I haven’t posted in a long time: I’ve been staying off the computer, trying to do real-world things, soaking it all in just to be squeezed out on a day like today, when my brain won’t turn off. I didn’t sleep well last night because my thoughts are out of control, and it’s good.
I hate stressing about politics. I actually hate politics in this country in general; it’s such a disgusting, sloppy mess, and it makes the whole country look idiotic. About a year ago, after several years of obsessively listening to NPR daily, I stopped listening to the news and it was the best thing I ever did for my happiness. To cut that unnecessary stress out of my life was to wake up to what really mattered in my daily life. However, I still have to care about what’s going on in the world, and I still have to vote because it’s a right that many people in the world don’t have.
Yet, every election, the day after is full of desolation and nothing has changed. Each politician, each party, puts forward all these big hopes and dreams and changes, and nothing happens but a giant money grab that continues on and on and on. If we aren’t careful, we’ll drown in the depression of this vicious, ugly cycle.
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
As I drove to my studio early this morning, Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row came on my iPod, and it reminded me of how desolate and lame our country’s political scene really is.
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
I heard these lines this morning, and thought sorrowfully on our state’s new Public Land Commissioner. He campaigned against the “Organ Mountain land grab” (aka, the creation of the new Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in southern New Mexico), which fortunately for the protected land, he won’t have much influence over. Time will tell whether monument designation will truly preserve and protect these lands or not, but all I can hope for is that no more buildings will be built and no more roads will be paved and no more trash will be dumped…
The environment is the number one political issue for me because environmental issues are what created politics and economics: people arguing about what they should do with all the land and resources and animals, who it belongs to, how they’re going to rape it or save it or fuck it or leave it or abuse it…
The circus is in town
Desolation Row: fighting about abuse, fighting about selfishness, fighting about desolation.
Everybody’s shouting, “Which side are you on?”
It’s disgusting how we fight for our rights but not for the rights of the very Earth that is our home. If we destroy our home, we’ll have nothing to fight over anymore. We’ll disintegrate into the desolation of what we did to our home. Why can’t we all agree that we should take good care of our home?
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
Desolation: wildness, isolation, remoteness, barrenness, broken-hearted.
The desert. The tortoise. The raven. The tarantula. The coyote. The cottonwood. The sand poppy. The ponderosa pine. The blue gramas. Each knows desolation. Each has unheard stories to tell. Will we open our senses to hear their tales? Or will we keep faith in our fake realities of commissioners and elections and buildings and pavement and celebrities and fashion and whose side are you on?
I’ll be on the Earth’s side, forever.
There are no sides on this sphere.
Here is Bob Dylan’s live version of Desolation Row from his stellar performance at Royal Albert Hall in 1966. For me, it’s one of the greatest performances of any song, ever.
Artist On The Road 