Last night, I watched “The Future is Unwritten,” a documentary about the life of Joe Strummer. I didn’t know much about Strummer beyond his music, and it was quite illuminating. One thing that sticks with me was when he said:
“I don’t have any message except: Don’t forget you’re alive.”
(And all day, the words from Jon Langford’s “Oh No, Hank!” –from Nashville Radio–have been also going through my head: “He’s somewhere out there, happy and alive.” It adds texture that the corn is actually as high as an elephant’s eye at the moment in my Ohio.)
From both legendary musical sources: Good message. It strikes me that Strummer (and maybe punk rock, and Langford too, while we’re at it, who’s still somewhere out there, possibly happy and actually alive) is/was about nothing less than, essentially, reclaiming humanity.
Rebecca Kuder 