Blondie: Chris Stein
News about Chris Stein, guitarist and songwriter for the rock band Blondie.
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sat sept 22
Posted by Chris Stein at 9/22/2001 08:32:00 AM
im really pleased to hear from all of you who took time to write, it must have taken over an hour to read the last bunch of mail barry sent... its totally great to know that you all are as smart as you are... a lot of you were in agreement about the waste of energy involved in the drug war, i saw tom clancey on that dumb o'reilly show, he (clancey) is pretty far right but at least he had enough on the ball to say that the only way to keep the hordes of mexican workers from sneaking across the border to get jobs here is to help mexico prosper so that americans would want to go there for work... to that o'reilly, idiot that he is, replied 'well thats up to mexico'
i guess that telethon last night with all the celebs was pretty much a first, ive never seen any one tv show on almost all channels at once i watched it for a little bit but got irrationaly sad seeing mohammad ali so stricken by illness and turned it off,
this morning i woke up still feeling gloomy and depressed but reading the rest of the e-mails from all of you guys (id started them yesterday) turned my mood around
everyone seems to be 'on the same page' as they say, like myself a lot of you expressed your confusion in trying to figure out your own feelings about whats happened... im kind of surprised that i find the situation as complicated as i do, i try to view lifes events in their simplicity and its frustrating to find myself looking at so many different views of the same things... on one hand i've been looking forward to some kind of great change in the way things are in the world, but being confronted with such a brutal reality is a lot more shocking than anything id imagined,
(the idea of the post apocalyptic 'road warrior' world is appealing but the reality of death and destruction on a huge scale isnt)
is this really a turning point? last night i even heard some straight guy on tv talking about this generation selling out to comfort and complacency (although he didnt use those words), this awareness is way overdue, everyone has bought into the 'big lie' to one extent or another; no one is well off until everyone is, the world is too small now, how can we be content with our tv's and cars and all when there are whole countries of people who live below the level of our cats and dogs? all these differences are going to catch up, if not now eventually...
im sorry to sound too preachy but this stuff is a reality... as far as the immediate future goes all the advice i can give is the same as before: none of you have to do anything you dont want to, dont stay in jobs you cant stand, survival isnt about being unhappy... try and change things, dont conform
thanks again
chris
sat. sept. 22 '01
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drug war (added Sept. 16, 2001)
Posted by Chris Stein at 9/16/2001 08:33:00 AM
dear all
again thanks so much for all the good wishes, its really great to hear from you all... ive just got one more thing thats been really bugging me about the whole situation and i hope that any of you who agree with me here will also discuss this with friends and anyone who'll listen...
what if the american government and policy makers hadn't wasted billions of dollars on the so called 'drug war'? the same people im seeing call out for justice now are the same ones who had been calling drugs the greatest enemy threatening America... is it really true that the U.S. has given some 43 million to the taliban Afghani govt. to finance their stoppage of opium production or is this just rumor? as for me i always was certain that the 'war on drugs' was many many times more dangerous than the use of drugs and that the problem of drug use should be handled by legislation and treatment rather than violent aggressive resistance... now in retrospect it should be painfully obvious that not only huge amounts of money and resources been used up on fighting an even more elusive enemy than any terrorist, the drug war has also served to turn great numbers of people here against each other as well... so much waste putting people on trial and in jail over antique marijuana laws... its just so damn stupid to think that all that energy that's been used fighting something that really cant be 'fought' might have been put to use fighting a real enemy
thanks again for listening,
chris
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more (added Sept. 15, 2001)
Posted by Chris Stein at 9/15/2001 08:34:00 AM
i just read all the letters i got from you all, a lot of you express your inabilities to know how you feel about whats going on which is pretty much how i am as well
one kid called me out about saying i didnt think any good could come out of this, writing that they thought all the pulling together of people was a positive thing...
of course i think that too and what i meant was more that the people responsible for this are misguided to think it would solve anything for them... yeah its great to see everybody being more human towards each other just a shame what it took to get that result...
like christmas or burning man for that matter sad that people can only be nice to each other one day, one week a year, this is an old story
most of you guys werent around in the sixties, the failure of the ideals of that period is still with me... in a way its hard to describe, all the young people now are used to factions and divisions between them, what if everyone was on the same page so to speak, everywhere one went there was a positive feeling that things were really going to change, that society was going to transform itself totally, in a way the connection between people was very similar to whats going on now in the face of the attack,
only the motivation wasnt fear and nationalism, on the contrary there was a great desire to get rid of borders and differences between individuals... i really thought that people would fall into tribal ways of living and stop feeding the mechanised warlike aspects of life... i was a teenager and in retrospect was as naive as many others, as we all know now not much changed and sadder still much of the change that did happen was only temporary
what happened? is it just that everyone stopped trying and decided they'd rather have the comforts of middle class life, what happened to the half million people who were at woodstock how many followed dreams and how many are lawyers and used car salesmen? theres no more "counter culture" its all been absorbed, we see the car commercial with born to be wild playing in the background how wild is it to have to deal with a job you cant stand so you can keep up your car payments on some dull looking vehicle? what contradiction... people used to always be talking about a topic that doesnt exist now: conformity being "a conformist" was bad now weve got the gap, uniforms for everyone, certainly the hippies used to wear their uniforms but theyd make them themselves the romans absorbed all that resisted them, i think this is sort of what happened here everything that once had an edge has become a part of the great machine
theres the complete blurring of the lines that divide entertainment and news in the media, weve all been seeing things like the trade center bombing in films for the last twenty years, "reality" tv isnt reality its tv and it always pisses me off when some so called news show has a background of sentimental music to play with peoples emotions
this all may sound "negative" and i dont mean it to be even though it sounds that way to me too
in the light of last tuesdays events perhaps discussions like this become all the more irrelevant, its easy for me to become all the more filled with feelings of frustration but theres still this, no matter what, everyone still has a chance to control their own personal history, that great line from gladiator: what we do today echoes in eternity... i really think that this is a pivotal point... these events may have been formed billions of years ago in cosmic gasses but still we all have our free wills its time for all of us to be stronger than ever things and the way weve all lived up till now may change a lot or not at all but still we all have a choice to be afraid or to stand up to our fears and overcome them really weve all got the exact same thing to lose which is just the dust of our bodies while what there is to gain, the freedom in our spirits is a real reward, certainly worth putting up with a little discomfort now and then
follow dreams, you dont have to do what you dont want to
peace, out
chris
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wtc attack (added Sept. 14, 2001)
Posted by Chris Stein at 9/14/2001 08:35:00 AM
dear troops,
everyone in the band is fine ive talked to all parties
oddly im the closest to the crime scene here in new york, about a mile or less uptown... barbara and i watched the whole thing from the street in front of the house... initially everyone of course thought it was just a terrible accident, even the second plane hitting wasnt visible from our point of view and and we all thought the second explosion was a gas line or such... anyway pretty soon everything was revealed
the loft and studio here is just inside the last perimeter thats blocked off before 'ground zero' and we have to show our id's to walk around the neighborhood, oddly this makes me feel more secure in light of what went down... most of the people are gone from the neighborhood and the streets around the nearby blocks are filled with con-ed workers and lines of heavy machinery, firemen and police going to and from the site... at night the worlights and smoke can be seen down the block making a white glow...
but just above 14th street except for the lack of traffic the city is almost buisness as usual the biggest difference is peoples reactions to each other with strangers being much closer than whats normal
barbara and me also just came back from burning man, had just been here for i guess less than a week when this happened
im still not really sure what my reaction is to all this it changes constantly...
right now rather than put down a lot of thoughts about politics and such id just as soon hear from any of you whod care to write... aside from that we all have to condemn this action as just greedy horror, no human good could possibly come out of something like this and we all have to just hope that the aftermath is not any more terrible than what's already happened
keep up your spirits
chris
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