New York:
I just got back from a short trip to NYC with Thievery
Corporation.
Good to see the T.C. Family again, and thankful for a late night hang with my roomy John Nelson.
Woke up this morning and had breakfast at a favorite Cafe: Mogador,
(Our brother Arnie put us on to this spot and
it is still as good as it ever was).
I then went up to the Metropolitan Museum to check out the Robert Frank Photo exhibit
that Susan hipped me to: Amazing. Robert Frank and Kerouac were the last ones to document the old America as it just
began to get bowled over by commercial giants and political deceptive allusion.
That world is gone now.
Only
in the park lands, and the company of the gracious poor & recent immigrants can you still find that original American
heart.
The rest of America has "bought the monsanto / walmart farm" - so to speak;
Wether
America is trading it on wall street - or giving it money on main street...
I believe that America has lost it's
heart to industrial commercialization.
Forever.
Historically, America has lost it's heart many times over, and
somehow arguably found another.
It lost the original heart that tried to make a union with the Native Americans,
the Canadian French, the English.
It lost it's Idealistic heart when it spread propaganda during ww2 and the McCarthy
Era. And, it lost it's heart during Iran Contra (and the Iran war), Just to name a few...
BUT - that doesn't mean that
it lost it all - because the people all along the way have tried to bring it along. People are sometimes noble and most-times
not. But, ultimately - unfortunately, human nature is greedy.
And, all living things are self preservation-al.
The
down fall of post colonial America is that it has NO history.
Post colonial America likes to think of itself as 'having
had a fresh start'. But, it has no allegiance to ancestry, and without that, one may have freedom to 'be free' - but, one
also has less of a base for local responsibility. .. or; Tribal responsibility.
Now, I want you to know that I like
my freedom of tribal responsibility, I like my total freedom - BUT, America did not give that to me; I was born with that.
I was a child of the world first. The 'new America' cannot take that away from me.
The new America is not free.
It is bound by Law, Money & Social Mores.
I saw a painting today at the MET in NYC of a Natchez indian couple delivering
a baby by a river side, in the wild - and that was freedom to me. No hospital; if the baby died - the baby died... if
it lived - it lived. The couple was strong and beautifully natural, and no court in the world could preside over them;
only their own selves: That is natural freedom.
At dinner tonight my friend (and Band Mate Rick Gehrenbeck) said
"We all but killed off the indigenous people - America is all immigrants. We have very little shared ancient history".
My friend Marco added that "in America, people "go off to college, and re settle, and that adds a break in the chain
of home and community" (and ultimately - culture). This combined with the industrial revolution, and subsequent
world trade dynasties, and the greedy wrestle towards monopolistic capitalism has crushed any hope America once had towards
developing it's own noble soul.
We can't come back from that - FOX news & CNN and the global financial
/ political machinery won't let us.
I believe tonight that America has lost the dream. It has even lost the war.
I believe that there is no turning back.
I believe that my only recourse is to reject it all, and to live in my own
dream, and to try to stay out of jail for doing so.
My original point is that the Robert Frank exhibit was beautiful.
Inspiring...
John Nelson told me about the Bauhaus Exhibit at MOMA so I went there today too. Stunning.
The
design esthetics and the architectural influences on everything made total sense,
There was a film they played of a
well constructed house: how a house should be laid out for optimal use that made complete sense to me. The Nazi's deconstructed
the bauhaus movement.
But that is another long ramble...
NYC has never been the same to me since Arnie,
Lesa, Kalea, Ted, Robert, Christian, Cliff, Laura and all the Hawaiian's moved away out west - but it was sure nice to feel
that even without that local aloha - NYC can still inspire.
