Mercury’s rising floating on down

Well, I had a strange call yesterday, out of the blue without applying, I was invited to an interview for a job which hasn’t been advertised. I thought things like that only happened to others, never to me. Just hope I can make a good impression today and keep the nerves in check.

Back to the real Nitty Gritty, even if I make a good first impression can I hide my mood swings and depression from them? The meds help but I stutter when I’m nervous, anxious or stressed. What is more stressful than being interviewed for a job you want, because it means getting paid for a hobby, never having to work again, and having money to pay for life’s little luxuries, like food.

If I’m successful, it will mean working 9-5 again, last time I did that was in the 70’s, jobs I’ve had since have been 8-4, shifts or 10-10 (working 10 hours between those times, 4 days a week). I know I can cope but it will mean either changing my lifestyle or catching up on sleep at the weekends.

Please wish me luck and then maybe I will have an even bigger chance to get this job.

In the end we all sleep alone

What is this life? Why are we all here?
Is it meant for us to live in fear?
Or should we all look out for each other?

I got to this point and haven’t been able to decide where to take it from here. A random act of kindness restores our belief in humanity, whereas a random act of destruction leaves us feeling scarred and scared. A family can be united in the face of horror, but it can be torn apart when least expected. Why are we still hell bent to destroy and kill each other surely we had enough in the past? The last century saw more people killed than ever before in history.

We should all be working together to make things better for all of us, yes that was what the hippies (myself included) were saying 50 years ago. God knows we tried, the eighties kind of put things back with everyone looking out for number 1, under the Thatcher/Reagan era. Was it all a dream? All you need is love, we are all neighbours, brothers and sisters trying to get by as best we can? Maybe we should try something new and go back to the ancient ways?

I would like to know how many people would be interested in taking up the cause to save this planet before it’s too late.

Once I was a little bitty baby

How far have I travelled down life’s long highway? Reading adventure stories and historical novels made me realise that as a species, human beings are still not treated fairly by our own species. What gives anyone the right to say this or that colour skin is the one we should all have?

I may be another voice shouting in the wilderness but more and more are taking up the mantle. We can’t change the past, no amount of money can compensate the horrors we, white Europeans, inflicted on indigenous people all over this planet. We can give them a voice, give them back their lands and ask, politely, if they will allow us to stay there.

In the case of Australia the land is certainly big enough for both but we should still give it back and ask if we can stay there, no longer as conquerors but as equals. Side by side, that has worked in South Africa, thanks in no small part to the strength of one man who was imprisoned for fighting against the occupier but did not seek revenge. A man we all know of and respect. Nelson Mandela could have taken revenge on those who kept him imprisoned for wanting to take control of his own destiny.

We have all seen how well he succeeded in uniting South Africa for all, regardless of colour of their skin. If you cut anyone of us, black, white, yellow or pink with green spots, do we not all bleed red? Of course we do! The colour of our skin means nothing, we are all born, live for a time and then die. We all have the same internal workings regardless of being oppressor or native. This world is dying because of the white man’s greed and stupidity. Species of animals and birds are being hunted to extinction, for no other reason than they look good. Leave them to be enjoyed by our children’s children’s children then. It seems to me the Native indigenous people of America (North and South) and those of Australia and New Zealand could have taught us so much if we hadn’t been so arrogant and believed ourselves superior to them.

What gave us the right to hunt down these people, our fellow human beings? To kill most and herd the rest into small areas of THEIR homelands taking the remainder for ourselves? We have no right to feel superior, no right to make them work for no pay (slavery can never be justified whether it is whites under the Roman and Greek empires, or black, yellow or white today). Everyone of us has a right to live without fear and to receive some payment for our labour. Freedom is not limited to one race, religion, or social standing: freedom is a right for all men, women and children on this small planet. We should stop and think before we destroy the very fragile ecosystem we have here. The mistakes made in the past should learned from and not keep being repeated every day. We have to stand together to stop the madness from continuing and complete destruction of this planet being achieved by the minority as it will affect us all.

When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me, yes we all know Let It Be, unless you’ve been living in a box for the last 45 years, or even a vacuum. I can’t imagine a world without music, music has tremendous power which has been proven time and time again.

A friend of mine once said, If music be the food of love then never let it stop. He was paraphrasing William Shakespeare of course, but the sentiment is there nevertheless for anyone with half an eye to see. If the world were to stop revolving, would everyone and everything on this planet really drift off into space? If gravity is created by centrifugal force shouldn’t we try and match this for the next generation of pioneers? After all, if we can study other systems in this universe how do we know (or presume to think) we are alone and this is the only inhabited planet in every universe within the multiverse.

Is it not possible that we were visited millennia ago by highly advanced and, to our ancestors, humanoid beings claiming to be gods? Perhaps, and that could have given rise to early religions springing up in Rome, Greece, Egypt, Peru, Brazil and Mexico. Why did the Peruvians and Egyptians both build pyramids? Could it have been suggested by visitors from another planet? If you look at the early drawings of saints and gods their heads are circled with haloes. Could these not have been helmets much as our cosmonauts and astronauts wear in the far reaches of outer space?

So, to go back to my original suggestion about music, how was that developed? Since mankind learned to communicate with language we have had music, musicians and instruments to play. The modern world of the 19th and 20th centuries saw the music being recorded, put on discs or rolls and being sold so that it could be enjoyed whenever the buyer decided the opportunity had presented itself.

Plato, the Greek philosopher, mentions musicians in some of his surviving books. This bears out my point that music and musicians have been around almost since the beginning of time. Some of those early musicians must have invented a musical language so that others could recreate their sounds whenever they wanted to entertain others. Through the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages we hear tell of wandering minstrels, singing songs of the deeds being done elsewhere. The fore runners of the town crier, or the news reader.

Music can create ambience, make you feel relaxed, upset, angry, sad or any other emotion you care to think of. Will music be around for all time? I have to say yes, in one form or another. After all we have used our ears to listen to music since the beginning of time so why would it not continue to inform, entertain, or get a message to the masses?

It’s even said that God is dead

When will it ever stop? Despite no radio play whatsoever this was the song that had half a million people singing along at Woodstock in 1969. What is more powerful than music for uniting people behind a cause? If we all do 1 thing it’s lift our voices in song, albeit not everyone sings in tune.

This small insignificant rock, which carries us all on its surface, is under attack. In the search for oil, great forests have been cut down, oceans have been plundered and now the last great natural expanse is under threat. But wait, where are the people today? Have all the protesters been silenced? Surely there must be a voice left to sing with indignation about this atrocity? No, not one person. There were a lot of people gathering to protest the war, I was one, but nobody speaks out about wholesale destruction of the ecosystem that keeps this planet alive! Those who do are ridiculed by governments, trying to maintain a tenuous hold over their electorate.

If we all stand together, shoulder to shoulder, then we can topple governments, move mountains and create changes to the human mindset. What has inspired today’s post? I was listening to Country Joe’s album Incredible! Live! and started thinking about what has moved me the most over the last 60 years, and it all came down to music. Music has the power which no politician, or political party, can fight. Free speech is a right in the West as it should be everywhere. The next thing we have which is not as powerful is dramatic plays. Again this is powerful because it gives the audience the opportunity to think about the world around us.

Poverty is still rife, and will continue to be so, at least as long as there are corrupt governments skimming off the top any international aid sent to help the poorest. Where do we draw the line? In the “free” world, checks are in place to ensure this can’t happen in my back yard. There are no checks in the poorest countries. Why? We all know that aid for the poor isn’t getting through to the people most in need of it. People, like you and me, are being imprisoned trying to bring light to the masses and show how corrupt and unfeeling the regimes are.

Yet, the music is lacking, there are new plays written but nobody wants to shine a spotlight against these humanitarian thieves. Why is that, does anyone know? Or even care? Am I alone or do others share my view? Please send messages to Government in your country and tell them the war on poverty is continuing but we need to rid the “third world” of corruption and greed, by showing that we are capable of standing against greed and corruption in our own back yard.

Thank you to all who have continued reading to this point.