"Larry Bird isn't walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through that door, they're going to be gray and old."
If there's a better summation of where we are as a country as we end 2020, I've yet to hear it.
Hope and cynicism rarely go hand in hand, which is probably why I've been diagnosed with major depression and really connect with "Welcome To Hell World". If I've been able to weather COVID-19 and layoffs and potential evictions and the deaths of family members and everything else that this year has thrown at me...welp, I'm sure that it's because I live the old adage "Hope for the best, but expect the worst," and I've lived believing that it's only those closest to you that will be willing to help when the chips are down. It's almost validating to see a jowly Senator decline to offer a financial lifeline to people days away from homelessness while pushing for corporate protections and military funding.
Jack Crosbie had a very good blog the week before Christmas about mutual aid, and it was a great reminder that, even when the pillars of power refuse even bread and circuses, there is empowerment and growth available by banding together. Not only that: it's easy to support mutual aid, and it's easy to do it yourself. We can keep each other afloat. Each other is all we have.
Punk and hardcore comps were the first examples I had that facilitated mutual aid. Case in point: 1994s "Land Of Greed... World Of Need". It was a tribute to Embrace, that short-lived Revolution Summer alliance of Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye and members of Faith. A contemporary band covered each song on the sole Embrace LP, with the proceeds going to local, grass-roots homeless shelters and organizations. It's still a pretty great comp: the cuts by Lifetime, Rancid, Farside, Ashes, and Avail remain standouts. And it taught me that, if you want to see a change in the world, it's not even as complicated as coordinating a 14-band compilation. Just figure out what you want to see done, and do it.
Whatever the analogy, no deus ex machina is going to save the day for us. The vaccine isn't going to solve all illness, Joe Biden surely isn't going to lead us all to a promised land, and Amazon isn't going to magically keep your fridge full. WE are going to have to make things suck a little less in 2021. But we already have the examples available, we have the power, we have the ability, and we have the time. So let's get to it.
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