I'm new around these 'ere parts, and I reckon that even if I live here for twenty years or more, I will still be new.
The accent does it. When I meet people for the first time, I have always to repeat the first thing I say to them. This is due to the simple fact that the first time they hear how I say things, and the second time they listen.
My wife tells me that my accent is cute, and I could probably get laid in any bar in Tulsa. Well that's nice, but a bit beside the point ... If she isn't in the bar, I don't want to .... ya understand?
Anyway ... My inappropriate humour aside, that isn't why I am here.
Being new allows me some latitude in the vision I have of America. It's a vast and beguiling country. It is many countries, really, and I marvel that, imperfect as the Union might be, the creation of ANY Union was quite an achievement.
America seems to be a different country to everyone you ask. To most, it is the greatest country on Earth. Made great not just by the people here, but by the creation and realisation of a vision. Few countries are made the way America came into being, and that of itself makes this place unique among the family of nations.
America is just over two hundred years old. England, in it's various forms, has had a Parliament for a thousand years, and the Isle of Man even longer. Against this backdrop the imperfect place we live is indeed a remarkable thing.
I listen, and comment with interest on the things that drive us to write Diaries, and make comments, prompted as they are by the feeling that it is a struggle, it is a fight. It is a struggle to slow and halt those who we feel would defile the vision. A fight to roll back the damage we see being inflicted on the majority by a small and privileged minority. That is not the perfect Union that was created, and it is with great irony that those who would do us harm try to do so, in the name of the Constitution.
Quite frankly, they wouldn't recognise the Constitution if they walked into a Town Square and Ben Franklin was there reading the document through a megaphone.
My vision, my America is idealistic. It is a combination of a benign Democracy and the pioneering spirit of the West. It is a place where the leaders guide the nation towards an equitable social democracy, and the people trust them so to do. That they also verify goes without saying.
Politically, this is not the America I am living in. I am here in a place that is being dragged in the opposite direction, where all the social advances made in the last one hundred years are coming under threat. I can understand that the greed of corporations and their supplicants is driving this. I cannot reconcile that the Supreme Court, that third and equal branch of Government, is also a willing tool in the decimation of a Constitution that is their only purpose, to defend.
I used to believe that you had to be smart to be a Justice on the Supreme Court. Now I understand that you only have to say "yes" in the right ears.
All that said, and smarter folk than me have at least some of this in hand, what about the other part of my dream. The pioneering spirit. "Go West, young man".
Sometimes, just sometimes, I catch a glimpse of a world, of an America that people at least believe existed. It may never have, but the dream is real, and the spirit of the dream is laudable.
That happened to me last Friday in the most unlikely of ways. I run a Karaoke Show in a local bar every Friday night. It's fun, even if it can sometime be a bit "same old, same old". Every now and then I am surprised and inspired. That happened when my friend, Bill, sang a song I had never heard before. The song was Pancho and Lefty, and the version was a cover by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
Now Bill is a decent singer but even so I was quite unprepared for the way that song just grabbed my gut. It was a spine-tingling moment. The first hearing of a tune, and words that can move your spirit. It may not move yours and that is fine. We are all different and I feel sure there will be songs, poems, movies etcetera that have done for you what this did for me.
When I got home I googled the song and was surprised to discover that it was written and recorded originally by and artist I had never heard of, a guy called Townes Van Zandt
The Wiki is terrific. It tells of a genius, a man compared to Bob Dylan in his song writing skills. A flawed rich-kid, actually, who spurned fame and while lauded by musicians remained, until his death, relatively unknown. He does, in fact, embody all that is good, and all that is wrong in this place we call home. Let's have a listen:
There is a fascination for me, especially as a newcomer. At every street corner, every turn my life here takes there are new experiences, things to discover that remind me what we want to be, and what we can become.
You all have your own dreams and inspirations, but on Friday this was mine.