Perhaps this is in bad taste and by no means do I mean disrespect to the situation in Haiti or the relief efforts. My bone to pick is with the band wagon that is feverishly being hopped upon. Natural Disasters happen but it should not take a natural disaster to decide we need to be helpful, to decide we need to fork over money, to join every fucking facebook group you can find.
Granted, I have a lot of wonderful friends who are really trying to generate some sort of relief but I sadly cannot feel okay with this fair-weather, wishy-washy, kind of help. Also, admittedly I am sitting here and not being productive but rather bitter. I have not neccesarily done things in my recent past but have in my distant (high school) past to help aid global issues but in a time where there is still genocide in Darfur, still political and religious persecution in Tibet, Burma, Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq and other reaches of the world, I do not feel so inclined to go bat-shit crazy about another tragic situation.
I am not trying to tell you, 'Stop, your efforts' but I am saying to you and myself we need to consider how we can be better humanitarians before disaster strikes. We (and myself) need to practice the art of being awake and not just waking up. Honestly, was Haiti on your radar before this happened? It was not on mine (which, is not to imply that it was not on someone else's). There are great people out there who do great things but this call to arms seems like a cheap way to justify that we are good people all of a sudden.
Zach, man, I have to say that this kind of sounds similar to indie music elitism. "I was into Haiti way before you were, son. Now you gotta come all up in here with your checkbook from Johnny Come Lately." If your capital city is turned into a morgue, would you give a good goddamn where the money's coming from? I mean, really. We'd all like to pretend we don't wanna dirty our hands with help that ever passed through the devil's hand, but when the shit hits the fan, no thirsty child with water rations has time to stop and consider what you've done for him lately.
ReplyDeleteI get what you're saying. I hate empty gestures from fakes as much if not more than anyone with half a heart or a brain, and joining a Facebook group is the empties and fakest of gestures, but I mean, come on. You can't be upset that people don't go around all the livelong day being upset about tragedy in parts of the world that they have no connection to except similar chemical makeup or terrain. Most people can't function that way. It's too much, there's too much, and most of it theoretical. In a time when people feel as helpless as most of us do, and are as helpless as most of us are, sometimes an empty gesture is a reaffirmation to themselves if no one else that there's a reason to hope for something better until something better is actually within reach.
In summation, who cares when you heard this album. If the album's good enough, it deserves to be listened to at any time, and any halfway-genuine musician would be grateful for the play.