TomFlannery.com

It’s been about half a year now we’ve been dealing with this virus. We’ve certainly bounced around some, from disbelief to terror to resignation and then back again….depending on anything from how hung over we are to how moronic our facebook feed became overnight. For those of us who are not assholes, masks have become almost second nature……as important as car keys when leaving the house. The media hysteria has mostly died down. Our nation seems content with a weekly death toll of three 9/11s. As our President said, and I quote…”it is what it is.” It really is amazing what people can get used to.

Six months. Whipsawed back and forth. Don’t do this do this. No don’t do that do the other thing. There finally seems consensus. And it’s dead simple. Wear a mask. Wear it properly (it’s not used to hold up your fucking nose). Do your best to not get into anybody’s face. Suck it up….a vaccine is coming. Hang together, or hang separately. To which the rest of the world responded, “sounds reasonable enough”. To which Americans responded, “fuck off, myyyy rahhhts!” Which is why last Friday 0 people died from coronavirus in Canada and an anti-mask flash mob invaded a Florida Target Store today chanting “take off your mask!” . The virus doesn’t know a Canadian from an American. It does, however, seek out morons.

These are the times that try men’s souls. They are also the times that try our patience….which I suspect is what Paine was saying all along. It seems silly to rail against social media on social media, but here we are. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em….but try to stay on the side of history that won’t lead to you being grilled by your grandkids…….”Grandpa…..you didn’t actually VOTE for him, did you?” (Cue Grandpa desperately trying to delete his 30 year old Facebook profile before Jr fires it up and finds the bald eagle and flag pics with the pictures of Trump flanked by Jesus…)

Remember. What happens online is the opposite of Vegas.

And so it goes.

I’ve tried to stay busy. Every day I have to walk (at least 4 miles), and I have to write. If I don’t do both, I have a hard time sleeping that night. I’ve been fortunate. I have been able to work from home. I haven’t missed a workday since the pandemic shut things down. I’ve been luckier than most. And that’s all it is. Dumb luck. I don’t deserve good fortune more than others. A lot of friends are frustrated….struggling. On a razor’s edge. Tomorrow everything could change and it could be me. Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug. I like to think I don’t take anything for granted….and that I can feel the lash when its applied to the back of another. That doesn’t make me special. It just makes me not an asshole.

I have a little home office, and it’s filled with the cures. Music. Books. Guitars. Recording gear. Framed pictures of Abraham Lincoln and Who posters and a large Bob Marley tapestry. ‘You can run, but you can’t hide’ is what they say. But at the very least you deserve a place to try the hiding part out in. To my right is an Amazon Echo I borrowed from my daughter (and “forgot” to return) blasting Bob Mould’s “Patch the Sky”, and to my right is vol 1 of the collected plays of Neil Simon sitting on top of Peter Guralnick’s 2 part bio of Elvis Presley. I wish you all had both of these things at your fingertips during a pandemic. It would help.

In less than 2 months, we’ll have a new road map. We get to vote. All the hate. All the division. All the lies. All the ignorance. It’s like a large dog shit on the floor. We can start the clean-up process, or let it fester.

Cynicism has split me in half. The better angels of my nature sometimes take a night off, and I’m convinced that fascism is what the majority of this nation wants. They seem to revel in the fact that the President hates the same people they do. So they don’t ask “is my life better than it was 4 years ago?” Instead, it’s “are their lives worse than they were?” And then they smirk in the affirmative….don the red hat as this generation’s white hood, and march. Backwards.

And then sometimes the angels return. And I realize that most of the people around me are appalled at what’s happening to us, and aren’t gonna give in to a pack of fucking soulless gangsters.

May you be on the side of history that doesn’t embarrass your grand-kids.

In a bit…

–tf