(Or: I Don't Like Mondays)
Midnight in the gay cowgirl bar in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Took a long break from mixing my new song, "The Angels Will Explain." "Shame what happened today." Turns out that sometime during those long hours behind the SSL mixing console, some yahoo had a shootout at the university. "What are you talking about?" I asked the people who drug me down there. "You know, the massacre." "Yeah," someone said, lighting up a smoke (very OUT in the states). "That's right, some kid went nuts todays and shot up his school." Oh, great. Here we go again ...
30 plus dead. Why, oh why?
It's all so totally surreal. Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus. I was mixing from 8 AM to midnight, and I didn't even know what had happened. Does anyone? The only thing open on a monday at midnight was a tavern where everyone was bi-sexual and wearing 10 gallon hats. Somehow, it all didn't fit. And they were singing. Pretty badly. It was kind of therapeutic in a way. Some drunk idiot was MURDERING the song, "Hound Dog." The King was rolling in his grave. (Or maybe he's selling polyester suits in Michigan, there have been sightings.) Everyone was talking about what a nutcase the schoolboy shooter was, a real loony, but NOBODY was talking about the GUNS. Why not? Made me think. Of course he was/went crazy. Pretty obvious. But the talk was all about how crazy this kid was, how he'd made weird phone calls to girls at night. (I've done that more than that guy! Call this an Ode to Cho.) Poor dead bastard. They said he was a loner. They always say that! I say it shouldn't be about the "lone nut" theory all the time, (JFK, anyone?) but how and why American Life tolerates and even encourages such bahaviour. "Bring it on!" Are ALL of the 10,000 plus gun deaths a year (in the US alone) due to crazy people? I squinted and cringed and cupped me ear (over the din of what they called music) to hear what they were saying. The 10 gallon party was continuing in the background, everyone was having a great time ...
In the immortal words of Jon Bon Jovi, "Shot down in a blaze of glory!" Even if Hollywood loves and glorifies this kind of shit, most of the planet simply does not ...
"It's really a shame," my mixing engineer said. "Yeah, these guys stink!" (Talkin' 'bout the singers.) Laughter. At least it felt good to be among a relatively nice bunch. Then he went on to tell me about how he was very pissed at his girlfriend. "Don't shoot her," I said in all seriousness. They'd just broken up, had been together for 4 years, and she said, "It's either me or the music!" He chose the music. He tried to drown his sorrow in his beer, and he was doing a pretty good job. So much hatred and anger, so much fun. Ahh, precious life.
And no, I'm not a pacifist. But I mean, you can't kill more than 30 people in a fist fight, van dammit!
We just need to halt the stupidity. All of this is fine and dandy, but ... nobody was talking about the REAL issue. We're all just human (until we get blown away by some psychopath) but we need to look in the mirror.
Presently I took a deep breath and said, "We should be talking about the GUNS, you guys ..." Peace, -Todd
Posted by calico at May 11, 2007 06:21 AM