Dear friends, It has been too long since I wrote to you and for that I sincerely apologize. I have been busy writing songs, performing, working on a new CD to be released in mid 2014 and living life in all its “terrible beauty” as Yeats would say. As I may have told you before, the working title of the CD is “Boomtown” a play on the baby boom generation and a town in the midst of a hydrofracking slow destruction. The song title is “Boomtown.” The CD begins in Greenwich Village, New York City in 1966 when I moved there at the age of 19. I describe the entire passion play of that first summer. The tourists, café’s, the rockers, folkies, beat poets, etc. Jimi Hendrix, known then as Jimi James, and loads of images that forever influenced and shaped me. The CD tracks our generation through the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s and beyond into the future. One song, “The Lost Diary Of D.B. Cooper” tracks 4 + decades through his eyes. Yes, no matter what you read if you Google his name, he is still alive and is 85 years old, living in… well, I can’t tell you where. Carly Simon appears with him on Martha’s Vineyard not knowing his true identity, so does Bill Gates. The World Trade Center disaster is in the song plus the answer to what became of the $200,000 Dollars he absconded with during the infamous airplane hijacking he got away with in November 1971. Suffice to say he has led a heroic life as you will find out. There is “The Ballad Of Julian Assange”, “Homeland”, a song that describes the tragic plight of the ordinary Palestinian, recorded with a club dance production. In fact, most of the CD is uptempo. It was Emma Goldman who once said “I wouldn’t want to be part of a revolution where dancing was banned”. “What Would Woody Think” is about the destruction of workers unions since 1980. “The Healing” is just that. Just when you think all is lost, sometimes magic can happen. There are two love songs that anyone in our generation will understand, “I Just Want To Fall In Love One More Time Before I die” is one of them. Another song, “Reality’s Virtually Fine” is about over-reliance on computers, I-Pads, phones, video games, texting, etc, that instead of bringing people together, ultimately leaves them more alone, sad and isolated as the real world is 3 dimensional and vast, not two dimensional and small. Yes, it is handy for some things as you are reading this on one of those gadgets. But it is being way over used. Not to mention the microwave radiation invisibly slipping through us from everywhere. Ever sit in a wifi equipped restaurant for a few hours and start feeling strangely weary? Maybe even getting a headache? Maybe feeling a little disoriented? Other songs on the CD cover a lot of ground but it is not a depressing album. The final song, “Only One More Night Till Touchdown” is one of the most optimistic wishes I have ever written. So… I have been busy as I hope all of you are as we continue to pass through the days, months and years of what seems to be a pre-apocalyptic time. The future is not hard to see if you connect the dots and the picture it reveals is not good. The wealthy and powerful rule the world. Poverty is endemic, the middle class is becoming the poor class and the poor class are on the streets abandoned with little hope and ignored. We live not in a Democracy but a Plutocracy spying on all of us. People today are truly afraid. But I don’t have to tell you that, you already know it. The only hope we have are millions of people taking to the streets, getting off our couches and fighting for our humanity and dignity, our constitutional rights and the ultimate break up of the corporations who in reality rule the world. We know who the villains are, hell, we can find out where they live on Google Maps. Maybe it’s time we made them a little afraid. Remember Marie Antoinette? A hopefully peaceful revolution is coming. For too long we have reacted to the unfairness and greed in our bought and paid for congress, like a possum caught in the headlights of an evil truck. We can’t believe what is happening. It is also a time when the crazies of the country are stirring. And remember, this is a country with over three hundred million guns. It is a time a populist fascist could come to power as Hitler did in the 1930’s. Don’t worry, it won’t be Ted Cruz. In time, it will be shown that he was a 4th of July firework that lit the sky brightly for a few seconds, fizzled into ashes, blown by the wind into nothingness and forgotten. Sorry, Kinky Friedman, I know you supported him when he ran for the Senate but you are still my friend and anyone who has an animal shelter for homeless and abandoned dogs is a great person in my book. And who knows, maybe Cruz contributed money to your shelter. I sure hope so. We are so divided that another civil war is not impossible to imagine or even worse, anarchy. We need common sense and common cause. A reminder of the days when we looked after each other and cared for each other. When we were all Americans first. When squabbles and arguments could be discussed and settled with compromise and respect for all sides of an issue. Yet we must beware of false equivalency. Some things are plain wrong. If they were still alive you wouldn’t put Gandhi and Stalin on the same cable TV show and call that “fair and balanced”. Anyway, we are living in the Chinese curse of “interesting times”. What the future brings is the great unknown. I look out my window and see 10 deer peacefully munching on the grass. If only life could be that beautiful, calm and simple, where one deer is not eating all the grass. Woodstock, New York October, 2013 Tom Pacheco
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 01:56:15 +0000
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