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You know Gil Scott-Heron died over the weekend, right?
He was only four years older than me. He had barely reached the Social Security minimum retirement age. I believe his life was substantially shortened by two related things -- his crack cocaine addiction and his sixteen years of incarceration for possession. In one of his interviews after his release, Gil Scott-Heron said he was not over the addiction, though I think he was living clean.
I was just going to talk about his music. I was just going to say how eloquent and compelling his words were. But I started thinking about this thing, and the revelations of Iran-Contra, and the documented fact that crack cocaine was introduced and popularized by employees of the CIA in order to raise money for weapons for counter-revolutionary efforts in Latin America and the Middle East. Doesn't that sound like the ravings of a paranoid schizophrenic, or the plot of an implausible thriller? But it's history.
We're all in control of ourselves -- up to a point. It wasn't inevitable that Gil Scott-Heron would be caught up in this net, and his life truncated like this. But if the CIA hadn't introduced crack to the ghetto, the drugs available to him would have mostly been much less devastating. And if the sentencing laws (and their implementation) were equitable for powder cocaine and crack cocaine, Gil Scott-Heron likely wouldn't have lost so many years.
I am absolutely, one hundred percent, certain that in the strategizing meetings where the Iran-Contra plans were drawn up, somebody noticed the potential for neutralizing uppity voices.
What's your favorite Gil Scott-Heron song? I think it may be "Johannesburg." Everybody remembers "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." I think my brother's is "We Almost Lost Detroit," which I heard this weekend on my way to the airport. The advantage of living here is that, even though I don't get any television unless I pay for cable (as much for cable as a week's groceries), I get seven public, school, and community radio stations. So naturally there were some Gil Scott-Heron memorial marathons this weekend. I also heard his newer song "I'm New Here Again," which I loved. I saw the Youtube video of it and I think it would make me cry even if he hadn't just died.
On another front: my usually entirely unplayful cat has been playing with all the stuff on my desk, and looking a bit desperate and embarrassed about it. After he rolled over on the keyboard and opened a new firefox window, I forcibly removed him to the top of the printer, and he subsided.
He was only four years older than me. He had barely reached the Social Security minimum retirement age. I believe his life was substantially shortened by two related things -- his crack cocaine addiction and his sixteen years of incarceration for possession. In one of his interviews after his release, Gil Scott-Heron said he was not over the addiction, though I think he was living clean.
I was just going to talk about his music. I was just going to say how eloquent and compelling his words were. But I started thinking about this thing, and the revelations of Iran-Contra, and the documented fact that crack cocaine was introduced and popularized by employees of the CIA in order to raise money for weapons for counter-revolutionary efforts in Latin America and the Middle East. Doesn't that sound like the ravings of a paranoid schizophrenic, or the plot of an implausible thriller? But it's history.
We're all in control of ourselves -- up to a point. It wasn't inevitable that Gil Scott-Heron would be caught up in this net, and his life truncated like this. But if the CIA hadn't introduced crack to the ghetto, the drugs available to him would have mostly been much less devastating. And if the sentencing laws (and their implementation) were equitable for powder cocaine and crack cocaine, Gil Scott-Heron likely wouldn't have lost so many years.
I am absolutely, one hundred percent, certain that in the strategizing meetings where the Iran-Contra plans were drawn up, somebody noticed the potential for neutralizing uppity voices.
What's your favorite Gil Scott-Heron song? I think it may be "Johannesburg." Everybody remembers "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." I think my brother's is "We Almost Lost Detroit," which I heard this weekend on my way to the airport. The advantage of living here is that, even though I don't get any television unless I pay for cable (as much for cable as a week's groceries), I get seven public, school, and community radio stations. So naturally there were some Gil Scott-Heron memorial marathons this weekend. I also heard his newer song "I'm New Here Again," which I loved. I saw the Youtube video of it and I think it would make me cry even if he hadn't just died.
On another front: my usually entirely unplayful cat has been playing with all the stuff on my desk, and looking a bit desperate and embarrassed about it. After he rolled over on the keyboard and opened a new firefox window, I forcibly removed him to the top of the printer, and he subsided.
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