riot folk

whew even i can manage to get out and about once in awhile instead of doing a darn good impersonation of a shut in.
for like the first time in i don't know how long, i actually went to a show.
i'll admit that it helps that there wasn't the usual $10 cover. (i realize that folks gotta pay the rent, but the $10 covercharge is a surefire guarantee that i won't be in attendance).
so i shimmied on over to 616 and caught the fine riot folk who were passing through. thank god it occurred to someone to post it on indymedia so i actually found out they were here. i'd always heard about these fine kids, but alas they don't pass through memphis on a regular basis (back when i got out a lot more and did things like go to shows). i'm a big fan of woody guthrie and pete seeger anyhoo so this is just my cup of tea. as i said in the previous post, kids playing guitars and singing really heartfelt songs about the state of the world.

aside from being entertaining and thoughtprovokingly clever, it was kind of interesting to be in a roomful of kids that remind me of the world i came out of. anyone there would have fit right in back in at declerye. listening to riotfolk reminds me of sitting on my own front porch listening to someone i know playing songs both new and old on a guitar while we drink coffee and tea and sit in a circle clapping and banging on pots and pans, shouting and dancing when moved to do so...

it was home-y...






ah, those were the days.
my current life feels so...linear. for a few hours i was able to trascend its petty restrictions and slip out of reckoning, remember how marvelous it felt to be totally free of it. i used to live this way all the time, in deference to cyclical time. in that mode the only time frames that had meaning were day and night, winter and summer, sowing and harvesting, life, death and rebirth. now i live in a world of boxes, and my time is compartmentalized, stamped with a number and told what to do at every moment. and each moment has no connection to the past, present or future.
it has an effect on you to live in a linear fashion...rather dehumanizing. no wonder people get so caught up in it, and forget all about the big picture. i feel like i even do this and i'm well aware of how it feels to live outside of this invisible jailcell of days and hours. in the old days you did only what needed to be done, only what made sense...now a lot of the things we do with our time are not what we would choose to do, but rather what we are told to do, or what we have to settle for because all the real choices have been taken away.