Tuesday, April 23, 2013

I'd give this creator credit if I knew who they were. Beautiful job of succinct ramming home of a point:


I had lunch yesterday with a beautiful musician friend from my university days who is from South Africa.  We talked fashion and gossip about friends and who we know that's making it in the classical music world (she is, but we talked primarily about other people and boyfriends, et al) and who has shot themselves in the foot and who is selling mattresses in Abilene now.  It was very interesting.  One thing we did not talk about was politics.  Early on in my musical training, I learned to step daintily through the minefield of politics when around my creative cohorts, because often emotion reigned supreme and "George W Bush is an idiot, right?" was tacit in pretty much every discussion.

I posted the above poster on my Facebook page and my musician friend sent me a message that surprised and delighted me:

"love love love your post about the dingbats' background check!!! I've been saying this to people for DAYS -- and all these idiots are screaming "background check"
PUH-lease...
It won't make a damn difference...
The CraZies will still get their guns, rifles and pressure cookers somewhere else.
Amen.

She continued:

In SAfr we have pretty strict gun-rules, restrictions, background bla bla bla and yeehaw, honey ----- we're No 1 in the WORLD with homicide gun deaths!  Purposeless.

Wow. I knew she was whip-smart, but, again, I learned take the high road and not judge my creative colleagues for their political views, and to try to have a charitable opinion of them.  Nice to see that one of them gets it.  The sad thing is it sounds like she probably thinks it's Americans who monolithically think gun control is the answer.  In the creative community, it may be. 

At music school in classes and rehearsals and after-parties, the brilliant teachers would lob the occasional depth charges to give everyone the correct, cynical view on whatever was going on in the world so we could all be on the same page.  I mean, we all agree, right?  Right?

I chose my battles.  I chose them elsewhere, because in addition to the pressure to stand on stage and sing like an angel, I didn't have the reserves to fight like a demon backstage for a cause.  My friend, though, gets it, and apparently her intelligence is simply too insulted not to go loggerheads with them.  Plus she's actually lived in a much more violent and stratified culture. I love her for her outspokenness.   Maybe I'd have gone farther with my singing if I'd actually dug in my heels and duked it out with those folks.

I think I need to open my mouth earlier and more often, even if it means I won't get the role I wanted.  Why am I here, anyway?  Common sense will not be common again until more people say it and let more people hear it.

3 comments:

Old NFO said...

Amen...

J.R.Shirley said...

Damn. That's a hell of a poster.

I get tired of two things:
1. People who share many of my social ideas, who assume that people who don't want to control most of what people want to do should try to control the tools they can possess.
2. People who share most of my ideas about weapons and personal responsibility who assume that people who share those, most also believe in a Christian imaginary friend, be "pro-life", and try to control people's social lives. It's taxing.

Vinogirl said...

Just spent $500 to renew my green card, with rigorous background check and pokey-proddy biometrics. I figure it's my duty as a law-abiding, resident alien to bankroll an easy passage into the States for illegals and miscreants...I'm just saying.