your son out there
I offered to be part of our community “Solstice Sing”* when it was a small offering among ourselves and local musicians… nice venue to sing a little song, among friends.
Then more folks got wind of it, and suddenly there were top-notch professional performers and singers and sound healers surfing in! It made for a fine event… and left me shy of my often-ragged voice (raggeder than I would like, if I am unable to avoid comparisons). Whenever the rain in my brain got too heavy, I took deep breaths, and got down off my need to achieve, remembering I was just offering what I had to whomever came to hear it. And hey, no one was getting paid for this: easier to find humility when everything is free.
I chose a song I had begun working on a few years back… In the middle of a previous administration, there were so many messages and so many sound-bites blown to the winds: they flew in the windows like sleeping powder, they clouded the eyes like confusion-dust… while the real motivation for the actions of leadership were clearly other than the spoken truths. Painfully other. Sobriety is not about drink, but about becoming human, about allowing there to be shades and colors and complexity in the world. Until you get sober, life is very easy, very black and very white. But when you do get clean… it’s very uncomfortable… as soon as someone begins mouthing half-truth, a big blip goes off on your radar, big as a star going nova in an otherwise stark sky. A man says freedom and his other face smirks oil. A man shouts safety and his other face whispers kickbacks. A man cries democracy and his other face… winks. It’s awful, like watching a crash in slow motion, watching the fragile bodies crumple. Like watching the twin towers fall, over and over and over again.
So the administration changed, and my lyrics were stuck in limbo. They were all about a way of behaving in the world, and we were undergoing some serious behavior mod treatment. New regime, America! Let’s focus on coalition and at least a passing attempt at cooperation! One of my stanzas had the enlisted youth “waiting for a leader” who could really lead, and it seemed my request (which was certainly not mine alone) had been answered.
But then… Recently I was watching a kid’s movie: it was my daughter’s birthday, and while I cooked up dinner for her and her friends, I caught Edward Scissorhands out of the corner of my eye. Quirky, entertaining trifle, and a perfect vehicle for an equally quirky (and nearly unrecognizable) Johnny Depp. The protagonist is an outsider boy, doomed to an outsider’s life. And the antagonist, a absolutely unlikable, xenophobic, Other-Bashing high school jock. This other-basher becomes more and more Klannish and abrasive as the movie progresses, finally beating Edward, and then really going off the deep end, trying to shoot him. In the final climactic scene, Edward (who is pacifist to the extreme) saves himself and The Girl by running the Bad Guy through with a scissor. Ok. Hollywood with a Gothic edge.
Here’s what troubles me, and what allowed me to complete my lyrics, and perform my song. Inherent in this plot, and in almost every plot of every movie, there is the seed of violence, and the excuse for war. In every movie there is an aggressor whose actions are mildly heinous or terribly heinous… there is Dickens’ Uriah Heep sucking life and goodness from the Good, there’s a Black Hat, there’s a Them and Us… in every case, heinous action is enough that the person or persons deserve to die. We watch them die. We applaud it. To no longer exist: to be removed from existence. Deep in our culture (and many other cultures), we accept without challenge the notion that another being deserves death, and by our own hands.
I have no illusions about response to aggression, and the challenges we face when violence in word or in deed are committed. Most often they begin in word, the noncommittal bark before the bite, excused as nonviolent because “no one was touched”, precursor to physical acts. You may be the least inclined to strike out, or one who simmers just below the surface: given continual attacks, or the right combination of exhaustion and insecurity, the “last straw” will create what Thich Nhat Hanh recognizes as the blind action of anger. Disguised as social action or self-defense, thought based in anger or fear is not lucid, and action based on that thought is quite often destructive.
~
Some years ago I stood with a handful of envelopes in front of my Chicago apartment. Just begun my college career. I opened them one by one, a bill, junk mail (when such a thing still existed on paper), coming at last to an official looking letter:
MR MARK SCHULTZ IS REQUIRED TO APPEAR AT HIS LOCAL SELECTIVE SERVICE BUREAU TO REGISTER FOR THE DRAFT.
The draft (or the potential for it) had been reinstated, six short years after the ignominious end of the Viet Nam War. Six years! Was it mass amnesia? Was it any wonder the ranks were depleted, by death, dismemberment, post-traumatic shock syndrome, and the interest in avoiding all of the above? I think it is more selective perception, than amnesia. It is easy to forget what we know, and for whispering voices to put doubt into what we have learned. So we find ourselves,a decade or so later, involved for years in Iraq, in a mess in Afghanistan, pondering North Korea, eyeing Iran. It’s awful, like watching a crash in slow motion. Like watching the twin towers fall, over and over and over again.
This year my son is sixteen. Will oil and greed and lack of vision see him digging a foxhole in sand?
~
Your Son Out There
The boys are taking numbers
to stand in line again
born to an open hand
which of them will be men today
and draw a card that wins?
They’re looking for a future
looking for their rising star
to shine above the fields
a voice shouts from the doorway
“C’mon in, boy, you’re hired.”
They say that in my country
when the market’s weak there’s war
and our coin is thin, my friend
dig a grave for the bravest ones
in endless waves of sand
For those who study nothing
but manufactured fear
choose the path of least return
for the sake of a fantasy
the world can burn and burn.
The boys are drawing papers
to try their luck again
in a game where no one wins
where a number only measures
the days you’ve left to live
They’re looking for a leader
who can see over the wall
“A promised land is there:
if a man can walk on the moon
a car can run on air…”
But the weakest form of freedom
is the one that isn’t shared
the hand that’s holding nothing
buys nothing without fear.
And there’s nothing to fear
nothing to fear
but fear.
But our boys are taking numbers
we’ve given them to play
on a corner where their future ends
which of them are men today
and draw the card that wins?
They’re looking for a leader
looking for a rising star
to shine above the fields
but a voice shouts from the doorway
“C’mon in, son, you’re hired.”
~
* Visit http://solsticesingforpeace.com - a great idea to share music round the world, launched by a friend of the Odonata Ecovillage: a kind of praise, and a form of prayer.