The sun is taking long, flaming limbs, and is stretching them through the cloud barrier of Chantilly, Virginia. It is largely unsuccessful.
I was a fool, a fool in socks, who began the run down the driveway before looking outside, before looking up at the sky, and realizing that, yes, plus or minus 70 degree temperatures a couple of days ago, the sky was spitting snow flakes at my head.
I can handle snow. I can handle snow in bare feet… but the night before we had spent lazing in sunbeams at Audrey’s house, playing with a small dog and playing music and trading stories and … well.. generally lots of WARM things. Last night we played Jammin Java. It was warm there. We hung out with Damian, who was warm at us… and we slept in a huge bed… which was warm.
This morning was NOT warm. Unkind, stabbing coldness. Grr.
I find myself thinking about politics.
I guess I should count myself in the “apathetic American” corner of the world. I spent last night feeling mildly berated, as Ember Swift – a Canadian activist singer/songwriter called for a change of leadership and eating habits – and I knew that the most I could promise was to keep doing what I was doing… and to swear off aerosol cheese (long story)…
Before I write any further, I want to stress that I admired her immensely. Talk about a woman who knows how to play and write and sing and … she is everything a performer should be and more – she was fantastic. Ember filled with me with feelings of grace and joy and occassional shame. She did what we all try to do, which is to get people to sit up and take notice, to listen. Take a person and make them strain in their skin to meet you. I listened and watched and admired and wished the show would go on longer, which, for a person of MY attention-span, is a rare compliment indeed.
But I felt outside – Ember writes in HER Journal about how activist ideas can NOT be introduced to mass audiences without the right kind of packaging. And she knows how to package it. There are short speeches made, and amazing musical interludes, and moments of genuis as she draws between Goldilocks and urban dangers.
Packaging IS everything, though, isn’t it?
I mean, that often, once something is packaged well enough – yeah, there’s a message in there, but does anyone care anymore? Does it make a difference to all those people saying “Wow, that was a great song” – it might catch people here and there – but I don’t know if I believe that there is a way of changing the mass-mind. Just something for me to ponder, I suppose… unfortunately, I got my train of thought massively derailed… so… perhaps a better formed thought later…
