Is it too late for one last Christmas song?

I remembered this song the day after Christmas.

Lyrics and sheet music for the original version of the song can be found here.
http://lds.org/churchmusic/detailmusicPlayer/index.html?searchlanguage=1&...
Dave skips the last 2 verses and writes his own final one.

The song has an interesting story and history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Heard_the_Bells_on_Christmas_Day
The original words are by Wordsworth, and the original and most common musical setting – which Dave uses – was by John Baptise Calkin.

Taken without permission from the Grapes of Rad podcast. So check them out as a thank you for the pretty music.
http://www.grapesofrad.com/
(Dear Grapes of Rad, let me know if you don't like this being out there).

Self-aware angst is the best kind

What's the point of having an a planet-destroying piece of communication technology in my pocket, (a position from which, incidentally, it's probably making me infertile — not that I particularly mourn the loss, though brain cancer later in life will probably suck), if I can't talk to someone when I really need it?

How can I rant about how I'm sick of texting and phones and the goddamn internet, and how I just want to sit in the same room as someone I care about and be with them, if I can't get a hold of anyone via texting and phones and the goddamn internet in order to give said rant?

Best. Video. Ever.

Best Dinosaur Comics mouseover text ever!

"Let's count up the number of brain cells across every living thing worldwide dedicated to Facebook. Then let's slice them out, create a Facebook brain, and ignore what it says forever."

(It's from this comic).

Guests of the Sheik

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea went 'behind the veil' when she and her anthropologist husband spent 2 years (1956-58) living in an Iraqi village. The real pay-off of the book she wrote about the experience comes — at least for me — on the last few pages:

"I suppose I was flattered, for I had apparently shown, by my restrained conduct in El Nahra, that all Western women were not, per se, wanton, but I had done this by generally observing Hamid's own customs towards women. How many years would it have taken, I wondered to convince Sheik Hamid that I was a respectable woman if I had not worn the abayah in El Nahra, if I had sat with the men in the mudhif, ridden horseback in blue jeans and wandered through the suq and village as I pleased?

"How many years would it take, I wondered, before the two worlds began to understand each other's attitudes towards women? For the West, too, had a blind spot in this area. I could tell my friends in America again and again that the veiling and seclusion of Eastern women did not mean necessarily that they were forced against their will to live lives of submission and near-serfdom. I could tell Haji again and again that the low-cut gowns and brandished freedom of Western women did not necessarily mean that these women were promiscuous and cared nothing for home and family. Neither would have understood, for each group, in its turn, was bound by custom and background to misinterpret appearance in its own way.

"... We [she and her husband] talked until very late that night. The dinner party had dramatized, a little more effectively than we might have wished, the difference between the sheik's world and ours. It had also made us realize that our presence in El Nahra had done little to resolve those differences. We admitted to each other that we had both somewhat irrational and idealistic notions of being examples, of bridging the gap between one set of attitudes and another. Now, of course, we knew we had not basically changed anyone's attitude, except perhaps our own. With our friends in El Nahra we had established personal ties, as individual human beings. This was all we should have hoped for, and perhaps it was enough."
-p.312-13, 314 in Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village. Anchor: 1965/1989.

"What do you mean the store is closed?!"

What's the point in living in a capitalist society if I can't have instant gratification when I have money to spend?!

"when they swear their love is real, they mean I like the way you make me feel"

So is it possible to love someone for who they are, not what you want them to be for you?

It's heartening to see people finally standing up against the unlimited greed and power of corporations. This is especially so since it seemed initially that, in the wake of the recent Credit Crunch and Bailout Bonanza, the public was just going to roll over — with only some minor grumbling — and take it in the ass again.

But what I find most exciting about the 'Occupy' movement is not the message. It is large groups of people figuring how to make decisions and live together — not just protest, let me assert that again, but live together — in genuinely democratic, consensual, and egalitarian ways. The challenge to activits and radicals, I think, is to prove it is possible to construct communities and ways of life that are actually of free of hierarchy, coercion, exploitation. Otherwise, how can our criticism that society and its institutions are riddled and dependent on these things be valid?

And there's the 'Occupy' folks doing it, right there in public. And having fun doing it too!

(Zombie walks, acrobatics, occupy. Who says you can't have it all? The Occupy Ottawa folks are sure doing something right — and enduring even as the weather keeps getting colder).

Be your own iPod!

Let the song sing you...

Best political ad ever!

In this video, Jedrzej Wijas, a politician who ran for Poland’s Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) party, told voters:
"End the useless talking / Enough of the stupid wars / Secular government / Dignified life / Freedom / Is my goal / Vote wisely."

He didn't win.

mother,

what part of you have we not poisoned?
where does our noise not penetrate?

you sustain us

so why do we act as if that sustenance is something to be won and wrested from you,
with what amounts to little more than long-distance rape?

These things worry me

Is calling yourself the follower of a man who smashed the money-changers' property consistent with condemning the actions of the Black Bloc?

What exactly is violence?

Isn't there something violent about a Nike shoe, McDonald's burger, or cop's car? What exactly is more violent, to do nothing about them, or to smash them?

Would-be followers take note

The Jesus of the Gospels didn't seem to think poverty was a problem — wealth was. He didn't think the solution to economic inequality was the comfortable and well-to-do pulling the poor up to their level through charity or economic development.

The solution was for the rich to become poor.

Pretty much

Taken from this episode of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cartoons, a wickedly funny webcartoon.

"This land is their land, this land is their land..."

Algonquins of Barriere Lake vs Section 74 of the Indian Act from Barriere Lake Solidarity on Vimeo.

Said the L'Arche Assistant to the Social Worker

"Sometimes 'helping people' just seems like an excuse to control them — and feel good about yourself for doing it."

Post-Election Meditation

As _______(e.g. activists, Christians, anarchists, Quakers, progressives, subversives, radicals, leftists, shit-disturbers, protesters, whatever... as people of good will),

Are we right to demand that our governments make justice and peace the basis of all their policies and actions if we have failed to build livable communities that are free from coercion and hierarchy? Can we demand that corporations end the exploitation basic to their economic life if we have personally failed to find ways to make a living that are sustainable, and free from any form of oppression? Why should they take us seriously, or believe that such things are possible in the "real world," and on a grand systemic level, if it has proved un-achievable on a small-scale, personal level?

(What about what Jesus said about considering other's sin to be like a speck, and our own like a plank – and our need to deal with our own, before addressing others? Or the parable about the servant who is faithless in the little things never being entrusted with the great ones?)

How exactly do we imagine our utopia of peace, justice, and sustainability would be achieved? By coercive laws backed up by force?

It's election time in Canada

A myriad of missing relationships

Last post I was musing about (among other things) how we seem to grow up alienated in our culture.

While still reflecting on this, I received a letter from a good friend, and I think he really hit the nail on the head with this point:

"I've been thinking that we demand so much of each other as humans, family, friends, lovers, etc. that we burn each other out and increase divorce, abuse, war, you name it. Why? Perhaps because we are trying to get out of one particular creature of one particular species all the myriad relationships we can only have when rooted in a diverse and natural setting with birds, hills, soil, rivers, trees, and other beings. In other words, we need the ironic state of being committed to a place — a 'natural' space — in order to really feel and appreciate diversity of being, and to not burn ourselves and our fellow humans out be demanding what they and we can't offer."

All Aboard!

My ukelele version of a song by Pete Seeger. Lyrics and chords at the bottom. Disapointingly, it was much less dark on my camera and computer before I uploaded it to youtube.

The song's relevant to me right now because... (briefly), two days from now, in a act of civil disobedience, some protesters will attempt to present those attending an arms bazaar in my hometown with a copy of the Nuremberg Principles.

(In detail)
Wednesday June 2nd, there will be an arms bazaar called CANSEC showing off the latest in security and military technology at Landsdowne Park in my home Ottawa, (Ontario). Canada is one of the leading exporters of weapons in the world (ranked 7th by the US Congressional Research Service in 2007).

Some of this technology goes to Middle Eastern and African nations that are dictatorial and repressive, that are engaged in civil wars and wars of aggression, and that have even been accused of war crimes. I'm sure some of it has been quite helpful in suppressing/killing demonstrators in the recent movement that have swept the region.

(Not that I think Western nations – the US is the biggest buyer – are making much better use of these devices. Killing people is ugly, and getting rich selling devices for killing people is grotesque). 

Landsdowne Park is publicly-owned by the City of Ottawa. Because of a protests and a public outcry against a previous arms fair in the '80s, arms trade shows were banned by the city in 1989. In 2009, (now former) Mayor Larry O'Brien reversed this decision, so that CANSEC could take place. O'Brien is the founder and still a board member of Calian Technologies, who derive much of their revenue from military and security sources. They are now a regular exhibitor at CANSEC.

Wednesday June 2nd at noon, a group of people will undertake a direct action against CANSEC, attempting to non-violently enter the grounds and distribute copies of the Nuremberg Principles to those attending, asking them to to sign a commitment to adhere to them.

These Principles came out of the Nuremberg Trials, where surviving members of the Nazi leadership and others who helped them (concentration camps doctors, industrialists who fuelled the war machine, etc.) were put on trial for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The trials/principles established in international law that individuals have a duty abstain from such crimes even if they were "only following orders" or they would have broken the laws of their country in order to abstain.

The argument is that
1) Some CANSEC exhibitors deal weapons to countries guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and are therefore complicit in these crimes.
2) Such crimes are more important than trespass, so it is worth "trespassing" (onto public-ally-owned land, ironically) in order to inform/remind those of their possible culpability, and in order to oppose their complicity.

I'll be there, singing a couple of songs. If you're in Ottawa, and this speaks to you, feel free to join us. There are other options other than civil disobedience too.
http://coat.ncf.ca/
http://www.nowar-paix.ca/snag/index.html


The words and chords go:

Chorus
Last train to Nuremberg! (2x)
Last train to Nuremberg! All on board!

Verse
Who held the rifle? Who gave the orders?
Who planned the campaign to lay waste the land?
Who made the bullet? Who paid the taxes?
Tell me, is that blood upon my hands?

Chords
Chorus: Dm Dmsus2 Dmsus4 Dm / Dm Am C Dm (Emsus4)
Verse: Dm – / Dm C Dm – / Dm – / Dm C Dm –
Dmsus2 = 2200. Dmsus4 = 2230. Emsus4 = 4410

"It is enough," Part II

There is a second and more personal thing that the statement "It is enough" meant to me. (Please see the last two posts for context if you're confused).

Experiencing Jenny's life and death changed how I felt about life, and about being alive.

Previously, my life was — perhaps— like that of many other shy suburban teenagers. Sure there were good moments, mostly when laughing or being silly with friends — moments of joy and even connection. But in order to get to those moments, it felt like I had to grind through much that was grey, kind of empty, and rather boring.

There was nothing particularly 'wrong' with my life, I was comfortably looked after, and my life was devoid of any real suffering. I was a child of priveledge, if not compared to many of my suburban peers, than to most of the people in the world. I had nothing to complain about.

Except a vague emptiness, a certain lack of meaning, and connection. There was no one to share what I was really thinking and feeling, deep down. I had no idea how to start such conversations, and maybe not even the knowledge that it was possible to have relationships and conversations where such sharing could take place.

In the context of all the suffering, injustice, and unmet needs present in the world, to speak of this lack  seems obscene. But that doesn't make it unreal.

Maybe my lack just boiled down to being socially awkward and introverted. But I'm starting to think there is something more systemic about it. I also suspect that lack of emptiness, lack of meaning and connection goes deeper than just a 'lack of intimate friends' — even if that's how I tended to think of it at the time.

This train of thought reminds of something I saw in Geez magazine a few years ago. "Help end affluence — sponsor a comfortable Western kid!"

(The fine print is both funny and pointed, so I would encourage you to click on the image and read it).

Anyways, to end this political rant over and get back to the 'real' topic at hand, let me just say this. While walking out of of the cemetery after I had visited my friend's grave for the first time, I broke down and started crying — for the first time since hearing the news of her death a month earlier.

I truly appreciated those times I had had with her, and I was glad I had got a chance to know her. Those rather brief moments — and other moments, with others still alive — now "were enough" to make life seem worthwhile, to make wading through all that grey feel worth it.

Undoubtedly, this will sound cheesy to any outsider. But that realization unblocked a lot in me, and opened my life up to so much, both in that moment, and yet to come.

"It is enough"

I'm going to tell a story or two about (or maybe better said, behind) the song I posted in my last entry. So if hearing such stories takes the mystery/goodness out of music for you, or if the song doesn't do much for you, feel free to move along.

Like the title of that entry said, it's an old song for a friend that died several years ago — though the similarly unexpected death of a friend's younger brother over Christmas has brought it back to mind in a powerful way. Anyways...

Jenny was a lifeguard, but the summer after graduating high school she drowned while swimming in a lake, because of a fit of her just-diagnosed epilepsy. She and I weren't the closest of friends, but we were in music class and "concert band" together, and our senses of humour clicked. Having fun and feeling happy while being at school was an unusual thing for me, nerdy introvert that I was. Not to get too sentimental or philosophic about it (though of course these are the thoughts you think after someone dies), but it seemed like she brought out a 'me' that was fun and funny — a 'me' that rarely saw the light of day. And I think she brought a lot of light and life to many people's lives.

One of the striking things at her funeral was the difference between how the "adults" and the "kids" in her life spoke about her. The adults seemed to have a hard time getting over the lost potential that her death represented, all the things she didn't do: she didn't get to go to university, to become a french teacher like she planned, to become a wife, a mother. Etc. Her peers, other the other hand were content to speak about what she'd done and been, and would continue to be in their hearts and memories.

Some of that, I'm sure, is that we ourselves hadn't had many of those 'adult' experiences yet. But as I thought and felt about it afterward, it seemed to run deeper than that. We didn't see her life in terms of lost potential, or things she didn't get a chance to do. Yes, it was monstrous, unimaginable, and so... so...unfair... that her life was cut short. Especially because she was so special, so well-loved, so full of light and life. But precisely because she was that way, it also was enough. To think otherwise would diminish all she gave. "It is enough" that we knew her for that all-too short time, because we had been given so much in that time.

At least, that's what I thought (and felt, much more importantly).

An old song for a friend who died

i don't miss cuddling with you
i don't miss your kisses
philosphizing or emotionalizing
(we never did those things)

what i miss is goofing around
collapsing in fits of gigles
attacks of silliness
belonging when i'm with you

good-bye
good-bye, for now
good-bye — pirouette through light
good-bye, for now
good-bye: it is enough.