Friday, April 27, 2007

Buying the War

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491

Just watched Bill Moyers' latest, which you can watch by clicking here. It's a great watch, well-made, and it's got me really thinking about just how fragile our nation is.

The video examines how the Washington press-corps, in the lead-up to the Iraq war, failed in their most important responsibility: finding, and communicating, the truth. It wasn't clear to me just how absolutely critical the press is in maintaining our freedom, in enabling us to make informed decisions. Imagine if it were like China or Russia or another one of these fucked up places, and all our news was state-run. How could you ever make an informed decision? You only have the word of these people to go on. If they fail, democracy fails.

It seems almost quaint now to hear Bush and his people make the case for the war, almost embarrassing to see how they made constant connections to 9/11. It's like making a video of yourself at age 16 in which you declare all the things you take as absolutes about life and love and then watching it twenty years later, realizing the stunning amount of ignorance in which you lived. It would be comical if people weren't still dying for it, weren't still giving their lives towards the effort.

I remember once, in the lead-up to the war, I posted something on a forum in defense of Michael Moore. Moore had just delivered his "fictitious war" speech at the Oscars, something for which history will remember him, in my opinion, as a minor hero of free-speech, and within minutes someone posted about how I was a "typical liberal" who would rather have Saddam Hussein in power and how much I hated America. It's funny, I still kinda get pissed just thinking about it, and I think it is because, even then, I knew I was being policed, being branded a minor-traitor just because I called people on their blatant character-assassination. It scared me how powerful this person's vitriol was, how palpable his anger was, and it's little comfort knowing just how wrong he was, just how embarrassed I would be if I were him, to have put my heart into some knowledge only to be shown repeatedly by the last four years just how wrong I was, and how tragic my certainty had proven.

Now, am I sad that Hussein is out of power? Nope. Dude was a douchebag, a whorehound of Hell, and he deserved a dog's death. He deserved death long before we gave it to him.

But we were lied to. I was lied to. My mom was lied to. I know some of you might still have some faith left in Bush, even some faith in this war, and I guess it's hard for me to communicate how much I wanted to like Bush, how much I wanted to believe that it was a righteous war. Is it bad to confess how exciting it was to see the green footage of Baghdad in those early days, the way our bombs lit up the night sky, to feel the might of America throb and pulse and pound, a beating heart spilling blood and destruction in the name of justice?

But you were lied to. The fear that we all had after 9/11, the righteous anger, the trembling fury that shook in our fists as we saw the buildings collapse, all of that was taken, twisted, manipulated and deformed into a misguided fervor. Like an abused child, we all thought we were doing the right thing, that what we were doing wasn't hurting anyone, and now I just feel dirty. Tainted. I'm mad that my generation inherits a world that went from "Tout les Americains" to "Freedom Fries" in the span of a year. I'm mad that our credibility in the world is shot. (I'm also mad at people like Richard Gere, who astound me by being horrible, horrible ambassadors... I mean really, Dick, what the fuck. This kind of thing would make us uncomfortable in America, let alone freaking India).

Anyways. I haven't gotten political on this blog for one reason only, and that is that politics divide people. My whole point here is to connect, to brighten your day, to share my stories in the hope that you find the strength to share your own. I am just so sad about this whole Iraq situation. I don't know how long it will take to undo the damage done. I remember reading once in an editorial that perhaps the only way to win in Iraq was to lose (or feign-death, for the WoW peeps who read this). You know, take a fall and let the little guy feel like he's won. America leaving could be great motivation for Iraqis to feel good about themselves.

Anti-American? Nope. I want to win, goddammit, and if winning the freedom of these frigging people halfway across the globe means sucking up some of our pride, consolidating our armies, refortifying, and strengthening up for the next battle, then so be it (how awesome is Risk? seriously, people, sometimes you have to let the Middle East go in order to pwn Africa).

I hope you're well. Watch the Moyers thing. Some guy on YouTube called him an "aging Marxist," and I've found that the people who get labeled are usually the ones with something interesting to say. Also, the internet makes me fear for the future of humanity, YouTube comments in particular. Sheesh.

always,
m

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Whatever You Are Doing

Stop.

Look at this.



I have been staring at this image for 10 minutes, and now I know why. It looks like a woman. No, I am not crazy, look at the pale pinks, the vibrant reds, the bluish veins. Look at that little swirl to the left. It's a woman. This could just as easily be a well-lit close-up of you. Millions of light years away, an image 50 light years across, just one tiny corner of one tiny corner, is a womb as pink and perfect, giving birth to new stars brighter than our own Sun.

It's from Hubble. The Carina nebula. Meant to celebrate the telescope's 17th year.

Does anyone else take incredible comfort in the fact that we are made of star stuff? Looking at this picture it makes perfect sense to me why women are soft, supple, swirling. The picture is pretty, sure, but it is depicting horrific violence, an incredible maelstrom of creation and destruction, bits and pieces of existence hurling into one another, creating new starlight. Birth isn't painful or chaotic as a punishment. It's just what creation is, two faces of the creative force, light and dark each perfectly balanced. Stars grow, live, nova, die, implode unto dust, and out of that dust swirls new stars. Mix some of that same dust together, add a little water, and you get a new you. Is it possible to look at this picture and not be overtaken by your inner philosopher? Can a human being look at this and not see himself in the collisions, not see his woman in the pink and blue tendrils?

Okay the answer is probably yes, so resist the urge to be a smart ass and comment as such. I'm just saying. Stop and look. You are not puny in comparison to this image. You are enormous. You are as big as the sky.


-m

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Sex, Drugs, and Ragtime

Omg this is the sexiest blog title I've had in months.

Hi! It's been awhile. I can honestly say I've been busy, putting on a ragtime concert with Bryan, working on the polio documentary, finishing up school forever and ever amen, working for Apple... I've been off Paxil for well over a month, having quit cold-turkey after realizing that crap was one of the reasons I was smoking and drinking like a fiend, and so now the only drugs I'm on are for a nasty cold that I caught. I am definitely a medicine-head at the moment, however, so if my prose seems kind of flighty you'll know why.

How have you been? God, we never get to talk anymore. I always feel like there's more to say than I've said. Where to begin.

Sex

Yes, sex. It's been good. I have a great sex life and I'm delighted by it.

Drugs

Already covered. Off of them. I think I smoked half a cigarette three weeks ago and was horribly disappointed with how gross it was.

Ragtime

Ah-HA! Yes! My ragtime life has sprung awake with the lilies. On April 13, Bryan and I put on a ragtime concert at the First Unitarian Church. I wish I had some of the footage to show you - I think I'm going to YouTube some of it, but suffice it to say that we got not one but TWO standing ovations, and it was a delightful return to performing for me. I was so nervous to start out that I completely forgot the first notes of Joplin's "Elite Syncopations" - I had spent the whole day nervous about that evening, and I think screwing up, and surviving, was the best thing I could have done for my confidence. Because after that, I mean, what can happen? You've already screwed up. Worst fear realized, and the audience is still sitting there. Time to move on.

So, I've been good. Playing a lot of piano, working a lot in Avid. My inner life has been interesting recently. As I wander deeper into myself, I'm constantly surprised by the variety of things in my inner-forest: twisted vines, great scars covered by flowers in bloom, strip mines with baby grass peeking through pebbles, streams, smooth stones, lilacs. Jessie's grandfather gave me a beautiful analogy once. He is 90, and so most of his friends have passed on, and he was describing the sadness of it as though they were "great trees who had grown skyward and then suddenly collapsed." I've been thinking a lot about death recently, especially considering the events at Virginia Tech (more on that in a minute), and I'm reminded of when I was in Houston and Emily read my palm. She ran her finger along my life line and said, "Well, mine is longer than yours. Yours is pretty short, actually." And I've wondered, not idly, if she's right, if my life is indeed going to be short. I don't know. I look at the faces of the slain VA Tech students and they look a lot like my classmates, a lot like me. I bet they had the same question when they looked at their palms, wondering how long their life was going to be, what dreams were yet to come. Are the lives of others on our palms as well?

Regarding the Virginia Tech thing, I just don't know what to do with it. I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose your child like that, at that point in life, when you're just getting to enjoy them as a person, a real person. That's how my mom talks about my Uncle Mark, who was killed in a car crash 30 years ago at the age of 21. The sadness was that he was just becoming interesting, you know? Just finding his own two feet. And I don't know if it's tasteless or not, but I think of Lord of the Rings every time I hear of seemingly random violence, think of Theoden donning his mantle of war and all the while wondering, "What can men do against such reckless hate?" The question rings out in my head, wholly unsatisfied with Aragorn's answer, and I feel like it is the question for our times how we as good people respond to those who perform vicious, evil acts.

My first question after I heard the news was, "Where is your God?" The second question was, "How is it right for one person to have the capability of ending thirty lives?" And then I realized that the two questions were connected, both dealing with responsibility, with cause, with reason, and I knew in that instant what I know about my own darkness, and that is it comes from a place beyond reason, beyond motive and purpose and cause. Every person has a well inside of them, a well that, at its bottom, is sludgy and dank, and if its dug too deep or there's not enough water, evil, dangerous things can seep through and bubble upwards.

Friends are the water. Love is the water. And if you aren't filled up, then you can draw some crazy things from the bottom of yourself.

Anyways, I'm waxing. But it does have me thinking about life and about death, about what I'm leaving to the world and whether I'm in danger of dying with my music still inside me. I wish I could spend less time being afraid of not accomplishing enough and more time actually accomplishing, but that seems a silly wish seeing as I'm the only one who can grant it (Disney moment!).

Alright, I'm heading to bed. So little to say, so much time. Wait. Scratch that. Reverse it.

yours
Martin