This is What Relentlessness Looks Like

Right this very minute, as I sit here typing, over three-hundred and fifty college and non-comm (public access etc) radio stations across the United States are listening to and playing various songs from an album entitled All Your Heroes Become Villains. The group responsible for the creation of this dark moody eclectic and conceptual work is now called Ed Hale and The Transcendence; which brings things full circle right back to where they began nine years ago when a group by the same name released their debut album entitled Rise and Shine. Rise and Shine was a utopian dream; filled with hope, faith and optimism. Ed Hale was known as The Ambassador. He sang in multiple languages and believed every positive-message that entered his mind and sprung from his heart. The world was a stage where all we need do is believe to create our lives any way we desired or preferred. For a good long while, life really appeared to operate like this.

Songs from the album began spinning on radio stations all over America and in Europe. TV shows and movies picked some up as well. Life was good. My God was it good. At least in the insulated private world that The Ambassador and company kept themselves wrapped up in. Hale had created a fortune for himself at an early age as both a musician and as an entrepreneur. Early-retired before the age of thirty, it was hard not to feel that life was good. But that was soon to change.

Massive mailing to college radio all over America for Sleep with You. Over 450 stations. In weeks we will know. 

Studying the Armenian genocide of 1915. Recently saw the film Ararat. Bas says, “Goddamn. Another freaking genocide. Who would have ever imagined that humans would do that to each other. There are so many holocausts. How do we keep track of them all?” It is something that we in modern times, as Americans, cannot even bare to imagine. And yet genocide is at the foundation of the very land we live on.. It is the heart of America. We founded our country in the name of genocide with the blood of over 90 million Native American men women and children. This coming Monday the new America, the modern America, will celebrate something they call Columbus day. For the Native Americans and for thinking and educated people all over the world it will be a day of mourning, as it is every year. Not just for all the lost lives and the needless suffering—and indeed this is a mourning we will never be able to escape in our hearts, because we live here---but we will also mourn the loss of our honor as Americans as we do every year, as the lies of the genocide of the native Americans continue to be perpetrated by the deceptive and cowardly and ignorant men and women who live among us still. But I will say this. One day things will change. Those who know, whose hearts are pure and without deceit, will not have to live in a world of lies and half truths and trickery. One day real honor and justice and caring will prevail among human beings. For me it is more than a mere hope or wish or prayer. It is a vision. I can see it. I know it is our future.

Current Spin: Rufus wainwright. His new one.