International Peace Day.
I attend this thing, lunchtime, in a park nearby...
Fine speeches - if all too mechanical...
Kids - lots of kids. The local schools brought them in and prepped them for it, too. Some wrote awkward little pieces proclaiming how much they love the earth, all nations, etc... Peace is the only way - such is the consensus. The most original piece, written by a 12 year-old, imagines a formal dialogue between Mother Africa, Sister Europe, Daughter America (there should be two daughters, kid... B+ for the effort.)
Politicians are au rendez-vous - why not? It costs nothing to show up for twenty minutes - and the possibilities to reap big time, come election time, are huge.
The finale: some music teacher got a bunch of angelic voiced-kids and assorted volunteers of all ages to sing in a rag-tag choir. Four songs, vaguely familiar. Why four? Don't they know the Asian aversion to that number? (Not to mention all other hockey towns and teams whenever they played the fair-haired demi-god named Bobby from Beantown in the late sixties and seventies - but that is another story.) One of the choir tunes is sung in several languages: English, Portuguese, French, Swahili... and Mandarin. All the more reason to know about the number four...!
And then - as everyone is invited to bite into a free apple, courtesy of your city tax collector - the kids start writing their little messages of peace, hope and other daydreams, onto pre-prepared sheets of paper stylized for the occasion. These will be collected, pinned onto boards for that effect, exposed to the damaging sun rays for 48 hours and then shipped to New York, to the United Nations, nothing less! Let's see if these scribbled unintelligible notes will have more persuasive power than all the good intentions of the diplomatic world, combined...!
Adults were also invited to partake in this activity: I declined, mainly due to the fact that I wish not just anyone to own a piece of my handwriting... But if I had jotted down something, even with the limited space available for one's diatribe in writ, it would have been something like this:
To all the great many world leaders -
you must come to your senses, quickly!
Peace is impossible, you've shown this well
but Earth is flawed enough without making it hell.
Time is so very short, weighing upon your shoulders
Try not wasting it all so gallantly!
For all your fine discourses
we see your agendas following other courses...
Remember that you will not take any riches with you
only your sins will follow through...
And so, if you truly value your legacy
and honestly believe that this planet has a future
make it clear to your staff and party
that you are in it for the noblest venture.
+++
One final note: the music chosen for that momentous lunchtime was so insipid, so uninspired... It could bring a sensitive soul to tears, really.
There was some Michael Jackson - but not Earth Song.
There was the now meaningless "We Are The World"...
Worse of all, there was John Lennon's atheistic-laden "Imagine"... again.
During the preparations, there were some totally unrelated, inappropriate, not à propos tunes playing - just to test the sound equipment. One had to make sure the microphones were working fine, hey - all those city dignitaries with nothing much to say other than repeat the same clichés repeated ad nauseam since September 11th, 2002 (no typo - the first anniversary of 9-11 was my aim - although this initiative was launched a mere ten days after the tragic events that fell the twin towers.)
I was watching and listening to all this and I was thinking...
No wonder all the peace processes set in motion all throughout the globe are failing, I thought to myself (no longer, since I am blogging about it!)
Plus, the worst thing of all was that they completely missed the boat on a chance of a lifetime: to actually be actual, in sync with the times and the only thing that can reach that youth that they force to participate in these things and that attend them, sure, but as juvenile emotionless zombies caught in a vacuum. For I tell you: any more hollow than this, and you are in a black hole, kiddos!
Thus, the song that is out since recently and that should have been used is this one that follows right here. It talks of the best, the only remedy for the world - our hearts. It even makes a short mention of the Son of Man: Our Lord and Saviour (though, for mass-appeal and commercial purposes, it fails to make the correlation between point A and point B - and how intricately linked they really are...)
Still - this song teaches kiddos how to achieve peace alright:
Peace in their hood, or immediate surroundings, at least - if not in the entire blamed world!
I could envision, within a fraction of a second, the doofus of a gym teacher that I saw there joining forces with the music teacher and training a bunch of them zombie kids to dance to this, complete with a choreography based upon the few basic moves that the boyband does in the video...
Maybe that would have successfully infused the basic message through the tiny craniums - of both zombie kids as world leaders.
Maybe - depending Divine Intervention, really...
(And you know that things are pretty damn bad when Divine Intervention of the sort works through the likes of Robbie Williams and his lost-and-found cohorts of Take That...!)
But that is another story...
+++
I attend this thing, lunchtime, in a park nearby...
Fine speeches - if all too mechanical...
Kids - lots of kids. The local schools brought them in and prepped them for it, too. Some wrote awkward little pieces proclaiming how much they love the earth, all nations, etc... Peace is the only way - such is the consensus. The most original piece, written by a 12 year-old, imagines a formal dialogue between Mother Africa, Sister Europe, Daughter America (there should be two daughters, kid... B+ for the effort.)
Politicians are au rendez-vous - why not? It costs nothing to show up for twenty minutes - and the possibilities to reap big time, come election time, are huge.
The finale: some music teacher got a bunch of angelic voiced-kids and assorted volunteers of all ages to sing in a rag-tag choir. Four songs, vaguely familiar. Why four? Don't they know the Asian aversion to that number? (Not to mention all other hockey towns and teams whenever they played the fair-haired demi-god named Bobby from Beantown in the late sixties and seventies - but that is another story.) One of the choir tunes is sung in several languages: English, Portuguese, French, Swahili... and Mandarin. All the more reason to know about the number four...!
And then - as everyone is invited to bite into a free apple, courtesy of your city tax collector - the kids start writing their little messages of peace, hope and other daydreams, onto pre-prepared sheets of paper stylized for the occasion. These will be collected, pinned onto boards for that effect, exposed to the damaging sun rays for 48 hours and then shipped to New York, to the United Nations, nothing less! Let's see if these scribbled unintelligible notes will have more persuasive power than all the good intentions of the diplomatic world, combined...!
Adults were also invited to partake in this activity: I declined, mainly due to the fact that I wish not just anyone to own a piece of my handwriting... But if I had jotted down something, even with the limited space available for one's diatribe in writ, it would have been something like this:
To all the great many world leaders -
you must come to your senses, quickly!
Peace is impossible, you've shown this well
but Earth is flawed enough without making it hell.
Time is so very short, weighing upon your shoulders
Try not wasting it all so gallantly!
For all your fine discourses
we see your agendas following other courses...
Remember that you will not take any riches with you
only your sins will follow through...
And so, if you truly value your legacy
and honestly believe that this planet has a future
make it clear to your staff and party
that you are in it for the noblest venture.
+++
One final note: the music chosen for that momentous lunchtime was so insipid, so uninspired... It could bring a sensitive soul to tears, really.
There was some Michael Jackson - but not Earth Song.
There was the now meaningless "We Are The World"...
Worse of all, there was John Lennon's atheistic-laden "Imagine"... again.
During the preparations, there were some totally unrelated, inappropriate, not à propos tunes playing - just to test the sound equipment. One had to make sure the microphones were working fine, hey - all those city dignitaries with nothing much to say other than repeat the same clichés repeated ad nauseam since September 11th, 2002 (no typo - the first anniversary of 9-11 was my aim - although this initiative was launched a mere ten days after the tragic events that fell the twin towers.)
I was watching and listening to all this and I was thinking...
No wonder all the peace processes set in motion all throughout the globe are failing, I thought to myself (no longer, since I am blogging about it!)
Plus, the worst thing of all was that they completely missed the boat on a chance of a lifetime: to actually be actual, in sync with the times and the only thing that can reach that youth that they force to participate in these things and that attend them, sure, but as juvenile emotionless zombies caught in a vacuum. For I tell you: any more hollow than this, and you are in a black hole, kiddos!
Thus, the song that is out since recently and that should have been used is this one that follows right here. It talks of the best, the only remedy for the world - our hearts. It even makes a short mention of the Son of Man: Our Lord and Saviour (though, for mass-appeal and commercial purposes, it fails to make the correlation between point A and point B - and how intricately linked they really are...)
Still - this song teaches kiddos how to achieve peace alright:
Peace in their hood, or immediate surroundings, at least - if not in the entire blamed world!
I could envision, within a fraction of a second, the doofus of a gym teacher that I saw there joining forces with the music teacher and training a bunch of them zombie kids to dance to this, complete with a choreography based upon the few basic moves that the boyband does in the video...
Maybe that would have successfully infused the basic message through the tiny craniums - of both zombie kids as world leaders.
Maybe - depending Divine Intervention, really...
(And you know that things are pretty damn bad when Divine Intervention of the sort works through the likes of Robbie Williams and his lost-and-found cohorts of Take That...!)
But that is another story...
+++
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