I had the means to drop something on somebody in Washington, or anywhere Americans were, I would be tempted to do it. Especially if I had lost my entire family and seen my country blown to bits because United Fruit didn't want to pay taxes. Now, that's the way we operate. And that's why we got to be so hated.

LAW: You've spent decades bemoaning the erosion of civil liberties and the conversion of the U.S. from a republic into what you call an empire. Have the aftereffects of September 11, things like the USA Patriot bill, merely pushed us further down the road or are they, in fact, some sort of historic turning point?

Vidal: The second law of thermodynamics always rules: Everything is always running down. And so is our Bill of Rights. The current junta in charge of our affairs, one not legally elected, but put in charge of us by the Supreme Court in the interests of the oil and gas and defense lobbies, have used first Oklahoma City and now September 11 to further erode things.

And when it comes to Oklahoma City and Tim McVeigh, well, he had his reasons as well to carry out his dirty deed. Millions of Americans agree with his general reasoning, though no one, I think, agrees with the value of blowing up children. But the American people, yes, they instinctively know when the government goes off the rails like it did at Waco and Ruby Ridge. No one has been elected president in the last 50 years unless he ran against the federal government. So, the government should get through its head that it is hated not only by foreigners whose countries we have wrecked, but also by Americans whose lives have been wrecked.

The whole Patriot movement in the U.S. was based on folks run off their family farms. Or had their parents or grandparents run off. We have millions of disaffected American citizens who do not like the way the place is run and see no place in it where they can prosper. They can be slaves. Or pick cotton. Or whatever the latest uncomfortable thing there is to do. But they are not going to have, as Richard Nixon said, "a piece of the action."

LAW: And yet Americans seem quite susceptible to a sort of jingoistic "enemy-of-the-month club" coming out of Washington. You say millions of Americans hate the federal government. But something like 75 percent of Americans say they support George W. Bush, especially on the issue of the war. Vidal: I hope you don't believe those figures. Don't you know how the polls are rigged? It's simple. After 9/11 the country was really shocked and terrified. [Bush] does a little war dance and talks about evil axis and all the countries he's going to go after. And how long it is all going to take, he says with a happy smile, because it means billions and trillions for the Pentagon and for his oil friends. And it means curtailing our liberties, so this is all very thrilling for him. He's right out there reacting, bombing Afghanistan. Well, he might as well have been bombing Denmark. Denmark had nothing to do with 9/11. And neither did Afghanistan, at least the Afghanis didn't. So the question is still asked, are you standing tall with the president? Are you standing with him as he defends us? Eventually, they will figure it out.

LAW: They being who? The American people?

Vidal: Yeah, the American people. They are asked these quick questions. Do you approve of him? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, he blew up all those funny-sounding cities over there.

That doesn't mean they like him. Mark my words. He will leave office the most unpopular president in history. The junta has done too much wreckage.

They were suspiciously very ready with the Patriot Act as soon as we were hit. Ready to lift habeas corpus, due process, the attorney-client privilege. They were ready. Which means they have already got their police state. Just take a plane anywhere today and you are in the hands of an arbitrary police state.

LAW: Don't you want to have that kind of protection when you fly?

Vidal: It's one thing to be careful, and we certainly want airplanes to be careful against terrorist attacks. But this is joy for them, for the federal government. Now they've got everybody, because everybody flies.

LAW: Let's pick away at one of your favorite bones, the American media. Some say they have done a better-than-usual job since 9/11. But I suspect you're not buying that?

Vidal: No, I don't buy it. Part of the year I live in Italy. And I find out more about what's going on in the Middle East by reading the British, the French, even the Italian press. Everything here is slanted. I mean, to watch Bush doing his little war dance in Congress . . . about "evildoers" and this "axis of evil" -- Iran, Iraq and North Korea. I thought, he doesn't even know what the word axis means. Somebody just gave it to him. And the press didn't even call him on it. This is about as mindless a statement as you could make. Then he comes up with about a dozen other countries that might have "evil people" in them, who might commit "terrorist acts." What is a terrorist act? Whatever he thinks is a terrorist act. And we are going to go after them. Because we are good and they are evil. And we're "gonna git 'em."

Anybody who could get up and make that speech to the American people is not himself an idiot, but he's convinced we are idiots. And we are not idiots. We are cowed. Cowed by disinformation from the media, a skewed view of the world, and atrocious taxes that subsidize this permanent war machine. And we have no representation. Only the corporations are represented in Congress. That's why only 24 percent of the American people cast a vote for George W. Bush.

LAW: I know you'd hate to take this to the ad hominem level, but indulge me for a moment. What about George W. Bush, the man?

Vidal: You mean George W. Bush, the cheerleader. That's the only thing he ever did of some note in his life. He had some involvement with a baseball team . . .

LAW: He owned it . . .

Vidal: Yeah, he owned it, bought with other people's money. Oil people's money. So he's never really worked, and he shows very little capacity for learning. For them to put him up as president and for the Supreme Court to make sure that he won was as insulting as when his father, George Bush, appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court -- done just to taunt the liberals. And then, when he picked Quayle for his vice president, that showed such contempt for the American people. This was someone as clearly unqualified as Bush Sr. was to be president. Because Bush Sr., as Richard Nixon said to a friend of mine when Bush was elected [imitating Nixon], "He's a lightweight, a complete lightweight, there's nothing there. He's a sort of person you appoint to things."

So the contempt for the American people has been made more vivid by the two Bushes than all of the presidents before them. Although many of them had the same contempt. But they were more clever about concealing it.

LAW: Should the U.S. just pack up its military from everywhere and go home?

Vidal: Yes. With no exceptions. We are not the world's policeman. And we cannot even police the United States, except to steal money from the people and generally wreak havoc. The police are perceived quite often, and correctly, in most parts of the country as the enemy. I think it is time we roll back the empire -- it is doing no one any good. It has cost us trillions of dollars, which makes me feel it's going to fold on its own because there isn't going to be enough money left to run it.

LAW: You call yourself one of the last defenders of the American Republic against the American Empire. Do you have any allies left? I mean, we really don't have a credible opposition in this country, do we?

Vidal: I sometimes feel like I am the last defender of the republic. There are plenty of legal minds who defend the Bill of Rights, but they don't seem very vigorous. I mean, after 9/11 there was silence as one after another of these draconian, really totalitarian laws were put in place.

LAW: So what's the way out of this? Back in the '80s you used to call for a new sort of populist constitutional convention. Do you still believe that's the fix?

Vidal: Well, it's the least bloody. Because there will be trouble, and big trouble. The loons got together to get a balanced-budget amendment, and they got a majority of states to agree to a constitutional convention. Senator Sam Ervin, now dead, researched what would happen in such a convention, and apparently everything would be up for grabs. Once we the people are assembled, as the Constitution requires, we can do anything, we can throw out the whole executive, the judiciary, the Congress. We can put in a Tibetan lama. Or turn the country into one big Scientological clearing center.

And the liberals, of course, are the slowest and the stupidest, because they do not understand their interests. The right wing are the bad guys, but they know what they want -- everybody else's money. And they know they don't like blacks and they don't like minorities. And they like to screw everyone along the way.

But once you know what you want, you are in a stronger position than those who can only say, "Oh no, you mustn't do that." That we must have free speech. Free speech for what? To agree with The New York Times?

The liberals always say, "Oh my, if there is a constitutional convention, they will take away the Bill of Rights." But they have already done it! It is gone. Hardly any of it is left. So if they, the famous "they," would prove to be a majority of the American people and did not want a Bill of Rights, then I say, let's just get it over with. Let's just throw it out the window. If you don't want it, you won't have it.

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This article is reposted without permission; if someone with a legal stance objects to this; contact me. I would like to obtain permission, but felt the material in question was too timely to await a decision.

In God We Trust (All Others Pay Cash)

This God thing is really getting out of hand.

I mean, it's ALWAYS been overblown. Ever since the Nazarene walked the planet, got nailed to a tree, then mysteriously vanished after having been buried, there's been this obsession with the "True Divine" and "miracles".

Then the righteous started getting really righteous, and obsession is not a strong enough word to describe the actions to follow. I think it even transcended zeal.

In case you're new to this planet, I refer you to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the century immediately preceding the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, the Salem Witch Trials, and the Abortion Clinic Bombings, in no particular order of importance other than that's about the order they happened in.

I think there were other smaller events which transpired, but I'm not sure I have room to list them all.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not a God-hater or a would-be God-slayer or anything as completely bozotic as all that, although after having several large cosmic jokes played on me of late, I think I would like to have a word with said Creator -- and his Mother.

But I digress.

Of late, there's been this flap in the news about someone suing to get "...under God" removed from our pledge of allegiance on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.

I must confess that I applaud this individual. Ever since 1954, when the Cold War started, this country has been in a state of paranoia over letting people live their lives. Witness, e.g., the House Un-American Activities Committee, McCarthyism, blacklisting. You've probably read about it all. If you haven't, do. It's a blood-chilling read more sobering than any murder mystery -- or real-life murder case. Study it. Read about how the Fear of Communism -- and Fear of a Godless State -- brought about a great deal of rules and regulations and abridgements of that nice little passage in the Constitution guaranteeing separation of Church and State.

They make the motions, saying that religious groups are not allowed in public schools, regardless of denomination. They'd probably come in and harass a student for making a religious observation of five minutes of silence or chant or prayer or whatever during lunchtime, if they could monitor everyone, just to make sure they didn't transgress that Constitutional line. Wouldn't matter if you were Wiccan, Pagan, Christian, Muslim, whatever.

But since 1954, there's been this line about "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Here, let me see if I can recall how it's supposed to go. This is the old one; all the new garbage has been stricken. "I pledge allegiance to my the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice for all."

Now, what's so hard about that?

I have a remnant of a lighter age. Actually, thanks to Dad, I have several of them, but this one in particular is a find. I think I'll have it framed.

It's a 1950 issue five dollar silver certificate which reads: "The United States of America will pay to the bearer on demand
FIVE DOLLARS"

Other than that, it's an ordinary fiver. Lincoln's face, the Abe Lincoln Memorial Stadium and Hot Dog Stand, the whole works. Certainly not the ugly hack job of late. It's a beautiful piece of work.

Nowhere on the front or the back of this note does it state, in any way shape or form, anything about God. No "IN GOD WE TRUST". Nothing. It just guarantees that the United States, presumably its treasury, will pay the bearer -- me -- five dollars upon demand and likely surrender of said note, even though it does not state explicitly that I need to forfeit the note to get the five dollars. But I digress.

I had an interesting campfire revival experience when I was about four. I was out camping and singing songs and some of them started turning to the folksy religious ones. Even at age four, I felt very unnerved, very disquieted. I don't know why, but religion has always bothered me. I state that, by and large, I am spiritual, and not religious. Religion is spirituality with military funding and herd mentality. This is not something that is conducive to social well being.

To this day, I can appreciate the beauty in the architecture of the old buildings, the churches and cathedrals, but I can not handle being present to witness a mass or a sermon. It reeks of hypocrisy, shame, and the worst form of righteousness.

I will note, with some degree of accuracy, that probably most of the presidents we have lost to assassins have been of other faith than that of the ever-pervasive White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I could be wrong...

But I digress.

To sum up thus far, I applaud the fellow who is launching the campaign to further the separation of Church and State. I still wish that we could get "In God We Trust" stricken from our currency, since it violates the Constitutional guarantee of Separation of Church and State.

Something to ponder. Remember they were afraid of a Godless state? What do we have now? The presence of this God has not improved our quality of life. Our children run amuck without fear of repercussions or reprimand, and no sense of responsibility or reprehension for their actions.

But you know the real killer? I think it's summed up in this bumper sticker I saw once.

Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven.

We have a very large mass of people out there who are convinced that no matter what they do, as long as they repent in the end, they will be allowed to enter their Heaven, because their God will forgive them. What a fantastically irresponsible manner in which to raise children. No wonder we're so screwed up.

I don't know about you, but I know where my own personal heaven and hell are. I also know that if there is a heaven where everyone good goes, I'm sure I will pay you a visit in my own roundabout way before continuing my journey. If you think your journey ends there, you've got a nasty surprise coming to you.

But I digress.

In parting from this diatribe, if you're reading this and you're offended by my comments on God and Godlessness and the fact that yes, even God has a Mother (who's waiting for him to clean up his act, in my opinion!), I have a perfectly good pair of legs by which I will kick that crutch you call "religion" right out from under you and tell you to take responsibility for your own actions.

And I invite you to do the same for me, should I need it. I'm not perfect. I admit it. At least I can. How about you?

Hypocrisy and Change

"Things are seldom what they seem
Skim milk masquerades as cream
Highlows pass as patent leather
Jackdaws strut in peacocks' feathers..."

There are days, and then there are days.

There are days where I wonder how this world has survived thus far.

It's okay for our kids to see war and gratuitous violence and drugs (in spite of "just say no" (or "just fly low", whichever you prefer)) and the six o'clock news.

It's okay for our kids to listen to music of questionable origin which makes overt references to acts of violence against people of other races.

It's okay for our kids to be exposed to constant attitude, and to turn around and give lip to their parents (remember, physical discipline, which is what these little upstarts needed before they got too out of hand and turned into big upstarts, is no longer permitted. Your kid could turn you in for spanking them.).

Heaven forbid they should be exposed to love, tenderness, caring, or (gasp!) public display of affection.

Or, more so, forbid that they should be exposed to "unusual living arrangements." Even if a mother lives in perfect harmony with two other men (or women, for that matter!), it's not all right, because it goes against the "fahn, upstandin' Murkin morrle strutcher" which so many of the blind sheep embrace.

What an amazingly hypocritical society we live in.

We can't leave well enough alone. We don't seem to have enough to do with our lives that we can't pass so much judgment on other people. We can't just let other people live lives without ostracising them for living in unusual harmony.

There's truth out there to the Wiccan law, "an it harm none, do what thou will." As long as you're not hurting anyone, what's the problem?

More of the most stupid conflicts have taken place over some righteous charlatan's stance on morals. It's amazing. Just because one small group of people cannot wrap their minds around the concept of harmony within an alien arrangement, suddenly they have to rally other people to their cause.

And yet, it is permissible for the depression mongers on the six o'clock news to spread doom, depression and other bad feelings to the multitudes, to do everything in their power to keep down the morale of the populace.

I get a lot of funny looks when people find out that I don't watch the news.

And then there's change. People change, and we never see it coming. Sometimes we never see it coming in ourselves. We swear that, after the first time, we'll never ...oh, get married again, for example. ...and along comes someone to sweep us off our feet, and we forget every reservation we had about repeating past mistakes, probably because the person is of sufficient quality of character to make us realise that the past is the past, and that we won't make the same mistakes with this one that we made last time.

Of course, there's always the "Ugh. I'll never do that again", which of course we do again. Seriously, which of us will never party that hard ever again?

It's hard, really, to remain immutable. After all, if you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?

Ask yourself this, if you are set in your ways: Could you crawl off, somewhere, knowing that you are a Dinosaur doomed to extinction, and just die in the desert? There are a number of people who could answer yes to this question. There are a number of people who could answer no to this question.

The mind-blower is going to be not how many people fall into either camp, but *which* people fall into either camp.

There are actually times that I feel like a dinosaur. I'm not as abreast of the technology as I could be, largely because I lack the self-discipline to do so. I've always learned better in a group situation. Could I walk out into the desert and lay down and call it? Sometimes. Quite often. I'm content with what I know. I find the world moves too fast for me to keep up. I'll be lucky if I know 10% of what's current by the time I'm 50.

And I'm okay with this, unless you want to come keep me company on a journey to higher learning...

Happy Birthday, Noah and Chris!

This is a special Birthday Edition of the Journeys of the Sound Chaser.

There are two people whom I wish to commemorate here. One of them I know personally, the other I admire greatly. Well, that's not strictly true, of course -- I rather admire both of them, but for different reasons.

The first one is a very dear friend I met at the Renaissance Faire while it was still a good Renaissance Faire, but to further clarify that would be a digression of major proportions. He's a very bright young fellow whom I have known since he was 9 and was just starting to learn how to play the guitar. This year he celebrates his 22nd birthday, and as far as I know he is still going, albeit the last year has moved him farther out of the area.

He has had the knack to eke a recognisable tune out of just about any instrument he would touch (though, truth be told, I don't think I've seen him pick up a wind instrument), ranging from the piano, to the mandolin, to the bodhran (the Irish drum), to the violin, and he has even put together some very interesting mixes on a computer; his styles cover everything from the Beatles, to Bowie, to Led Zeppelin, to Yes and beyond, as well as Irish music. He's in touch with the past, the musical roots, but has the youthful courage to find the good parts of the music of today.

He's one of very few musicians with whom I have worked who has had the uncanny ability to divine when to stop the tune, which tune the leader is going to play next and which harmony to sing -- truly a delightful musician, and a wonderful friend (even if he is out of touch for long periods at a time).

Happy Birthday, Noah!!

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The other fellow is someone I have long admired for his adventurous approach to music. While his own compositions strike me as ponderous -- very thoughtful -- in nature, his contributions to the compositions of his other musical compatriates lend themselves well to those compositions. He's a top-notch arranger with a voice capable of covering three and a half octaves (counting his head voice which, thankfully, he's not afraid of using!).

He's been the keeper of the flame for The Best progressive rock group on the planet, none other than Yes, for the last 34 years(!), and he's an excellent composer and performer in his own right.

Happy Birthday to Chris Squire!

Thank you for 34 years of absolutely wonderful music, and may your later years treat you well!

[If you've never listened to Yes, I recommend Close to the Edge (1972), Going for the One (1977), 90125 (1983), Union (1991), Keys to Ascension(the studio tracks) (1995) and The Ladder (1999). If you have listened to them, I recommend that you check out Chris' solo works (which, regrettably, I can count on both thumbs, but they're both up!), Fish Out Of Water (1975) and Conspiracy (2000), the latter of which, strictly speaking, isn't a solo album (he co-conspired with Billy Sherwood, also an excellent musician, but I digress again), but it's non-Yes, and it's extremely well- done.]