Saturday Night Soup For the Soul (28)

Warm wind to touch the trees colored blue and Flash the moon to paint blue my heart. Warm wind to touch the trees colored blue and Flash the moon to paint blue my heart. Your silver streak flash Your silver streak flash Your silver streak flash Across the tiny door of my eye Across the tiny door of my eye. (Grace) or my final soup post of this road trip, of this fading spring season, and before this colunm leaves for summer hiatus, we travel to Stonehenge to visit a memorial for young men who died too young practicing the art of warfare. “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” — Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, at the beginning of the war. Perched high upon the edge of a vast plateau made of molten lava, that flowed and solidified millions of years ago are the restless spirits of young men. These men are members of the original generation of Americans sent abroad to fight a war to end war: the Great War: now referred to as World War I. Fairy castle stark and black in the moonlight The jingle jangle jester rides his stallion Seagull flies across my eyes forever Sadly goes the wind on its way to Hades Would I, should I, could I be a stranger I shall walk right by and sigh goodbye Lucifer calls his legions from the hillside. Sadly goes the wind on its way to Hades. (Berts Blues) This was the first war fueled by the collective military industrial complex of the combatants. This was the first war where invention played a central role devising ever more lethal weapons of mass destruction, allowing for the extermination of massive numbers of soldiers on the battle field. The fruits of this war were most bitter, directly resulting in the deaths of 216,000,000 human souls over this and the subsequent generations. This bitter harvest of calamity continues to this very day. The first fruit from this tree of war: an entire generation of the world’s finest, handsome, and cherubic young men were decimated and scarred. This generation was physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually crippled beyond repair by the horrors of the battlefield, and by it’s aftermath. The survivors became collectively known as “the lost generation”. They were never the same. This generation who fought “the war to end war” in fact became the generation of the disillusioned. Their faith and belief in the institutions, and moral underpinnings that had for so long held western civilization together, failed. Dead was the belief that acts of nobility would yield equally noble results. Dead was faith, dead was hope. "First in war First in peace Dead the poison Dead the beast. " (T-bird, 1969) Don't talk of dust and roses Or should we powder our noses? Don't live for last year's capers Give me steel, give me steel, give me pulses unreal (Big Brother) On April 10 of 1917, the German government, in a cynical move to knock Russia out of the War, allowed a sealed train filled with a hidden poison to pass through it’s territory to deliver the lethal cargo to the heart of Russia. The name of this deadly poison was Vladimir Lenin . The resulting October 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia was a fruit of this war, resulting in the eventual rise of Joseph Stalin, murderous psychotic who possessed life or death power over the citizens of the nations imprisoned in the USSR (a virtual jail house of captive nations) for decades. The overly vindictive and punitive treaty of Versailles (brought to you by the greedy and grasping gluttons of France) set the stage the weak and fragile Weimar Republic which served as the backdrop for the election of Adolph Hitler (yes, he actually came to power in an election). We know how these fruits of war ended. In Italy we had rise of the blowhard tin pot wanna-be Caesar, the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. In 1930’s Spain we had the testing ground for the rapidly approaching battle between Democracy, the Communist International, and Nazism, with fascist dictator Generalissimo Franco (who Richard Nixon loved and admired) ending up as the only winner. (Note: read the Comments on this post for an update from Ric on Franco and Salazar, dictator who ruled Portugal for decades who also benefited from the aftermath of WW I). In America, the survivors (the "Doughboys") came home to a brief hero’s welcome. However, as the idealism of the lofty Wilsonian League of Nations was killed by lack of American participation thanks to a corrupt isolationist Republican congress and Wilson’s untimely stroke. Yet another rotten Republican President succeeded the ailing Democratic Wilson, the infamous Warren G. Harding. (Note: As foul as Harding's administration was, Bush/Cheney have vastly exceeded him in depravity with their treacherous and treasonous "criminal mob posing as a democratically elected" government.) The entire nation retreated into holier-than-thou isolationism, where it stayed until it was rudely awakened by the calamity of December 7th, 1941. In 1920, Prohibition was passed in America outlawing the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The result was a massive rise in consumption, and the criminal enterprises which supplied the now illegal beverage. "In the room the Dyke Dolls come and go..." The 1920's, the celebrated "Roaring Twenties": America went on a massive decade long drunken orgy of inebriation, jazz, fast driving, conspicuous consumption, promiscuous sex, smoking, dancing, and credit fueled stock market speculation. Good times were here to stay forever, or at least until the entire "house of cards economy" came crashing down on October, 1929. In the east, we had the rise of racist and militarist Japan embarking an their reign of mass murder with the rape of Nanking. Starting in December 1937, Imperial Japanese invaders exterminated more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war. During this reign of terror, an estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped; many of them were then mutilated or murdered, which included "the sport" of tossing Chinese babies into the air and bayoneting them to an instant death. The mountains of 20th century corpses topped with tombstones stretches beyond the most distant horizon that we can see. World War II begat the cold war: Hungary, Korea, Vietnam, mass murderer Mao, wars of extermination across Africa, Central America, the Balkans, Cambodia , the Middle East and Afghanistan, which the expansionist Soviet invaded in 1979. To thwart the USSR designs on the Middle East, the United States armed Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, and armed the Islamic Mujahideen, where Osama bin Laden has roots. And the fruits of war now continue through out the Middle East in this century in which we live. Farewell Angelinathe bells on the crown Are being stolen by bandits I must follow the sound The triangle tingles And the music plays slow But farewell Angelina The night is on fire And I must go There is use in talking And there's no need for blame There is nothing to prove Everything still is the same A table stands empty By the edge of the stream But farewell Angelina The sky is changing colors And I must leave The jacks and the queens They foresake the courtyard Fifty-two gypsies Now file past the guard In the space where the deuce And the ace once ran wild Farewell Angelina The sky is folding I'll see you after a while See the crosseyed pirates Sit perched in the sun Shooting tin cans With a sawed off shot gun And the corporals and the neighbors Clap and cheer with each blast But farewell Angelina The sky is trembling And I must leave fast King Kong, little elves And the roof-tops they dance Valentino-type tangos While the heroes clean hands Shut the eyes of the dead Not to embarass anyone Farewell Angelina The sky is flooding over and I must be gone The camoflaged parrot He flutters from fear When something he doesn't know about Suddenly appears What cannot be imitated Perfect must die Farewell Angelina The sky is flooding over And I must go where it is dry Machine guns are roaring The puppets heave rocks At misunderstood visions And at the faces of clocks Call me any name you like I will never deny it Farewell Angelina The sky is erupting I must go where it's quiet. (Farewell Angelina) And so, i drove east to the Pasco, then turned to follow the Yakima river upstream, and crossed the mist and snow covered Cascades, finally returning back home. In all my travels, I think I saw no place as beautiful and screne as my own garden. A garden of peace, where beloved spirits dwell and rest. Where I shall take my rest someday. Here is the last bowl of soup until September. Have all you want. There is enough for all of you, and for all of your friends. As usual, there is a subtext to the music that those of you who are perceptive will understand. There is always much, much, much more to the soup than meets the ears. Such is life. The recipe includes: 1. Grace is a wonderful bit of moody psychedelia from from San Francisco band Country Joe and the Fish's 1967 LP Electronic Music for the Mind and Body. Grace is Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane. I love this music as it is absolutely unique, and well performed. True art. And captures my mood of the moment. Another selection from this LP appeared in Saturday Night Soup (22). 2. Bert's Blues is from Donovan's 1966 Sunshine Superman LP. Talk about a great piece of work. This LP is where Donovan came out of the "Dylan wanna-be" folkie shadow, and first expressed his own artistic persona. This was a voice that mixed folk and medieval music, rock, psychedelic threads, trad jazz, and classical into his own unique sound. He was personal friends with the Beatles, especially Paul McCartney, who appears on Donovan’s Mellow Yellow single providing the whoop-it-up party sounds in the middle. I have loved this song since early adolescence and it brings back a lot of ancient memories from that period of my life. It still rings true to me, too – providing you swap out the word “Gal” for Guy” in the lyrics. Another selection from this LP appears in Soup (21). 3. Big Brother from David Bowie's too, too fabulous Diamond Dogs. I will write a lot about this LP some other time. I have included this song for all my hidden stealth "fans" in Washington DC. 4. Farewell Angelina -- Unreleased (until it appeared on his bootleg series) Dylan song. You could remove everything in this post, leaving just this song and you'd know what is really going on with me. This is, so to speak, the real man behind the curtain. Do you understand it? 5. Moonlit Mile by the Rolling Stones. This is from Sticky Fingers - a wonderful 1971 LP with the homoerotic cover by Warhol. I included this song -- very nice for the Stones -- because of the words and imagry. For I'm sleeping under strange strange skies Just another mad mad day on the road My dreams are fading down the railway line I'm just about a moonlight mile down the road... All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your bowl of Saturday Night Soul for the Soul by clicking the jukebox.