Sooo..as I was saying……

“Whichever way it goes, my work is the same. My work is to quiet my mind and open my heart and relieve suffering wherever I find it.” – Ram Dass

Sooo..as I was saying……

Yeah, I was never that prolific anyway, what’s four years?  Turns out a lot.

I have some excuses by way of explanation…

There was the global pandemic, now for someone like me, who spent his “hobbyjob” consuming art, music, community…it..well, it knocked me on my ass pretty good.  Just like a lot of us.  Couple that with the fear of devastating illness, even death as hospital ships docked in New York Harbor.   I work my day job in the health care industry, my employer started to cancel all elective procedures, which put financial pressure on hospitals nationwide, which in turn led to layoffs (thankfully not me) and financial fear set in. 

And the loss of access to art, community, family and friends, was hard on us all.  For my own immediate family our world shrunk to the four corners of our house.  The once busy street I lived on was eerily quiet.     When out for a walk in my neighborhood, neighbors who would once greet one another closely, would now converse across streets.

Not to mention the absolute incompetence of my country’s federal government to react to this once in every hundred years calamity didn’t help much.

In short, it fucked me up.  Thankfully I sought help and found it in a counselor who was also a Buddhist   Think about that, therapist-Buddhist, I’ll let you figure out what side of the hyphen got most of the job done.    Game changer.

So after the pandemic started to become ..I guess manageable, I had major heart surgery.  I’m still working to recover from this, but I am happy to tell you that the procedure was proactive to correct a wonky valve.  But boy oh boy I was out for WEEKS after a solid week and a half in the shop.

Then recently I had a run of deaths of people close to me, family and friends.

A literary and rock n roll mentor of mine. Who said to me “keep writing, you sir are a writer”

A friend of mine who loved pop culture and had the same general frames of reference as I, and champion of al the same causes.

A stage side buddy with a dry sense of humor and an endless pursuit of that rock n roll sound wherever It was playing on a given night.  This guy did more miles in NY State than anyone I know and he didn’t ever drive.

And most heartbreakingly my mother, who was a rock, who raised my brothers and I all by herself and I never saw her feel sorry for herself, she just got the job done, and in her later years she treated her grandsons like they hung the moon.  She was a month short of 90 and I am sure her longevity was due to her love of those two boys. 

And although this is not a pollical blog and never will be, it’s impossible to ignore the dark times ahead for this fucked up country of mine.  The disappointment that a majority of voters chose to return a prolific criminal to the highest office in the land in great enough numbers that the destruction and hurt he will impose on all of us will go unchecked by our destroyed and corrupted guardrails.

It makes one want to just give up and really, if I’m being honest, as a white, middle class, educated cis gender male, I have that freedom.  The freedom to give up. To simply dive into personal interests and ignore the dystopian hellscape that awaits us. 

But that just won’t be an option.  There are too many women in my life, friends, family, my wife, that need our support in the fight.

There are too many LGBTQ brothers and sisters who are terrified right now.

There are too many people who believed the promise of America in the words of Emma Lazurus etched into the walls of the statue of liberty. 

And to my brothers and sisters who invited fascism to this land, you too will one day realize you have been hurt by this too.  I pray that one day the clouds of hatred and disinformation will pass you by and you will see clarity.

Until then, it’s once again time to take to the streets.

But what about this silly blog, read by countless dozens of people?  Well, here’s the thing, I was at a show this week, a performance by my friends Pete and Maura Kennedy, a couple who share my political point of view,  and as I watched, in amazement, Pete’s hands, with fingers like 10 Fred Astaires of the fretboard, I thought about how joyful this performance was without ignoring the situation we collectively find ourselves in.

I thought about a friend of mine, a young woman I have known since she was 5 and I am listening to her amazing and mature beyond years debut CD, which I will be reviewing in the next few days here.  How hard she worked on it.

I thought about other artists of all kinds locally and otherwise who are producing such great art in what looks like an approaching storm of darkness.  My role, as i see it, is to tell you about it.

In the words of singer songwriter Kathleen Edwards who also took time away from her art to take care of her personal wellbeing and do a bit of a reset. “suck it retirement”

You know, I tell everyone that my birth certificate says I was born in a hospital in Syracuse but in many more ways I was really born in a small rock n roll club under a Chinese restaurant on Westcott Street.  This shit is my birthright.

Joe Strummer famously said “The Future is Unwritten”

It’s time I got back to work.

JJT,  Syracuse NY

PS: On most Sundays these days I play records and ramble more or less coherently at jjtierney.mixlr.com if you are bored.  It’s a genre agnostic few hours of my imposing my musical taste on you.  I get noisy at 7PM.