Whole Cowardly Bundle of Art

The telephone interview didn’t go so well. ‘Is that really what people want to know about me?’ I said. ‘Everything you need to know about me has already been written and it rhymes.’ The line was quiet.

I wanted to be Elvis but then he died. Life is like that.

I received an email today from the United Nations. It was in reply to a piece of music I had sent to them which was intended for all of mankind. Their corporate reply concluded with the words thanking me for “taking the initiative of writing to us.” Please do not misunderstand me, I have the utmost respect for the principles of the United Nations and replied to their email saying who I was and would they kindly extend me the courtesy of actually listening to the piece of music I had written for them and get back to me with a genuine reply. A few days later the reply came and said that they would be passing the track on to the appropriate department and thank you for taking the initiative of writing to us. So I shot next door’s cat.

I have all my ideas in secret. They are the salary of the mighty. If I tell you my ideas you will suggest re-writes  leaning towards popularity. This is how popularity perceives the world. It comes in promises and it comes with cages for humanity.

I try not to ask what people think, mostly they are in the dark to the reasons behind their answers. So, as an example, if I ask you, should I have my hair cut? I am asking a question but at the same time provoking a response. Your answers could be many and depending on certain factors including our your mood cycle or your confidence at any given fluctuating moment. It puts into question whether you love or despise me, perhaps you neither care one way or another and answer accordingly, are you jealous, inferior, do I intimidate you, do you actually give a damn or is it you just can’t imagine my hair in a different style as an example. All of these factors may distort your answer. And all of this stuff is going off every time we just ask each other a question. Knowing all that, I don’t ask.

The idea of a question is of more use than the idea of an answer.

Beware of what you didn’t used to need, you can never put it back.

FOR FUCK SAKE, PUT THE WAR AWAY BOYS!

It is always hard for me to believe that we go to war. It is even harder to believe that we accept it so readily, that we are convinced so easily of the mandate of war. Are we informed, do we care? Do we stand on the right side? Who do you choose to believe? Do we know the circumstance, the timeline, the pipeline, the truth behind the fact? The price of life. The meaning behind the headlines, the stink behind the bullshit. Do we remember the Resolution that damned both sides to war? Religion, money or prejudice; which suited your mind? Is it an act of humanity or terror? Did we hear their side in reason and think accordingly? Did you see the movie or the documentary? Do you believe Mr President, the anchorman, the prime minister, the soldier, the doctor, the industry or do you trust a politician? But we do remember those “Weapons of Mass Destruction” don’t we? And behold, war harnesses the power of advertising.

The greedy generation wears “What Can I Do?” sprayed across hipster tight t-shirts. Where is their fight, the stomping, the graffiti; where is their primal urge to rebel? But their acceptance has been sold to them on every device, on every campaign of sale, on every pitch upon this new cathartic life. Social media has controlled us to conform within its polite, political parameters. We can speak to the world now, but only in courteous, accepted tones. LOL. Music, once the gauge of youth rebellion, the temperature of the soul is now lost. It has disappeared from campuses, is non-existent on itunes, empty from the music papers. It is becoming more and more Eurovision and less the temperament of defiance. Music companies, too concerned by sales in a changing market to rock the boat, too polite to sign up a reaction. Music has become a commodity and is no longer a revolution. I spit blood to this! Music has become bland, more sterile than I ever dared believe. The charts are a sham, they tell you what they want you to buy. It has been rounded, perfumed and cauterized of all expression. But this is not the order of the world changing; this is not evolution, this is not the free spirit of young people. This is control.

But it isn’t our involvement with war that frightens me most, it is in our simple act of acceptance. Shall we honestly not care that we kill our own kind? Today we accept the killing of innocent people and make those that carry out such crimes heroes; I shudder at the advertising connotations of this. Look out, we are being sold a war and we believe it. Governments know this.

I say bring on the hackers, the bloggers, the terrorists of convention, a class of redemption, the musician, the artist, writers, the iconoclasts and allow them to give us back our voice. Turn off the television people; it will have you dull and programmed. We have more power collectively, than sedative control allows you to believe! An easy life is a cowards life, and it shall reap its rewards in pointless, cowardly ways.

 

 

ESSAY IN SILENCE

In the last one hundred and fifty years of our magnificent intelligence, we have been responsible for the most unbelievable leaps foreward for our kind in recorded history. The computer, medicine, philosophy, science, arts, design, communication, aeronautics, stratospheric’s; people are more enlightened, dreams are now even possible; the canon of our worth is now almost unimaginable. And as much as the false leaders all want to take the credit for these creations, it is has nothing to do with a single one of them; but they can make speeches on it.

The world is a fundamentally different place than it was before the Great War; you remember the one that millions of innocent people got shot in. Today sees just another leader, another effigy, another fool on the hill; but we’ve seen it all before, it’s all the same, new logo: same design. Don’t let them hold us back, don’t let politics or religion stifle or take the credit for our unrivaled prowess! Mankind stood on the moon, not a nation, not a religion not a political party.

Today’s governments are at the forefound of nothing, preaching to an old world on out-moded media; on televisions, in radio friendly, bible belt words, spelled out in yesterdays Times, with pseudo-leaked reports, in the sound bites of bullshit. But the Internet generation shall succeed politics and religion. It follows a different command; its very design is of the order of progress. It is very difficult for the email generation to believe in holy water, as it is difficult for the YouTube generation to believe in party political broadcasts. Today the computer age owns the world. The young are in control, and if you don’t believe me, you just try and ignore them!

So how are the dinosaurs that control us doing today? We grow enough food to feed the world but half of its people are starving. We march for peace but the world is at war. They shore up flood and famine until such time as we can excuse ourselves of blame. The people have faught to take back a freedom that had been promised for so long that we no longer know what it is, instead we now settle on a new form of freedom; today freedom is adjusted by the amount you get paid. The markets have spread poverty and ignorance further and further and shared the wealth and influence with itself. Gods political wing is not uniting the people but ironically pushing mankind further and further apart. All over the world women are still fighting to take back the rights they deserve. In a post-racial world why is racism rising? Human rights, poverty, welfare, justice, hatred, torture, land mines, the death penalty and the thirsty refugees. Just because you believe what you are being told, don’t make it right!

But humankind is a believer, a follower en masse, a pack animal; seldom an individual. We want to believe in God even if we don’t. We belong to politics but who really trusts them? Religions eventually become mythology and politics are eventually overcome by revolution. But what frightens me most, is what it is we are willing to believe.

From the earth came Mankind. From his inability to control himself came God, from the love of his own design came Kings and Emperors and from our social indifference came politics. It appears that each significant form of control takes less and less time to fall. Stand up!

HUMAN EVOLUTION AND OTHER GAMES

Nature is God! Nature is that which we must obey. It is our mother, our father; it brings us into life and returns us to the earth. Nature is in our very design, in every breath we take, in each orgasm we export. But disregard it at your peril, for it is the price of everything. We are not above it, we are not superior to its intention; its elemental concepts govern the core of every single one of us. But as our rage with nature continues, we still rely on unproven faiths other than the thing that we know supports all life on earth. So beware, nature’s greatest power isn’t going to allow one arrogant dominating species to run roughshod over the earth at the cost of all other life. It will cut our lifeline; it will de-select us in flood, in plague or in food. We shall be undone by it if we continue to abuse it with such righteous contempt. Human life has existed in but a blink of geological time; and in just one hundred and fifty industrial, politicised years we have altered the fragile balance between earth, sea and sky. We have raped it, disrespected it and destroyed it until the ground can no longer possess the power with which to yield and sustain life.

So here is my thought on human evolution and other games. Man invents time to make sense of the natural world, over-riding his connection with nature. Eventually growing an arrogant perception that says he is above the natural order of life, crowning himself king of the world. In planetary time we have come so far so fast and this is both our magnitude and our downfall. Today we have reached the zenith in human achievement and its by-product is to no longer have any respect for nature, the natural order or the natural world. The manual evolution of Humankind believes that our pace in progress is greater than that of longevity. And if this is so, then our demise shall follow. There is a perfect analogy seen from the implausibly inventive and beautiful International Space Station, our wise blue marble is beginning to discolour. The human is damaging itself and earth for the benefit of nothing. And we are desperately trying to support a species on earth that is so rampantly over-populated, destructive and increasingly stupid. If we continue to support that which nature cannot maintain, nature will punish us with de-selection. But these are not my laws; these are the laws that govern nature. Nature, not god, is the force with which all of life must reckon.

If we are not making our species stronger, it is no longer evolving and therefore it becomes diminished by its own futility. Another greedy dynasty of man spiralling down into great swathes of society that is wasted, unwanted and worthless. But if we want our race to survive we must adhere to nature’s law. We must promote new human life with purpose and harmony. A life without a purpose is undone; a life without harmony is unbalanced. Even the simplest organisms have a purpose and this is what we must reckon with; this is what we must promote if we are to evolve. We are growing people alone, ruined at birth by their acceptance of their pitiful future, a future without prospect, with Crystal Meth, toting guns, promoting misery and violent extremes, with nothing but a life in the replication of poverty and pregnancy, doomed to live without hope and dreams.

One animal killing another is how life survives and both sides grow stronger as a result of it. But for the Americans to drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in order to threaten Russia with its power and intention, this is the beginning of the end and serves no purpose in the progress of mankind. But we have flouted our responsibility to protect life on earth in so many horrendous, unforgiving ways and most have the narrowest most pitiful view of all, financial gain. How does your god justify that? Akin to the religious manuals that do not speak of the dinosaurs, the religious-orders give little or no support to nature. We have ill managed and condemned so many species to their extinction through ignorance and greed and in the process managed our own kind in squalor and in hatred. The planet cannot tolerate us as we are. There are so many people that it is impossible to implement a feeding programme to sustain them all. Mental health and suicide is outrageously on the rise. We are consuming precious natural resources at a non-replenishable level and we seem unable to cease our plunder. The unwanted generation is with us, without purpose or chance. Of course the oil companies do not care for the planet, it is stitched into their very concept and we are buying it.  And if you pretend it isn’t so… it still is!

So life needs a purpose in order to survive, take away the purpose and you take away the reason to live. If we do not adhere to nature’s guidelines we will not survive the next thousand years. Look at this planet, all filled with an exciting myriad of people and cultures and music and foods and architecture and laughter and kites and love and communication all hating each other. All frightened of each other, all wary of their own kind. But man does not naturally hate man; it is not in the interest of a species to want to kill itself. Hatred and prejudice are learned, and the teacher is politics. Politicians build up walls, design boundaries; they take us to war convincing us that they are in power to protect the people from the people. They draw up rules that we all must follow, and all the time they are pushing apart what they should be bringing together. Politics governs without creativity, without compassion and bereft of evolution. If dictatorships evolve into democracies, democracy must evolve a purpose greater than markets and money.

Nature is God. When (she) shakes the mountain to the ground and buries a village, we all arrive to the rescue. We come from all corners of the world to pull them out until we bleed with clawing fingers to find just one more person alive. We come without political design to help each other; without race and religion, bereft of social standing or law. These things have no meaning at this level, at the level of humanity; they have no influence, no priority, just mankind helping mankind. Give the people a purpose and they become it. Take away their purpose and they cease to evolve. At the tsunami, the whole world come ashore to help, we see people throwing themselves at the mercy of nature to try and stop one more child from drowning. So let us promote the values of human life. The value of us. To nurture people to understand what it means to be alive. Let us give and offer a purpose, a reason to be a man or a woman and stop promoting hatred between, skin colour or race or religion, or political ideals. Tear down those tired old walls that persecute us, that keep us in fear of each other, tear down those walls so we can see and share in the curve of the world.  And stop spinning those tired old plates.

Nature is not scared of the truth; it lives, survives and becomes greater by it. But I am just a songwriter with nothing to lose but the odd album sale.