 |
Newsletter Menu Realitycheckers Books Screensavers 
The Power Of Distraction Edition #48 — 10 Sep 2003 Hi folks. I'll begin this issue of "Get Real" (the new name for my monthly newsletter) with a nifty little synchronicity that recently occurred during the power outage. Give you a break from all that patriarchy stuff. Monkey In The Middle Since 1986 I've had this catchy little musical phrase — a keyboard lick - that I wanted to write a song with called Monkey In The Middle. On Sunday, August 10, 2003, after 17 years of sitting on the shelf, I finally started working on it. All I had was the working title and the intro riff; there were no verses or choruses — nothing resembling a song. That quickly changed as I got creative. First I added drums to find the groove and from there my guitar and bass parts started revealing themselves. The song was promising to be huge sounding, but I still had no idea what it was supposed to be about. I was kicking around some ideas about evolution and being enslaved to luxury and technology. I wrote: "What if my ship starts sinking — have I paid too much for the anchor to let go of it now?"- a line inspired by my Reality Check book. I also wrote this great chorus that went "oh...luckily I still got a little bit of monkey in me" (you have to trust me on this one!) which sounded really cool but made no sense in the context of the verse lyrics I was fleshing out. Temporarily frustrated, I began working on another song altogether. I also finished up my super-sized "McNewsletter" on Patriarchy for August, 2003. Knowing enough to move on when I'm creatively blocked, I didn't think a few more days of ignoring the song mattered after 17 years... And then came August 14, 2003. Zapped! As many of you know, August 14, 2003, was the day a massive power outage struck and wiped out electrical power in many North Eastern states, as well as here in Ontario, Canada. Like many rural inhabitants, I depend upon a well for my water. Problem is that without electricity it won't pump water out of the ground. Suddenly we had no running water or any of the electricity-dependent luxuries that kept our modern, civilized illusion of controlled self-sufficiency intact. Suddenly our proverbial "ship" was sinking. It quickly became apparent just how child-like our dependency was on electricity and other out-sourced services for our basic survival. We're too far in it now — but it's one of our main vulnerabilities. We had a barrel full of clean water that we used for hand washing and toilet flushing. We had candles, matches and even a battery operated radios so we could monitor helpless politicians advising people to "Stay at home and take care of each other." At least that was better than calling the electrical companies "The Evil Grid" or something Bushy like that. I figured with our garden we might survive a few days without missing the grocery store. Water? We'd have to do a rain dance or drink sweat cause we couldn't trust what was in the lakes and rivers anymore. --- The Great Beer River As a humorous sidebar to the event: a giant vat full of beer exploded at a major beer brewery and LOTS of beer drained into a nearby river. So if you Torontonians have a beer-like aftertaste in your municipal water supply — try guessing which brand it is! Oh, and don't drink the water and drive! (Makes you wonder what else gets spilled in there...) --- Back To The Monkey Song A lot of stuff comes to the surface when "the system" fails us — you think being late for work is hectic: what about living in the concrete jungle with no food growing anywhere nearby? It doesn't take long to realize just how vulnerable we are. In fact we're sitting ducks. I woke the next morning — after a long, sweaty night without my ceiling fan! — to a house still without electricity. Shit. As I walked in the back yard I imagined what a few more days without power might bring (and remembering that many Iraqis have been without electricity for months). Something clicked and I finally realized what "Monkey In The Middle" was about. I flopped down onto the carpet in my room and started writing the missing verses — using a desk is too civil for a monkey song! Words joined to form viable and entertaining concepts. Best of all was that the chorus suddenly made sense when before I had no clue as to why I had written the words "still got a little bit of monkey in me". I wrote all the lyrics for song in about 10 minutes. Filled with humour and insight, everything flowed together beautifully as if it had all been written at the same time. The truth was that the song already knew what it was about and I had to discover it. It was one of those wonderfully humbling and mystical "aha" moments. After all, how could I have known about the power outage three days in advance when I started writing about a man who was lucky to still have enough monkey left in him to survive the sinking of his technological ship? And that's when the strangest thing of all happened. Just as I'd finished writing and rose to put the pen and paper back on my bed — the power came back on. Nice timing, I thought — my work's done here! Next song please! Look, I'm not suggesting that there was some vast conspiracy to create a power failure so I could finish writing my monkey song. It just turned out that the whole scenario worked in my favour, from start to finish. It gave me the perspective for the topic and right after I finished the lyrics, the power turned back on so I could record the new verses in my computer. 1-2-3. Kinda neat, huh? --- Seeing The Light Of The Community Amidst the backdrop of this widespread power failure, we also had a good opportunity to consider our own connection — and often disconnection from one another. We all witnessed how our dependency upon harnessed electrical power had also created many distractions to human contact and interaction. Consider how the concept of community has been disrupted by the ability of people to switch on a television set. Think about how we use technology as a distraction and a barrier to interaction with family, neighbours and friends — or as a parenting tool to pacify children. Consider how disconnected we are from our neighbourhood and our interests in the world. Or how indifferent we've become about exercising our social and civic rights — and duties — as citizens of our countries while becoming more aggressively vocal and socially aware about such illusions and petty distractions as the Super Bowl, "Joe Millionaire", "American Idol" and whether Jay Lo and Ben Affleck will get married or not. If this keeps up for too long, we're screwed. If this is a plot to keep us benign and stupid — it's working brilliantly! We reward our knowledge of cultural trivia on shows like "Jeopardy" and "Millionaire" while intellectuals and freethinkers like Bill Maher are abandoned as too risky a vehicle from which to bombard viewers with lipstick, McDonalds and beer commercials. Public Broadcasting is generally ridiculed as b-o-r-i-n-g and many of us are starting to use our heads only for chewing. Television, like alcohol and heroin, makes the world go away — but it doesn't solve our problems. Our problems always return in full force when an interruption in our dealer's supply line causes our distractions to suddenly lose their power and control over us. When was the last time you did something artistic and creative with your mind and hands? When was the last time you expressed yourself, not as a reflection of your need for money or acceptance, but as a true expression of who you are, what you love, and what matters to you? When was the last time you saw the stars outside, or heard the sound of a room without an electrical hum, or a street with only footsteps? Sometimes we have to go back to move forward. How far? I don't know. Ironically, many of us seem to care more about who's being crooked and unfair on our favourite "reality" TV show than out in the real world where crooked politicians and their corporate backers are undermining our very real freedoms and rights with each passing day. Reality is what we make it. And if we don't create it then others will do it for us. You know those happy-faced people in TV commercials we're being asked to compare ourselves to? They're actors. We are the real people. Don't forget that. We may not be as skinny, beautiful, rich and educated as everyone else — but it's our planet too! And there's a lot of power that flows through us. The Light That Shines On the night of the blackout I sat in the kitchen and talked with my family. That's something we don't usually do without a TV on for background noise. It felt so alien to sit there in the dark by candle light and just *be*. It was an opportunity for me to be completely *present* in the moment with those who mattered most to me. Those home alone could meditate without distraction; city dwellers could see stars for the first time without the harsh glare of city lights. It was like waking from a dream. And for those with batteries and a Game Boy, it was business as usual. Crossing Over host John Edwards always advises his audience to appreciate and validate those around us *now* so we don't have to try to chase down our dead relatives in the afterworld to make amends. But it's obvious that in order to begin this process of appreciation and validation, we'll have to take our lives back from the clutches of our modern distractions — maybe it is "the evil grid". There also seems to be a grid of human consciousness. It comes back on when our electrical power grid shuts off. Truth is, we're in charge of our consciousness — always. Click — we're on. Click — we're off. We just forget it's that easy to tune in or out of what really matters. It may not be easy to turn the lights of the city off or find a room without an electrical hum, but at least we can turn our backs on the dealers of distraction — the media — long enough to find out who's living with us - and what's on our own minds! Late Friday night I listened to a local radio station as callers shared their feelings about how nice and strangely unfamiliar it was for them to gather as a family and just talk — some perhaps for the first time, ever. (Don't worry, I'm aware of the irony here.) And all because of the blackout. Maybe we should consider scheduling more blackouts on a regular basis - for the sake of our humanity. Imagine the power we could harness — and unleash — to change our lives and our society if we could just "get off the grid" of distraction once in a while and talk with family, friends, neighbours and even complete strangers about the kind of world we would like to live in — and then work on it. Ironically, on the morning of the blackout I was working on another song called "It's Time" which is about the human family opening our hearts and joining together to evolve in compassion. I have to admit, sometimes I feel like I'm plugged into some major psychic appliance that doesn't run on ordinary power. --- Anti-Spam And now, to switch gears completely on y'all, here's a handy anti-spam hint for those who hate SPAM aka unsolicited email. Noticing that many SPAM ads have numbers in their email addresses, I created a mail filter that shoots everything with a number in it (from the "sender" email address) into my trash folder. Whatever winds up there I treat as suspect. I always "send to trash" and never automatically delete because some of my friends use numbers in their hotmail addresses — like georgebush666@snotmail.com (I'm kidding folks!) I had to create separate filters that would send email with their specific addresses to my inbox instead of the trash. I currently use Netscape 7.1 for all my web needs, so I'll give you an example of what I've done in that program. If you're using other mail software, you should find equivalent commands in their mail filter section. So here's what I've done: 1) In email mode, I go to "message filters" under the "tools" menu. 2) I open mail filters and set the "Filter Rules" to "Match any of the following" 3) I then enter "sender" "contains" "1" on my first row. 4) My second row is identical except now it's: "sender" "contains" "2" 5) I continue this process until I have 9 rows from 1 to 9 targeted in any email I receive. Again, this is just something I've decided to do recently. I've also got filters with suspect words that target text like "viagra" or "HGH" in the body copy — but that doesn't always work so well. For one thing, spammers got wise and started sending emails as image files instead of text files — which can't be screened for text. And then they started misspelling "viagra" like V1agra" or "V*agra" so our text filters were rendered useless. Bastards. Can't we bring back the electric chair, just for a couple of months? Pretty please...can we, huh, can we? OK, switch the power back on — and let's put Uncle Spam on simmer! --- Well, my work's done here, so I'll say toodles for now! And let's keep that power of love grid on in our lives — no emotional blackouts! Fight The Power?, Roland Kriewaldt Subscribe to free newsletter
Search Realitycheckers.com
|
|
