Wednesday, September 23, 2015

My Kind of Candidate

If there exists a presidential candidate who advocates the abandonment of GICE (the global industrial consumer economy), the reduction of the US military budget to one dollar annually, the mobilization of the citizenry to plant prairie grasses and forests as emergency (and long term) carbon sinks, who renounces publicly Christopher Columbus and also many of the founding fathers as insane people – sociopaths who preached individual self-aggrandizement and avarice at the expense of human and nonhuman lives; if there exists a candidate who, finally, advocates the dissolution of the nation into local, land-based economies of scale and organizes nation-wide permaculture and foraging classes to help realize this transition... Well, that person has got my vote.



coltrane

invested in
the elements
spins a sun
and sets another
system swirling

on the pulse
of elvin jones’                                 
breakneck
metronome
to redefine
rhythm
and therefore
space/time

these are
a few
of my
favorite things
sings a
soprano sax
so unlikely
only inevitable
like a cardinal                                                                     
on green grass
it appears
to wrap minds
around
new vines
scaling manhattan
canyons

trane laid
down sets
with monk
at the five spot
said rehearsals
were just learning
from sphere
eight hours
at a pop        

how to stop
a blue train              
can't be done
bends into night
sounds
lonesome blue
midnight blue
blue Egypt
blue ascension
blue the color
of the robin's egg
In carolina hills
blue beam
of starlight
on the
nightingale's beak
blue stones roll
as tumbling notes
across the
staff paper
blue
the color of
astrological charts
strung across
the beams
of night
blue reason
to play
until the hour
of 5 am
harlem
sunrise

won't the
midnight special    
shine a light
on me            
leadbelly
memorandum
laid the table
for stone
cold blues
trane could
reform
in the
steam engine
of harmonic
extension
medieval modes
put into
brass improvisations
call it africa/brass
call it the spirit
made me do it

ballads whispered                         
from duke ellington's
piano
were information
in a glazed glass
tangerine sundown

the tenor
in the hands
invocation
of the very stars
of the coming night

all was written                    
in your name
already
coal the element
to generate
steam                        
trane the engine
crossing the continent
in ascents
and
whistle-round-the-bends
so much
trouble seen
refined down
to copper penny
arpeggios
trane baroque
tapped
onto broadway
melodies
so much
trouble seen
must glean
some daybreak
into the
coldwater flat
while the
steam
of trane’s
inventions
floats up
the fire
escape dawn

It's time
to craft
a monument
alright trane
will do it
in sonic sculpture
and know
the rushmore
of this night
this song
is in
the ascension
up

Dan Hanrahan





Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Externalities and the Sacred

A recent report by Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program concluded the following, “The huge profit margins being made by the world’s most profitable industries (oil, meat, tobacco, mining, electronics) is being paid for against the future: we are trading long term sustainability for the benefit of shareholders. Sometimes the environmental costs vastly outweigh(ed) revenue, meaning that these industries would be constantly losing money had they actually been paying for the ecological damage and strain they were causing.” 1 This is a very important fact to recognize, as one considers the global economic and social system. However, I believe there is a deeper point to be grasped as we consider the report’s conclusions.
The notion that you can affix a monetary value to many of the "externalities" that the report identifies is the notion of a madman. To wit: if the neoincotinoids found in Monsanto's Roundup result in the catastrophic reduction or extinction of the monarch butterfly – as is occurring presently -- what price tag do we put upon such a crime? I recall visiting the shores of Lake Michigan with my mother in the 1970s and viewing great clusters of these floating miracles perched upon milkweed patches. As Monsanto seeks to remove wonder – in the form of bees and butterflies – from the planet, how many dollars do we assign to this extermination?

Answer: no dollars. The very essence of such elements of existence is that their value exists outside of financial calculus... because they are Sacred. With approximately 200 species going extinct daily, we exist in the epoch of the Sixth Great Extinction on earth and this event is being forced by... "externalities."

The world of the global market is the world of desacralized life. It is a slow motion crime scene.

1 http://www.exposingtruth.com/new-un-report-finds-almost-no-industry-profitable-if-environmental-costs-were-included/


Stravinsky, The Pagan Composer

Igor Stravinsky -- as his works' titles, The Rite of Spring, The Firebird suggest -- was a pagan composer. His work returns always to the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. The compositions are a meditation on how we connect with and honor the elements and how their presence in our lives influences the drama of human emotion. Stravinsky's compositions affirm the fact that human life is rooted in the four elements and that, therefore, they are sacred to us.