August 17, 2011
-
When I Was An Alien
"When I was an alien cultures weren't opinions".... Kurt Cobain
Truer words were never spoken...I've used them before in a blog you know. It was one of those html link collage projects i did a while back, i swirling mish mash of words and pictures with embedded and hidden links. Back then I didnt know what it meant,but my subconscious latched onto it for some reason...i could just feel, it you know?
and it just kind of stuck there in my mind, like some kind of mantra replaying itself at different points in the soundtrack of my life...
'when i was an alien, cultures weren't opinions."
from what i can gather, Kurt explained that line as coming from his childhood where sometimes he would pretend he was a visitor from another world, a stranger in a strange land...
an alien.
probably as an early kind of coping mechanism.
I know the feeling.
I'm a little bit older now.
I've had a chance to reflect on his words a little bit more.
I recently was fortunate enough to cross this land we call America...
I mean, I traveled from Texas to Florida to Bahamas to Louisiana to Texas to Washington to Oregon then flew back home...
I saw some places. I met some people. I did some things.
Stuff that made me realize that everything they tell you about this country on the tv and newspaper is bullshit, THEY ARE LYING TO YOU THRU THEIR TEETH.
This country is huge, folks. unless you've actually checked it out yourself it's hard to fully appreciate on a physical level.
From sea to shining sea, the incredible vastness of the United States is awe inspiring...almost all of this entire country is still wide open beautiful spaces, fields, farms, and forests.
As it should be.
There are cities scattered along here and there but they are just small dots on the map,places that sparkle at night from outer space, with twinkling webs of freeway lights connecting them, a web that catches our lives and dreams written out in glow of a million strangers traveling thru their stories in the darkness, a million stranger's lives told in the headlights of an 18 wheeler, those photons making their way to the astronauts and beyond...
So many people they say, so many lives where we are all outnumbered strangers
hiding from each other, a million dreams hermetically sealed up like submarines in the dark, pinging desperately for an echo to whisper back in the black nothing, "this is the path you need to follow."
A billion lights being kept dim under bushels and bullshit., a billion families kept apart no matter how brightly the freeway shines.
It's part of the whole lying thru their teeth thing...and you wonder, who are "they"
I don't know, but I know one thing-
They are not like us.
And we the people are the majority.
The majority just doesn't know it yet.
One thing else I know-
We are all NOT strangers.
That's the first big lie I wanted to get at. So many people have forgotten that we all go thru life connected together and that we have an inalienable right to do so.
"As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me." - Woody Guthrie
(end of part 1)
currently listening: The Last Great Song Of Planet Earth
currently reading: Days of War, Nights of Love, CrimethInk For Beginners.
Comments (4)
I so agree with you.
We are not strangers. The big lie has made us feel alone.
They are lying to us through their teeth. We have to stop listening to them and begin to think and feel for ourselves again!
Nice string of melodious thoughts like lights on the freeway rushing past us in the nights.
JUST found out you can recommend COMMENTS as well as POSTS, which i did on both this AND your comment on my post...and after reading this, i can see WHY
When i was a musician, WE toured this humungus motherfucker called the US (and parts of Canada), about three or four times...INTENTIONALLY sidestepping Texas because THAT was where they shot JFK and danced in the streets like the Taliban.....completely FORGETTING that was where Janis Joplin and ALL these motherfuckers CAME from!!
SEEING all the bullshit AmeriKKKa was going thru when i repatriated in 1966 from Jamaica, the I HAVE A DREAM shiite was a REALITY i've always known...as exemplified HERE on the FREE DOWNLOAD
ANYONE who's SEEN America beyond their backyard HAS to say to themselves--DAMN, WE got a whole lotta LAND..especially driving thru Montana or the Dakotas OR Nebraska or Mississippi OR Kansas OR Maine OR...YIOU got the picture, right???
And CANADA.....................
"When I was an alien cultures weren't opinions." I don't know what that means, either. It's the first time I've heard it. ~ This is a beautiful planet (and country)we're on and in. I've travelled, but not enough. Too long ago, for me. But enough to know of what you speak, in that we are the majority. I need to go again. I really need to go again.
PS: It's getting that time of year I think about you and your poetry contests. Fun times.