To be and not to be: That is the answer. Anarchy is ordered. What a horrible year for so many in impoverished dangerous situations. Then we have the neighborhood to global privileged circles spewing their brand of toxicity. It’s reassuring to know that there are an ever growing number of far more creative circles where enlightened and progressive values continue to expand. It’s great when I get the chance to walk, if only for a moment, with a member of such a circle and am introduced to their work. I had never heard of grindcore and its political punch until meeting Richard Hoak in 2015. Included in this post is a video by Total Fucking Destruction, a grindcore band founded by Richard, once Brutal Truth’s drummer. Thank you for your good strong energy and allowing me to post a selection from TFD’s last album to be alive at the end of the world. The corporate elite and uniformed dinosaurs still clinging and causing havoc don’t have a chance no matter how deep their bunkers or dreams of colonizing other planets. Best wishes, Richard: Yes, agreed, our children are a great source of inspiration and love your declaration “peace is the victory.”
Convenience Store Parking Lot
The transmission finally quit on this rusty
convertible: you could do better. Should I
remind you where you could be right now?
It isn’t here by my side staring at this wall.
Seeing how we’re not going anywhere, feel
like trashing this place? Fuck that status quo
weasel grin on that petty acting store king—
as if seeing beyond that dead squint possible.
Think I’ll get jail-time if I only poke his eyes?
Perhaps not if I can convince the judge how
I arrived at this unnecessary point—how taking
directions from ghostly ghouls can leave one
prematurely parked—mad seeing this age ends
in pain management and quick ways to get off.
Hamlet’s Soliloquy
To be, or not to be? That is the question—
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. —Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! —Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
Peace,
Andrés