so in the '60s we had this saying:
UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKER
and that seemed to represent the gestalt at the time - we were pissed as hell, we weren't going to go to viet nam, and we wanted change. no mo statquo. time for peace and love. that was how we saw the world.
but that wasn't how the world saw us.
the jefferson airplane wrote a song that perfectly described the way others saw us. it's called "we can be together", and represents the then-current emotions of the time: in one part they say "we should be together" and in another part they say "up against.." kinda shows you the range of emotions of the era. we wanted peace, and we were willing to cause a revolution, if need be, to get it. this song was the first time the word "fuck" was uttered on national television when the Airplane played it on the Dick Cavett show in '69.
Abbie Hoffman inspired Paul Kantner to write it as a call to arms to mobilize the liberal to radical left and all it's various factions. it more-or-less served as an anthem for the '60s rebellious society.
and perhaps for today's "unequal" society.
on the one hand, we have DADT abolished, DOMA "on the rocks" and a very positive outlook for queers, and on the other hand, the Pope telling people that "the greatest threat we face today is transsexualism", the tea bagger party trying to return us to bushonomics, and the fundies trying to return us to the 15th century. i compared the lyrics of the song with what's going on today, and i found many commonalities between the words of the lyrics of this 40+ year old song and these current events.
everything we write has subtexts; sometimes hidden, sometimes visible - these come from the "lingua franca", the "free speech", of the era. in order to put the lyrics in perspective, i changed terms that were "current at the time" to similar terms that are current now:
- society in the '60s felt that queers were outlaws, but i rather like being an outlaw, so i left that term in; and
- as society then-felt threatened by all young people, and now by queer people, i changed "young" to "queer"; and
- as social change was then-considered "chaos and anarchy", i changed "chaos and anarchy" to "social change"; and
- as suicide is one of our greatest challenges, i didn't change the term "let it die" (where "it" = "our life").
- the economically disenfranchised; and
- poor gender-variant people who have no job and no money and hook for food/meds;
- meth addicts that have lost everything; and
- once-flourishing Queers that are now poor because they have to pay for meds / healthcare.
we are all outlaws in the eyes of America.
in order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fuck hide and deal.
we are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and queer.
we should be together
come on all you people standing around
our life is too fine to let it die
we should be together
we are forces of social change
everything they say we are, we are
and we are very
proud of ourselves
please don't ever forget that the vast majority of people in the world think that the greatest *social* transgression today remains a man wearing a dress, and the second greatest transgression is that of a female calling herself, "Butch". the times and the lingua franca may have changed, but we've still got a lot of work to do. just ask any of the Queens from Compton's or Stonewall...
oh yeah. when all was said and done, we got peace - but it didn't last long... so never quit trying!