August 26

I am not responsible

it was somewhere back in the depths of things
that someone said to someone else
“you can do that for me,
I’ll put you in charge”

and a secret was born
like a small invisible signal,
an engine of hidden
agendas

“I’ll put you in charge”
- and all that it leads to -
“I’m only doing my job”
“that’s not my department”

the Nuremberg Hiding Place

hot metal blisters will rain on Bagdad
and nobody will say
“it was my fault”

everyone will say
“they made me do it”

dead smoldering bodies
that somebody else killed

how do you bring somebody else to justice?
when you put them on trial how do you question them?
do you ask them if somebody else was there
on the night of the murder?
the defense will say it wasn’t my client it was somebody else
and the jury will find the defendant innocent
by reason of somebody else

like slippery shimmers,
the mirror mirage,
reality runs through
your fingers

and all you’ve got left
is somebody else

nobody did anything

relax
close your eyes
you’re getting sleepy

repeat after me,
“I am not responsible”

“I am not responsible”

August 18

August 18

Not as frequent as I'd like but its better than the way it used to be. I would do a journal entry and let it sit for six months. The Veterans For Peace (VFP) national convention was real good. I was only there for two days, and I kick myself for that. I missed the AWOL who turned himself in at a press conference. He had been interrogating people in Iraq with dogs and just couldn't take it anymore. So he disappeared and kept on the run for about a year, finally decided to go public. I guess he was surrounded by a cordon of VFP folks - Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vietnam vets, you name it. There's even a WWII vet there. That happened on Friday. I showed up on Saturday and spent the whole day. I know a lot of people from over the years and many of them showed up. S Brian Willson was there - that's not a spelling mistake and he was not in the Beach Boys. He's one of the most serious and dedicated people I know. Here's his web site: http://www.brianwillson.com/ Brian lost part of both of legs when a weapons train ran over him in Concord, California. He was sitting on the track to protest and perhaps to interrupt the shipments of white phosphorous to Central America. The train was speeding up when it hit him. Now he uses artificial legs and rides a bicycle that you power with your arms. He rode up to Seattle from Eugene!

Saturday night VFP gave a lifetime achievement award to Abe Osherov, a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Abe is another amazing man - he's 90 something years old and shows no signs of slowing down or mellowing out. And he never loses sight. It was a wonderful thing to see him on the stage with 19 and 20 year old Iraq Veterans Against the War - a cross generational movement.

I played a few songs just as dinner was being served and I might as well not have been there at all. Its an old musician's rule: never play when dinner is being served. I wouldn't listen either. Actually, Jim Hinde played right after me and was fairly well received. His songs are slower. And I think people were eating by then... But the best part of my set was just as I was getting ready Shep Gurwits comes up and says, "hey, remember me?" Jesus! Shep Gurwitz - I hadn't seen him in at least 10 years. Shep is Lew Gurwitz's brother. Lew was a lawyer working on the Peltier case way back in those days. I knew Lew from a million different realities in a million different places from Boston to Standing Rock to Rapid River. He died of a heart attack some years ago. But Shep is still there and damn, it was great to see him. After a while we went outside and I sang him a bunch of songs from the old days and a few from the new. It was a warm night, I was singing with my eyes closed and I felt someone else sit down with us on the low wall in front of the building. When I opened my eyes I saw an intense young man 20 years old or so. Shep says he's an Iraq vet and he needs someone to talk to. Shep says he'll talk to him - "I was a paratrooper, you can't scare me" he says. The young man asks me if I have any songs for a returning soldier. So I sang Head Full Of Pictures. I think he liked it. He thanked me and left.



Next morning a bunch of us went up to the Canadian border at Blaine - the Peace Arch. There's a park there and you can walk on over to the Canada side or they can walk over to the US. We had a picnic. There were us Yankees from down south and there were some draft resistors from the Vietnam days who came by to say hello. And some Canadians who made it clear that they were ready to accept resistors again when the need arises. And it already has. The Pentagon - that paragon of morality and intelligence - has estimated that are currently 40,000 deserters. People who I talked to said well, if the Pentagon says that then you can pretty much double it and be closer to the truth. 80,000 deserters. That's a good sign. We need that. And they need us. So I ate a little food and sang a few songs. There were a bunch of speakers and a labor choir from Vancouver. After a while we all had to leave - to catch planes and head back home. Shep was there but I didn't see him afterwards. We're talking now through the emails.

Next day, Monday, the 14th, was Guild festival committee meeting - getting things ready for the busker fest in September. Jim had the T shirts together. There were questions about awnings and stage platforms, all the usual. There was an unfortunate blow up and Artis left the meeting, later vowing to resign from the Guild, resign from Real Change, leave Seattle, not perform at the festival. Just a whole bunch of stuff. It remains to be seen how serious he is about all that. Seattle - especially busking Seattle - would be much poorer without him.

I just heard from Mikael Wiehe in Sweden - one of my favorite singers. I had sent him my latest CD, Head Full Of Pictures. In his email he said that he liked it the best of any I had sent. And that it gave him ideas, which is "the best I can say a bout a CD." Well, his music gives me ideas too so maybe I know what he means.

August 8

Tuesday night, August 8, 2006... These days pile up like lumber. Living in a bad house, waiting for it to fall down. I just read a story from the LA Times this morning about how the US soldiers who raped that 14 year old Iraqi girl went back out and cooked up chicken wings after killing her family. Kind of makes you numb...How do you respond as an artist? Most of the time we are told that politics and art don't mix. It's easy to believe – convenient in fact - because then you never have to risk losing an audience or a gig. Or getting punched in the nose. But it’s a lame excuse and doesn’t hold any water. Supporting the status quo and keeping your mouth shut in dreadful times is just like working for The Man. You might as well be on the payroll.

I remember years ago in Ireland when Christy Moore was doing the Moving Hearts - 1980, 81. Those were sharp contested days – things were heating up in the North. And the Hearts were a very political band. They played every Tuesday and Wednesday at the Baggett Inn (The Maggot Bin) in Dublin and the houses were always packed – people turned away at the door. I did a lot of gigs with them. One night I was sitting with a famous traditional singer and I asked her what she thought of the band. She said she didn’t like them, and when I asked her why she said, “Politics and music don’t mix.” I looked around and the room was completely full. Obviously politics and music were mixing very well that night…

I think the trick is to politicize the culture, rather than to dig into the deep trough of left wing ghetto art. I don’t really trust people who only do political songs – because we don’t only lead political lives. We play games and tell stories, we laugh and dance, we make love and argue, we travel and meet strange and wonderful people. To become a strenuous brick of nerves over it all doesn’t really help. Rather than stress about how to get more people to go to the Radical Utopian EcoFest maybe it would make more sense to infiltrate the greater culture at large. Every festival should have thought music.

Thought music.

This week is the national convention of Veterans For Peace, of which I am an associate member. They are a great group! Jim Hinde and I are singing at the banquet dinner on Saturday night. Jim’s a combat Navy vet. I call myself a “civilian veteran of the Vietnam War.” I was on the ground running scared, changing my name, heading for the east coast. Wars do that to people – everything gets warped. So Saturday is the dinner, then on Sunday I travel with a bunch of people up to the Peace Arch at the Canadian border. We walk to the border and meet with a bunch of draft resisters from the Vietnam days and we have a picnic. What a wonderful idea.

August 5, 2006

Seafair Weekend, lots of noise. The big bad Blue Angels doing their dangerous acrobatics over the houses. Slamming audio-cacophonic hydroplain races on the lake. Lots of drinking, lots of trash, lots of traffic. Why do people go to this stuff? If I had PTSD I'd be hiding under the bed. It's like a great big recruiting display for the overstimulated youths.

Oh well. There are more important things to do. There's a film crew in town doing a documentary on busking. I'm the guy who made it legal back in '74 so they want to talk to me. I'm also a founding member of the Pike Market performers' Guild (PMPG), along with Artis and Jim Hinde. So they want to talk to all of us. Briggs, Lance Tigner, Twister Thomas. We all sat out on the sun baked concrete beside the too expensive French restaurant and had conversations with the cameras. It was a blast. Niceol is in Ireland so she wasn't there. Emery was at a funeral. Dave was nowhere to be seen.

I was hesitant at first - movie people from "down there" coming to my town. But they turned out to be real cool. Real nice people with good ideas. There's more to come tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.