Blogging At It's Best: My Story (In Words And Music)

My best friend (36 years) came over yesterday, a six-pack in hand, and we had one of those long, meandering conversations that only best friends can have. During it, I admitted I love my country, and explained how I got there:

After years of traveling, the Iraq War made it necessary for me to weigh the same questions Vietnam-era Americans did, but without the luxury of (what I considered to be, in my pre-NewAge awareness) ignorance about the world.

By this time I was living in France, and being hounded by my gracious hosts (another divorce subtext, my wife's friends, family, and the rest of their nation) because I was firm in my conviction George W. Bush was a good man, and - Michael Moore at Cannes or no Michael Moore at Cannes - there was no way this Democrat would diss my nation while in theirs.

But I'm no pussy when it comes to myself - was I adopting a pose, after all I'd endured at home (from whites and blacks and mexicans and chinese and gays and anybody else who saw opportunity in what was obviously an isolated human being) or was this "proud black man" truly something more - an honest-to-goodness American? I had to know.

Which meant I had to "crunch the numbers" on the United States, too - and all of you - looking at everything from outside our shores, warts and all, deciding if we were worthy of what we were doing - and each other's love.

That wasn't the first time I'd had a chance to compare the U.S. to the rest of the world, having already returned from the military to tell my friends ghetto life was a dance in the park - a very dark one -  compared to the Third World. 

And I told them, knowing that, I think we should be grateful we somehow made it here.

Something white Americans get in a lot of trouble for saying.

All of my foster parents were from The South, so there was no sugar coating what I was raised in, who kept the imagery clean, who made this nation great, endured it's struggles, and committed it's crimes.

But come on, I was over that by the time I started seriously taking drugs and knew I was an atheist - like, the age of 14 - maturing into someone happy they kept the lights on long enough for me to get married and actually succeed in launching a ramshackle solo music career that, after I'd acquired a band especially, started taking on, you might say, humanist tones. Yeah, me. I was an "out there" American artist in France, contemplating what my next professional move was, really nothing more dramatic than that.

 

 Sure, 9/11 had happened, but it was the inescapable reaction to Iraq that was making it impossible for me to keep that as my only focus. "War" was getting deep. (In english, the French were asking my wife if she agreed with my political views, to elicit only that she does "When he says it,..." They'd keep talking to her in french,...) America's streets had more-than-equipped me for war's mechanics, and the ability to cope, but no one can prepare for the fall-out because no one can know the untold number of options (many horrifying) fate chooses from. Dying "like an animal" is not just a possibility but one of my norms. Hell, not even always one of the worst possibilities. 

I knew the score - but, as I said, not where knowing it could lead:

Then came the fast ball,...

 (To be continued,...)