Ship of Fools—World Party

#365Songs: November 13

In times like these, we go to music to help us contend with—and make sense of—the world around us. We go to music to help us let our feelings out, and let our feelings in. We go to music to cope and to process. We escape to music, and draw strength from music in order to return to the fray.

I find myself, as each day brings with it a new cascade of insanity, desperately searching for a song, a melody, a lyric, that somehow sums it all up neatly enough that I can will myself into continuing on without shattering into a million weeping pieces.

The past two days have been almost comic, even as their very real tragedies play out in real time.

Kristi Noem leading … intelligence? Surely you jest. Lee Zeldin, in charge of the environment? This is a man who has backed fewer environmental bills than just about anyone in Congress (about 14% of the time, thank you very much). And how about Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel? A man who has said there’s no such thing as a Palestinian? I mean, come on.

But the joke gets sicker. Today, we learned that Matt Gaetz will be Attorney General. A man who literally just resigned from office a mere few days ago to prevent the release of a report that would damn him to the hell he deserves. A man under active legal scrutiny for rape, illicit drug use, and sex trafficking. The Attorney General. The individual who “represents the United States in legal matters.”

As this deranged clown show continued to be paraded out across news channels today, it finally hit me—the lyric I’d been looking for:

Save me from tomorrow I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools

Karl Wallinger was a Welshman. That alone is enough to endear him to me. But he was also in The Waterboys. Also a tremendous plus. And, he founded World Party, one of the great “if you know, you know” musical acts of the late 80s and early 90s.

We lost Karl not too long ago, and it was a deep lost not just for the world of music, but for the literal world itself. Karl was a prophet for the environment, long before it was fashionable to be so. As he explained in an interview with MOJO:

“I wanted to personify the world and sing about her. I always thought it would have been great if Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” had been about the planet. Plus, if I stand on top of a mountain Julie Andrews-style, the hills do seem to be alive with the sound of music. You can say whatever you like about eco whatever, but if you fuck up the environment you’re going to die.”

Wise words, and prescient ones, as we are about to give over the Presidential reins to an administration that does not give a good god damn about the environment—or anything else for that matter, except lining their pockets with money and shooting power into their veins.

We’re setting sail to the place on the map From which no one has ever returned Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool By the light of the crosses that burned Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace And the gold and the cotton and pearls It’s the place where they keep all the darkness you need You sail away from the light of the world on this trip, baby You will pay tomorrow You’re gonna pay tomorrow You will pay tomorrow

We are indeed about to set sail, the ship is indeed full of fools, and we will indeed pay tomorrow.

And who are we in all this madness? Or, should I say, who are YOU? 74 million of you made this happen. I presume it’s what you want. But why? Surely you know you’ll be little more than galley slaves on a ship sailing for a new Sodom? You do know, don’t you, that you have lionized a liar, an adulterer, a thief?

Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea They will leave you drifting in the shallows Or drowning in the oceans of history Traveling the world, you’re in search of no good But I’m sure you’ll build your Sodom like you knew you would Using all the good people for your galley slaves As your little boat struggles through the warning waves, but you don’t pay You will pay tomorrow

In that same MOJO interview, Wallinger spoke about his early drive to create music:

“I was singing about unity and about how, for me, the natural world is one of the few real truths, whereas human society is a fuck-up.”

Thank God he did sing, because, while his mortal self has departed this mortal coil, his brilliant heart, mind, songwriting, and music live on.

And oh, did I need Karl today.

Perhaps we consider Donald Trump as a kind of new Noah, and he’s about to take charge of a big ol’ white ship, and he’s bringing on his chosen few by the twos, and he’s got Elon Musk as his eugenicist-in-chief, and they’re primed to re-architect humanity in their own image, and so I say, if we cannot escape the flood, then let us rush into it as fast as we can, and we’ll just see for whom the waters part and for whom they close.

Where’s it comin’ from? Oh, where’s it goin’ to? It’s just a ship of fools All aboard now

~

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