[Landline] Born on the Death Star
Plus: Joe Stummer & Bob Weir's all-nighter, Harlem Renaissance-era rent parties, Fred Dibnah as demolitionist/restorer, and what those discarnate entities you encounter in visionary states really are
Personal health note: I’ve recovered from the norovirus or whatever that was. I hope none of you ever catch this thing, which beyond being very painful and filthy was, for me, to be honest, a bit frightening. Thank you for the kind wishes for my health — and the recommendations to drink as much lemon-lime flavored G Zero as possible to get through it.
Okay! Onward. Here’s a few things as I crawl back to normal mind land…
1. GET OUT NOW
None of what the US is doing in Iran and Lebanon right now has anything to do with legitimate self-defense. This nation’s terrible machinery of death — always something to be troubled by — is in the hands of an idiot president and his host of religious nutjobs, sycophants and enablers, who are operating well beyond law, sense and basic conscience.
We Americans are inside the wrong side of history.
How to make it stop? How to dismantle this horror machine?
I suppose I hold out some weird hope that troops will desert or quit en masse, but it seems so unlikely given the overwhelming psychological, social and (above all) legal barriers. Nonetheless, there may be some people that can get out, and we might as well try to reach and support them and their families.
This seems like a good resource to share:
"Once you have signed on the dotted line and shipped out to boot camp, is it possible to quit the military? Many have tried, and even more have wondered if getting out early is a good option for them. There is no easy answer to the basic question since much depends on when and why you want to quit."
For more, see veteran.com
Another way we civilians may be of immediate use is to counter military recruiting in our public schools. (I have more to say on this subject, but it’ll need to wait til next time out.)
Finally, let’s honestly face up to the new grim reality. The devastation and war crimes being committed or threatened right now by the U.S. and U.S.-supported Israel are increasingly delivered via AI-enabled barrages of missiles and bombs. We must find ways to encourage people of conscience to quit Palentir and all the other parts of the growing techbro-military-industrial Death Star complex that we Americans are all now a part of.
Who knows — let’s try everything. Find the work that you can do. If you need guidance, or inspiration, maybe talk quietly with a veteran. They’re everywhere.
2. SAME HOTEL, DIFFERENT ROOMS, ONE ROOF
Above: Noted weed enthusiasts Joe Strummer (The Clash) and Bob Weir (Grateful Dead) partying together in a Philadelphia hotel room, before taking it to the roof and staying up til 10am.
How did this happen? The bands were on tour (separately) and were booked in the same hotel. Internet says this was on or around April 20, 1984 (4.20, really? okay you stoners).1
If you need it, and I’m guessing you do, here’s a four minute video from a few years ago of Bob giving his account of this impromptu punk-hippie summit/wild night, with more photos.
3. ON DISMANTLING AND RESTORING
Here’s a wonderful recommendation from writer-editor, Landline reader and Arthur contributor John Adamian, who writes, “I send this your way on the off chance you’ve never come across it. I found it captivating for about 5 or 6 different reasons: accents, death-defying labor, scenery, era, antique engine refurbishment, etc.”
4. MONEY’S TIGHT! KEEP A ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD
From officiallangstonhughes.com:
During the Harlem Renaissance period, some Black people hosted rent parties, using the proceeds to pay their landlord on the first of the month, and then hopefully making it another 30 days before scrimping again.
Because of Langston Hughes, there is an extensive record of Harlem’s rent parties.
Hughes saved dozens of invitations, storing them away in a red box that once housed his checkbooks. He held on to them even as he traveled as a newspaper correspondent in the Soviet Union, Haiti and Japan, and a series of rented American rowhouses until he finally settled into his own permanent home in Harlem, on East 127th Street, in 1947.
He would later donate them as part of a much larger collection of his papers housed at Yale’s Beinecke Library, where they have a permanent home in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters.
“He was doing this for posterity, to let people know that these things were happening,” said Melissa Barton, a curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature.
Rent parties were bawdy, booze-soaked and offered an escape. Outside, there was prohibition and gawkers from Lower Manhattan. Inside, there was beer and bathtub gin. There was live music, including appearances by Duke Ellington and Fats Waller. At rent parties, Hughes wrote, he met truckers, seamstresses and shoeshine boys.
Nearly all of the invitations followed the same format: a clever rhyming couplet at the top offered a snippet of homespun poetry, followed by a euphemism advertising the main event. Most hosts announced their gatherings as a “Social Whist Party,” but some opted for “A midsummer frolic,” “A beer brawl” or even a “Chitterling Strut.” Hosts promised drinks, food and tunes, then listed the date and time as well as the apartment.
More: “The Rent Was Too High So They Threw a Party” by Debra Kamin, NYTimes
5. WHO’S REALLY THERE
Via John Coulthart, a wholly sensible and sympathetic review by writer Joanna Steinhardt of current 'science'/thinking about what those seemingly autonomous discarnate beings that people encounter via psychedelics, spontaneous visionary episodes, and so on, might actually be:
That’s all for now. Take care, be safe and let’s all do as much of the right thing as we’re able,
Jay Babcock
Tucson/Patagonia, Arizona
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Mick Jones had been kicked out of the Clash by this point.