"I take it on the road, y'know this ain't no vacation
But everywhere I go I got an open invitation
It's cool to be forgotten when you're moving around
But it's good to be remembered when you pull into town
Luxembourg, Luxembourg, I'm waking up in Luxembourg
- from "Luxembourg" by Mr. Bennett
September 14, 2007
Velbert, Germany
Yesterday my friends Chris and Sonja, their 2 1/2 year-old son Jonathan (my godson) and I went to Holland for the day. Yep, we went to another country for the day. Life's different in Europe. Different cultures, languages and countries are as far apart here as cities often are in the states. A week ago I did a show down near the French border and Chris and I went to France for lunch. On the way we passed a boarded up border check station, and our Euros spent as well in one country as the other. On the way back that night we drove through Luxembourg and Belgium, partly because Luxembourg had the cheapest gas. Europe has changed a lot since I first came here 19 years ago, and yes, there's a downside - in each of those countries I saw a McDonald's. There still is clear individuality in the different countries of Europe, though. The moment one crosses the border into another country the air itself seems to shift a little, even before you've heard a word of the new language. It's hard to explain, but it's true.
I've done six of the ten shows that make up this tour, and it's going beautifully. It's poignant to be starting my real farewells due to my new career path (see the July 20 NFR if this is news to you!). This is possibly the last time I'll tour here, so I'm saying goodbye to a lot of folks that I've become close to over the years. One of the highlights of this year's run was a band show I did in Haan last Sunday with some friends I met last year. We've got some video and will try to get it on to Youtube soon.
I'm sure I'll be back to visit some time, but probably under different circumstances. I think my first European concert tour was in 1998 and I've been coming over every year since for a run of shows. Now with only three to go my thoughts are turning more each day toward home and seeing Deanna again.
And it will be a fun homecoming for several reasons. About five weeks ago I put a hammer through the wall of the living room and started tearing it out, The living room, not the hammer. We've been wanting to raise the ceiling and rebuild a couple of walls in there for a long time and we're finally doing it. I was telling a friend about it and he said "Oh, a cathedral ceiling!" The room's pretty tiny, though, so we decided we really need to call it a "chapel ceiling" instead. We've also put a couple of skylights in, a loft and a woodstove. Deanna's painting the new walls while I'm gone, so I'll get to build some bookshelves when I come home and finish up some of the lighting. I really got a winner, I think - I left the country with the living room torn out and she hasn't changed the locks on the house while I was gone (at least she says she hasn't).
Chris and I made a side-trip on this tour to a former checkpoint near Berlin, Point Alpha, where a strip of land between two barbed-wire fences separated two towers, only a few hundred feet away from each other. Soviet and U.S. troops stared at each other across that strip of land for many years. It was somehow surreal to find that it was a beautiful sunny day. When I picture those scenes they are always in black and white in my mind: steely-eyed troops in heavy jackets smoking cigarettes and looking tough under blinding spotlights. Actually, though, they spent those days glaring across that small gap on gorgeous sunny days, too, when the fall leaves were spinning around them and a light breeze blew, caring nothing for the artificial borders it blew across. I was struck by this spiderweb on a tank tread as we walked through the compound. There is some hopeful poetry in the image, I think.
That war is far away in time now, and our current war in Iraq seems far away in miles on most days, though a few weeks ago I sat on my front steps and talked with a guy from my neighborhood about his two tours there. I heard his story of a dishonorable discharge after starting to have panic attacks following a maneuver in which he killed a small child and her mother under orders. And a few days before leaving for this trip Deanna and I spent the day with Salee Allawe, an Iraqi girl celebrating her tenth birthday in South Carolina. A group from the US flew her over to be fitted for prosthetic legs after her own were lost to a US missile, which also killed her brother.
Deanna and I got to go to her birthday party. I played a few songs, we ate cake and then watched Salee and the other kids there whack the heck out of a very tough piñata. She'll be heading home to Iraq soon with her Dad and her new prosthetic legs.
I mention these things not to stir up divisiveness. Honestly, I think that the question of withdrawal is more complicated than many on 'my side' of the political spectrum seem to. We've played a big part in making a big mess, and though I don't believe that more violence is the answer, I also don't think we can simply walk away - not if we intend to walk away with any shred of integrity left. I don't have many answers here, but I think we have a clear responsibility not to oversimplify the questions, which seem to be boiling down to 'stay or go' in the media these days. We can't subscribe to oversimplified dichotomies, whether they are "you're for us or you're against us" or "stay or go." We need to go, certainly, but we need to go very carefully and with a lot of attention to what happens as we do and afterwards, factoring in the welfare and future of everyone involved, not just our troops.
As citizens in a democracy, who bear the ultimate responsibility for the actions of our government, I think it's important for us not to hide from the cost of those actions. Not only the cost for our troops but for everyone who suffers from the war, which in the end is nearly everyone. Salee, who seems to have a ready smile for everyone she meets, is an inspiration to me, and a very tangible part of that cost. Though I only spent one afternoon with her, she shows people who she is pretty quickly, and the best way I can describe her is to say that she's not hiding from the evil and harm she has experienced, but she's choosing to look forward positively, and seeming to squeeze every bit of joy out of every moment she's got. She's an incredibly fun little girl, zooming around in her wheelchair. If she can survive the rest of this war I think she'll be unstoppable, with or without legs.
I guess that topic leads pretty naturally into the next one. I've been really moved by all of the kind notes of encouragement on the Guestbook. Several people have written to ask if there has been any word from Rotary, but Rotary made it very clear that they won't notify candidates until October or November, so I would be quite shocked to hear anything before then. In the meantime, I'm privileged to continue the work I've been doing for these last eighteen years.
I'll be touring hard for these next nine months or so, literally all over the US, from Arizona and New Mexico to California and the Northwest, Wisconsin to Florida, New England to Texas. We've got plans coming together for those last five states I haven't played in, too - working on Alaska and North Dakota first, and they're both coming together, so stay tuned to the tour dates. If you want to bring me in for a show in that time, it would be good to be in touch with MJ soon. Thanks again for keeping me going all these years.
“…We need hope. An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not being foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of competition and cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness… The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
David
