A journey through catastrophe

"Declare this an emergency/Come on and spread a sense of urgency/And pull us through/And pull us through." -- Muse, from the song "Apocalypse Please" I was so helpless when I first heard about it. People drowning. People stealing. People killing. People dying. People starving. Destruction. Dehydration. Devastation. I wanted to pray to my estranged God. I wanted to petition my government. I wanted to scream. Instead I sulked. Might I be just as guilty of indifference as the journalist taking photos of bodies floating by in a hurricane's flood? Might I be just as responsible for class disparities as my pseudo-aristocratic neighbors from the suburbs? I cannot be so sure of any of that, but one thing I do know is that I still feel helpless. "And we refuse to see/That people overseas suffer just like we." -- Faithless, from the song "Mass Destruction" Did I forget to mention that people are stealing, killing, dying and starving all across the world? Did it slip my mind? Did I forget that we're not the only ones with problems? Some nations across the world are faced with tragedies on a daily basis. Since August 13, those seeking sanctuary from genocidal ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan, faced a flash flood, which destroyed their refugee camps. The United Nations continues to issue warnings regarding starvation in Somalia and other parts of Africa. Problems with the Iraqi insurgencies seem to be a daily occurrence. Suicide bombers continue to perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This past summer we read of such atrocities as the Sinai blasts in Egypt and the London Underground bombings. And surely we all can remember the tsunami in Asia. We're not the only ones facing problems. Unlike people in highly terrorized regions overseas, those in New Orleans did not lose their homes as a result of human aggression -- nature is to blame for that. But looting and violence in New Orleans is, for the most part, the desperate result of human nature. We cannot do anything about nature itself, but maybe we can at least try to sensitize human nature. "People they come together; people they fall apart." -- Moby, from the song "We Are All Made of Stars"
I always wondered why it takes a tragedy to bring people together. For a brief moment, immediately following 9/11, it seemed tragedy unified Americans and America became one nation under philanthropy and sympathy. But then fear and prejudice set in, and it became more important to fight the "Axis of Evil" then to deliberate upon what exactly happened. These days the party responsible for destruction is a faceless name. In the wake of disaster, Katrina managed to create a feverish sense of scared and vile human desperation. And, like 9/11, Katrina inspired a productive sense of unity. But then initial civil negligence raised class issues that, up until now, were ignored. Why did it take so long for people to pay attention to these obvious inconsistencies in socialization? And why does it take a tragedy to bring people together? Why can't people remain compassionate and unified under more ordinary circumstances? Maybe we are all made of stars, pushing and pulling at one another in space and time, growing and shrinking, burning and fading... "Was John the only dreamer?" -- Over the Rhine, from the song "Spark" John Lennon hoped some day people would join him, and the world would live as one. As I read about special events to benefit the refugees of Hurricane Katrina and as I listened to celebrities and journalists passionately discuss the failures of our public officials, I felt a similar sense of oneness. These compassionate people were in agreement. To them, anarchy in New Orleans was symptomatic of larger problems within the entire nation. We were no longer individualistic Americans doing our own thing; we were parts of a whole. When these people read reports of gunfire and rape, of stranded Americans and dehydrated children, they envisioned their own friends and family caught amidst the hurricane and the chaos. So they spoke out. They donated money, time, food and goods. All the while, in a spirit similar to the recent Live 8 concert, musicians raised awareness in interviews and through melodic performances on music television as a part of the "ReAct Now: Music and Relief" benefit. I don't think John was the only dreamer. The spirit of dreamers and their ideal goals can be felt moving through the music. But it certainly takes more than dreaming -- it also takes action. Giving blood, making donations, volunteering, perpetuating a sense of oneness -- this is all a way of making dreams into a reality. This kind of stuff is going on all over Bloomington. For instance, on Thursday, Bear's Place and the Buskirk Chumley Theater alike will be hosting separate benefit concerts for Katrina survivors. So let's continue to do our best. As Maxi Jazz from Faithless said on the No Roots album, "inaction is a weapon of mass destruction."