I used to sparkle, like the midnight stars

Big Cycle Beat

a lonely reminder of who we used to be.

"everybody still wants to fly" - Prince

Today was the last launch of the Space Shuttle. We are spending billions a day in Iraq and Afghanistan on essentially ... blowing things up, taking sides in fights older than our own country and of course, protecting the profit centers of the well connected.

The space shuttle is too expensive. Never ending war is not. This, the last great symbol of our better aspirations; of our great hopes for the future, will pass too into the night, like so many others that have perished beneath the weight of cynicism, greed and apathy in the past decade or so.

There are technical reasons and they are real, I'm sure. But it feels to me like we're just giving up.

They say we're retooling our space vehicles to take us back to the Moon, to Mars and beyond. Perhaps, I suffer too much from the aforementioned cynicism, but I just can't imagine that happening. Yesterday, we were talking seriously about cutting medicare benefits to our senior citizens to protect our billionaires from a 1% tax increase. We aren't going to the moon ... but we're going somewhere, and it ain't good.

I'm still working on lots of cool new stuff, but none of it was ready for postage this week. As I thumbed through my archive of old tracks, I found this piece I did with  Narva9 on vocals circa 2008, that seemed to connect to my current mood regarding all this stuff.