The Wars, The Wars.

I have now spent this entire week, trapped on the couch, keeping my arm in ice. I didn't know until two days ago, though, that the problem was in my shoulder, not my wrist (because the pain seemed to be more focused on the lower arm and wrist area -- I thought the shoulder pain was coming from "favoring" my arm.

I'm still in pain, so I can't do much, include type, but I thought I'd just put down a few thoughts.

I probably shouldn't have gone to Columbus and done those two shows, but at the time, after I fell, mere steps away from my front door on a Sunday morning at 5am, all I could think of was, "I gotta get to the plane!" What can I say?  I'm dense.

Anyway, since I couldn't use my right hand much -- still can't -- it has given me a chance to slow down and just think, even as I have all the media I can eat.

I saw on the news the other night a story about making some kids spend a week, or something, away from all electronic devices -- and judging how "addicted" to the net they are.

It all sounds so fantastically sci fi to my ears. And yet, how quickly I take for granted things that, a generation ago, weren't even thought up yet.

But how ironic it is that the more we think up in The Cloud, the more unreal "reality" starts to seem. The two "wars" they keep telling us "we're" fighting rage on like an intermittent mini-series on USA Network. Our lives are so divorced from that reality, we don't even want to look at it.

(And, now, the Wikileaks Papers, which the major news organizations have been hoarding, so that they can analyze it before the government spin doctors go to work? have come out. Al Jazeera broke it 30 minutes too soon.)

Friends of mine on the Christian Right have been insisting, to me, that we are in a war with Islam itself, and that lefties are all in denial about it. Radical Islamists and radical Jews agree with them. It's nice to know they all agree about something other than gay people are going to hell. But, I kid my Abrahamic faith brothers and sisters!*

There was this song by the Monkees, long ago. Peter Tork sang it. The King of Zor / Called for a war.

I have several friends in the armed services who tell me they almost wince when someone says "thank you for your service" but ignore how this country treats its veterans, and how the wars are treated as this remote thing "the government" is doing. As interesting as watching someone else play a video game. Thus, without substance.

It's why I added the song called "He's Coming Back" to New World Waking with a shared lyric credit with my friend, Avril, who volunteers at Kulak's Woodshed. She sent her son back to Iraq and I wrote the song surreptitiously over the weekend, by writing down what she said as she told the story at a Wednesday song writing workshop.

That's the vocal arrangement I was working on all week. 

This is the video where I first performed the song for Avril, that following Monday.

It makes me even more committed to New World Waking, The Last Session and The Big Voice. All three pieces, written from the heart with no original purpose other than to tell a story and to entertain, foster an environment of dialogue and communication. 


Just last week, I heard from a theater in Canada that wants to use The Big Voice as their way of engaging with the conservative people in their area.


That's how all wars end. With a negotiation around a table. And that's how I'll end this rambling post. With a trip to get another ice pack out of the freezer.

*There is an exhibition, now, in New York, of early texts from the "Abrahamic faiths."