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FiftyFive ~ # 33 (again)
I wasn't so young when this picture was taken, around thirty-three (same number as this post - and ouch, were I there again) certainly not a babe (my son D. said, "...dad I don't remember you when you had brown hair..."). Much of the ten years prior to this picture being taken were spent singing and writing and playing guitar and harmonica and just doing stuff that appealed - and at this point I was still playing live, here and there. But my last post on Haiti received a response which awakened something else in me - something which was present then and perhaps is not so clear now - though I am writing an extended piece which has a similar sentiment. In an email conversation we were reminding ourselves how 30,000 people die of poverty and needlessly of hunger every single day - look there goes another 30k since you last read. And that's the problem, isn't it. Tragedy becomes a cause, a 9/11; an earthquake, a hurricane instills this sense of horror, when what we really should acknowledge is that there already existed and exists still great sadness in the world. And she wrote, "...the chicness of tragedy leaves me crawling under the covers to push my pillow into my mouth so I never have to talk again..." And we are/were right to be outraged by such chic causes, such as the one launched for Haiti, which ignore the existing tragedy it was built on. But then, I guess the world would also be worse without the chic causes too, so we are damned if we do and damned if we don't, because what more can be said. What I don't do anymore (and I wish I did) was some of the kind of writing and singing that presented this and these issues to a newer audience - in the way that the wondeful Joan Baez trumpeted all her life (and dreaming of Joe Hill). There are so many ways to raise awareness and singing was one way I liked and like and am close to. Thus, and in deference, this is a truly wonderful song and I don't know if Joan ever sang it, and I have a copy of Archie Roach singing it on my iPod - but I really love this version. So let's keep those old protest flags flying; even if I am pretending the picture above is really me, it is as I once was and I don't have a Dorian Gray-like picture in my attic, for you still cannot buy my soul...
I wasn't so young when this picture was taken, around thirty-three (same number as this post - and ouch, were I there again) certainly not a babe (my son D. said, "...dad I don't remember you when you had brown hair..."). Much of the ten years prior to this picture being taken were spent singing and writing and playing guitar and harmonica and just doing stuff that appealed - and at this point I was still playing live, here and there. But my last post on Haiti received a response which awakened something else in me - something which was present then and perhaps is not so clear now - though I am writing an extended piece which has a similar sentiment. In an email conversation we were reminding ourselves how 30,000 people die of poverty and needlessly of hunger every single day - look there goes another 30k since you last read. And that's the problem, isn't it. Tragedy becomes a cause, a 9/11; an earthquake, a hurricane instills this sense of horror, when what we really should acknowledge is that there already existed and exists still great sadness in the world. And she wrote, "...the chicness of tragedy leaves me crawling under the covers to push my pillow into my mouth so I never have to talk again..." And we are/were right to be outraged by such chic causes, such as the one launched for Haiti, which ignore the existing tragedy it was built on. But then, I guess the world would also be worse without the chic causes too, so we are damned if we do and damned if we don't, because what more can be said. What I don't do anymore (and I wish I did) was some of the kind of writing and singing that presented this and these issues to a newer audience - in the way that the wondeful Joan Baez trumpeted all her life (and dreaming of Joe Hill). There are so many ways to raise awareness and singing was one way I liked and like and am close to. Thus, and in deference, this is a truly wonderful song and I don't know if Joan ever sang it, and I have a copy of Archie Roach singing it on my iPod - but I really love this version. So let's keep those old protest flags flying; even if I am pretending the picture above is really me, it is as I once was and I don't have a Dorian Gray-like picture in my attic, for you still cannot buy my soul... 
