Anyone else saw Live 8 yesterday?
Hey did anyone else catch the Live 8 concert or at least snippets of it yesterday?? Please give your input as to whether I was wrong...but was I the only one who was initially cynical about this whole thing and eventually got blown away?? I mean, I was really amazed and impressed by the whole even though I really didn't care too much at first. Not to mean I don't care about the plight of the poor. But somehow I think the world on many levels and all our lives is much different in 2005 than it was 20 years ago in 1985 when Live Aid first started. Which ways is it different? Well...
1) People have almost become numb to tragedy and to images of people who die needlessly. Hell, we've seen them almost every fricken day since America invaded Iraq.
2) People in general are a lot more suspicious of organizations involved in humanitarian aid. Now this is VERY SAD. In the past people used to give quite generously as compared to now. However after MANY reports of how such aid never even gets to the intended recipients in addition to numerous reports of waste, corruption in mismanagement, people seem much more reluctant to "blindly" give or to pay attention to causes than they used to.
3) As compared to 20 years ago, people are WAY more busy these days. Every body has something to do, somewhere to go, a hectic schedule to commit to and doing something as simple as sitting down to watch a benefit concert is a luxury that many have little time or even patience to afford.
4) We're all bloody tired of celebrities and stars preaching from a Soap Box. And the cynicism sometimes can be stated as "Heck, if you really care about this people why DON'T YOU give a larger portion of your substantial and opulent income and stop telling the little guy to keep on trying to squeeze blood out of f$cking stone."
5) There seems to be an unsaid Universal Cynicism...can we really "Change the world" anymore? Or is it an illusion to placate our silent fear that this world is really run by the whims of the Powerful and Corrupt and we're just living in it, like it or not. Often it seems as if the more we do, the more things stay the same.
Heck, I didn't check the show out live yesterday. I was too busy at work and going to the beautiful beach afterwards. However, I did catch live pieces of it while I was driving and did see some snippets and re-runs when I finally returned home late at night. I must say that I was still a bit moved...that even in this hostile and malevolently brutal world that we currently live in....There are STILL people who want to make it better.
Again, I was impressed. They didn't seem naive enough to claim they could fix it...they just wanted to do what they could and at least try. When Bono said that "we're not trying to fix all the world problems...but what we can fix, we must" it gave me pause. It's tough. This world is run by the powerful, the ruthless and the amoral. However, if for one day, one moment, can be spent where people can consider SOMETHING ELSE OF RELEVANCE besides brain-eating reality TV or Paris Hilton's slutty ass, then I say GOD BLESS 'EM.
And besides the message, the show did indeed impress. Out of all of the 9 concerts I have to say I enjoyed the London Concert the most. U2, Coldplay, UB40, SNOOP DOG, Annie Lennox, The WHO, and I totally loved Madonna's set while I sped in my car on the freeway. Y'know there was some previous controversy that the SPICE GIRLS(remember them?) did not get their act together to reunite for this concert. Well fuck those skanks! I think no one could care less...because the London Concert saw the 24 year old reunion of a REAL BAND!! PINK FLOYD!!!!!!!!!
I couldn't believe it!! It was fan-boy's wet dream!! Rick Wright! David Mason!! Dave Gilmour!!! ROGER WATERS!!!! All 4 of them back after a nasty 20 year old spat. It's tantamount to the Beatles getting together after Lennon and McCartney had their falling out. Man...it was SOOOO Amazing...no...a MIRACLE to see Pink Floyd back in action. Their "Dark Side of the Moon Album" was really one of those albums that changed my life. Hell...Had I been born 10 years earlier...I might have been a long haired, weed smoking, dishevelled Rocker just zoning out to the Floyd Concerts. But alas...I was not and thus am the fairly plain and rather humdrum straight arrow that you all know.
I think being so impressed by this feat, it also raised my awareness as to why these guys got back together. Were it not that this event was for a just cause, an urgent cause, and important cause...this would reunion would not have happened. And the cause stems from people who boil stones just so their children have the illusion of food in the pot. The cause stems from people who are so desperate they eat clay and their own socks because they have nothing else. The cause stems of from countless infant deaths from lack of a single shot because they have no money.
I certainly don't portend to have answers or know easy solutions to these questions of extreme worldwide poverty. But that doesn't mean that I or my own history can remain untouched by the dark hand of starvation. Indeed, it got me thinking back to my own Great Grandparents who themselves starved to death. Yes, the parents of my Grandparents died because they had no food in their bellies...the saddest part was that they were farmers.
During the Mao's cultural revolution in China, the eternal Idiot Chairman Mao enacted brainless agricultural and economic reforms that literally wiped out wide-stretches of arable land and created
a famine that killed 20 to 50 MILLION rural chinese. My great grandparents were among them. Even though they owned a farm...all they produced was taken by Mao's Communist Dictorship and they were not even allowed a morsel for themselves. Everyone had rations...and so little. It got so bad, that one of my relatives had to sneak my great grandparents extra rations by rice paste by smearing it on her stomach to get it by officials. Later she would peel off the meagre layers of food for my great grandparents to eat. Too little. Too late. They perished. People when they hear this think that it happend SO LONG AGO. But NO....this happened in the early 1960s during the Cultural Revolutions. My Great Grandparents died of starvation while the Beatles were still rocking away in England. So strange to think, that one of those Beatles, McCartney, would be playing at a concert yesterday to end such extreme starvation decades later.
All this is in hindsight as all this information was found out during a family visit to China in the 80s. At the time, my family in the 60s were in Taiwan which was still officially in a state of war with China. They could do nothing and knew nothing of the millions dying of famine. My own family in Taiwan weren't doing much better as most families back then who fled from China in the late 50s lived in extremely poor conditions. But still, it somehow does irk me inside that my own flesh and blood, parents of my grandmother, died only because they had no food. It just hard to imagine in this day and age. You can somehow understand that perhaps one of your family members will eventually succumb to something in the far, FAR future whether it be by accident or by disease...hopefully it's ripe old age...but starvation?!?
I've come to realize that this world is so huge that it's very difficult to make a significant dent in it alone. But perhaps if one person takes up a cause...another will...then another. And if that grows into a million then so be it. All they asked for Live 8 is "Not your money, but your voice." So I signed the petition. The least I could do. My small voice, hopefully joined by the ranks of millions more.
1) People have almost become numb to tragedy and to images of people who die needlessly. Hell, we've seen them almost every fricken day since America invaded Iraq.
2) People in general are a lot more suspicious of organizations involved in humanitarian aid. Now this is VERY SAD. In the past people used to give quite generously as compared to now. However after MANY reports of how such aid never even gets to the intended recipients in addition to numerous reports of waste, corruption in mismanagement, people seem much more reluctant to "blindly" give or to pay attention to causes than they used to.
3) As compared to 20 years ago, people are WAY more busy these days. Every body has something to do, somewhere to go, a hectic schedule to commit to and doing something as simple as sitting down to watch a benefit concert is a luxury that many have little time or even patience to afford.
4) We're all bloody tired of celebrities and stars preaching from a Soap Box. And the cynicism sometimes can be stated as "Heck, if you really care about this people why DON'T YOU give a larger portion of your substantial and opulent income and stop telling the little guy to keep on trying to squeeze blood out of f$cking stone."
5) There seems to be an unsaid Universal Cynicism...can we really "Change the world" anymore? Or is it an illusion to placate our silent fear that this world is really run by the whims of the Powerful and Corrupt and we're just living in it, like it or not. Often it seems as if the more we do, the more things stay the same.
Heck, I didn't check the show out live yesterday. I was too busy at work and going to the beautiful beach afterwards. However, I did catch live pieces of it while I was driving and did see some snippets and re-runs when I finally returned home late at night. I must say that I was still a bit moved...that even in this hostile and malevolently brutal world that we currently live in....There are STILL people who want to make it better.
Again, I was impressed. They didn't seem naive enough to claim they could fix it...they just wanted to do what they could and at least try. When Bono said that "we're not trying to fix all the world problems...but what we can fix, we must" it gave me pause. It's tough. This world is run by the powerful, the ruthless and the amoral. However, if for one day, one moment, can be spent where people can consider SOMETHING ELSE OF RELEVANCE besides brain-eating reality TV or Paris Hilton's slutty ass, then I say GOD BLESS 'EM.
And besides the message, the show did indeed impress. Out of all of the 9 concerts I have to say I enjoyed the London Concert the most. U2, Coldplay, UB40, SNOOP DOG, Annie Lennox, The WHO, and I totally loved Madonna's set while I sped in my car on the freeway. Y'know there was some previous controversy that the SPICE GIRLS(remember them?) did not get their act together to reunite for this concert. Well fuck those skanks! I think no one could care less...because the London Concert saw the 24 year old reunion of a REAL BAND!! PINK FLOYD!!!!!!!!!
I couldn't believe it!! It was fan-boy's wet dream!! Rick Wright! David Mason!! Dave Gilmour!!! ROGER WATERS!!!! All 4 of them back after a nasty 20 year old spat. It's tantamount to the Beatles getting together after Lennon and McCartney had their falling out. Man...it was SOOOO Amazing...no...a MIRACLE to see Pink Floyd back in action. Their "Dark Side of the Moon Album" was really one of those albums that changed my life. Hell...Had I been born 10 years earlier...I might have been a long haired, weed smoking, dishevelled Rocker just zoning out to the Floyd Concerts. But alas...I was not and thus am the fairly plain and rather humdrum straight arrow that you all know.
I think being so impressed by this feat, it also raised my awareness as to why these guys got back together. Were it not that this event was for a just cause, an urgent cause, and important cause...this would reunion would not have happened. And the cause stems from people who boil stones just so their children have the illusion of food in the pot. The cause stems from people who are so desperate they eat clay and their own socks because they have nothing else. The cause stems of from countless infant deaths from lack of a single shot because they have no money.
I certainly don't portend to have answers or know easy solutions to these questions of extreme worldwide poverty. But that doesn't mean that I or my own history can remain untouched by the dark hand of starvation. Indeed, it got me thinking back to my own Great Grandparents who themselves starved to death. Yes, the parents of my Grandparents died because they had no food in their bellies...the saddest part was that they were farmers.
During the Mao's cultural revolution in China, the eternal Idiot Chairman Mao enacted brainless agricultural and economic reforms that literally wiped out wide-stretches of arable land and created
a famine that killed 20 to 50 MILLION rural chinese. My great grandparents were among them. Even though they owned a farm...all they produced was taken by Mao's Communist Dictorship and they were not even allowed a morsel for themselves. Everyone had rations...and so little. It got so bad, that one of my relatives had to sneak my great grandparents extra rations by rice paste by smearing it on her stomach to get it by officials. Later she would peel off the meagre layers of food for my great grandparents to eat. Too little. Too late. They perished. People when they hear this think that it happend SO LONG AGO. But NO....this happened in the early 1960s during the Cultural Revolutions. My Great Grandparents died of starvation while the Beatles were still rocking away in England. So strange to think, that one of those Beatles, McCartney, would be playing at a concert yesterday to end such extreme starvation decades later.
All this is in hindsight as all this information was found out during a family visit to China in the 80s. At the time, my family in the 60s were in Taiwan which was still officially in a state of war with China. They could do nothing and knew nothing of the millions dying of famine. My own family in Taiwan weren't doing much better as most families back then who fled from China in the late 50s lived in extremely poor conditions. But still, it somehow does irk me inside that my own flesh and blood, parents of my grandmother, died only because they had no food. It just hard to imagine in this day and age. You can somehow understand that perhaps one of your family members will eventually succumb to something in the far, FAR future whether it be by accident or by disease...hopefully it's ripe old age...but starvation?!?
I've come to realize that this world is so huge that it's very difficult to make a significant dent in it alone. But perhaps if one person takes up a cause...another will...then another. And if that grows into a million then so be it. All they asked for Live 8 is "Not your money, but your voice." So I signed the petition. The least I could do. My small voice, hopefully joined by the ranks of millions more.