TomFlannery.com

Strange days. I’m in the process of making what is probably my quietest, most personal record, and all around me storms are raging. Katrina was 5 years ago, and the debris is still littered about. People are still living in FEMA trailers. Neighborhoods that our government promised to re-build remain un-re-built. And now forecasters are keeping their eyes on new potential hurricanes forming in the Gulf. New Orleans is no more capable of handing another Katrina-like storm today than she was in 2005. It’s only a matter of time before a great American city disappears completely….like a modern-day Atlantis. It’s not just sad, it’s criminal. If we can’t take care of our own, I’m not sure we should be believed when we claim to be “taking care” of someone else. Like Iraqis and Afghans for instance. Meanwhile, “Brownie” now works as a “consultant” for a disaster management company. If you tried to make this stuff up you’d be prescribed enough pills to lay out every animal in a circus.

The mantra is still “drill baby drill” even though BP proved that we really don’t know how to without possibly fucking up countless lives, and maybe even the ecosystem for about 1000 years. What of a 3rd generation fisherman in one of those small gulf coast towns turned overnight into a large tar-pit? He wakes in the morning now and….what? Puts on the War-Mart smiley face pin? Goes to class to learn how to use Microsoft Word? Meanwhile, the rest of us yell at the waiter for the rising price of shrimp at Red Lobster. Do we even know how to pull together anymore?

Gotta blame someone though. Illegals are a good pick. They can’t really fight back, and they’re ….you know…brown. That’s close enough to black for those lily whites who put on Uncle Sam hats and attended Glen Beck’s rally yesterday in Washington…..a rally that managed to desecrate the memory of Martin Luther King and embarrass a few republicans. No mean feat that. Just another chance for pissed off white people to commiserate under the banner of god and country. Any crowd that allows itself to be whipped into a frenzy by Sarah Palin is bound to be the type that keeps other nations laughing at us. The entire spectacle makes my head feel like it weighs 50 pounds. As the song goes, “someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny”, and I can only hope that day comes before I die because I need a good laugh right now more than ever.

Why is everybody so mad at the wrong people all the time? I’ll admit to being a pissed off white guy too. But my fury ain’t directed at the quiet hispanic guy on the landscaping crew down the road….or the single black lady across the street desperately trying to care for her 3 children, or the lesbian couple around the corner. I want the guys who stole my 401k. The guys who force me to work more hours than they’ll pay me for. The guy who writes that small print on credit card applications. I’ve got investment bankers and oil executives and professional Washingtonians and insurance companies and guys who tailgate and corporations who ship jobs overseas in my sights. Let’s have a rally against them in DC. And invite everybody this time….not just those who think god is a republican.

I’m trying to keep my wits while all around me is madness. This record I’m trying to make is about the quiet dignity of one man who is no longer with us. The one man I could talk to who could sum up the madness and put it into perspective….and gently nudge me back onto the path I should never have deviated from in the first place. I fear failing with these songs so much I’m having a hard time letting them go. But I will. I know I will. Soon. I need to sit down in front of the mics and let it come out.

I miss him so.

In a bit…

–tf