The Unbound Evil Phase...

What is Evil? 

"Evil, as a concept, is usually defined as profoundly immoral behavior, and it is related to acts that cause unnecessary pain and suffering to others."

So...

The Republicans passing a budget bill that takes food from poor children, kicks 17 million, or so, folks off their healthcare, to try to justify extending tax cuts for the big corporations and the supremely wealthy, would be a textbook example of pure, unmitigated evil, for sure. Correct?

Yep. No doubt. 

And the glad-handing, gleeful, chorlting Nazis talking to the press, getting pictures of themselves in front of cages built for folks they plan to disappear off the streets of America? Yes. That's disgusting and supremely evil too.

The disheveled & disgusting Fat Man who envisions detention centers to be built in every state in America. Evil Embodied. 

Detention Center > Gulag > Concentration Camp > Death Camp = EVIL...

You wonder what phase have we entered here, now in America? The Unbound Evil Phase.

Raised by "Lady-Wolves."

I think of my childhood as a bit "raised by nuns." Very similiar to being "raised by wolves." These particular "wolves" were women, dressed in black & white habits, with gold wedding bands on their ring fingers (married to God don't you know). They were kind of scary, harsh, maybe bitter that they were stuck in classrooms with 30 or so children every day of the school year. 

What were these lady-wolves trying to teach us? Mainly fear of God. God was an old, bearded man, sitting on a throne; a scary, harsh, bitter God that would be judging all of us somewhere down the line.  For me, for some reason, the lesson just never took. Maybe because at home, in my own world, I was a happy little gangster, with my own gang, my little brother & my two sisters. 

Sure, I was left with a bit of guilt & shame for being a gnarly, snot-nosed kid, but that deep, in-bred fear just never did materialize. The story just seemed so improbable. I am the same today. The fear-mongers and their fear-mongering just doesn't work on me. I think those folks are just too full of shite. I can't take them seriously. It might be a flaw in my character.

This new era of hate, racism, division, unthinking idiocy just rolls off my back. I don't get it at all. It doesn't resonate. Maybe I can thank those "lady-wolves," maybe they unintentionally innoculated me to the ways of manufactured fear and idiocy?

The lessons I learned on the playground, at lunch, and after school, were the ones that really did sink in, and are still with me to this day: "The Big Ones will always stomp on the Little Ones." And, well, "There but for the Grace of God, go I."

Invaluable information. 

Kind of gave me a code for better understanding and better living in the real world. And when the Big Ones beat up on the little powerless Ones, I immediately side with those being beaten down. 

Ha. Now that I think of it, that seemed to be the gist of the whole weird Jesus story too. Jesus was a nice, helpful guy, who looked out for the poor & downtrodden. His whole schtick just didn't sit well with the powers that be. That simple Jesus story has been twisted into a goddamned pretzel by the crazy-ass Christian Nationalists. Seems they have forgotton that whole Love, Forgiveness and taking care of your Brothers & Sisters idea, and replaced it with a stone-cold, racism & Hate. Fuck those fuckers.

Anyway. Amen Brothers & Sisters! And an early morning tip of the hat to the Lady-Wolves...

Rooting for the Real...

"My political opponents," that would be the Republican Party, want to impose their god-awful-ness on all of us. Yikes. You wonder to yourself: "Why do they hate the America that exists today?" One thing that seems to bind them, hatred of the other. Anyone not a White Christian Nationalist Repbulican is on the outs with these folks. Everything I celebrate about America, our diversity, our inclusiveness, our multi-cultural cornucopia, our thriving urban centers, are considered foreign and unwanted by them. I keep thinking this political movement can't happen, can't last, it must implode, disintegrate, fall apart into a million ugly pieces. The reality of America is too strong, too diverse. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Maybe I am wrong. Not sure. Every day I watch these sick fuckers trying to dismantle this beautiful experiment of a Rainbow Democracy and I shake my head. Who knows, maybe it is my optimism, my hopefulness that blinds me. I hope not. I do my best to see and think clearly. I do  believe that reality has a way of having it's say. It's time for reality to make a come-back.

Your Instrument...

Think of your body as your instrument. It allows you to play all the notes in a life. You didn't get to pick your instrument. It was handed down to you. Generations. It comes with it's own quirks, limitations, faults, and capabilities too. You must contend with it. It's up to you. You can use it, abuse it, baby it, put it in dicey, dangerous and tricky situations. Seems we all often take our instrument for granted. And think we know it. But, really, living is a process, and our instrument is always morphing, changing, evolving, devolving. And we have these major currents running thru us. There are the emotional strings & keys. And there are the rational/logical strings & keys. Sometimes they play off each other, or against each other. Sometimes you are aligned, or in deep unalignment. You have to be diligent. Listen to your instrument. Stay in-tune, with yourself, others and the world around you. It's your vehicle to approach some kind of truth, reality, transcendence, intelligence, wisdom. Or, you know, not.

A Singular Journey...

Folk #1: Well. Seems you are on your own to try to make your life as meaningful and fulfilling as possible. It's just up to you. No one is gonna do the heavy lifting for you. You are on your own. You are on a singular journey of one. Of course, you need to surround yourself, and fill your life with people you can relate to, and spend time with. You need to find things you love to do and do them as often as you can. There is no saviour coming. God ain't looking out for you. Heaven & Hell are here right now. There is a play of Light & Shadow. Good & Evil. Every day is an existential crisis. It is all up to you, but don't get full of yourself. Humility, Grace, Kindness, Love, Happiness, Joy, Creativity, Music, Poetry, Drama, Intelligence & Heart. These are your tools & inclinations. Plunge into healthy obsessions. It's not that hard. Fuck it. Damn the torpedoes. Much of Life is disappointing, disillusioning. No one promised you a rose garden. Oh well. Fuck it. Plant a garden yourself. Water it. Care for it. Do it. Carry on.

Snake Eating it's Own Lying Tail...

Folk #1: That desperatly fat, flailing & failing guy is ranting & raving on TV and social media again. I know, not really new, or surprising. Maybe there is some kind of formula, or calculation? Too much bullshit fabricated by one human being starts to calcify, to no longer stick, to bounce back, and diminish the source? Or, you know, the endless stream of lying finally twists around? The snake turns on itself; wildly, ravenously, devouring it's own lying tail? We have definitely reached the point where EVERYONE knows that guy is lying. Although, of course, there is a small, committed, fanatical group that enjoys hearing the lies. Fat-boy's lies are entertaining to their ears & hate-filled hearts & heads. The rest of us just assume everything that idiot spouts is just a damned lie, and the truth is to be found somehwere in "opposite-land." And, thankfully, we can just point to the obvious, ridiculous lies, and then just tune him out.  Which of course drives him insane. He amps up the lying machine even higher, the lies come harder and faster. There has to be an end-point. Can one malicious fat guy choke out on his own vicious, stupid lies to the wild cheers of the teeming masses? One can only hope...

Celebrating Mamdani...

Oh. Yeah. I wanted to celebrate some good news: Zohran Mamdani won the NY Primary for Mayor and is the favorite to win in November. Yes. A young Muslim/American, a Socialist & Progressive Democrat from the AOC and Bernie Sanders wing of the party beat the candidate the Democratic establishment  were backing: a failed, disgraced ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo. It was a magnificent surprise. Even over here in our sleepy Midwestern town we were rooting for Mamdani. Seemed like a long-shot. Sometimes the remarkable good thing happens. Should New York have a young, dynamic, socially-idealistic, Democratic Mayor? Of course.

The celebration is for Democracy too. Funny. You think it's all going down the shitter. America on the ropes, and the long slide into oblivion, and then, a surprise. That is the beauty of Democracy. It can turn on a dime. People Power. Just common folks, can step up and make it happen. It helps to have a charismatic personality to ignite the folks. This time the igniting wasn't based on hate or division, but a coming together for a common good. Yes. That is a great reason & occasion to celebrate.

The Blizzard of Lies Will Always Melt...

Sure. Yes (see previous post).The lies of a desperate and flailing, wanna be strongman, get more wild, & over the top as reality starts poking back. And reality always has it's say. Building anything on a foundation of lies is sketchy, and a fool's paradise. The blizzard of lies starts to melt in the face of facts. Those of us who believe in truth, can see the hard glimmers & shards of a spiky reality, suddenly popping up everywhere, all at once. Sure the liars may have their power, their guns, their Bibles, their hate, but the opposition is armed with a healthy relationship to facts, truth, science, rationality, logic, math, gravity. We have the clarity of questioning & discerning minds. We observe & learn from Nature, and the real world. Those are great teachers. Always inspires those great qualities: Wonder & Humility.

Hall of Lies...

The problem with this current administration. These people lie. You know, always, always lie, about the little, easily disproved things, and the big, easily disproved things, about, you know, fucking anything & everything; and when they get caught red-handed in their lies, they just double, triple and quadruple down with a barrage of more over-the-top, gob-smackingly, audacious lies. Where does that leave us? First blush, assume the opposite of whatever the adminstration is saying. We live in "opposite-land." Then we are grasping, gaping, searching, trying to drill down to the nub of things. Seeking the facts, trying to swim to a certain clarity & truth. We are stuck in a Hall of Lies. Sure, it's a strategy to wear us down. To defeat us, to make us want to tune out, to throw our hands up in surrender. But, fuck, that is the way to a certain ignorance & madness. We must work towards clear, verifiable facts. We are all essentially like scientists or private eyes; think of yourself as a Marlowe or Spade, in a  Raymond Chandler or Dashiel Hammet novel. Testing, verifying, doing our best to see clearly. Making decsions based on cold, hard facts.  Essential work for being a real Human Being.

Our Nation Turns it's Lonely Eyes to the Cowards in Power...

Yes. Well. Sometimes you turn to the court jesters amongst us for the best insights. I think especially of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce. They don't make them like that anymore. What of the Onion?  Sometimes the only way to find any sense is thru nonsense. Makes sense right?! As AOC puts it (see previous post), "The President's disastrous decision is a grave violation of the Constitution and the War Powers act." A Congress with a spine, a drop of integrity, a hint of conscience, and a moral compass would vote to Impeach and Remove this Tyrant in a heartbeat. Cowardice is a many-splendored thing, and a terrible waste of a Democracy.

Wrong in So Many Ways...

Many of us could see that electing Trump was a major catastrophe for America & the World. Wrong in so many ways. We could see that this lawless conman and his boot-licking lackeys could lead us all to a horribly wrong-headed, idiotic, heartless, criminal future. Well. Just how wrong can it go? Thinking epically, prodigiously, un-imaginably wrong. We are now deeply in the fuck around & find out phase of our existence. Yikes. Below is a pitch-perfect response to the latest outrage & stupidity. AOC is one our favorite Democratic Representatives, an essential voice in the middle of the chaos...

A Small Victory...

A small victory over here. We played a show last night, billed as a Summer Solstice Celebration, at a little, well-lit, totally cool & elegant wine shop, nestled in a very urban landscape. It was a warm summer evening. We played our set inside, gorgeous chandelier above us, gaping, unlit fireplace behind us, a room full of cool people in front of us. We were testing out our new, very tiny mixer board with two small speakers, you know, anything to make the schlepp a bit easier, and it sounded really good in that little room. It was just a trio, guitar, double-bass & percussion, 2 voices. 

Seems we connected with the audience, which is always gratifying & surprising. We are on our own very stony path, a creative journey; quirky, gnarly, very much homemade. We are always amazed that people can connect with these very personal, "vision songs." 

My bandmate triggered an episode of vertigo in the middle of our song, "Murmurations." She nearly spun out, but hung in there,  she truly is a creative dynamo, fearless and determined. We finished the set, smiles and cheers all around. Pretty sure we made some new fans. A couple guitar players in the audience came up to  talk tone. That's always a good sign. My beat up guitar was sounding very "present." All those little experiments with strings, pre-amps, speakers, seems to have paid off. The three of us definitely "got there." It was nice how the instruments all claimed their space, and stood out. We are always intent on losing ourselves in the moments of performance, it worked last night, even with the spinning couldn't deny us.

The Heavier Lift...

Ha. Feeling a bit philosophical this morning. This usually happens when I have "lost the thread." Events seem to be careening out of control, and I just don't know how to process it all. So, in my head, there is a strategic retreat into the realms of philosophy, I fall back on a ruminative posture. Figures like Sartre, Wittgenstein, Hume, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates pop up. It's all a bit of a confusing churn. And, then, of course, the thorny field of psychology is also "tangled up in blue," in my head too. I find myself in a hall of mirrors. Who am I? What am I doing? What's it all about? Where is all of this going? WTF?!  I remind myself that if you look closely enough, it always feels like things are carreening out of control, because, there really is no control. And who I am is always morphing, evolving, revolving, devolving. Everything is a moving target. Sure there is gravity & physics, but beyond that, so little to hold on to. I think of that David Byrne/Talking Heads line: "Stop making sense." You know, this morning, that seems easy. It is a piece of cake to get beyond the rational & logical, and into the poetic, intuitive. But, what about making sense? Of the world, and myself? That seems to be a heavier lift.

A Knotty Problem...

Getting your head around things. You know, reaching for some kind of hard-earned wisdom. No grand statements or theories. Suspicious of wide-ranging conspiracy theories. Resisting the simple answers, they often seem like fairy tales, off-target and more concealing, than revealing. Or what they reveal is an ability to obscure and evade cold hard truths. Sure, we like to tell ourselves stories that we can understand, about the world & the people in it; but of course, we will never really understand the world or the people in it.  People. They are always the problem, they are sometimes, rarely, the solution. Although, ultimately there are no solutions. Just problems being worked over & worked through, across generations. People are confusing, contradictory, arbitrary, shallow, self-dealing. Yep. The Tricky Monkeys who think they are smarter than they really are. There is often pain, suffering & chaos in our  human world. Most of it self-generated. Some of it is beyond human, there is Nature, Biology, to contend with too. It's a knotty problem. Living. You will never solve it. You just get to do it, be it, experience it.

Rewarding Bad Behavior: Strategy for Failure...

Rewarding bad behavior. It's become a thing. It's all too much. Feed the Out of Control Monkeys too much money & attention, and well, shit goes wrong; badly, weirdly, prodigiously, immensely, horribly wrong. That is where we are at the moment; in our culture, our politics, our social media landscape. Swamped with Bling & Bad Behavior.

Have we breached some kind of limit of Bad Shite?! The realm of no shame, no morals, no common sense? 

Not sure. And then, what comes after the reckoning? You know, there is always a reckoning. I mean, who the fuck knows?! Yikes, the scoundrels, the cheats, the liars, the fuck-ups truly reign supreme. We are well and truly fucked. It's sort of funny in a not so funny way. Are there any clear-headed, mindful, honorable, respectful folks to be found? Are they hiding? I imagine there is a vast underground of folks, calm, clear, composed; the level-headed resistance to the stupid debauch. Keeping their shoulders to the wheel. Doing their best to do the good work. Not because it pays, no cold hard cash, just because, it's good to be good. Ha. That's the new, radical stance, & credo, right there.

Hazarding a Guess...

Folk #1: I am going to hazard a guess. I woke up early this a.m. with a deep unease. I can't really call it a premonition, it's too vague, even to me, just a deep, dark, feeling of existential dread for all of us. This fool & idiot in the White House is going to do something really stupid & bad. No, I know, no big surprise, this fool & idiot always does stupid & bad things, we are getting numb to the stupid & bad, but I am just guessing that soon, this fool & idiot is going to stumble into doing something so stupid, so bad, it implicates, and has consequences, for all of us. Every last one of us. You know, blindly hurtling to some very stupid and bad catastrophe. Yikes. It's a bit of doomer idea this morning. Whatever it is, I'm not predicting the actual thing, whatever it is, it's not gonna be fun or entertaining. Those of us who somehow survive, and get thru it all, and God only knows who exactly that will be, will be left with one cursed thought: We are well and truly fucked. Hope there is light at the end of the tunnel. Good Lord. Yikes. Damn the torpedoes.

The America They Hate, The America We Love...

Funny. 

The Trump/MAGA movement can be summed up with one very elemental word: HATE. It is HATE that binds them. HATE that drives them. HATE that makes them all cowards, bullies, and assholes.

They actually HATE America. You know, the America we actually happen to live in. America is a land built by, and inhabited by, immigrants from all races, creeds, colors & countries. It is a vast multi-cultural & wildly diverse stew of Humanity.

If you happen to be one of those immune to the HATE, this all looks like madness, stupidity, fascism, white-Christian-nationalist madness. So inhumane & Un-American.

This weekend (see previous post), we reaquianted ourselves with the America we love. Folks from all walks of life meeting in the public square declaring our LOVE for America, Democracy, the Rule of Law, the Constitution, the melting-pot of a thriving, beautiful Human Civilization.

It is a much better place to choose to live in. Yes. We choose the classic American Dream, and reject the American Nightmare the HATERS want to sell us. Their HATE is built on a web of lies. It's a dead-end. A falsity, a nullity.

The Dreamers Unite...

Hey, over here in our sleepy little town, Evanston, IL, the No Kings Protest yesterday was magnificent. Great turnout for the 10a.m. - 12p.m. event. We've been to three Indivisible protests at this same town square this year, and, no doubt, this one was the biggest, most vibrant, enthusiastic, creative (so many great signs), and inspiring. Lots of old, young, middle agers. Lots of families too. It is amazing how quickly this adminstration has fired up the opposition. A good sign for a vibrant, lively, diverse, America. I hazard a guess: Democracy is not doomed, not defeated. Too many of us actually do care, and do still cling to an open-hearted, American Dream.  We are all the Dreamers.

Just Showing Up...

Yes. We are going to the NO KINGS protest in our sleepy little town later this morning. It seems to us to be an essential duty as human beings, and as citizens of the country, and the world. We want to stand up, and be counted. We are part of the opposition to this current adminstration. So, yes, a renewed commitment to activism & protest.  It's a little thing, a small gesture & stance, but, the least we can do. The country has taken a dark turn, and we ARE AGAINST IT. Peaceful protest. My partner is making a sign. We will chant & sing and, you know, just show up. Damn the torpedoes.

Dystopia is Here...

I suppose it should not be a surprise that electing a "stone-cold liar" (hat-tip to California Governor Gavin Newsom), a criminal, and a chaos agent as U.S. President, has manifested into a full-fledged regime of crime, and the total cruel and stupid fucking chaos we see unfolding now. We are barely 6 months into the thing and the seams of reality seem to be pulling apart. 

We all should apologise to each other, and to the world, for unleashing that shit-storm upon the planet. Of course that liar & conman should have been impeached after the January 6th insurrection, and disqualified from ever holding office again. Total fail there, for sure.

OK. Maybe there are no seams to reality, no stitches either, instead, there is endless flow & flux; reality is an ocean, a cloud, an atmosphere. Everything is always revolving, evolving, devolving. We are in it, and of it. For sure, we are in the deep unraveling phase of our world. Yikes. Dystopia is here.

"No Kings Protest" tomorrow. Fuck that guy in the White House and everyone who works for that fuck. He truly is a plague, a scourge, a crime against humanity. We all deserve so much better.