03 Jun DJ Inky’s Virtual Travelogue Playlist

Gentle Reader(s), I greet you once again from Lockdown atop Chango Hill in La Ciudad Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis. Greetings & peace.

 

It’s a bit hard to comprehend the degree to which an already fraught and anxious situation has become exponentially more so over the course of just one week. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis has once again pushed the inequities and violence of America against people of color to the forefront of the national conversation (if there actually is anything resembling a ‘national conversation’ these days) and protestors have once again taken to the streets to exercise their civic right—their civic duty—to stand up and speak out. In the unprecedented context of a global pandemic, months of quarantine, a starkly divided country, and an election year the murder of yet another unarmed black man in plain view of the world might just prove to be the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. The murder of George Floyd comes hard on the heels of the revelations regarding the vigilante murder of Ahmaud Arbrey in Brunswick, Georgia, back in February and it seems that across the country, and across the world, people in ever greater numbers are turning out to make it clear that enough is enough is enough. Again.

 

I have already expressed my thoughts regarding this very situation in my post Strange Fruit, 2015. That post was written in the specific context of the murder of Walter Scott by police officer Michael Slager. Michael Slager was fired, prosecuted, and sentenced to twenty years in prison for shooting the unarmed and retreating Walter Scott in the back. The city of North Charleston, South Carolina eventually paid $6.5 million to Walter Scott’s family. That result offers hope for some semblance of justice for George Floyd, but obviously and tragically it’s clear that nothing of substance has changed in the intervening five years.

 

Actually, that’s not true: Something of substance has changed since 2015, and that something sits glowering and tweeting out hate and divisiveness from 1600 Pennsylvania Boulevard NW in Washington, DC. Change will come—change must come—but I am very much resolute in my belief that Job One must be that the Orange Goblin has got to go. As long as a willfully ignorant, racist, sexist, fascist, narcissist and pathological liar holds the highest office in the land NOTHING can or will change. The Orange Goblin must go. Impeachment didn’t work, so now it’s time for the power of the ballot box to escort the Goblin back to private life and the myriad prosecutions that will undoubtedly greet his return to civilian status.

 

For those of you new to InkyInkInc.com, my references to the alleged president of these allegedly United States as the ‘Orange Goblin’ might seem to trivialize the evil abuses and transgressions of the alleged office holder. Perhaps so, but it is done with a specific purpose: I do not use the Goblin’s actual name as his name is his brand. The Goblin and his brood have been pushing that brand for many decades now—they license it to suckers around the world who are duped into buying into his gaudy, empty pretense of power and opulence. The intent of not using his name and re-branding him as the Orange Goblin is to deny him this one tiny molecule of legitimacy and replace it with ridicule. It ain’t much, but it’s something (as the never-ending barrage of Russian bots trying to hack into InkyInkInc.com might attest—and I shite thee not).

 

So, there you have it. Check out the link to my April 10, 2015 post. For what it’s worth, that’s still where I’m at. Only more so.

 

Now, on to some music. As advertised, this post presents DJ Inky’s Virtual Travelogue Playlist—a musical trip across space and time to locales as diverse as Tupelo, Kyoto, Kashmir, Albuquerque, Panama and Bakersfield. And with this offering a new format is debuted: At very long last I’ve collected the toons together as an autoplay playlist on YouTube, so that you, Gentle Reader(s), are spared the hassle of dozens of additional browser tabs opening and closing. I actually kind of miss posting the individual song links, for no reason other than that’s the way I’ve been doing it for years. Maybe I’ll go ahead and do both–belt and suspenders stylee, if you get my drift.

 

Either way, I hope you listen and enjoy and, perhaps, for a moment, get taken away to some place where worry and sorrow and anger can be put aside for a moment, somewhere more carefree and loving, through the power of music. I shall return in the not too distant future with a playlist attuned to the streets and the peaceful civil disobedience being practiced by our brothers and sisters all over this country and beyond.

 

Be Safe, Be Strong, Stay Calm and Carry On.