Traveling through the remainder of Indiana with two shows left on this wandering and it must be said that spirits are low. Kristen’s caught something that’s making her throat burn and in tight quarters we’re all trying not to think of it as a mere matter of time before it hits the rest of us. Heather in particular can be really smacked down by a cold because her voice is such a precision tool. I’m a little bit more of a blunt instrument and can take a fair amount of illness incursion and mucous abuse before my voice starts to show it…. And my concern for myself is borne less out of concern for the discomfort of being sick and more for being an ADDITIONAL vector of virus to Heather – if I fall, then she’s truly surrounded.
There are good things and bad things to be said about rural Indiana. The church-like barns tower over plains that stretch as far as the eye can see – many are in states of decay, falling into themselves over the years, and many of those are memorable ruins that we’ve watched slowly collapse over the years. I’ve talked about these cathedrals of architecture before and I wonder how they’ve been raised – whether it was a family collective effort or a higher contractor, whether here in the heartland of America where people are ever so outspoken about BEING American and certainly fall into the right side of the political spectrum, if here many of the barns are built with the assistance of illegal immigrant labour as they would be if they were being built in Maryland or Virginia.
I haven’t bothered to do any research on the subject and I don’t plan to. It’s one of the many topics in the world that I can see both sides of and therefore can’t really get worked up about EITHER side of the equation. Too many problems are like that: the complexity of the issue goes so far beyond what is popular to talk about and it’s a thing that must be tackled holistically or not at all… not something we’re doing in this country right now. We want nice and simple black and white problems and in their absence we like to pretend that ANYTHING in our world can be expressed in 140 characters or less.
I hate overhearing people and wanting to step in and point out where their conversations are so poorly misinformed – but then I’m part of the educated elite looking at blue collar America with contempt… sigh. How do I put any of this into a song? And how do you make anyone who’s made up their might sit down and listen? And how do you make the listeners stand up and act?
Sigh – I’m really proud of Matt Pless right now. He was overheard, he was snapped up – on an Occupy Wall Street inspired CD he’s the lone local voice. He’s in the heady company of Willie Nelson and Third Eye Blind and many others – and I look at the list of performers and wish they could’ve gotten together with a traditionally right-wing artist like Lynyrd Skynyrd or some pop country artists… some way to not just be preaching to the choir.
Ha – though I imagine that even if one of those artists saw the merit in the message it would be capitalistic suicide for them to speak up.
Meh. I’m morose this morning. Gas prices jumped by twenty cents outside my window last night, and I’m sure that four dollars a gallon in our area are about to become the new norm. Someday not too far in the future that is going to start pricing people out of commutes, and then we’ll have REAL trouble on our hands…
