Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass...
It is about learning to dance in the rain.
Monta Lea
The following is an inspired e-mail and response
about life, loss, human kind and riony.
This blogger thought it worthy of note:
~Vince responds to Ken:
My compliments to you, Ken, and to the hangin' judge.
Amen.
It hasn't been a great year, but it has been a memorable year. I keep trying to figure out what gets us where we are, and why, but I can never get my arms fully around the losses and gains and figure out how they work. This may sound crazy, but I've read the Unabomber "Manifesto" 3 times (and may read it again) and, without the bombings, agree with almost everything in it.
I feel like we are a generation of tech-heads with no purpose for our use of technology.
I, personally, make a living by making bad stuff louder, so it can be heard by people who don't care.
Sometimes I help people record things that make no sense, that will be viewed by people who try to understand a concept that is designed by a clueless hierarchy that has no respect for their audience.
My favorite projects are musical productions that are so self-absorbed that no one can relate to them in any way other than to buy a copy so as to not hurt the feelings of the "artist".
I help people build home studios so that they can record awful sounding CDs with good equipment, therefore making them "audio engineers and producers". ~I actually heard a reporter remark about a dangerous situation that she was covering, "It was like being in a reality TV show." So, now reality is officially like TV.
Are you as proud as I am?
Okay, the year isn't over yet. Maybe all of this can be reversed before Dick Clark (who is made of space age polymers) drops his ball in Times Square, which I have done before Rudy turned the whole square into Disney North-East.
I miss Larry Moskal, Wayne, Gerry Bush, Kurt Vonnegut, my Aunt Betty, the real Dennis Hopper, Lou Gehrig, my dad, Benizir Bhutto, Rin-Tin-Tin, Thomas Jefferson, John Lennon, the Charmin toilet paper guy, some of whom left us in past years but continue to tacitly impact our lives on a daily basis.
I am, however, happy to have all of you to communicate with.
I still have my kids, as the hillbillies say, "I wouldn't trade them for a million bucks, but I wouldn't pay a nickel for another one just like them."
"There is no solace in fatalism. A believer is robbed even of the pleasure of shouting, 'Fuck you, I quit,' because he knows he was a born quitter and it would be only a matter of time before he threw in the towel, surprising no one, not even himself."
Hunter S. Thompson, Songs Of The Doomed
I wish you all a peaceful year, but don't stop thinking.
Vince
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken
Sent: Mon, 31 Dec 2007
4:57 pmSubject: 2008
Ken's year end message:
To many of us, perhaps all of us, 2007 was a desperately bad year. We've lost some very dear friends and relations that leave huge hole in our hearts. People we have know and loved whose passing was as untimely as it was unjust. It would be easy to dwell on these and, certainly, we all are. But those who have gone before us would surely rather have us celebrate their lives: the laughter, the tears, the insights, the foolishness.
Words are never enough to convey our losses. Our best hope is to continue those good works and lives that these folks have embodied. And, ultimately, to look to the future and carry on that lifestyle that so inspired us. To quote Judge Roy Bean,
"Time will pass and seasons will come and go. Spring with its waving green grass and heaps of sweet-smelling flowers on every hill and in every dale. Then sultry Summer, with her shimmering heat-waves on the baked horizon. And Fall, with her yeller harvest moon and the hills growing brown and golden under a sinking sun. And finally Winter, with its biting, whining wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow."
So, to that, I have only one wish for all of you who are on this mailing list:
Peace.
Ken
~*~*~*~*~*~
The author writes to conclude:
Isn't it good to have literary friends!?
I feel honored to have known and learned from, so many good, smart, creative and inspired people. Lucky if they thought the same about me. These 2008 thoughts are passed -from Ken and Vince- on to you and yours. It's just my way of keeping us 'edge-dwellers' in the loop of 'good-guy' friends we might have known. Where-ever all of us are, blown from one end of the global map to the other, I also send best wishes and many serendipitous moments for the New Year – and beyond.
peace
&
aloha
Dln
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
