15 September, 2005
vertigo

after my sense of humour disappears, my creative instincts depart soon thereafter.
as evidence, i offer this journal content in the past two weeks. but, though i accept responsibility, i do not accept the blame.

obviously, i've immersed myself way too much in current events, lately. the non-stop repetition of bullshit rolls out of the fingers much too easily. but i refuse to play the "blame game" and "make politics of this situation".

fuck. i did it again.

this time, last year, i was fire-breathing and chest-thumping about the farce that this country has become, and tried to bore as many people as possible into my crusade to the polls to make some sense of it.

silly human.

as long as they're comfy and oblivious, nobody will move their ass for anything.

maybe it was opening my eyes to the false comfort and apparent oblivion in my own four walls that got this ball rolling... a ball that got squashed flat by the stark reality in the newspaper and in this house. crisis, neglect. neglect, disaster. it works everywhere, whether on a national or a personal scale.

the icing on this putrid cake was slathered on when NewOrleans died, two weeks ago. never having set foot there, just as i've never set foot in Jamaica (though i've advertised reggae for almost fourteen years, now), i feel just slightly hipocritical making comments at all. but, empathy is a persistent and evasive insect... and you don't necessarily have to be someplace to know a place.

every news story, every image, every inference pushed me into a funk the likes of which i haven't endured since i had to sleep in the back of a stationwagon, years ago, during another personal low point. natural disaster, human suffering and irresponsibility: that was a wake-up call, enough to engage the rusty gears and tell my Congressmen exactly what i thought of the situation, in stamped #10 envelopes.

yeah, Congress can get to the bottom of the botched emergency response... and my name's Jesus.

deep-down, past all of the usual reactions to horrible things, the one aspect that completely sucker-punched me was this: in the inevitable suddenness of life, a place that was defined by music and character and life lived was silenced. the Big Switch was thrown on the Big Easy. in a matter of days, more people had dispersed to the far corners of the country than had migrated during the Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930's. and, right now, this minute, this place that had sound and life and purpose is silent: except for soldiers warding away news crews from ugly, necessary reality with M-16s. can't show the rest of the world the awful truth, can we?

while the government is writing blank checks for Halliburton's cleanup, and everyone else clamors to the RedCross, i contributed, instead, to WWOZradio. there's no telling where all the other money will go... but at least i know that i'll be helping to breathe music back into that city. maybe it's like whistling in the graveyard... but it's the best mind-over-matter cure that i know.

this is only one of the sores that have kept me from writing in these past days. but, i'm not picking at them so much, anymore... not if i can do something about them. pitching a bitch to elected officials, or dividing up personal effects... it's motion, anyway.

might i find my sense of humour somewhere around here, too?

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