Some Optimism Along The Dead Pine Highway

“Dead Pine Highway”

Not sure what exactly that refers to, or even what it means, but it’s something I was thinking/sensing while on a drive up to Chicago last summer.  Kinda feels like what we’re traveling on these days amidst the warning signs of our corroding late stage capitalist plutocracy.

The basis of the IAH episode bearing the name pretty much came together during that aforementioned drive, though it was another year before it was actually put into some kind of a finished form. And for various situational timing issues, was then left on the sidelines for a spell of time while a number of other IAH episodes have been amplified.

I’m glad to see (and hear) the program finally off the bench and onto the radiophonic playing field, hopefully able score a few audiophonic points for you the listener ")

It’s in some ways a working soundtrack, as is much of IAH endeavor itself, for this current age of an ever-increasing amount of people seeing their faiths in certain expectations of ‘the way things are supposed to be’ get increasingly shaken. “Wait a minute, *this* wasn’t supposed to happen!? (And happen again!)” 

Unfortunately, I feel some of the latest developments in our world are just hors d'oeuvres samplers of the kinds of eye opening shockers I think we’re probably in for. Especially as the U.S.’s ‘new’ oligarch-sponsored regime takes over next month and sets about making unfettered extraction capital profiteering great again.  

I’m definitely not one to be quoting from Lenin very often at all, but I think there's some wisdom to this, a situation it feels we’re rapidly heading towards…

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”  

Sooo many reasons to feel this is the case these days. There was the shooting of a corporate CEO responsible for the denial of health care to literally *millions* of people (over 31 MILLION claims denied to patients in need just this year under his direction is kinda telling, leading to who knows how much untold suffering and even deaths). It's what I fear is just one more harbinger of the tumultuous social and civic convulsions likely to come, as this unsustainable system begins to no longer sustain.

But as we feel ourselves driving lost along such a desolate highway of current conditions, the fact is this isn’t a time for despair, but for re-invigorated optimism. That's not delusion, but sober awareness of the potential that underlies actual historical change. Something this program I hope helps reflect and amplify.  

We’re in a historical moment that feels like its quickly becoming an opportunity for a kind of reverse Shock Doctrine, where the crisis is an opportunity not to plunder and exploit, but an opening to reconnect and to heal.  On so many levels. We're entering a period where the oligarchic empire will be standing with no clothes. It's something that will be ever more nakedly obvious to all.

None of this is going to be quick or easy, that’s for damn sure. But it’s becoming more and more obvious to more and more people that things are never going to get easier without some radical changes ahead. 

The key question now is what *kind* of radical changes will those be, and who will decide what they are and who benefits from them?

One thing I know for sure is that music can and will be an essential inspirer for those needed changes. Music is indeed the antidote, one that often serves to amplify ideas and uplift spirits, on the personal as well as social levels. It's why it's all happening right here right now with this program, and hopefully at least partly why you're taking the time right now to bother to read and listen to this.

So tune it in and turn it up…

There’s some real light and life ahead on this highway if we keep our eyes on the road and our hands on the democratic wheel. Let’s turn off the corporate pre-programmed cultural/political GPS that keeps leading us down these dead ends, and let’s cooperatively work to create our own, new path forward. And we're not little children

And we know what we want

And the future is certain

Give us time to work it out

We're on a road to nowhere

Come on inside

Takin' that ride to nowhere

We'll take that ride

There's a city in my mind

Come along and take that ride

And it's alright, baby, it's alright

And it's very far away

But it's growing day by day

And it's alright, baby, it's alright

And would you like to come along?

You could help me sing this song

And it's alright, baby, it's alright

['Road To Nowhere' - Talking Heads]