In Pink Floyd’s The Wall, when the album (or movie) is almost over, and the big crescendo has happened, and the wall has come crashing down (which is really cool to see live in concert!!), there is this wonderfully beautiful little song that I didn’t appreciate for the longest time, wrapped up as I was in the Grand Spectacle, and the rage and angst and “we don’t need no education” and “comfortably numb” and all that.
But the final song, as the dust clears, is a gentle, folksy ditty (I believe I’ve blogged about this before…please forgive; it’s just so relevant here.)
In concert, a handful of musicians come up onto the stage, having traded electronic rock&roll super-band technology, for simple instruments that could grace the stage in some small village’s local pub.
And softly, they sing,
*****
It’s a touching moment, and wonderful ending to the bombastic angst of the rest of the Wall.
I’ve sang that song so many times and with so much feeling, it often brings tears to my eyes now.
This IS what is happening on Earth. As the military juggernauts roll forward, we’re reaching our own crescendo moment where “the bleeding hearts and the artists make their stand”. Indeed, in the land defenders, water protectors, forest protectors, island nations fighting for their survival in a rising ocean, and so many more, we are already making this stand. We are sacrificing our bodies now, in this struggle. Just as Nature always has been.
My grandpa used to say, “You grow where you’re planted.” Like a germinated seed stretching into the Unknown, every person has their own context, and humanity at large has This Age as our collective context. Sadly, our collective context is global ecological degradation on a heavily armed planet of superpowers.
There’s no sense pretending we are not in this situation, just like there’s no sense in a budding sapling pretending it didn’t germinate poor soil, if that’s the reality.
No, that sapling has has to grow those roots deeper, and proliferate its root system so thoroughly that it gets the life energy it needs to survive and thrive. Right there, in the poor soil it was planted it. Or, it dies. (Interestingly, if is has kin-trees around it, they’ll give it resources and help it grow….)
This is exactly what we have to do — grow our roots deeper with each other, and proliferate this social-root-system so thoroughly that, together, we “level up” humanity. And, when we can, give each other resources, and help each other grow.
“Live long, and prosper”
I call this the Star Trek Revolution in casual conversation, like with my kids when we talk about the future of the world. In Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future, brought to the screen through Star Trek, 21st-century humanity is rocked with escalating crises. But, instead of completely devolving into war and destruction, we FINALLY get our shit together, realize we’re all one species, ditch money and poverty and racism and injustice and…all that…and refocus humanity on being awesome and putting our energies into creative endeavours and science and letting everybody flourish.
And so, instead of blowing each other up all the time and tearing our societies down, we combine our energies into making our planet awesome, and our civilization awesome. And then…Boldly Go where No-one has Gone Before!
And sure, this is science fiction, but it’s 100% true that if we took the resources right now that we spend on the military, and in bloating even further the billionaire & mega-corporate class, and we rechannelled those resources into the arts and community and non-military science, then….
This is what we’ve been singing about and yearning for since…our whole lives!! Right?
We all want the same things — freedom, safety, love, family, beauty, play, meaning.
But we are continuing on a path where these things are becoming more and more at risk, and less and less available for most people.
So when I started this blog, I knew that Tearing Down the Wall would be messy. My writing can be messy. Emotions get the better of me sometimes. And I’ve decided to let them. Because they are real, and Real Life is messy. Chaos is inevitable.
But I believe that in this chaos, in the messy realness of our feelings and deep truths, we will find Fierce Love. And we’ll fix things.
I believe in this far more than I believe in any religious doctrine about an invisible dude in the sky. I believe that the potential of all of us, from any culture, any religion, with any body, is to reach into our deepest awareness, and find Love. It’s what being alive, is.
* * * * *
Thank you for sticking with me all these years. Or for joining recently! 🙂 I know I have divulged wayyyy TMI at times. Oops. But this is my best attempt to “be the change” that I believe in most deeply.
So, we’ve come full circle here. I do feel like my personal walls have come down. A lot of things have shifted internally for me as part of this process.
I have very little idea of what’s to come. I have plans, sure, but I also know that I feel a deeper intuition in me now, and I’m kind of stepping back and letting it lead the way.
For one, I know that we are about to “change gears” a little in my blog here this coming week, and in my personal life more generally. I’m a bit trepidatious, of course. But overall, I’m excited to see where we go from here.
Thanks for reading!
💖