Younger Than That Now

My message is for the young ones. Oh, I don't prefer kids to geezers. It occurs to me, however, that folks my age have mostly made up their minds. About everything. They're left or they're right. Some of them are avid environmentalists and some of them still bow down to Wall Street. From my perspective you're either looking under every rock for the truth or you're busy waiting to die.

My I pod has changed my life for the better. That doesn't mean that I've enjoyed sitting across from friends at a back table in the diner while they tweet about where we are on their I phone. I love technology. I hope never to be a slave to it.

Some things never change. War is bad. War has always been bad. It's never gonna get good. Next time we watch a crowd of rowdy boys chanting, "USA, USA," let's hope we're tuned into an olympic event, not a foreign invasion involving shock and awe. Love is good. It's always gonna be good. Love with all of your heart, all the time.

My music brings me more joy than ever at this stage of my life. I'm preaching to the kids, however. Big Joe Turner preached to me when I was a kid. So did Elvis and Little Willie John and Sam Cooke. That's where I pieced together whatever little message that I have. I have a big debt to pay.

I hope old folks listen to my music and I hope they like it. I'm playing it for my audience, though. The kids.

I'll Let It Come To Me

It's a lucky fellow who asks a dumb rhetorical question about chasing happiness and gets serious, thoughtful answers. My old pal, Bill Mann, got the ball rolling. His idea is to lock myself away in a quiet, sunny room with my dog and get to work on some positive, happy songs. 

I know that I've told you this before but I never knew that I wrote sad songs til it was pointed out to me. Okay. Now it has been pointed out to me and I hear it. While I've never set out to put together dark ones, I think that I can write happy ones if I try.

Bill's idea is that sometimes life imitates art and I keep living these sad songs. You know what? I think he's on to something. I ran it past my buddy, Walt, at lunch. He thinks so, too. I've got nothing to lose but these blues.

For the time being I'm gonna let happiness pursue me. If it works out I'm gonna try the same thing with women and success. Maybe wisdom, too.

Please buy this new record because I'm hoping that it's the last sad one. I'm starting the new, happy one today. I don't care for sarcasm and this seems to reek of it. Nope. I love you all.

Chasing Happy

With way too much time on my hands I find myself chasing happiness the way that you try to focus on a floater. You know how the little tricksters jump to a new spot when you try to look right at one of them? I got to be something of a master at blue. No future there.

Now I obsess over the past and worry about missed opportunity and fret over any impurities in my heart. My dog and I spend far too much time in the great state of anxious. She worries that I'm gonna leave the house. I don't know what I worry about. 

I'm open to suggestion here.

Wasted

What if I don't save the world? What if my negatives outweigh my positives at the end? I keep promising myself that I've finished all preparations and that it's living from here on out. Next thing you know I've got dark thoughts in my head and I'm wasting my time doing nothing. I did cut my hair today, my fingernails, too. I can't help but wonder if Einstein or Eleanor Roosevelt or Hank Ballard wasted time on that kind of mundane crap.

Welding with stardust, patching holes in the cosmos- that's what I'm wanting to spend my time on. Of course dating showgirls and sipping champagne sounds fine, too. I should probably meditate and masturbate more. A bonobo's life for me, hoho.

Grave Matters

A wife once asked me, "Is there anything else in life that you want to do? Are there any ambitions that you work towards?"

When I answered that I really just wanted to live life and see what happens I got in trouble. Wrong answer, I suppose.

When all of these films came along and old geezers began comparing bucket lists I checked out. My bucket's got a hole in it. Oh, I still hope to see the rest of the world and I want to fight the good fight to save the planet. I'm still hoping to write a song that burns with truth and hope and beauty.

For the most part, though, I want to live and love. I believe everything will work out for the best. Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

I Guess I Am

"Are you a hippie?" It was the summer of 1965 and my younger friend Mike Regar's question caught me off guard. There wasn't much of a negative association with the term yet. I suppose that maybe I struggled for just a moment to clarify my worthiness. I hadn't really taken any drugs to speak of. I think I had smoked dope once. I surely believed in the concept of free love but I was hardly any kind of participant. Peace and love? I was okay on that one. My grandmother had taught me that there are no good wars. She was a hippie.

I would be lying if I said that I remember how I answered Mike's sweet, innocent question. I hope I said yes.

Who was the first hippie? Who knows. Jesus or Buddha might get my vote. In this polarized culture these days you have to have your "opinion"ready for the argument. Therefore, I go officially with Harry, The Handsome Hipster, Gibson. He had already renamed himself Harry The Hipster in 1940. On the radio in 1945, though, Stan Kenton referred to him as "Hippie."

We need the hippies now. We need peace and we need love. We need to fight poverty. Someone's gonna have to reform our prison system, our entire system of justice, in fact. We need a leader with the fortitude to stand up to the NRA. Who's ready to expose the military industrial complex and shut down these arms industries. Where are the heroes to face our complex immigration problems. We need to take turns holding and hugging and rocking the orphans and showing all the love and respect that our elderly population needs and deserves.

Come home, hippies. We need you now.

Old Cowboys

In all of Shakespeare's finest westerns the young, fast gun finally falls to a younger, quicker hotshot. The tragedy always follows the same course. The new kid with the white hat is looking for peace and justice. Usually he's looking for a little love, too.

As he grows older our hero has typically been tested, tempted by dark forces hidden behind every sage brush, every cactus.

The U.S.A. got its white hat quickly and fiercely, shooting the villains in the back when necessary, stealing the land, itself, from the original inhabitants; building a new system of wealth on the back of slavery and taking other gunslingers' land through drummed up war and patriotism. We didn't steal Texas and California from Mexico because Davy and Sam and the boys liked to sing the Star Spangled Banner. We took it because Mexico had outlawed slavery and that act threatened the ancestors of those rich white guys who still run that burg. 

Obviously, the next big wars won't be fought with bombers longer than football fields or even drones. We won't be dropping G.I.'s out of airplanes over the middle east. Computers will shut down infrastructures, banks, utility grids.

We're still building those bombers and those tanks. The wealthy crooks who bought our government some time back make a great deal of money with the stocks of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about.

Oh, we have some heroes fighting the good fight. Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich and a handful of other brave, noble cowpokes with noble dreams and nerves of steel.

In the final chapter, however, Willy The Shake would have the young China Kid ride into town and pin the star on his own vest. 

I'm already looking forward to the sequel. I'm waiting for the really good guy to ride in.