the type of memories that turn your bones to glass


red print, howard hodgkin

* No Direction Home. excerpt:

"Let's be clear about one thing. Nothing that has happened in the past week -- the mass destruction in the Mississippi Delta, the obliteration of the city of New Orleans, the murderous abandonment of thousands of people to death, chaos and disease ­ will change the Bush Administration or American politics at all. Not one whit. The Bush Administration will not reverse its brutal policies; its Congressional rubber-stamps will not revolt against the White House; the national Democrats will not suddenly grow a spine. There will be no real change, and the bitter corrosion of injustice, indifference and inhumanity that is consuming American society will go on as before."
...
"This painful split between obvious reality and popular perception is nothing new, of course. Today we look at old footage of Adolf Hitler and wonder how on earth such a pathetic and ludicrous creature could ever have commanded the adoration and obedience of tens of millions of people. Yet he did. As Eliot said, 'Human kind cannot bear very much reality.'

"The fact that a few conservative commentators and politicians are making mild criticisms of Bush means nothing. There has been much trumpeting of the remarks by David Brooks of the New York Times that Bush's manifest failures in the Delta ­ coming after the debacle of the Iraq occupation, the torture revelations, etc. ­ could be a 'watershed' moment when the nation loses faith in its institutions, a situation Brooks likened to the 1970s. But even in making these comments on one hand, Brooks was taking them back with the other, saying clearly that he might 'get over' his disappointment with Bush soon enough. Think of it: Brooks has watched people literally dying before his very eyes after being abandoned to their fate for days by Bush's criminal negligence ­ and he thinks he can 'get over' that at some point, and give his full-throated approval to the Leader once again.
...
"This is what you must understand: Bush and his faction do not care if they have 'the consent of the governed' or not. They are not interested in governing at all, in responding to the needs and desires and will of the people. They are only interested in ruling, in using the power of the state to force their radical agenda of elitist aggrandizement and ideological crankery on the nation, and on the world.
...
"None of this will change because of what happened in New Orleans. If these people could be touched by suffering and injustice, by death and destruction, by corruption and incompetence, then they would not be where they are today. If there was a viable opposition in the American Establishment to Bush's policies, it would have stood up long ago. Like the people left behind in New Orleans, we're all on our own ­ 'with no direction home.'

"How does it feel?"

* Get Your War On: Hurricane edition.

* in oak, in elm recounts his Labor Day weekend war protest: three days of biking and playing music in Alaska.

* WFMU has posted some rare videos, including one of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd playing Jugband Blues, sort of his farewell song from their album Saucerful of Secrets. additional information on the video is available here.