Taking Kingston Advice Or Not

In dreams waking and sleeping

In these days,
I don’t know what to sing,
the more I know,
the less my tune can swing

So sang The Clash, in the third verse of their timeless and timely Kingston Advice.

A word I hear a lot these days is “relatable.” It’s probably overused, but I’ll use it here because it applies. Those lines are relatable.

Clash recorded that in the late ‘70s or very early ‘80s. As a freshly minted fan then, I picked up the album right away, all three long-playing 33 1/3 RPM vinyl towering epic slabs of it, and I’ve been unpacking that album ever since.

It was a hugely generous thing for them to do. They had hit their stride creatively, and they just let it rip. Song after song, track after track, experiment after experiment. They were throwing down. Putting it all out there, leaving it all on the field.

I was 15 years old then, when I first heard those lines. Related to them. Here I am four times that age, and I relate again. There was a certain sense of impending doom in the so-called Cold War. The knowledge that it could all end in nuclear catastophe at any moment if someone made a mistake and someone didn’t stop the mistake and the mistake got worse. A persistent stress that drove us all somewhat mad, at least some of the time. Or one could be in complete denial, another form of madness.

Today we have different worries. But they are just as existential and just as mad.

And

In these days,
I don’t know what to sing,

again, and not in a particularly awful way. I just, don’t know, what to sing. Or say or write or play or do. Other than pet the cats, do some laundry, be glad it’s peaceful here for the moment. Hope and pray my friends and colleagues with travel plans soon all arrive at their destinations safely and enjoy the company of good and caring people and critters.

Last night I dreamt of a three-headed rather colorful snake, was visited by inquisitive sniffing badgers, walked on a ledge on a building overlooking Telegraph Avenue, bravely faced the frightening task of climbing down it, set up to do a little solo acoustic set of original songs only someone else was already playing there, so I didn’t. Then I’m with a band and we’re driving a van from a gig up a steep hill that turns out to be a rooftop, and we have to figure out how to get down. Lots of ledges and trying to climb down things. There was also a school bus full of kids and teachers who seemed to have caught an awful new virus akin to Ebola but worse, and we were advised to stay away as blood leaked from the exhaust pipe. Charming, no? I woke up and made coffee.

Dreams are just as significant as experiences in waking life, in my assessment. I mean they’re ours, they happen in our lives, our sleeping selves come up with these rich and wild scenarios, full of symbols and situations to interpret or accept or ponder or just forget. I expect we forget the majority of dreams. Sometimes we remember a glimpse, a sense, an aftertaste of the feeling of a dream, and this too has meaning.

I don’t know what to sing,

I don’t, and that’s OK. Maybe something comes to me again, maybe I get a perspective, a handle, something to add but now, now I’m listening. Listening to dreams and news and music and views and the wind as I try and stay informed yet not overwhelmed even as fake writing and fake songs and fake comments by bots swamp the digital ecosystem while ridiculous idiot villains command armies and and and

In these days,
I don’t know what to sing

It’s OK, I’ve said a lot. I’ve observed lately that I could just not write another song again and I’d be happy with my output. That was NOT true ten or five years ago. It’s true now, I mean, I’ve started to repeat myself a bit. Not that that is in itself bad, but I enjoy uniqueness in a song or track. I’ve always appreciated when artists move on, grow, expand and evolve, rather than get stuck in a lane. “Stay in your lane,” the saying goes, and there’s wisdom to it, sometimes. It’ll save your life on the road, simply, but in the safety of your imagination, your creative playground, your artistic journey, your dreams? Hell, we can go anywhere we want, and there’s freedom in that.

Artistic freedom. Freedom of expression. Freedom of choice. Freedom of speech and freedom from tyranny, we all deserve these things, and societies built on such principles still seem like a good idea to me.

In my meandering way, I found my voice, had fun with it, used it, became the songwriter I wanted to be, and learned to produce my own records to my liking. I’m grateful for all the experiences and circumstances and struggles that eventually made that possible.

I wrote my dad, in 2015, from the road, on a laptop in a van, as we approached Houston, Texas. I wrote something like, “Downtown Houston is a mass of harsh angles and ominous blocks,” figuring he’d understand. Sure enough he did, and he asked, “Are you keeping a journal?” Thought about it and why yes I was, but mainly in correspondence. Well he died the next day, I learned, and it was another week before I said out loud “I’m gonna start producing my own records.” And that’s my journal, really. That and these blogs. My record. My “I was here.”

I think it’s important that people use their own voices. I am frankly horrified that anyone wouldn’t want to, and that the tech world is stampeding in the direction of generating fake content imitating human voices. I’m glad to have lived before it, glad to know what it is to write, to speak, to sing my own words, and glad to know life before we had to wonder and scrutinize every time we find anything online - is this real, or fake? Am I being fooled? The zone-flooding from bad actors, the dull unimaginative laziness of auto-generated content-pollution tsunamis, it can exhaust one.

I can see how one might unplug entirely, quite literally sit on a mountain alone and ask to speak with God. Or gods, goddesses, colorful three-headed snakes and badgers, or whatever may come.

In these days,
I don’t know what to sing,
the more I know,
the less my tune can swing,

and it’s OK. What I wanted to say, I’ve said, pretty much. It’s in this wild and eclectic collection - https://ericdin.bandcamp.com, and in some of the songs I’ve written in the past, with the UpTones, HOBO, Rancid, and a few others. There for anyone to find, as long as the proverbial lights remain on. My “journal,” as such.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
- John Lennon of course

Thanks for your eyes and ears and time, wishing you safe travels, wherever you may sing and dream,

Eric Din
Berkeley Cat Records