By |

This is the type of shit they write Bibles about. Wildfire, pandemic, murder hornets, lynchings, protests, riots, and who knows what is next. The scale and drama of these events are so large that it is easy to imagine some ancient scribe breaking out the quill or chisel and writing about the year that God decided to smite the people. And this pious writer wouldn’t have to look very far for reasons that God would see fit to smite us. There’s greed, environmental destruction, racism, the propping up of a hateful king, and surely countless other no-no’s.

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that this is all God’s work. I’m just pointing out how easily a religious mind could turn to thinking that this is the next installment in the good book—The Newer Testament: Return of the Old Testament.

By the way, who would be the savior-figure in the newer testament? My guess is that it would be an athlete. These are the only people we speak so hyperbolically about that future generations misinterpreting the text would think that they committed actual miracles. Just think about how many times people have written or spoken about Michael Jordan ‘flying,’ or ‘walking on air,’ or ‘being suspended in air.’ There’s even a very on-the-nose quote ready for biblical publication in which Larry Bird, commenting on a great game that Michael had, says “That wasn’t Michael Jordan out there, that was God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

Anyway, I digress. The point is that I wouldn’t fault anyone for feeling like this is a biblical moment we’re living through. However the danger of that line of thinking is that it could lead to a sense of resignation. This is certainly not true for all religious people, but thinking that it is in God’s hands could lead you to think that it is out of your hands. And that is most certainly not true.

The truth is, you can change things. This truth is both a comfort and a pain. It’s a pain because it implies responsibility (yuck). It is harder to live with the knowledge that you can change things, because it means that if you see an injustice in the world that stirs your heart, you should do something about it.

And hey, I’ll be the first to admit that doing something is harder than not doing something. Frankly, I’m a huge fan of just sitting on the couch. I love the couch!

However, while it may be easier to not do anything, it most certainly is not better. Any momentary comfort you derive from resting your buns on your comfy couch, will give way to internal strife if you aren’t actually helping a cause you claim to care about.

And now let me point out the uncomfortable truth that I’m using the pronoun “you,” when I should be using “I.” When I’m talking about people caring about causes, and not doing anything about it, I’m talking often about my own behavior. Because there’s a good chance that you who are reading this have done a whole lot more than me in these past few weeks to help fight racism (internally and externally) and end the tragically frequent occurrence of police killing black people.

This is of course the cause that anyone with a heart, brain, and access to the internet currently cares about more than anything else. There’s very clearly a moment happening now, born out of righteous backlash against too many disgusting atrocities, that has the power to change our society for the better. But it will only actually change if we continuously choose to take action to change it. So how do we change it?

Well, that question is pretty much something I typed into Google. And as I’ve heard from a blunt and truthful commentator, this is basically a moment for “white people to shut the fuck up and listen.”

So in the spirit of shutting the fuck up and listening, here are some resources/people/causes I’ve found useful and enlightening:

Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTc8PHROVjk

Educate: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/#educate

Donate: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019

Act: https://8cantwait.org/

I called Bill De Blasio’s office today to urge him to enact the 8 that can’t wait in the link above and was both delighted and dismayed to find his voice-mailbox full (I sent an email instead). But well after the protests die down, and the hashtags stop trending, and Billy De-B’s answering machine clears up, there will certainly still be work to do. To me, this moment is an opportunity and an inspiration to build my civic muscles. I’ve long known that I can call or write my elected officials, but I’ve rarely done it. Again, it’s easier not to.

As you may know, I like to use this blog to commit myself to certain ridiculous resolutions (see: record a song a week for an entire year). And that’s exactly what I’m going to do now.

From this today until the end of the year (and hopefully beyond) I promise to contact an elected official at least once every week and urge them to support or oppose something I care about. We put these people in office, and if you believe in democracy, you have to believe that they will listen to our voices. Don’t give in to apathy or cynicism friends. Go do something.

By |

I’m on a flight to Minneapolis right now writing this blog post. On a very lazy level, I wish I didn’t need to do this right now. I’d be happier to kick back, order a crisp pilsner, eat the tiniest possible bag of cheez-its, and watch Hustlers. And I know that you might be thinking “Lucas, you don’t have to do this—no one is making you write blog posts. No one is even asking you to!”

Well, sassy reader (who is actually my own inner monologue), I didn’t say I HAVE to do this, I said I NEED to do this. You should really read my blog more carefully. The distinction here is that saying I “have” to do something implies a responsibility coming from somewhere outside of myself— I have to go to work, I have to file my taxes, I have to wear pants in public. But I don’t actually need to do any of those things. A need is something that emanates from inside myself, directing me to something that will nourish my body and soul. I need to eat, I need to sleep, and I need express myself. This little blog and these little songs are how I get to express myself right now.

But I actually don’t want to do this right now. And it is more than mere laziness at play. I don’t want to do this because I think I don’t have anything nice and easy to write, and I don’t have any nice and easy music to share.

Truthfully, I had a pretty hard week, and I’m not feeling all that cheery. Both on a completely personal level, and on issues that I view from afar, this week sucked. A fond coworker of mine told me that, astrologically speaking, we’re currently in the “shadow” period gearing up for a coming “Mercury Retrograde.” This period of “Retroshade” (amazing band name) is apt to bring about things like breakups, dangerous exes reaching out, and even corruptions of democracy.

Actually I don’t know if that third one is on the list of things that usually happen during retroshade, but I do know that that is something that happened this week when one of our political parties decided to further enable an aspiring tyrant by acquitting him of his crimes.

But I digress. I’m certain I’m not alone in having a bad week. I don’t need astrology to assure me that some people are having a hard time. Many people are having a far worse time than I am, and I would never dream of being able to offer any kind of blanket solution to solve anyone else’s difficulties. What I would like to offer, is something that I need to remind myself from time to time: It’s ok to be sad. It’s ok to feel your feelings. And it is good to find a way to express them.

Ok, I feel like I’m doing a bad Mr. Rogers impression right now and I don’t like it. I’d just like to share how I captured my uglier feelings this week: I wrote a piece of music that begins somewhat sweetly, grows a more and more strange throughout, culminates in a terrifying crescendo, and ends up being mostly ok.

Such is life.

 

By |

I’m proud to say that I took a trip to Washington DC last weekend to participate in the historically huge Women’s March on Washington. Unfortunately, my whole trip was a near perfect demonstration of Murphy’s law. The most flagrant tragedy of the weekend was obviously that a fleshy orange sack of unchecked ego was sworn in as our nation’s 45th president, yet my personal experience of the weekend also included setback after setback.

My original plan was that I would hitch a ride to Maryland with my friends Jonathan and Tina (who were also going to the march), take the train into DC to stay with another friend Friday night, and then go to the march on Saturday morning. We did depart on Friday afternoon, yet what Google maps claimed would only be a four hour drive ended up taking closer to seven and a half as we travelled among thick unrelenting traffic. Thus, I called my friend in DC and told her that I was going to get in too late and decided to just sleep on the floor of Jon and Tina’s hotel room.

After the long journey Jon and I desperately desired some beer in our bloodstream so we walked to a nearby gas station only to discover that in College Park, Maryland, you cannot buy beer in gas stations. So we then drove down the street to a bar (aptly named “Bar”) and settled in to some stools next to the locals. The first thing that happened was that we witnessed a drunk man in a powder blue sweatpants and hoodie getup being kicked out of the bar for pouring extra booze into his drinks from a flask in his pocket; the second thing that happened was that we were ignored by the bartenders for a solid ten minutes before we got to order our drinks; and the third was that our conversations was hijacked by a man spouting the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was hypnotizing the populous with those weird hand movements he does.

The next morning, we drove down to the train station, parked a block away in a seemingly pleasant little neighborhood (Jon described it as “where your grandma would live”), and then took our place at the back of what I’m certain I can accurately describe as the longest line in the history of College Park, Maryland. We waited in line for roughly and hour and a half before we finally reached the machines that were dispensing metro cards. Go figure, as soon as I got to it, my machine decided it didn’t want to print metro cards anymore. Thus, I had to merge into another line and wait just a little longer before getting my card.

We finally packed ourselves into a train full of fellow marchers and made the trip into the heart of DC. We didn’t make it in time to hear the many wonderful speakers at the event, but we did get to march, chant, and wear ourselves out for a just and beautiful cause. Around 5pm we boarded another train and began our return journey and we were two stops away from our destination when the train suddenly stopped, broken. Everyone on the train waited helplessly, packed shoulder to shoulder for over an hour before another train came to slowly push us back to the previous stop. We finally boarded another train and made it back to good ole College Park, Maryland around 8pm, still anticipating a long drive back to NYC. We wandered back to the car and discovered that the back right window was smashed. Jonathan’s and my bags, each containing our laptops, were stolen.

Like I say, it was a near perfect display of Murphy’s law. Near perfect, but not perfect, because there was one glaring exception to the rule: The Women’s March was an unequivocal success. In DC and across the nation, people engaged in what was likely the largest demonstration in US history— a demonstration that despite it’s size and fervor incited no violence, and required no arrests. I was in awe of the sight of the seemingly endless sea of people marching past the Capital and the White House and on to the national mall, and invigorated by the energy that ran through the entire crowd. Every fifteen minutes or so I would hear a distant swell of jubilant screams that grew louder and louder until it swept over our portion of the march in a continuous wave. It was incredibly inspiring to come together in solidarity with so many people and affirm our belief in human rights for all people. For this was not so much a march against a truly despicable man, but a march for the rights of the historically disenfranchised. Sure, there were plenty of anti-trump chants (my favorite being “he’s orange, he’s gross, he did not win the popular vote”), yet there were just as many simply affirming basic rights (“My body, my choice! Her body, her choice!”) or basic tenets of American democracy (“Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!”).

I do hope that we the people never again have such a dark reason to show up by the hundred thousands and affirm our belief in basic human rights, yet it was an incredible moment, a beautiful sight to see, and I felt extremely lucky to be there. The silver lining of electing a grotesque, sexist, xenophobic, neo-fascist, climate-change denying, cartoon super-villain as our president is that a massive number of American citizens now feel inspired to do things like call their senators, protest, and engage in civil-disobedience (parts of democracy that I and many others overlooked during Obama’s presidency). For all of the evil actions that Trump is going to attempt, I hope that there will continue to be equal and opposite reactions from the millions of people in the United States that truly believe that “all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, (and) that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

I spent the majority of my waking hours last weekend either sitting in a car, creeping along in bumper to bumper traffic, standing in a line, or packed shoulder to shoulder with strangers on a train. I also had my favorite bag, some of my clothes, my journal, a book, and my laptop stolen. And yet if I were given the chance to do it all again, I absolutely would. All of that was a small price to pay to witness and take part in the beautiful, historic, and life-affirming moment that was the Women’s March on Washington. Let us all continue to fight the good fight.