holiday tracks

Homeless people take care of each other, in ways that "normal" people seldom (and perhaps never) experience.
I'm just speculating, based on a stray moment...though it's quite plausible. The "us vs. them" mindset is hard-wired (if profoundly manipulable) in our brains. And there are few dichotomies more pronounced than "sheltered vs. not".
I got home last night from a four-day train trip. By that fourth day, my odor was pronounced and my hair becoming more comical by the hour (i made a nick nolte mugshot look dapper). I was too tired to shower, and when i woke this morning my first thought was breakfast, so i walked to the store. On the way, a homeless person gave me a solicitous greeting.
I'll assume he thought i was homeless too. I looked like a refugee. Beyond the smell and hair, my shoes are starting to split, my sweats have seen better days, and my layering-for-warmth had that homeless je ne sais quoi.
His words were casual, yet the warmest any homeless person has ever given me.
I spent the past couple weeks visiting family in PA for the holiday. It was beautiful. Giving gifts i'd been saving up all year, and receiving some wonderful love too. My step-mom found me an art deco banjolele that might be eighty or more years old.
The trip was too long to not have a sleeper car (i was getting foot cramps by the last day, and my ankles always swell after such a trip), yet train is still the best way to travel. It's so much more social and beautiful than any other mode. Chugging through the Sierras and Rockies in winter, and along the California coast...plus the humyn connection, which is always amplified when you're playing a ukulele in the club car. I sat next to a bluesman on his way to a gig in Chicago, who taught me i could follow him musically, which i didn't think i could do. I traded songs with other musicians, and gave a mini-concert for (and fell in love with) a chinese college student traveling around the country. I chatted with one of mccartney's childhood mates. I sat next to a young womyn for three days, and shared amiable small talk. When her stop arrived, she got up and left without a word of goodbye. Hm. And the bluesman flopped on me in his sleep, after having had a couple drinks.
Ah, the good and the bad...
I climbed a hay tower in Kennett Square, walked through Chicago to Lake Michigan, and was stunned by the architecture of the Harold Washington Library. I sat in the Grand Hall of Union Station, playing my songs. I wasn't trying to busk, but several groups of children shook down their parents for bills.
I also had a drug-sniffing dog give me the once-over. It was startling to remember that in some places, they'll lock you in a cage for having pot.
Another moment came about through startlingly fortuitous timing. I had a one-hour layover in Albuquerque, and set out for a quick stroll in a random direction. A few blocks on, i walked right into an anti-war protest. I cried.
I wrote two songs on the train, a comedy holiday number destined to top "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" as funniest ever (or most annoying, or both), and "The Poverty Blues", which is heart-rending. Ten minutes after writing it, i realized that 70% of it replicates a chord progression of a dylan song. The feel of the music and lyrics together was perfect - i spent the rest of the trip trying (and failing) to find new chords, or alter the ones i had. I wrestled with my conscience, trying to justify keeping the original chords. The melody and bridge are entirely different, and no one i've played it for has recognized the dylan. I don't think i was even subconsciously remembering those chords. My style of writing is too plodding for me to have any sort of specific musical goal in mind. I just try to follow the feel of the lyrics. I laughed at the irony that it was a dylan song, having learned this year that bob's writing method is to take a song he likes, and make it different. I can't help thinking he would urge me to not change a thing.
I'd been reading a book about neuroscience before the trip, so synapses were on my mind. A song idea came to me, called "The First Festivus Miracle", about the Christmas truce of WW1, where enemy soldiers in the trenches fraternized, and refused orders to go back to killing. If we're capable of overcoming THAT "us vs. them" indoctrination, there is no leap of empathy and compassion beyond our species.
Living in such a barbaric era of our history, it's too easy to think that's not so.
But it is. Come hear my songs, and i'll convince you.
I love you all.