It's Friday. End of the week. Time to relax. I remember when that was so. Not now, of course. This is the age of uncertainty.
I suppose it is always the age of uncertainty, and we just pretend life is eternal and unchanging, but it used to be much easier to pretend. Nowadays, there are constant reminders of the impermanence of it all. Things are bad. We all know it. Covid is very real. Global warming is galloping apace. The powers that be seem to be hell bent on minority rule, with a small clutch of very powerful people dictating policy with only their best interests in mind, to the detriment of the rest of us, and to the world itself.
So I don't want to focus on that today.
I have things to do.
I need to write up a treatment for a new musical I'm working on.
I need to gear up for callbacks for a socially distanced, mask wearing production of Little Shop I'm working on down in Parker.
I have to tend to my garden, both literally and figuratively.
I am not saying close your eyes and pretend this isn't the most serious time of your life.
It is.
I'm not saying just climb onto your roof top and watch it all burn down.
That way lies madness.
I'm saying acknowledge the wrong but seek the right.
When I was a kid, the world was crazy. Watergate was in full swing. The Beatles had broken up. Jimi and Janis and Jim were dead. The Zodiac was on the loose, and the Manson Family still had a few members taking shots at Ford. When they announced we would be pulling out of Viet Nam, I remember a fellow kindergartener saying to me "I can't believe we lost". He seemed to take it very personally, which seemed odd to me, being all of five year's old and not feeling like anyone, anywhere, was truly invincible. Not on the playground. Not in my family. Not on TV. Not in life.
And culturally? We were so divided. There were people who still dressed like it was 1955, and those who dressed like Woodstock never ended. The hippies and the hard asses. I liked the hippies because they had better music and didn't seem as angry. Move love, less fear appealed to me.
There were good things too. The Planet of the Apes movies. Micronauts. Evel Kneivel. Slurpees. And Comic Books.
I think one of the many things from that time that sort of summed up the state of the world was Manbat. He was this sort of reverse Batman werewolf like character who wasn't evil or good, but messed up and lost.
I dug him a lot.
And I think we are all Batpeople now. Struggling to retain our humanity in a world full of contrasts, short of love and tall on anger, not sure if we are doing the right thing, or even what the right thing is.
But back then, and now, one thing is remains true. We try. We seek answers. We don't often get them, and when we do, lots of times we misinterpret them. But we keep on trying. We have to. What other choice do we have?
I grew up in a dysfunctional, alcoholic household. Dismay and terror were part of the daily routine. Paired with the state of the world at the time, I had no choice but to be optimistic. It was difficult, and there were plenty of times when I let the dark side take over, when I was more bat than man. But I kept on.
And I keep on today. I think the world is gone mad. I think people are lost and afraid and angry. I think we are facing the very real possibility of the end of democracy in America. But I keep on. I have to.
And if I do turn into some from of hybrid bat/human, I will fight for what I think it right. I may get rabies, or have Batman kick the shit out of me, but that's the way it goes.
As mister Bowie told us, "we can be heroes".
So let's do that. Let's find the love and hope and possibility of a better world.
Here's a song. It's Superman's Song by Crash Test Dummies.
Okay. I get it. Things suck. And there is no final crappy thing that will mark the end of things sucking. This is life. Things happen. Some good. Some bad. Both will happen in large amounts. Can't control that. Can only control how we respond. How we live. How we treat one another.
I am choosing as much love and respect as I can. And doing not only the right thing, but the hard thing. Risking oneself for what is right. Speaking out, politely but unsparingly, for what I believe to be true. Well, maybe not so polite. I might tell someone to go to Hell. Or fuck off. Or ask them to pull their head out of their ass. Because a lot is going on right now, and we are all of us, each and every human being, being counted. Where do we stand on: Covid, Global Warming, Science in general, Systemic Racism, Equal Rights, voting rights, education, the Economic Divide, and on and on and on and on and on.
It's all coming together, it seems.
It's one of those moments in history when the world is being tested. And we can either rise up to greater glory than ever before, or sink like Atlantis.
I prefer rise up and flourish. But that's me.
What I don't feel like doing is giving up. Ever. I don't think I can. I have built into my brain a desire to fight for what's right. I think we all do. Not that we always do the right thing. Far from it. We all have let things slide, given the benefit of doubt to trolls under the bridge who promise us they are up to no mischief. We've all had that moment when we could have said or done things better. And we will no doubt have more.
But we are living with such gigantic consequences of letting things slide, I firmly believe we will not let that continue. I think of the Velvet Revolution in the former Soviet Union. I think of the American Revolution. I think of the French Underground during WWII. I think of the Underground Railroad. Things have been awful before. And people chose sides. And there were heroes.
And there are heroes.
I want the ghosts of Harriet Tubman and RBG to guide us.
I want us all to have a daily or nightly seance where we call on the spirits of our personal heroes to return to this realm to help us become better at being human beings.
I want every person reading this to get five people they know to vote, and to vote Democratic.
My words may be jumbled, my paragraphs rambling, my meaning not clear.
But I am clear. I know what I want: Justice. Peace. A Green New Deal. Equal rights for every human being on this planet. A future for every little kid I see.
And together, we can make this all happen.
No more fear. No more madness. No more lies.
And no more excuses, for ourselves or for those who seem bent on world destruction.
Let's take that next step of cultural evolution.
I love you all. Here's a song. It's All Is Not Lost by OK GO
Okay. Can we just all get together on the global warming thing? Shaver Lake, the lake I grew up on every summer as a boy, the lake I swam a mile on, got my certification as a lifeguard, lay on rocks at night, letting their sunbaked warmth keep me toasty in the cool Sierra Nevada evenings, is surrounded by flames. So for me, I have a real place from my life that has been burnt to a crisp. Of course, there's also the fact that is got over 120F in LA the other day, and pylons melted on the pavement. And it got over 130F in Death Valley recently. And on and on and on and on.
But wait. I read something today that made me think maybe, finally, real work will be done on a massive scale and approved by our corrupt system. It was an article in the NY Times, which despite what the Orange One and his followers says, is still a pretty reputable news source, about how global warming is going to start messing with economic markets on a massive scale.
So greed will get the world moving. Not safety, kindness, a sense of responsibility, love for humanity or nature or animals, or even wanting a world your children can live to an old age in. Just greed. A desire for money.
What is it with us, as a species? How did we come to value money above all else? How have we been able to ignore the obvious downsides to this aspect of our collective soul throughout our history? I am reminded, yet again, of a line from The Planet of the Apes. It's at the end of the movie, right before Heston sees what's left of the Statue of Liberty. Cornelius is asked by a tied up Doctor Zaius to read from some religious scrolls. Cornelius complies, and reads the following:
“Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.”
It seems like we are making a desert of our home.
It is time to stop; all this. To either fix this, or go the way of the Dodo. I prefer fixing. And I think we can. I know we can. I firmly believe we are in the greatest period of flux since The Enlightenment. We are being forced to confront the end result of our way of life, of thinking and doing. Oppression, repression, exploitation, and manipulation are up against science, compassion, reason, and love. We have to make a choice. Each of us. We have to get up, and try, and try again. We have to help, both ourselves and each other and the planet we live on.
We have to wise up.
Please.
I love lakes and forests and beaches and trees. I love open fields, going to the movies, concerts at Red Rocks, live theatre, hugs. I can take heart ache and being stupid and arguments about chores. I can't take us killing the planet. I can't. And I won't. I am in this to the end.
Here's a song. It's Aimee Mann singing Wise Up, with footage from the movie Magnolia.
Well, life in the Upside Down continues to warp and woof, to mutate on a constant basis, always in surprising ways even when I am certain surprise is no longer possible. For the past few days, the skies of Denver have been this creepy pale dullness that looks like the photos of what the skies of Mars look like. Dead, lifeless, barren and forsaken. This is because a ton of the state is on fire. A ton of the country is on fire. And don't tell me this isn't due to global warming. Don't tell me anything about global warming, unless it's about how we need to change our habits right the fuck now. A bunch of greedy, lost fools have sold our planet for a fistful of dollars, and it sucks. We need to fix it, and that will be painful. Doable, but painful. That, too, sucks. But that's all I really care to discuss on the matter of global warming. At least for this paragraph.
I was talking about the sky. How strange it has become. How drab and dreary, like that Once Upon a Midnight Poe wrote of. And what really makes that sky so sad is that we all got to see blue skies for a bit, at the beginning of the lockdown. Blue skies, clear streams, birds singing. I dig that. I love that. Earth is this huge love planet, and all we did was pause our so very important business for like a month, and POW! that planet was reviving, recovering, refilling. I want more of that. Less smoke and sorrow, more life and joy.
Speaking of joy, I'm gearing up to direct a production of Little Shop of Horror. Which fills me with happiness, trepidation, and a desire to create something pertinent to the now. To right now. To a world of masks, protest, fire and ice.
Oh yes. The ice.
Yesterday, it was in the 90s here in the Mile High City. Today it's in the 30s. That seems a bit severe. A bit unkind. But undeniable. We now live in a world where the temperature can swing over 60 degrees in a day. Where is gets so hot in some cities that traffic pylons melt on the pavement, while not that far away, late summer tomatoes freeze on the vine before they've fully ripened.
Wow. I'm feeling like I might be veering towards the negative. And I don't want to do that. I don't. We have so much trouble right now. So much heartache. Time for heal. To put out the fires, bundle up the cold, and sing songs of love and laughter for our fellow human beings.
I am going to try and do just that. I write stories. I direct plays. I teach children.
And I play you songs like Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple.
Every morning, well, most mornings, I get up and make a French press pot of coffee. While I wait for the water to boil, I heat up a cup from yesterday's pot, let the dog out, and listen to the news while going about the business of wandering around, waking up. I have an Alexa, and while I do this it plays a series of little news snippets from the NY Times; NPR; Fox News, and so on. I think they're trying to be fair and cover all bases by having all these different types of news shows. Today, Fox was really trying to get me excited about the NBA playoffs. And I realized how much I don't really care about them right now. And I started thinking about what has changed for me during this pandemic. What I care about. What excites me. What feels important. And it ain't sports, much as it feels like the powers that be would like them to be. I don't connect normal with professional sports. Or rather, normal as in healthy occupations that I am happy to do for the short span of this life. I think the virus has increased my need and ability to critically think. To parse what people are trying to sell me. Don't get me wrong. I love watching sporting events. Especially baseball. But I find the way most people on TV and radio talk about it is out of touch with reality. There is this strange lionization of sports, like this is what gives our lives meaning, as opposed to it is something we enjoy passing the time with while living our lives.
Usually, this over exaggeration of the importance of professional sports doesn't bug me. But this morning it did. The only think I find really pertinent about sports these days is how there was a walk out during the recent protests, and that walk out resulted in a lot of arenas being turned into voting centers. That is cool. That actually does have meaning.
We are still in the midst of a global pandemic. Over a thousand Americans died yesterday. Ten people for every yard on a football field. Imagine them. A thousand people, standing in a line on a football field, from field goal to field goal.
Now imagine them laying there, dead.
What I'm trying to say is, I'm tired of people telling me via advertisements and sponsored newscasts what they think I should consider important. Because I don't think they care so much about what is right as they do about making money.
And money, as Ringo, John, Paul, and George taught us many years ago, can't buy me love. Or more time on this earth. Or joy.
I would love to go to a ball game.
I would love more for less people to die every day.
For more people to take this thing seriously.
For our better angels to finally make an appearance.
Okay. Here's a song. It's the foreshadowed Can't Buy Me Love by The Beatles.
And still, it goes on. I think I've semi-forgotten, or managed to push to the back of my brain, the fact that every day hundreds, often over a thousand, people die of Covid right here in the USA. And world wide, the numbers are even worse. Part of that is probably human nature. We adjust. But I think another large part is the fact that we never see images of what people look like in those ICUs, as they slowly, horrifically die, isolated from their friends and family. I think I've mentioned it before. I'm not sure, as these blogs are written first thing in the morning, as I drink my second cup of coffee after letting the dog out, watering the plants, and all those things you do in the morning. Anyhow, I have seen what it looks like, because a woman I barely knew, one of those Facebook friends you have whose posts you read but whom you've rarely actually conversed with, had it, took a lot of selfies throughout her ordeal. And then she died. She was a mother of three. In her mid-forties. Married. Seemed really nice. The images were awful. Like something from a scary movie. I am very tempted to share those photos, but out of respect for the dead and her family, I don't.
Maybe I should.
Maybe if more people saw what it looks like to have Covid, it would be real for them.
Maybe not.
There is video of that kid in Kenosha killing people, but there are those who have managed to bend reality so that in their minds, it was self defense. That this angry mob, for no reason other than they were savages, had attacked this angel who was out there with his trusty rifle to protect America.
Maybe images on social media are just a bad way to try and convince anyone of anything. Maybe I need to engage on a more immediate level with people I actually know, right here in Denver, who think everything's great, the virus is over, and all is well in the world.
What seems certain is that we are still in the middle of some seismic, tectonic shift in how we think, live, breathe, interact, move.
And that when I speak with people, listen, learn, try, write, express, things get better.
And life is short. Absurdly, stupidly short.
And War of the Gargantuas, a classic Kaiju movie I watched many times on Creature Features in my formative years, is a tale for our time. Basically, there are two gigantic monsters, who have the ability to destroy entire cities, but also to save us from certain death. They're like this obvious metaphor for our inner demons and angels. We used to call the good one Brother Brown and the bad one Goofy Green. Green is basically got a lot of issues, and enjoy snacking on people and destroying buildings. Brown lives in the mountain and communes with nature. Brown loves Green, but when it becomes clear Green can't change his evil ways, shit gets real. It's streaming now, and I think, if we all watched it, the world would be better. Or at least distracted for a bit.
Okay. Here's a song. It's Feelin' Human by D'Haene.
Tuesday morning, and the weather changes. Almost chilly. At least for the moment. I pulled out a hoodie for the first time in ages. Feels nice. One of those parts of life I didn't realize I liked so much. Putting a hoodie back on as summer starts to let Fall give us little sneak previews. I have a hunch we are going to need the little things even more in the coming months. Bad moon rising. Well, not bad moon. Bad mojo. Anger and Fear. Lies and Exaggerations. Accusations and Revelations. Not the Book of Revelations, though it does feel like it these days. So pull out those hoodies. Order your favorite tea. Watch that movie that keeps you going. Do whatever it takes, because we are not through the woods. We are in the thick of it. Cases rising in Europe. Unrest across the country. And this election is going to be nasty. Probably violent. And Election Day itself? I can easily imagine little skirmishes all over. Trump cultists insisting on a win, regardless of reality. We will need to be strong.
Not that we can't get through this. We will. It is going to be ugly, and there will be more and more difficult conversations. People we love, friends and family, will spout things that sound, and most likely are, insane. Things that will make the Flat Earthers sound almost reasonable by comparison. Things like "there are really less than ten thousands deaths from the virus"; "It's a worldwide conspiracy designed to get rid of Der Fuhrer... I mean the President!"; "Jar Jar was a great character"; and so on.
It is heartbreaking when people we love act foolishly. When they succumb to fear or greed or vanity. I think most of us assume those close to us will always do the right thing, see the world the way we do, and never break those unspoken bonds of love. But they do. Sadly, the longer I live, the more I see that happen. But, happily, I have also experienced first hand many times where out of troubled times comes love. Where when something that seemed flawed was addressed, those same friends or family who seemed to be in the wrong got it together and adjusted to reality. And of course, I've adjusted to that same reality myself. We all have the potential to be assholes. And we all go there from time to time.
I don't know if we will all make it out of this unscathed. I don't think every asshole will wise up.
But I do know we all gotta keep on trying. Reaching for the stars, for understanding, and for each others hand. In a socially distant, safe way. To tweak Burr's advice to Hamilton, if we talk more, smile more, things will get better.
So pull out that hoodie, put on your favorite song, and change the world.
Here's a song. It's Hey Ahab by Elton John & Leon Russell.
