When information-overload, money grubbing to survive, fears about Fukushima, the rigged "choice" of two-party politics -- the Demopublicans and the Republicrats -- combine to ruin what would be a perfectly good day, is there an answer? Some of us disagree with Paul McCartney's Beatle song, "There will be an answer; Let it be."
Perhaps the answer was close by at that time: John Lennon was leading millions of youth in a positive rebellion, and other poets and singers such as
Jim Morrison demanded to know "What have we done to the Earth? What have we done to our fair sister?" You see where I'm going with this: we must bring to the forefront our innermost feelings and honest concerns in order to reach people's hearts and minds for unity.
We are told to stay in the system, keep working (like slaves, if we're lucky to have jobs), and let the corporate economy keep burning up the planet. Aren't you tired of the techno approach to saving the planet and trying piecemeal to live sustainably? Wonder how we're going to transition to an ecologically harmonious society? Harmony -- there is no way to harmony; harmony is the way.
The greed of plastic society, as we called The Establishment back in the 1960s, was challenged mightily by the youth revolution's values, music and love. The government was then tantamount to the status quo war machine, and it's still with us today; same old schidt! From the first battles of the civil rights movement -- nonviolence winning in opposition to brutality -- the government often attacked nonviolent protesters and those exercising their human rights. Cointelpro was the FBI's infiltration and subversion program that strove to destroy The Movement. A lot of lasting damage was done.
We had to get through the period of assassinations and seeing millions of Indochinese slaughtered and poisoned for "democracy." Fifty thousand U.S. troops died, and it was up to the surviving G.I.s to rebel and hamstring the war to help end it. It was a tough time to handle, so one consequence of the stress on activism was the splintering of The Movement into separate movements and campaigns. The growing pains of the movement included residual patriarchy, technophilia, and conflicting urges to unite with or avoid mainstream society. So we saw the rise of the separate Women's Movement, the Environmental Movement, Black Liberation, Gay Rights, Peace, and others. A cultural revolution of higher consciousness and the struggle for the immediate ending of U.S. aggression turned into a waiting game by increasingly isolated consumers -- whether they were "green" or "liberal" or new adherents of the "Me Generation." Some of us are still waiting. But we're doing more than waiting; we're playing music, writing books, protesting, creating art, and planting gardens.
Just as the '60s Movement could not have happened without the music -- Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Peter Paul and Mary, and rockers such as Country Joe and the Fish, MC5, and even Roy Orbison who chimed in with "There Won't Be Many Coming Home" -- an all-encompassing movement today must have its inspiring music. The right music is indeed being made, but little heard. The socially conscious and eco-rocking songs are suppressed by corporate decision making whose dictum is "I love you babeh tunes yes; peace-now no."
To do my part, I've written some more songs with a message, included in this article as imbedded videos. Feel free to play these tunes, and write some more. Request radio stations to play peace and environmental tunes, such as "Nature's Way" by Spirit. I offer these six song ideas that originated in dreams. For example, "My Goddess They Got Us" featured in my dream Bonnie Raitt demonstrating her latest song in a radio interview I conjured up in my sleep last year. The oldest song dates from 1997, "Freedom Says" - in Zoé Zephyr & The Big BANG!'s repertoire. Zoé's previous stage name was Spring, of the eco-band The Depavers. Her last name is in the title of the federal civil rights case she and our friends won against police torture in Lundberg v Humboldt County. My daughter's latest music can be downloaded at musiquedenuit.com/+z.
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When information-overload, money grubbing to survive, fears about Fukushima, the rigged "choice" of two-party politics -- the Demopublicans and the Republicrats -- combine to ruin what would be a perfectly good day, is there an answer? Some of us disagree with Paul McCartney's Beatle song, "There will be an answer; Let it be."
