thinking things through

Posted on August 29, 2006

sup kinfolk,

so it’s like 7am and i’ve been up most of the night thinking about shit, reading, and wasting time online.  typical “don’t have to get up in the morning” time-wasting shit.  but i’ve got a few different trains of thought in my head and figured i might be able to straighten ‘em out a bit easier if i write ‘em down so here goes…

the first thing is that i’ve been trading emails with some folks out in pensylvnia that do a magazine focussed on celtic punk and they’re gonna do a featur story on my music, which is dope as fuck.  i got the cover yesterday and i was looking at it and a couple things hit me – first that they had described my lyrics as “irish nationalist, enviornmental, and political” and secondly that they had compared me to house of pain and krs one.  that sparked two totally seperate trains of thought in my head so i guess i gotta take those one at a time.

first thing is that I’m not a “nationalist” in any conventional sense of the word, irish or otherwise, because I believe that States are completely and totally fucked up as a form of political organization.  more to the point, they’re not an effective way of safeguarding the interests of the Nations they dominate and claim to represent.  creating more nation states and/or strengthening the states that already exist isn’t going to make anyone more free, all it’ll do is give the ruling class a local accent.  That doesn’t mean anti-impirialist struggles like the ones going on in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Palestein, Tibet, Chechnya, etc. aren’t worthwhile,. it just means that they’re not enough.  throwing out foreign impirialists is all good , but you’ve got to throw out the entire structure of impirialism with it. Up until now most recently colonized nations from South Africa to the Republic of Ireland have responded to the exit of their old colonial masters by taking the exact same machinery of exploitation and putting local people in it to run it.  As ward churchill puts it, africa  is every bit as colonized today as it was a hundred years ago, the only difference is that it is a colonial order run by africans.  the exact same shit is true about Ireland, and i’m sorry but that’s just not good enough.

to cut all the poli-sci crap, the problem is the structure, changing the people running that structure (as most self-described nationalists want to do) doesn’t change the structure and thus completely fails to deal with the real issues of power, inequality, and stratification.  So no, I’m not an “irish nationalist” because Republican Irish Nationalism settles for far too little.  I’m an autonomist, anti-impirialist, and an anarchist, and the revolution i’m looking for will free this whole planet, not just Ireland and the Celtic Nations.   just to sort that shit out for anyone who might have it twisted.

the second thing is the comparison to KRS One and House of Pain.  First thing I’ve got to say is Respect to both crews.  seriously.  I started listening to House of Pain at a very young age and i still bump their shit from time to time, and i’ve got every album Everlast has dropped since he went solo in my permanent mp3 collection.  I don’t like every song of course, but fuck it, i don’t like every song *I’ve* made.  Same goes for KRS, I’ve been listening to his shit for a long time and i respect the man as a musician, a performer, and a thinker.  even if he did do that sprite commercial.  shit was weak, but i guess when you do music for a living sometimes you’ve got to make compromises to bring home the bacon.  or the tofu if you’re a vegetarian.  heh.

Thinking about house of pain last night, i did a search online to see what they’re all up to these days.  apparently Danny Boy and Everlast have gotten back together along witha few other folks and have a new crew called “La Coka Nostra”, and even have myspace pages all set up and shit.  which is kinda funny, really, cuz “la coka nostra” is a reference to the italian mafia, and it was the italian mafia that hunted down and murdered virtually the entire Irish mob during the 30’s so they could take over all the rackets that used to be run by the Irish.   (a great book about the irish mob is “Paddy whacked” by  T.J. English, it breaks down all that history).  so it’s kinda of ironic to have everlast and danny boy – who’ve built a huge part of their careers on being irish – naming themselves after the *italian* mafia.  irony.  probably they just don’t know the history, most people don’t.  then again that’s probably because most people sleep at night instead of staying up reading books all the damn time. ahem.

anyway, Everlasts’ La Coka Nostra page in particular was interesting, he’s got shit up comparing george w. bush to Hitler and saying sept. 11th was an inside job, stuff drawing parrallels between the north irish struggle and the palestinian struggle, and in the lyrics to one of the new songs he’s got posted he throws in references to Michael Collins and William Wallace.  I was kinda suprised, honestly, I mean Everlast has definately shown some political consciousness before but nothing like that, and dude has been at it for a while now.  I mean, shit, it’s cool ya know?  I’ve been talking like that and putting those kind of references in my music for more’n half a decade now, so it’s good to see i’ve got some company at last.  Kinda makes me wonder where his political consciousness was until now though, maybe being on an independant label or just getting older has allowed the man to get bolder and speak his mind more freely, or maybe having someone as overtly evil as george bush in the white house for this long is enough to radicalize people who otherwise wouldn’t have spoken out.  either way though i guess it’s a positive thing.  I guess if i can be the next everlast he can be the next emcee lynx.  more likely though we’ll both just keep being ourselves.

that’s the funny thing about music i guess, people always have to compare you to someone else who’s come before so they know how to categorize you.  maybe that’s just part of language though, i mean, if you want to describe a lemon to someone who’s never seen one you say “it’s like a lime, only bigger and it’s yellow”, or if you want to describe a bush you say “it’s just like reagan, only stupider and more dangerous”.  everything is relative because relativitly is the only way we can understand anything.  there i go being all existentialist and shit again.

what the hell, it’s all just music i guess.  It’s not like it’s going to start a revolution or anything. as long as it gets people to think about real shit then it’s a positive thing at the end of the day, whether all the politics and all the details are precisely on point or not.  I know I can’t claim to have any kind of perfect kowledge or analysis or whatever, i just tell stories.

i guess the last thing, before i head out the door for the day is that – speaking of stories – I’ve got a whole shitload of new ones for ya’ll coming, and this thursday and friday I’m gonna be in the studio with my band working ‘em out.  I’m fucking pumped, i’ve put out 5 albums out of my home studio without ever stepping into a real recording booth, and the chance to put out some really professional sounding shit has me pacing holes in the floor tryingto get everything perfect ahead of time.  big ups to my man davin for hooking up the studio time.

so basically, hell yes the new album is coming.  I don’t know when exactly yet, but it’s coming. thanks to everyone who’s helped me get this far.

peace,
lynx