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Shangry Through the Back Door
by The Ox

And now it’s winter
Winter in America – Gil Scott-Heron

“Connection, to the knowledge that the
government…
fears the knowledge I spit….” — Shang

“Knowing we are the beginning of the begin,
Knowing in a fair race I gots ta win….” — Shang

A new aroma is ready to pop open our nostrils. I smell authentic victory on the horizon. Not the putrid odor of false hope… with its distasteful, underlying scent of orders, ordering us to stay in place. Our place of carcinogenic and sociounlogical stink.

So… we begin with acknowledgment that the playing field is not level, and that to straighten things out — create a new fragrance — we have to follow a new paradigm. For, as things stand (and fall down), only obsolete models for action are being employed to make a difference.

For starters, one cannot go through the front door with intensity and morality banners blaring, scaring.

[Pause.]

No, we must go through the back door.

It can be… with comedy*. Easily. So that everyone — at the outset — takes it all as a joke. [Not talking 'bout Coleman or Colbert political kitsch here.]

*To be elaborated on, upon request.

I see the whole shebang as going all the way, taking us all the way home. But even if I’m wrong, and the song in solidarity only clears the way a bit… playing an undeniable tune down an unprecedented road, creating ripples of watershed sound through the ground from here to there and back… well, that’ll be quite enough, won’t it? It will, as I hear it. [Voices are clearly saying, "Try from an untried angle."]

High hopes were once formed of/for democracy; but democracy now means simply the bludgeoning of the masses of people by a (small) select group of people for the very most privileged people. Has for some time, as you know.

There is music to be made together.

And I invite Shang and his loved ones to have faith in solidarity with strangers (like me?) to do so.

Oh, beauty!

Listen and smell. How we have moved from the olfactory and the old factory of activism which had us marching in circles, pitiful petitions in hand,… on to notes of a very high pitch, aural Heaven.

The time has come, and we do not have to take to the hills with feeble gun in hand.

Blessings in solidarity,
Your Ox
tosca.2010[at]yahoo.com
831-688-8038 at any hour