Volume 13 – #10 – October 2010

OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING! Chem-trails are alive and well in Texas. Yesterday the skies over Denton looked like a checkerboard. Then the lines all spread out and became wispy-looking fake clouds. Fantastic!

If you dwell on something long enough, you become accustomed to it and get acclimated to thinking about it. No matter if the topic is politics, food, power transference, animal rights or religion. I was brought up in a mid-size, protestant-dominated, East Texas town. Almost everyone believed in God, as in father of Jesus. I and 99% of everyone around me knew nothing about anything else to believe in. My parents were Baptist, so I was Baptist. I was conveniently indoctrinated into the Christian mind set. It would have been shocking to hear someone say that there was no God, because everyone we knew belonged to a church, whether they actually went or not. My point is that, in Texarkana, accepting Christ as one’s Lord and Savior was as common as filling the car’s tank with Esso. I didn’t even know that many Catholics (almost not Christian, according to some protestants), not to mention Jews. Although, it never made sense to me that the few Jews I did know were going to Hell just because they were brought up differently than I was. Uh-oh, what was I thinking? This kind of openness could possibly lead someone to the eventual notion that there might not be a Hell. Anyway, I know everyone has to follow his or her path and it’s up to each of us to decide how much we want to challenge core beliefs that were planted by our parents. This is tricky. If you open yourself to anything that’s out there, you risk closing the door on something in your past that created what you are. I understand why someone would choose to not rock the boat and stay in the comfort zone of familiarity. That eliminates one big thing to worry about. Personally, my curiosity must have been greater than my desire for the assurance of Heaven. I opened my mind to the reality that a good Hindu would probably breed Hindus, a good Buddhist, the same, Muslim, the same. And why wouldn’t a faithful parent encourage his kids to think as he or she thinks? We all understand what we are exposed to on a daily basis, right? It’s nice to understand our surroundings and to trust that they will be easy to understand tomorrow, as well. Unfortunately, a shrinking world and expanding population makes this kind of insulated comfort a thing of the past. It’s gone. So what? Is there a problem with living among non-Christians, if you happen to be Christian? Does it really matter if you’re a Muslim, living in Kashmir, and your neighbor is Hindu? Well, if it does matter, enjoy yourself now, cause, whether you like it or not, change is being forced on our weary planet. People are moving everywhere, the Internet is here, global awareness can’t be stopped and the media will see to it that we all hear the same news. That’s where the idea of becoming accustomed to something new comes in. Just from regular ol’ national TV news, the average American’s knowledge of the middle East is amazing compared to 15 or 20 years ago. Even if you don’t want to know as much as you know, it doesn’t matter, cause it’s just a part of your world now. This means your world is bigger, even if you don’t want it that way. The future might not be how your parents envisioned it, but someone’s parents somewhere didn’t want the train to stop in their town, either. So, I propose a radical idea. I call it, “Live and Let Live.” I actually heard about it first in that Baptist church in Texarkana. I was taught that Jesus said things like that. You know, stuff about being compassionate, caring for the less fortunate, not throwing stones, not judging your neighbor. I thought these were the lessons; the way Jesus wanted us to be. And through acting accordingly, enlightenment was assured. If we really do unto others as we would have them do unto us, it makes us more comfortable with the inevitability of change. It’s organic, you know, like how water flows. It takes drastic measures, like a dam, to control it, and not many of us own enough space or have enough money to build our own dams. As I became more open to how other people think and believe, I became more open to how people express themselves and luckily music was a way I could exhibit my passion for the diversity of cultures. At the same time I became more accustomed to the idea of not eating animals. It was tough to make convictions and accept that my world of food choices would be cut by about 90%, but eventually it was nothing, just the way it was. Restaurant menus became super quick to peruse. Joining a growing movement dedicated to reducing the fear and suffering of animals was enough to drive my actions. After a while my norm was the abnormal and , really, it kind of made sense for me, if for no other reason than that. I was also getting use to the idea of playing polkas in rock and roll clubs. That certainly wasn’t normal. The only thing that’s really challenging about this anymore, other than the logistics of getting gigs and arriving to perform, is boiling down all the bizarre directions Brave Combo can go into what’s actually manageable, artistically speaking. And, after all, art is what this is all about. And art can’t kowtow to what’s normal or it’s not doing its job. And art doesn’t have to be about normal means of “artistic” expression, such as painting, sculpture, music or dance. Art is about the current human condition and where that will lead. It’s about pointing out the obvious, which is stubbornly ignored. Art isn’t necessarily clever or crafty or even crafted well. It’s mainly about now, but the big now that’s right in front of everyone, yet for some reason, hard to see. I don’t know exactly how everything fits together, but, in a way, it all makes sense. And by making sense I mean that sitting in the yard with a cat by your side is time well spent, unless a dog is watching from the other side of the fence, getting upset that he’s not sitting by you. It’s interesting how some of our cats and dogs seem to enjoy music, but but a couple of them really don’t care for it at all. And I know all those signs of stress in the little guys. Pacing, panting, scratching the wall. Everybody! All Together! Pacing, panting, scratching the wall. Ears back, eyes big , nostrils flared! Once again. Pacing, panting, scratching the wall. See? Animals are just like people. That’s all for now.