About Ghosts of Our Former Selves - chapter 5 (…and reflect on what’s to come)
About the inspiration for the album, Ghosts of Our Former Selves
Chapter 5 - …and reflect on what’s to come, with the ghosts of our former selves.
I may be a product of mid-century America, but I am certainly not nostalgic for it. This album expresses personal grief, but it is not an expression of grief for some idealized notion of those times. It is about leaving them behind with all of their blind, destructive notions of progress. It expresses an intense internal distress at postwar tensions that have perpetuated an entrenched violence and led us inexorably to 2020. Even now, these destructive forces are built into our very existence, including those of us who think ourselves too enlightened and aware. It all must stop. Our entire structure encourages predation against anyone with less power, not to mention against the global environment. Incremental changes in society might make us feel like we are doing something, but these will only serve to cover up the problems once again and allow a return to complacency by those whom such a return would serve. A moment of great disruption may be here, but will it be enough?
As the months have dragged on through this pandemic, many of us have longed for a return to our “normal”. But a return is exactly what cannot and should not be. This is an apocalypse – a time of unveiling and uncovering - and what has been uncovered is ugly. The true depth of the hate, greed, fear, selfishness, and violence at the roots of our society has been laid bare and we need to face it. Anyone who can deny this given what is happening all around is entombed in their own fear and deep in denial. Nothing other than profound fear and selfishness can account for the insistence that reckless, violent, and anti-social behaviors are “personal rights”. It’s our right to murder one another. The optimist in me thinks, finally, we will not be able to return to an unjust normal.
I think of myself as an optimist. I expect that most people are naturally empathetic. Recent events have tested that notion. That I compose at all is an act of optimism. Art expects a lot of people. It asks people to stay engaged with an open mind. Listening to music can require reaching beyond ourselves and re-orienting our expectations. But when it comes to existential matters, my point of view starts to change and this too is contained in my music. The opening words of Ghosts of Armageddon describe an actual experience I had with friends in 1970 around the time of the first Earth Day. We waded into the toxic Whippany River thinking we were cleaning it up. We meant well. Pulling out abandoned shopping carts and wounding ourselves on rusted bicycles was a naïve activity given the prior decades of chemical dumping. Even as I participated over those years, I had a feeling of helplessness and despair. I knew that all of the sources of real power were driving humankind toward extinction and that no amount of activism could stop that. No amount of logic could prevail when so much money was at stake. I thought about the battle being waged against big tobacco and how hopeless that seemed. I thought of the senselessness of Vietnam. The fight for meaningful stewardship of the environment is larger and more consequential and, I was sure then as now, will only be recognized once it is too late for us to act.
This apocalypse, though presents an opportunity. As has often been the case at times of disruption, artists should embrace this energy, question all, look to the past, understand the present and dream of the future. It is a time to call on our most empathetic selves, and use that disruptive energy in a creative act.
