"For The Homeless Man"

(This is the last new post which will feature this picture; if any visitor is tiring of him, please look away now; the theme will become more positive soon)

This photograph was taken in Lisbon Portugal, but it is about Everywhere.

The words of the song you are about to read were written in and aimed at the USA, but they are about Everywhere.

The homeless man, woman and child has no specific name, passport, nationality, language, vote.

But the homeless man, woman and child does have one address:

The Street, Planet Earth.

"Rockin' In The Free World"

There's colors on the street

Red, white and blue

People shufflin' their feet

People sleepin' in their shoes

But there's a warnin' sign on the road ahead

There's a lot of people sayin'

"We'd be better off dead"

Don't feel like Satan,but I am to them

So I try to forget it,any way I can.

Keep on rockin' in the free world,

Keep on rockin' in the free world.

I see a woman in the night

With a baby in her hand

Under an old street light

Near a garbage can

Now she puts the kid away,and she's gone to get a hit

She hates her life,and what she's done to it

There's one more kid that will never go to school

Never get to fall in love,never get to be cool.

Keep on rockin' in the free world,

Keep on rockin' in the free world.

We've got a thousand points of light

For the homeless man;

We got a kinder, gentler,machine-gun hand

We got department stores and toilet paper

Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer

Got a man of the people, says "Keep hope alive!"

Got fuel to burn,got roads to drive.

Keep on rockin' in the free world,

Keep on rockin' in the free world

Keep on rockin' in the free world,

Keep on rockin' in the free world.

(Neil Young, 1988, with my great appreciation)

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No song - no matter how strongly socially or politically motivated - can ever actually change anything. It is not its purpose.

From the"Internationale" (Eugène Pottier, 1871) to "Imagine" (John Lennon, 1971), from "They Dance Alone" to "Free Nelson Mandela", the most incisive, perceptive, provacative songs have - at best - raised consciousness, galvanised, inspred, been present on the frontlines of protest, on the battle field, at the barricades of struggle and strike; the voice accompanying the banners, posters, flags.

But in themselves, the songs and anthems of social/political comment, protest and resistance can change nothing.

What they constitute is a wake-up, a call to arms. They urge "We the People" to Get Up, Stand Up and DO SOMETHING!; to take responsibility, without which the word democracy is just a word that means nothing.

Neil Young's "Rockin in the Free World" is as perfect an example as I can find to serve as an eloquent soundtrack for this photograph and everything it represents and evokes.

As I do not need the work of Michael Moore to show me what is going on, I only learned this week that he used it frequently to soundtrack his 2004 film, "Fahrenheit 9/11". It proves, I guess, how the powerful message of this song has swelled to embrace causes that at stake in societies far beyond the shores of the United States.

Young's simple acoustic solo version, with his plaintive voice is human, sad, poignant. His electric version is insistent, loud and angry. Each version is both a damning indictment and a rousing anthem to change our attitudes and behaviour towards these human beings fallen into a distress which, with fortune -or fortunes - we others manage to avoid.

"There but for fortune

Go You and I".....

......................The Street, Planet Earth.