“Why don’t you write political songs?”

I’ve been putting off answering this questions because I don’t want to go into a huge rant about politics 🙂 So, (hopefully) briefly…
“Why don’t you write political songs?” I’ve been asked this question over the years, especially by people who know that I tend to be quite socially conscious. (It’s not like I live in a bubble!) If it were possible, I’d be playing benefits for wildlife and rallies for peace every day – actions matter – but it’s my conviction that the depraved state of the current US political regime is a symptom, rather than a root cause. (Since I currently live in the US, I can’t really speak of the situations in other countries.)  The personal is political, so in a way, all of my lyrics could be considered political.

And the root cause is our collective level of consciousness – change ourselves and we change our world. The personal is political. So on that level, any song that challenges us to be more “awake” or live in a more aware state…is political.

Secondly, the most genuine songs come from where we are. And the lyrics that tend to come to me easiest, generally express my fascination for the journey to know Ourselves, to be awake and fully alive – and I feel like these themes are somewhat universal in time and space. And I feel that as we become more “awake”, our systems will change along with us.  Again, the personal is political.
Conversely, specific politics is localized, temporary…and as Einstein said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Empires come and go. I suppose we could all agree that the hideous political situation in the US is a symptom of our collective disease of unconsciousness.

If we were all more conscious, we would not have the intensely corrupt system we have now, and we would not have accepted some of the lowest form of humans to declare themselves the “deciders”. It’s in the best interest of these self declared “leaders” that we all remain asleep at the wheel…Hitler said to just give the people a little bread and a little circus to dominate them – change that to a little fast food and TV, and there it is.

So it seems to me that all our problems (be they interpersonal, environmental, or political) come from a lack of Consciousness. Our level of “awakeness” (or the lack of it) underlies every wonderful and terrible thing about us as a species. As we outgrow our immaturity as a species, we’ll look back in amazement at how primitive our behaviors were.

We have no idea of our full potential yet.

Having said all that, tho, you can apply a lot of our lyrics to a lot of things, political and personal. “Ring That Bell” speaks of our individual choices – and could certainly be applied to political despots – “ring that bell it’s tolling for thee.”

I knew this was going to turn into a rant. Oops!