The Soul of America Caught Naked in Ryan Adams' Voice

A Saturday night and Ryan Adams' Jacksonville City Nights is on the turn table while the whiskey is in the jar and the sun is setting beyond the Great Plains, the Rockies spreading their vast shadows over the graves of gun fighters and the long forgotten bleached bones of outlaws. Ryan Adams has managed to do something that I was tempted to think impossible in this digital/electronic mechanized age--he has recorded an album striking in its originality while somehow hearkening back to an age that the prairie sun long ago set upon. Listening to Jacksonville, you here hints of Sun Records by way of the old crackle of Hank Williams sr. records on a dust covered jukebox in some lost west Texas town. He has constructed a sonic looking glass that possesses the magical power of looking upon past and future simultaneously--the pain of a lonely rain-speckled afternoon when your girl has let that front porch door slam behind her for the last and final time. And yet, your grandfather's sorrow is in there somewhere, caught between the subtle creek in the voice and the cry of the petal steel. It's the static of some half-captured radio station heard absentmindedly while cruising over wind-swept highways of the southwest where the cactus open needle-covered arms up toward the sky as if in quiet reverence to the silent master of creation. It's the midnight river swelling with a storm's ugly might and threatening the farmhouse that has been in the family for three generations and has outlasted even bankers covetous designs, the one that gave shelter to those dust bowl refugees and who knows if even Woody Guthrie himself weren't amongst their ranks. It's in the cigarette scarred voices of old men sitting around a honky tonk bar trading shots of Wild Turkey and stories of the old days when cattle roamed the range 'stead of telecommunication antennas. And it's in the eyes of the old women, bless their wind-burnt souls, hanging laundry on the lines at twilight.

Yeah--it holds all those things, like a sonic scrapbook of who we were when the blood of struggle shook the land, when Wobblies battled it out with the boss's hired cops on the streets so that making a living wouldn't leave ém in their graves. It's all those things, all those things that are so quickly disappearing from the scene to be replaced by another collection of plastic people (all apologies to FZ), all lookin' just alike in the same jeans an' same triangular glasses frames, readin' the same book lookin' for the same tired codes to lead them through to the same checkout line payin'with plastic credit cards bought with plastic souls.

So thank you, Ryan Adams, for casting a little bit of fading light on this long sun down on the American soul. Who knows what's gonna happen when that darkness finally falls? I hope and pray that there will be a few troubadours like yourself to shoot some sparks out into that godforsaken night to give us a little bit of light to see by, a little bit of light--just enough to look at that face squarely in the mirror and keep us honest, a little bit of light to look back upon our forefathers, into the future and out of the past, and keep a few outlaws alive until the next great awakening comes stormin' from the sky above.

Playing Dominoes With History

I've been spending the morning listening to the web cast of Neil Young's new album, "Living With War," thinking back upon that awful row of dominoes that got us here to this point in time and space; back to those months after 9-11, sitting in the drug store cafe on Brady Street reading the reports leaked from the Pentagon on plans to invade Iraq, wondering to myself if it was just contingency plans, an awful joke, or if something more dark and menacing was on the horizon. But why take the eyes off Osama; why invade Russia, especially after Napoleon had gone down in flames?

Then came the big flight over the ocean and reading of the march to war from a computer in a little Czech library, everything so completely incomprehensible, nothing adding up--the saber-rattling soon to turn to lightning war ending in quicksand.

And then a few nights before the fireworks let loose, sitting in a Irish Bar in Karlovy Vary, young men sitting a table away wearing gas masks, Ïn case Saddam attacks first," they said jokingly. But no amount of whiskey could drowned that awful knowledge that fools across the globe were at the helm, and we were all at their mercy.

Then the morning dawned when I had to walk into my classroom and say something to my kids, who were only beginning speakers of the English language anyway. My country had just started a war. And I didn't buy the fairy tales that Uncle Rummy was telling anyway; I knew the bastards' heads had been cloudy by the most powerful opiate know the Man--hubris. We would be there a long time, and that it would change everything. I looked into their young eyes, all expectantly looking up to me. What could I say? I was the only American they knew, the sole representative of my country. And this was the hard reality that I had to come to grips with, that as much as I hated talking on behalf of anyone or anything besides myself, I was still "the American," and I had to answer for the actions of the country I had been raised in. I did not defend anyone, and I did not pin the tail of blame on any jackass (though I suspect in any world capital you can walk blindfolded in any direction and successfully hit your target). All I said was that, "This is an awful day. A war has begun." Unlike their elders who had seen war and oppression close up, both at the hands of the Nazis and the Russians, all these kids knew were the promises of the post-Cold War world. But looking into their eyes that morning, I could see the sad sense of comprehension that most, if not all, felt. War does not know good or bad, right or wrong, guilty or innocent. The bullet and the missile does not distinguish between ideologies. There are only those lucky enough to make it through the metallic hale, and those cut to bloody shreds. Somehow these children tucked away in western Bohemia could sense the demon box about to be opened upon the Persian Gulf, Pandora never looking back.

And so here I sit, April 28th of 2006, Iraq still a black hole, the tide turning against Bush (but so what?), and Iran comfortable enough to thumb its nose at the world. I take it all in, I see the pieces of the puzzle in its whole, and I am left infuriated with a dumb, futile sense of frustration. The question that starts as a whisper then raises above the din of war and lies--How in God's name did such a pack of terminally insane, two-faced, spineless jellyfish come to run this world? What man on the street would have anything to do with a nuclear missile, or use God's name (irregardless of the God) as a battle call? And yet, we elevate these criminally insane demagogues to the level of emperors. Dismantle the empire? Have everyman be a nation, a republic of the individual, with equality and fraternity towards all?

What do you do in the face of that, knowing that all our fates rest in the hands of such men? It would be funny if it weren't true, but it is. The Button in the hands of children, and the curtain can fall at any time. So drink up your wine before closing time and gaze at the night's sky. And keep praying whatever prayer it is that soothes your soul in the middle of the night. As long as you can hear your voice, you know your still here and breathing and there still might be some morning light to pull you through to tomorrow.

Remembering Bobby Sands

It was twenty Five years ago this day that Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican hunger striker, passed away after over a month on hunger strike.

In his time, he and his nine comrades on hunger strike, galvanized support for their demands to be seen and treated as political prisoners, as opposed to criminals. Their plight highlighted the struggle of Irish nationalists and republicans in the north of Ireland to remove the British presence from their country and finally grant them that most basic right, the right to self determination.

It was while on hunger strike that Bobby Sands ran and won the race to become a member of Parliament, putting the British in the awkward position of having a sitting MP on hunger strike in prison. The successful act of running and winning the Parliament seat awakened the Irish Republican conscious to the possibility of waging their struggle through politics. It could be said that this event was one of the first steps down the long road of the peace process, which accompanied the rising tide of republicans in politics through the political party Sinn Fein (We Ourselves). Today, Sinn Fein is the largest republican and nationalist party in the north of Ireland, pursuing its goals of a united socialist and democratic Ireland through politics, both north and south of the border. Bobby Sands' role in the transformation of the Irish Republican Movement from physical force to politics cannot be underestimated.

May he rest in peace.