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There ain’t no easy way out
Kootenay Crust
By Ian Cobb
I want to be sad. Just heard that Tom Petty has died; age 66, sounds like a heart thing.
Makes me want to cry. Didn’t know the guy but he was a great ‘friend’ – an advisor and companion over countless miles of road. During some of the hardest times of my life, he and his music was there – providing soundtrack and sense and confirmation.
“It was a beautiful day, sun beat down, I had the radio on, I was drivin’…”
But grief for a favourite artist pales today. It doesn’t feel right. Tom Petty would certainly have none of it.
We are all again blown away by the news of yet another mass slaughter in America. The last count of those murdered in the Las Vegas country music concert shooting is 58; hundreds others were hurt. Thousands more forever mentally scarred. Some Canadians are among the dead and injured, including a B.C. man.
And already the shitheads who cling to rights outdated for more than a century are railing that guns are great; guns are god; guns are America. And other insensitive shitheads are moaning about the need to enact stricter gun laws.
Give it a couple of days; carpe diem does not work when it serves shitheadery. Let the bereaved be; let the injured come out of anesthetics and return to the horrors that landed them in the hospital. The horror that comes too frequently nowadays – and not just in America.
The world is as tight as a drum; feels like a heavy-mic’d double kick is coming any day now.
Used to escape with some Tom Petty the last time the world felt like this; the fading days of the Cold War when nuclear conflagration was a daily worry for those with minds capable of accepting information and forming thoughts.
The Cold War never left, apparently. It just slipped into cyberspace where it infected the easily enraged, dupable and zealots of all form.
And here we are – again. Staring collectively into a heart of our humanity and questioning, questioning, pleading, pleading – and yet apparently never learning. The cycle of violence grows tighter as our world rages with hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
And a single voice goes silent at the same time. It is not right to feel bad about that; but I do.
“Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out.”
Thoughts, prayers, best wishes to all impacted by this latest unnecessary mass-tragedy. We all gather ourselves again.
And Rest in Peace Tom Petty.
“Well some say life will beat you down
Break your heart, steal your crown
So I’ve started out for God knows where
I guess I’ll know when I get there.”
