October 20, 2023

HS39 - 7M3 Sleepwalking (acoustic-live)

Apologies for the delay in signal—I know it’s been a few weeks. 

My mind has left me no peace for a spell, as I’ve let the exhausting and constant triage of work sap my energy cleanly away.

Are you feeling the same lately? I sure hope not, my friends.

I can’t seem to look away from the online borrow-sphere and the constant onslaught of today's news.  We seem to be living at a zenith of violence and maleficence, across both the globe and the soul-sucking social platforms that became the counterfiet proxy for what were once real communities that dialogue expressing original thoughts.   

I’m disgusted with us. War is here again, and nearer than we think to our doorstep. For many of you, it may have already arrived. 

Closer to home, I just read about another kid dying of fentanyl, and of the universities sweeping it under the rug. Stuff like that is never ending these days. Humans (and institutions!) doing their worst on so many levels.

I know better than to give into this BS way of spiral thinking, and I know too well the deep and real sadness that it gives way to, a smoke seeping under a closed door, filling the room.

But my inner monologue has been on a constant WTF loop anyway. WTF WTF WTF WTF. Over and over. WTF are we doing? WTF is happening. WTF is going on.  

Tomorrow, though, I intend to pick the skipping needle up off the turntable, flip the record over, and start again.

My inspiration: Howard Beale.

If you’ve never seen the 1976 movie Network, have a look below. Howard Beale’s (Peter Finch) speech still stands up 47 years later.

Time to throw open the window and get mad.

Yours,

JR

From Network (1976)

I don't have to tell you things are bad.

Everybody knows that things are bad.

It’s a depression.

Everybody’s out of work. Or scared of losing their job. 

The dollar buys a nickel worth.

The Banks are going bust.

The Shopkeeper keeps a gun under the counter.

The punks are running wild in the street.

There’s Nobody anywhere that seems to know what to do and there is no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breath

And our food is unfit to eat.

We sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had

15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We know things are bad. Worse than bad.

They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy!

So, we don’t go out anymore.

We sit in the house and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller

And all we say is please at least leave us alone in our living rooms

Let me have my toaster and my tv and my steel-belted radials

And I won’t say anything

Just leave us alone!

Well, I’m not going to leave you alone!

I want you to get mad

I don’t want you to protest

I don’t you to riot

I don’t want you to write your congressman

Because I wouldn’t know what to tell you write

I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and crime in the street

All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad

You’ve got to say I’m a human being goddammit – my life has value!

So, I want you to get up now

I want all of you to get out of your chairs

I want you to get up right now and go to the window

And open it and stick your head out and yell:

I’m as mad as hell! And I’m not going to take this anymore!

Howard Beale in “Network” 1976 (Portrayed by Peter Finch). 
Written by Paddy Chayefsky (Academy Award for Best Screenplay 1976)