You've got to plant your hopes to grow tomorrow
In a few moments, Katie and I will be heading up to Connecticut for our friends James and Luara's wedding tomorrow. They are getting married on James's grandmother's land, and it will also be the solstice and a full moon, so it should be a quite powerful occasion.
It's strange to look around at all my friends and see just how many of them are getting married and having kids these days. Not that I blame them, our community is incredible right now, people are very supportive of each other and want to make some stronger commitment to being here together. I hope it still exists when I'm ready to have my own children, as I couldn't imagine wanting to raise kids in the social isolation of the modern nuclear family. But that's still aways off. Even though this is the age in which this type of thing happens I still feel too much like a kid myself and have so much I want to get done before "settling down," going back to school and traveling the world and publishing a novel not the least in my plans. But that doesn't stop me from being utterly blown away by the courage my friends have to do this themselves, especially in this day and age, or from thinking about it a lot.
For years now there's been a long debate in the "scene" about whether it is a good idea to have children when the whole world seems to be falling apart around our heads. Look at the mess we're leaving them, and look at how overpopulated our small planet is already. But at the same time, having children is like the ultimate act of hope, it says "I believe things can get better. I believe there is a future." I've known a lot of older punkrockers who've sneered at this sentiment, but really, if we say we want to make this world a better place where better to start than by breaking the cycle of kids raised to conform to the world around them instead of shaping it to their desires, or of families tearing themselves apart under the lonesome weight of this emotionless system on their backs and in their wallets. Yes we can plant gardens, and have riotous parties, and learn alternative health care and bike repair and whatever else we need to take our lives into our own hands, but it is this community we have here and the families that are springing from it that will ultimately grow and carry these small techniques of revolution out into the world and time. Already I see my friend's children, just starting out in their lives, but so full of wisdom and autonomy and the desire to live, and I can't even begin to think what they will accomplish twenty years down the road. The word miracles comes to mind. We may be leaving them a world full of problems, but we are also building the foundations to leave them the tools to fix it and that spirit necessary to actually do so.
My bandmate Spat and I were talking before our recent cd release show about why we do what we do, create music and writing and revolutions with the passion that all good madmen and artists have, and he said that he used to do this so that he had something to leave for his children. A box full of novels and lps that they could point to and say, "my dad did this." We even wrote a song about the revolutionary potential of child raising when our friend Courtney had her son Sonedore, called Resistance is Fertile (it's on the album). Now he's not sure if its in his cards, though I suspect he won't always just be "crazy uncle Spat" to his friend's kids. I told him that regardless of his future parental status this work will all get left to the annals of culture as well, which offers some motivation, but I do want to have a more personal stake in that legacy than just some scattered words and sounds. Our children are left to society too, and are just as much part of the work as recipients of it. They literally are the future, and I would rather not leave the making of it solely to those who have no regard for making it a bright or sustainable one. And it would be nice to be taken care of when I can no longer take care of myself. Society's certainly not going to do it for me.
It's strange to look around at all my friends and see just how many of them are getting married and having kids these days. Not that I blame them, our community is incredible right now, people are very supportive of each other and want to make some stronger commitment to being here together. I hope it still exists when I'm ready to have my own children, as I couldn't imagine wanting to raise kids in the social isolation of the modern nuclear family. But that's still aways off. Even though this is the age in which this type of thing happens I still feel too much like a kid myself and have so much I want to get done before "settling down," going back to school and traveling the world and publishing a novel not the least in my plans. But that doesn't stop me from being utterly blown away by the courage my friends have to do this themselves, especially in this day and age, or from thinking about it a lot.
For years now there's been a long debate in the "scene" about whether it is a good idea to have children when the whole world seems to be falling apart around our heads. Look at the mess we're leaving them, and look at how overpopulated our small planet is already. But at the same time, having children is like the ultimate act of hope, it says "I believe things can get better. I believe there is a future." I've known a lot of older punkrockers who've sneered at this sentiment, but really, if we say we want to make this world a better place where better to start than by breaking the cycle of kids raised to conform to the world around them instead of shaping it to their desires, or of families tearing themselves apart under the lonesome weight of this emotionless system on their backs and in their wallets. Yes we can plant gardens, and have riotous parties, and learn alternative health care and bike repair and whatever else we need to take our lives into our own hands, but it is this community we have here and the families that are springing from it that will ultimately grow and carry these small techniques of revolution out into the world and time. Already I see my friend's children, just starting out in their lives, but so full of wisdom and autonomy and the desire to live, and I can't even begin to think what they will accomplish twenty years down the road. The word miracles comes to mind. We may be leaving them a world full of problems, but we are also building the foundations to leave them the tools to fix it and that spirit necessary to actually do so.
My bandmate Spat and I were talking before our recent cd release show about why we do what we do, create music and writing and revolutions with the passion that all good madmen and artists have, and he said that he used to do this so that he had something to leave for his children. A box full of novels and lps that they could point to and say, "my dad did this." We even wrote a song about the revolutionary potential of child raising when our friend Courtney had her son Sonedore, called Resistance is Fertile (it's on the album). Now he's not sure if its in his cards, though I suspect he won't always just be "crazy uncle Spat" to his friend's kids. I told him that regardless of his future parental status this work will all get left to the annals of culture as well, which offers some motivation, but I do want to have a more personal stake in that legacy than just some scattered words and sounds. Our children are left to society too, and are just as much part of the work as recipients of it. They literally are the future, and I would rather not leave the making of it solely to those who have no regard for making it a bright or sustainable one. And it would be nice to be taken care of when I can no longer take care of myself. Society's certainly not going to do it for me.
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