My birthdays comin up, so Im havin' "deep thoughts" ...about youth, change, and Hope....
I got faith in the "doomed generation"
March 2004
----------------------------
I'm Amatul, a biracial 35 year old poet and
performance artist/ community grassroots activist, born and raised in Cambridge MA and Rumford Me.
Like all of you, I've noticed so many many cultural differences in one short human lifetime... HISTORY IS ALIVE AND BLEEDING.
I was born to a Lithuanian/Irish Mother and a BlackFather back in 1968, on April 3rd - (One Day before theassassination of Rev King) My two little brothers and
I were growing up poor in a time when rent in Boston was $200 for an entire floor, lil girls could walk after dark alone without fear, Social Security was guaranteed fo all workers of the good ole' USA, and Welfare meant: a check for new bedroom furniture for your children, a kindly lil' governmental concern for public health, and ample foodstamps that my mother could buy organic produce of her choice with..... The Times, they are a Changin' & not fer the better.
I was developing my selfhood, womanhood, and socal conciousness throughout the racial wars and feminist
openness of the 70s, then kinda slammed in the shutting door of the greedy 80s, partied hard in cynical GenX culture that grew like weeds in the 90's... Puzzled and
amused by the rise of the WWW, I ended up being one of the first Black women developing Virtual Worlds (Boston ComputerSocietyVirtualRealityGroup represent REPRESENT!)
Nowadays I stand amazed in our current backlash of 1950's style selfish and self -rightious nationalism and international USA 1 semi- Roman Empire Imperialism... but hey babys, Rome always Burns...
Ya know, on the "Liberal" side streets of Boston MA (and right in Harvard Sq), we _never_ thought we'd see a mall world. A plastic place where the masses in public pass each other to spend credits in a commerical zone that frowns at skinheads, glowers at sk8t kids, curses loitering Black youth & requires licences and permits to create free public music or ... breakdance or ... sell art on a corner - incredible.
In - Crediable!
If you had told us about this world of change back in the 1970's or early 1980's, we would have thought you were lying. We would have said that you were _crazy_ yo.
Its like a nightmare snake how slowly this all slipped under our noses and became "normal"...
Noone but Orwell envisioned the strength of the rise of a semi police state: Metal detectors at our high schools? Crazy. Gun-scared or daterape attacks in grade
schools? Crazy. Our growing desire to ingest even the nastiest strange escape drugs? (Hey kids! why not try WET, embalming-fluid dipped smokables! HOW GREAT!) Crazy.
And our quick willingness to give away hard-won civil rights and civil liberties, incarcerate indiscriminantly without trial,
fund police forces and wage war for seemingly false reasons?
Crazzzzzy man, Crazy.
Bluntly, taken at face value, this IS an incredibly sad and challenging cultural time for good-willed, freedom-loving, life-loving, nature-loving, youth-loving people - BUT!
There is another set of threads, another web like a parallel universe. At small gatherings in homes, BarBQ's of friends,
large parties at lofts, amongst heads at underground clubs, at coffeehouse readings, at activist meetings, and on the
internet we can interact with other people that KNOW the differences between yesterday and today... folk that know history.
Folk that HAVE listened and watched well in their short lifetimes, and can feel in their hearts that this Necros-loving and full of aggression consumer culture, while quite amusing online, on MTV or in a movie, & madcap fun for a party, is wrong for them as the _totallity_ of their existance....
smell the emptyness & see the ratbone in the coke can.
know the LIE that we live on... find skeletons buried in the backyard of hometown USA.
So, I have hope.
I believe that it is imperative that the "adults" now pay very close attention to the "kids" that are NOT being stereotyped and sold to us, the kids who's "look" can be soldout - but whos soul will never be put into music videos. Yeah!
I mean, I know there is a sub-set of diverse souls that _give a damn_ and do NOT want to join the Safty Facist Patrol or
the Young America Brigade to get in lockstep with bad history - there are young adults and folk of all ages that TALK and SHARE with each other because they need a deeper level of heart, soul, and mind communication.
There is a secret generation growing, a shadow generation with somewhat
greener asperations, a post-rock post-tv post-punk post-rap post-www post-rave post-burning technologically savvy Tribe.
Several generations are online, internationally connecting, making art, blogging, organising DIY shows, serving Food Not Bombs in their local vacent
lot... there is as ever a sub-set of FREE citizen souls that refuse to simply buy what is being sold, or to give up! (for our peeps stuck inside a mall life - woth only the Clockwork - Blunted joy of Grand Theft Auto or drifting complacently away in EverQuest shared-hallucination -
well its all fun and a nice place to visit, but we still need to EAT and BREATH....)
If we look around casually, we could lose hope.
If we listen to the academy, we could lose hope.
If we believe the hype, we could lose hope.
But!
Remember, what once struck us as so damn true IS: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
In fact, the blocking factors, the discouragers and the petty mean distractions get all the "investigative
reports"... Daily and hourly we can see warning shows, read indepth articles & pay too much for movies about the lost, the sold-out, the labled and discarded by "RESPECTABLE" folk.."hardened teens: would-be pimps and hos, film at eleven!!" yeah, all the usual lost-to-activism consumer fools like us...
But!
There is another story whispering - all around if we only look. When I despair I make myself look & listen to the true diversity of struggle out here - and I still have hope.
Hope grows slowly inside the machine, hearty weeds struggle to bloom... sex and love are still so so damn gooood.. so:
Dont Ever Give Up.
Life wants us to Live &,
The Culture Wars are not lost
PEACE
Your sister and fellow Human Being,
Amatul
Boston MA
March 24, 2004
--------------------
Dispite the disfunction, they had each other and a home, the earth, someone to bury them and adventures to remember... minds full of love, compassion....
...and kumquats!
I got faith in the "doomed generation"
March 2004
----------------------------
I'm Amatul, a biracial 35 year old poet and
performance artist/ community grassroots activist, born and raised in Cambridge MA and Rumford Me.
Like all of you, I've noticed so many many cultural differences in one short human lifetime... HISTORY IS ALIVE AND BLEEDING.
I was born to a Lithuanian/Irish Mother and a BlackFather back in 1968, on April 3rd - (One Day before theassassination of Rev King) My two little brothers and
I were growing up poor in a time when rent in Boston was $200 for an entire floor, lil girls could walk after dark alone without fear, Social Security was guaranteed fo all workers of the good ole' USA, and Welfare meant: a check for new bedroom furniture for your children, a kindly lil' governmental concern for public health, and ample foodstamps that my mother could buy organic produce of her choice with..... The Times, they are a Changin' & not fer the better.
I was developing my selfhood, womanhood, and socal conciousness throughout the racial wars and feminist
openness of the 70s, then kinda slammed in the shutting door of the greedy 80s, partied hard in cynical GenX culture that grew like weeds in the 90's... Puzzled and
amused by the rise of the WWW, I ended up being one of the first Black women developing Virtual Worlds (Boston ComputerSocietyVirtualRealityGroup represent REPRESENT!)
Nowadays I stand amazed in our current backlash of 1950's style selfish and self -rightious nationalism and international USA 1 semi- Roman Empire Imperialism... but hey babys, Rome always Burns...
Ya know, on the "Liberal" side streets of Boston MA (and right in Harvard Sq), we _never_ thought we'd see a mall world. A plastic place where the masses in public pass each other to spend credits in a commerical zone that frowns at skinheads, glowers at sk8t kids, curses loitering Black youth & requires licences and permits to create free public music or ... breakdance or ... sell art on a corner - incredible.
In - Crediable!
If you had told us about this world of change back in the 1970's or early 1980's, we would have thought you were lying. We would have said that you were _crazy_ yo.
Its like a nightmare snake how slowly this all slipped under our noses and became "normal"...
Noone but Orwell envisioned the strength of the rise of a semi police state: Metal detectors at our high schools? Crazy. Gun-scared or daterape attacks in grade
schools? Crazy. Our growing desire to ingest even the nastiest strange escape drugs? (Hey kids! why not try WET, embalming-fluid dipped smokables! HOW GREAT!) Crazy.
And our quick willingness to give away hard-won civil rights and civil liberties, incarcerate indiscriminantly without trial,
fund police forces and wage war for seemingly false reasons?
Crazzzzzy man, Crazy.
Bluntly, taken at face value, this IS an incredibly sad and challenging cultural time for good-willed, freedom-loving, life-loving, nature-loving, youth-loving people - BUT!
There is another set of threads, another web like a parallel universe. At small gatherings in homes, BarBQ's of friends,
large parties at lofts, amongst heads at underground clubs, at coffeehouse readings, at activist meetings, and on the
internet we can interact with other people that KNOW the differences between yesterday and today... folk that know history.
Folk that HAVE listened and watched well in their short lifetimes, and can feel in their hearts that this Necros-loving and full of aggression consumer culture, while quite amusing online, on MTV or in a movie, & madcap fun for a party, is wrong for them as the _totallity_ of their existance....
smell the emptyness & see the ratbone in the coke can.
know the LIE that we live on... find skeletons buried in the backyard of hometown USA.
So, I have hope.
I believe that it is imperative that the "adults" now pay very close attention to the "kids" that are NOT being stereotyped and sold to us, the kids who's "look" can be soldout - but whos soul will never be put into music videos. Yeah!
I mean, I know there is a sub-set of diverse souls that _give a damn_ and do NOT want to join the Safty Facist Patrol or
the Young America Brigade to get in lockstep with bad history - there are young adults and folk of all ages that TALK and SHARE with each other because they need a deeper level of heart, soul, and mind communication.
There is a secret generation growing, a shadow generation with somewhat
greener asperations, a post-rock post-tv post-punk post-rap post-www post-rave post-burning technologically savvy Tribe.
Several generations are online, internationally connecting, making art, blogging, organising DIY shows, serving Food Not Bombs in their local vacent
lot... there is as ever a sub-set of FREE citizen souls that refuse to simply buy what is being sold, or to give up! (for our peeps stuck inside a mall life - woth only the Clockwork - Blunted joy of Grand Theft Auto or drifting complacently away in EverQuest shared-hallucination -
well its all fun and a nice place to visit, but we still need to EAT and BREATH....)
If we look around casually, we could lose hope.
If we listen to the academy, we could lose hope.
If we believe the hype, we could lose hope.
But!
Remember, what once struck us as so damn true IS: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
In fact, the blocking factors, the discouragers and the petty mean distractions get all the "investigative
reports"... Daily and hourly we can see warning shows, read indepth articles & pay too much for movies about the lost, the sold-out, the labled and discarded by "RESPECTABLE" folk.."hardened teens: would-be pimps and hos, film at eleven!!" yeah, all the usual lost-to-activism consumer fools like us...
But!
There is another story whispering - all around if we only look. When I despair I make myself look & listen to the true diversity of struggle out here - and I still have hope.
Hope grows slowly inside the machine, hearty weeds struggle to bloom... sex and love are still so so damn gooood.. so:
Dont Ever Give Up.
Life wants us to Live &,
The Culture Wars are not lost
PEACE
Your sister and fellow Human Being,
Amatul
Boston MA
March 24, 2004
--------------------
Dispite the disfunction, they had each other and a home, the earth, someone to bury them and adventures to remember... minds full of love, compassion....
...and kumquats!
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Til then