This Isn’t Over Yet

(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Reading Netroots blogs gets depressing, the content is repetitive, the problems are all too well known and the solutions are obvious, but they aren’t seen as solutions by the corporate or political establishments, they’re seen as lethal threats.  So we’re portrayed as radicals, we’re demonized by Republicans and ignored by Democrats, tens of millions of Americans pay no attention at all to us, many of them don’t even know we exist.    

You can look out across cyberspace tonight, you can see all words written on progressive blogs, all of the insights and commentary, all of the assessments, you can see all of the passion and dedication and idealism, but most of all, you can see the futility, the frustration of people who have no power.  It doesn’t matter if you’re Kos or Hamsher or the newest blogger on the smallest blog, the view is the same and so is the dilemma . . .      

You can see a million miles tonight,

But you can’t get very far . . .

 

No writer or activist can get anywhere at all without the skill, inspiration, and knowledge necessary for communicating fundamental truths through the written and spoken word.  None of us could take even the first step without our Muse. Unfortunately, none of the leaders of the major blogs have a Muse, they have something else called an Agenda.  Certain topics are off limits, there are lines that can’t be crossed, truths that can’t even be acknowledged, much less discussed.  

I don’t have an agenda, but I don’t have a Muse anymore either.  They can be very helpful and even inspiring, but Muses have problems just like the rest of us.  My first one always woke up in mid-afternoon cause that’s when it all hurt the most, and spent the rest of the day watching C-Span, which made her feel even worse, so my diaries sucked.  My next one always dreamed she never knew anyone at the party and was always the host, and just wandered off into the wilderness one day, mumbling “if dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts.”

I can’t blame her for leaving, showing up every day to be my Muse through the Daily Kos and FDL years was an ordeal, some might even call it Muse abuse, she was an acrobat swinging trapezes through circles of flame, she’d look down past the burning ropes and see the elephants getting out of their admin cages, forgetting to remember what we said, as the ghosts of the tilt-a-whirl lingered inside of their heads, and the ferris wheel junkies spun there forever instead.

I miss you, Maria.  I know you won’t be coming back, but you’ll still be in every song that I sing, even though the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings. Maybe I’ll find another Muse someday.  I hope so, because  blue light reflections color my mind when I sleep, and lovesick rejections accompany the company I keep, and all of your razor perceptions about my life without a Muse are cutting just a little too deep.

We all need a Muse, because our diaries would be blank white spaces without one, because we can’t do this alone.  Every writer learns sooner or later, usually the hard way, that writing is painful, it hurts, but not writing hurts even more.  We have to keep writing because we’re the only ones still standing, we’re the last line of defense for humanity, the last hope for civilization. Dickens knew it, Tolstoy knew it, Stowe and Steinbeck and Styron knew it, everyone who has ever struggled to write something meaningful and worthwhile knows it and paid the price.  We can bleed as well as anyone, but we need someone to help us sleep, someone to help us seek the truth and tell it, someone to help us survive.

If you haven’t posted a diary here for awhile, if you haven’t commented for awhile, if you’ve been just sitting there in the All Is Lost Roadhouse night after night . . .

drinking 100 proof disillusionment straight from the bottle like I was, not posting anymore because it seems pointless, if you’re just sitting there waiting for the last light in America to go out, for that last bell to ring, for the last one out of the circus to lock up everything, don’t be surprised when that’s exactly what happens.  

Put that bottle down and listen to me.

This isn’t over yet.  

So give up your seat at the bar and head for the door.  Walk out into the night and look around you, look above you, look within you, find your Muse and start writing again, head down that road again, it’s a dark one, it’s a long one, but don’t give up just because we haven’t gotten very far yet.  Changing the world isn’t impossible, it’s like driving at night, you can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the entire journey that way.