This is true, yes.

What exactly did you do over there?

I visited both Germany and Poland. I had the pleasure to visit both places and I took a class on the subject of the Holocaust. I had the amazing opportunity to visit many places in and out of Berlin and also in Poland that were very, very significant in the events of the Holocaust. One of the components of the class was doing volunteer work at the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum. I spent some time there while we were in Poland. That's the quick overall view of it. It was an absolutely amazing experience.

Berlin is a very beautiful city.

I love it so, so much. I can't wait to go back. It was absolutely beautiful. We studied during the day and then later in the evening we had time to explore the city. It was wonderful. I had a few opportunities to perform in the evening and one of the things that really stood out was I started playing the musical saw this year and before going to Berlin I got in contact with this really amazing musical saw player who lives there. It was such a pleasure to finally meet her when I arrived and she and I were doing musical saw duets in the evening at various places. It was so much fun.

My mom is from Switzerland and her father was in the French Resistance against Hitler. Her step-mother was German and lived during the Nazi regime. People have this weird misconception that everyone in Germany was pro-Hitler but most everyone in Germany hated the man, Jewish or not. He killed a lot of non-Jewish people as well.

Yeah, he did.

That's something people need to understand. It didn't matter if you were Jewish or not.

Yeah, I know. There were many other people who suffered and even lost their lives under the Nazi regime and I think yeah, it's something that is not as frequently spoken about but of course it's also significant. And also another thing you said about yeah, many people have the preconception that all of Germany was behind Hitler which was absolutely not true. Actually I'd be happy to send you a link to this museum if you'd be interested but one of the really amazing things is that we visited with the museum about the German Resistance against the Nazi regime and it was just amazing. Learning more about these people who risked or gave their lives in trying to fight what was happening and standing behind what they believed even if it meant death for them and their families. I just think that these really brave Germans are sometimes not given enough thought and attention by people in general. It's really extraordinary what these people did. It's an amazing museum.

Hitler was a pretty crafty guy. He sent all the guys off to fight in wars and by the time World War II started and Germany started getting bombed, the only people in Germany were women, kids, and old people. The guys were gone and my mom's stepmother lived in this apartment complex with a bunch of other old women and an elderly Jewish writer. When the Gestapo started sniffing around that guy, these women decided they had to get his ass out of Germany and on a train to Switzerland. One of the old women was a really fashionable old lady. I mean she dressed to the nines and somehow she managed to charm one of these young Gestapo guys and he finally asked her out on a date. They usually assigned the same two dudes to a particular area so they got to know these two guys that would come around. So this lady agreed to go out with this one dude and she tells everyone else when the date was, about how long the date would be, and when she went out with that guy that's when my mom's stepmother and the other women got the Jewish man out of there and helped him escape. The following week the Gestapo comes looking for him and all these women are telling them they don't know where he went and it looks like he just disappeared one night. If anyone had found out they had done that, they could have been put in prison.

I'm so glad you told me that story. That's so wonderful.

That's what these people did and that's what gets downplayed so much.

It's true and yeah, I think going to that museum was one of the highlights of the trip because it's something that's so important. Sadly all of the negative is so huge that we forget there were people that were still doing good.

Of course anytime you're in a really bad situation like that one of two things happens. You either break down completely or you have this gallows sense of humor which is what those people in Germany had. It's what you see with the people in Iraq today where they either break down completely or they have that black sense of humor.

It's very true. Actually when I got back from the trip I had to do a research paper and I did my paper on the way that music manifested itself in the presence and the lives of the perpetrators and the victims of the Holocaust. One thing that I found so interesting in my research was that there were accounts of some camps that served as way stations. I don't know what else to call them. They would hold people before sending them on to somewhere like Auschwitz. At these camps some of the prisoners would stage cabaret performances and things of this sort and like you were saying about the gallows humor, in order to just get by they would sing, they would dance, and they would make jokes about their situations. Sometimes that's the only way to live and to keep your spirit alive.

And keep your sanity. It's amazing what it takes to survive.

You know what's funny, speaking about how people use humor to deal with their situations, one of the destinations on our trip was a Stazi prison. It was fascinating and we learned so much about East Germany. About the GDR and about what it was like living in such an oppressive society but at the end of this really unbelievably intense tour of a Stazi prison the guard told us what I thought was just the funniest joke about the GDR the East Germans used to tell to deal with it. Since I've been back home, I've subsequently spent a nice amount of time looking online for more GDR jokes because it's so interesting to me. Like you said, that gallows humor is what got these people through. It's so funny that you're talking about it because it's been a subject of a lot of interest to me and I've been reading about that a lot. It's part of how we humans survive.

Last night I was watching the Documentary Channel and this Iraqi guy who lives in Australia did a documentary on his home town and you listen to some of the stuff that these people say. It makes you laugh and cry at the same time. So, you put out a live record and one of the songs was sung in German.

Yes. I've been really enjoying exploring the music of the '30s and '40s so much. I've been wanting to learn the language for a while and this year I decided I'm going to start doing this. My teacher who is a dear friend of mine has performed as an opera singer for years and years and she's wonderful at singing in so many different languages. She and a couple of German speaking friends and the help of taking a German class, I've started to learn some of my favorite songs from that era that were performed in German and it's absolutely the most enjoyable thing to start singing in the language and the recording on the live CD is actually the first time I was ever on stage singing in German. It was the beginning of a new thing for me and I've enjoyed it so much and even when I went to Germany and I performed there, I did sing songs in German which was really, really wonderful and exciting. It was something that's a dynamic for my shows I'm really, really enjoying now. Yeah, it's a new aspect to what I enjoy creating as an artist. I'm going to keep studying and get all my German grammar straightened out hopefully.

That's such a fun language to learn because I took German courses in college. I think their grammar structure is so much better than ours anyway. They actually have rules whereas in English it's a hodge podge.

Oh, totally. I think there are certainly things about German that make so much more sense. That are just so much more rational than English but then there are things in English such as we only have one definitive article, just "the" where you have to remember all your "dies", "ders", and "dases" in German. To an English speaking person it's such a foreign concept to have three articles to have to remember. I love it. I absolutely love it. I enjoy the challenge and it's made me think a lot more lately just about how much the language you speak really colors what you say. If I were to express something to you in English and then express the same thing to you in German, there are things that are perhaps subtle but really do color being expressed differently. Just little nuances. It's been something I've been thinking about more lately since I started studying German and really having an appreciation for. Just how unique each language is. Each language is like a little pallet to paint your thoughts with.

With the articles "die", "der", and "das", at first it seems weird but after a while you get totally used to it because of course when you learn vocabulary, you don't just learn that "Zimmer" is a room. It's presented to you as "das Zimmer" or whatever.

Yeah, I've found that learning to sing these songs in German has made it an interesting way to approach it. Even before I started sitting down with a book and studying it, I started singing in German so it's been such an interesting approach. It's just an interesting way to start the process of familiarizing yourself with a new language. It's something that I'm enjoying on so many levels. Just the whole experience of thinking in a new way just by using this language and also as a way to just create. There's just something so different about singing in a language that isn't your native language. There's something about it that, I don't know, I feel like it digs into a different place. It's been really wonderful.

I think learning another language opens you up to new horizons and I think it's sad how people in this country get so offended at the thought of learning to express themselves in another tongue and act like you're just this horrible person if you suggest learning another language. The way people are carrying on about stuff being in Spanish, yeah there is stuff that is written in Spanish. I've actually been picking up Spanish vocabulary from co-workers, watching programs in Spanish, and getting a grip on that particular language because I think it's fun to learn stuff like that.

Yeah, it's interesting just how different culturally we are from other places in the world. The main feeling here I think is speak English. Why should I be interested in learning any other language? Whereas in Germany most of the people I met spoke English wonderfully and even perhaps spoke French or another language in addition to that. I think it really enriches the way in which you can think about something because with your language you're limited to how you can think about something. When you learn another language there's an infinite amount of ways to approach thought. It's a whole different universe approaching it with a new language and it really makes you appreciate things about how we express ourselves.

My mom speaks five languages. French, German, English, Spanish, and Italian.

Did she grow up learning all these languages?

She was born in Geneve, Switzerland so French is her native tongue. Then when her father brought her to Germany she learned German and English. After she married my dad and came to the States, she learned Spanish and Italian.

That is so wonderful.

She has a real flair for languages. With my dad being Native American they go to pow wows and she has started picking up some Navajo and some Cherokee as well.

That's so wonderful. That's inspiring.

There is something fun about communicating with people in other languages.

I know that when I was in Germany and had the opportunity on a few occasions to try to communicate with folks who only spoke German, it was so exciting. It was so wonderful even though I am so new at speaking the language and I'm sure I wasn't speaking in a way that was grammatically perfect all the time but it was my first experience of putting together ideas. It was whatever vocabulary I've learned and doing my best to use what I have to communicate and then like you said it worked. You don't speak the language fluently but it's amazing when you do have an experience with taking what you know. You have been able to convey something. It's really amazing and it just makes you all the much more want to move forward so you can come to that point someday when you're not thinking about it. You're not thinking about oh, how do I say this when you can think in German or you can think in Spanish.

It just comes out automatically.

Exactly. That's going to be a really amazing experience once that happens. If this becomes natural is something that I very much look forward to.

Tell me a little about the organization called Amizade because I saw that they do all sorts of things like tutoring Navajo kids.

Amizade is a really amazing organization. They're a non-profit organization based in Pittsburgh, PA and they organize volunteer programs all over the world. Anyone at all can sign up to participate in the programs. Some of the programs, the one I took, was in conjunction with a class so some of the programs are set up that way. Many of them are set up strictly as volunteer programs. I have known about Amizade for quite a while because I know someone who works there and has been on many of these trips for the opportunity to go all around the world and experience these amazing things. Participate in these really positive programs. It's been something I've really wanted to do for a while. I finally decided I had to do it. I'm so glad that I did and I think Amizade is absolutely a great organization and I really recommend anyone who is interested in anything like that to look into it more because it's so amazing.

I'd definitely love to have that opportunity. At some point I'd love to work with Native American children and stuff like that.

I was looking at that program. It looks so wonderful. Your dad has a Native American background. Growing up, did you get to learn a lot about that?

I was raised with very much in the foreground. I don't think the way Anglo-American people think. As I get older it gets quite obvious to me that I'm on a totally different wavelength and different train of thought than Anglo people. I realize just how differently Anglo people think and it's really more and more obvious, especially in this country. They look at the world in a one dimensional way as this is the United States and there's this other area called the world. I look at people in a multi-dimensional way.

Yeah, I think that is so wonderful. I'd really like to learn more about the Native American traditions. Their ways of thinking. I don't know a whole lot about it but it's certainly of interest to me which is one of the reasons why that program sounded so wonderful. One of the great things about the programs that Amizade sets up is, I notice this may sound sort of all like sunshine and flowers but, really what I think is so amazing about it is that you're able to give a lot through the work that you're doing but you also gain so much from it. At the same time you're getting experience through the exposure to a new group of people. A new way of thinking. Standing in a new place. It gives you so much to take with you. The experience for me was just absolutely amazing.

Every time we talk you've done something else that's wild. I think that's so cool. We've gone all the way from trick or treating at Bruce Springsteen's house to going to Poland.

This is true. There's a lot to do in the world.

I was reading on your website that you're featured in the spotlight of "The Perch". What is "The Perch"?

"The Perch" is an online magazine that reviews music and it's put together by a really wonderful artist and writer named Athena. She's a really brilliant, creative person who I really truly have a lot of admiration for. She contacted me after I released the live CD and she released a new set of reviews and interviews and she asked me to be a part of it. I was really delighted and I was actually delighted when I saw that Nina Hagen was also featured in the same issue. That we were both on the front page of that issue. Sharing any space with Nina Hagen is a lovely, lovely thing.

Yeah, 99 Luftballoons!

Ja!

I loved that song when it came out.

Yeah, I have a recording of Nina Hagen singing "My Way", the song that Frank Sinatra performed, in German. It's just so absolutely brilliant. It's one of my favorite recordings.

On May 20th you did a benefit thing so that you could go to Poland.

Yeah, on May 20th I held a benefit show at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia and all of the proceeds from the event went to cover expenses incurred from my trip to Germany and Poland. There were a really good group of artists who performed with me. It was very much a 1930's variety show. There were a lot of really wonderful musicians and we each did our own sets so there was really great diversity there. You had a lot of musicians who were classically trained and who were opera singers and a lot of people who have more of perhaps a rock background but they're all doing these really brilliant renditions of songs from the '30s and '40s. It just all tied together with the trip so beautifully and it was absolutely wonderful. The show was the greatest experience and a big success and I can't tell you how much I feel so grateful to everyone who performed and everyone who helped organize it. It was a really amazing group effort. Everyone was so supportive. I was so happy to be part of the show. It was a really great experience.

What other gigs have you been doing?

Next week I'm going to be performing at this wonderful monthly event in Philadelphia. It's a monthly cabaret show at this really lovely venue called L'Etage and I've been invited to perform at the cabaret at L'Etage next week which I'm very excited about and I'm going to be performing with a new lineup of musicians who I've not performed with before. It's going to be our debut together so it's very exciting and we've arranged a very interesting musical saw for the occasion so it's really great getting to work with new people who are really inspiring. You certainly come up with things that perhaps never would have been thought of otherwise. I'm really looking forward to that and in October I have another show coming up. It's also another cabaret event which is going to be really amazing. While I was in Germany like I said, one of the most enjoyable things was being able to actually sing in German in front of a German audience. That was absolutely wonderful and also playing a musical saw duet with my friend Katherina who is an amazing saw player from Berlin. Having the opportunity to perform in Berlin was just absolutely amazing. It was just so wonderful. Over the summer that was absolutely great. Over the past few months and in the coming weeks or so there are little things that stand out the most.

I like to think of music as the great unifier too because no matter how the Bush administration manages to piss everyone off around the world, it's nice to know that music can still keep the normal people together.

Yeah, it's true. It is so funny that you keep bringing up things that have been very much in my mind lately. Totally in tune to where my brain is, it's funny. One of the things when I was writing the research paper that I wrote in class about music and the Holocaust is that many of the things that I read are unexpected and really moving. Even under these unbelievable conditions of the concentration camps, there are so many accounts of people finding so much strength in music. As you were saying, it brings people together like nothing else. There are even some really moving and rather jaded accounts about very famous performers being interned in these camps. On at least two occasions that I read about, the commanders of these camps were a bit dumbstruck and were delighted to have these prisoners to put on special performances for the SS which is almost unthinkable. It breaks down every reality of what was actually occurring in that moment. It's amazing. These accounts that existed even under those circumstances of music being so powerful even if for only a moment and even if only in a small way breaking that down and making people human again.

The problem in this country with the way people think is, they think in terms of either someone is all good or someone is all evil. Even Adolph Hitler probably helped an old lady cross the street once. I see that a lot in the Israel and Palestinian thing. All Palestinians are evil people and all Israelis walk on water. That is totally unrealistic. There is no situation where an entire group of people is all this and an entire group of people is all that and every Moslem thinks this and every Christian thinks that. That doesn't happen in reality but yet people have this mind set that in the United States we are all individuals and Timothy McVeigh was an exception to the rule but with Moslems, they all want to commit suicide and kill everybody.

Yeah, it's sad and that's unfortunately I suppose how many people grow up thinking and when your mind has worked the same way for many, many years, sometimes even the thought that perhaps there's a different way of perceiving things is just inconceivable. But yes, it's sad and perhaps it's naive if I find it a little bit surprising but I spoke to a couple of really wonderful girls who I met while I was in Germany and I don't exactly recall how we got on the topic but we started talking about how a German deals today with the past of their country and deals with the fact that many people very immediately make the association between that they're German and automatically think about the Third Reich. Not the printing press. Not any of the amazing composers that came out of Germany. Obviously it needs to be thought of. It needs to be remembered and it needs to exist in all of our minds. I've spent my summer studying it. There are many wonderful people who are German who in many people's eyes are personally in some way connected to this which clearly isn't so. They were even telling me about visiting the U.S. and these two women unfortunately had run into situations where people clearly told them that because they were German they didn't want to help them and they didn't want to speak to them. They didn't want to do anything with them. They didn't like Germans. It's unfortunate. Clearly there's no connection between me and something that my country did before I was born. I certainly wouldn't want to be held responsible for what was to done to the Native Americans. Yes, I live in America but I had nothing to do with that.

People always tell that they aren't responsible for slavery and for what happened to the Indians but that Germans in Germany today are responsible for the Nazi regime. Young people in Germany today weren't around back then. Young people in Japan were not around back then. If people in this country don't want to be held responsible for our past then don't hold people in other countries responsible for the past either.

It's a contradiction because at the same time many people want to tout individualism and how we're all individuals as long as it's them but all Germans are this and all Moslems are that. I think that it's unfortunate that more people don't have the opportunity to maybe travel through someone else's country where they call home and see that yeah, they're different. They have families., they have lives, and they have problems.

That's where I realize that my way of thinking is so different. I realize that as a product of a marriage between a Native American and a European, I have two different ways of looking at things. It's really interesting.

It's interesting very much. It makes me think of how different of a person I may be if I were born into a different culture.

Even when you experience things from different cultures, I think in a way that changes you as a person too.

Yeah, it gives you one more perspective to look at things from. Even if it's subtle, it certainly shifts the way that you see the world. That you see yourself. Sometimes I wish it was easier to stop old ways that you don't necessarily agree with but has been such a way of life. They're ingrained in you and some of it sadly is very difficult or impossible to get past. The best they can do is move themselves into maybe more positives modes of thinking and maybe that means thinking from other cultures and doing as much as we can to make it a part of our lives. As wonderful as I think many things about our culture here are wonderful, certainly there are many things that are really rather I think damaging to an individual.

I think it's interesting that as much as people study the Third Reich and as much as they study Adolph Hitler, the Bush Administration are doing things that are similar to what Hitler did. For some reason these people are so immersed in studying World War II that they can't grasp the concept that the Bush Administration is emulating the Nazis. You would think studying Hitler that much you'd actually catch on to that but they don't. When they say how could the German people not have known this, that, and the other, I always ask well how can you not know knowing what you know about the past? These people didn't have satellite dishes and the Internet. We do.

I think that in learning more about the events of the Holocaust and by visiting these places and by doing all the reading and the research I did before leaving, I think that that's something that people commonly feel. Well, how didn't they know? How easy that is to say in 2006. You can even see something that maybe perhaps you did last week and hindsight is 20/20 and you look at it and think how didn't I know? You don't know. To us these events only occur in the past tense. To us and perhaps not our grandparents' generation, I suppose it's impossible to imagine that someone didn't know. Of course they didn't. One of the amazing things that I visited there was a memorial. It was erected in the honor of the murdered Jews in Europe. It takes up a whole city block in Berlin and if you can imagine this, it's a whole entire city block and it's filled with very tall and gray concrete blocks. It I suppose looks like a city or a graveyard depending on how you want to look at it. There's over 2,000 of these blocks and they're set up in a grid. You can walk between them and from the outside, meaning the perimeter of the block where you're walking on the sidewalk, these tall gray concrete blocks start very low and as you go they start getting higher and the ground starts sinking lower. On the outside it doesn't look like it's going to be much to walk through but once you're in there it's like a maze. You can very easily lose the people who you're with and you can't really see the street from it anymore. I think the artist did an amazing job creating such an interactive memorial. The visitors are supposed to experience that feeling of looking at something and perceiving it not to be a threatening thing or something that could overwhelm you or something you could become lost in. That's what the case conveys.

One of the reasons why the German people had no idea of what was going on was that all of these concentration camps were built in very out of the way places. They weren't built next to a neighborhood or in the middle of a community. They were built in these out of the way places where nobody had any idea that they were there and didn't learn about them until it was too late. If you actually study a lot of this stuff even some of the SS officers started getting appalled at some of the shit that was going on.

There were definitely accounts of people who had been following Hitler and then as they got further into it were just shocked. They didn't know from the beginning what his agenda was. There are quite a few accounts of people who he was rather close to who were trying to appeal to him and asked him what it was he was doing. Why are you taking these courses of action against the Polish people and against the Jews? It's really inaccurate and it's really not fair to the people who didn't speak out to keep it in our minds that everyone followed him and everyone supported him. Certainly there were people who followed him and supported him but there certainly were others who when it did come to a point that once they realized what was going on, they were absolutely appalled. They did not any longer support him.

What a lot of people also don't know is that there were Jewish people who agreed with Hitler. Einstein offered Hitler the bomb and Henry Kissinger admitted that the only reason he left Germany was not that he had anything against Hitler, he just didn't have anything to offer the guy so he had to leave. People think everyone who was Jewish was totally against him and everyone who wasn't Jewish was totally with him. That's not true. Some people will interact with the enemy against their own. This is something human beings do and the problem is that people absolutely refuse to put the human element into this particular situation. People do some stupid shit. There are assholes out there and you can't do anything to hide it, disguise it, or ignore it. It is what it is. There is always going to be a group of people willing to go along with bullshit whether it's in their best interest or not.

I think one of the scariest things about the Holocaust is that the very things that fueled those events aren't really entirely extraordinary. There are things that exist today and there are things not necessarily on the same scale obviously but these things happen today. I think that the scariest thing is that a lot of people perceive the Holocaust as something that occurred because it was just extraordinary how all these things came together. I think the opposite. I think what’s scary about it is that mentality that existed in the people who perpetrated these crimes of the Holocaust is not something that’s disappeared. It’s something that exists in people today and it’s not dead. That’s why it’s so important to be aware of what happened and to not treat it as something that’s isolated and that happened many years ago. That’s not the case. It’s part of human nature to have the capability to do such things and that’s why I think it’s so important to be aware.

One of my grandfather’s jobs after World War II was to go to these camps and pick up these Jewish children and try to reunite them with their families. He also had to try to track down some of these Nazis that had escaped and in the course of tracking these people down he always reached a dead end in Argentina and the United States. These were two countries where these people fled and they continue with a newer generation of doing the same shit. This shit didn’t die and disappear. It’s still alive today and you see it all around you. It’s not something that just happened in the past and it’s done and over with. It continues because reading history, even during World War II when Germany was considered the enemy you still had American corporations like DuPont, IBM, Ford, and others providing the Nazis with material goods which you would think you’d go to prison for that. They didn’t because for some reason during wars it’s still business as usual. If an ordinary person did that, they’d be in jail. Wars occur to kill ordinary people for power and profit.

What’s sad among many other things is the unbelievable number of civilian casualties. It’s mind boggling the many deaths that occurred.

People always tell me that World War II was fought to protect our freedom but yet they had segregated platoons and my grandfather remembers talking to American soldiers who told him that Black people grow tails at midnight. The Navajo code talkers who played their role in history were sent back after the war to their reservations to die in poverty and these Black people were sent back to their ghettos and were discriminated against. Whose freedom were they fighting for? The freedom of White people?

What’s interesting or tragic, many people who came to the U.S. after World War II was over who had been persecuted such as the Jews and other groups that were undesirable to the Nazis, saw how the African-Americans were treated. They saw the signs that were so reminiscent of no Jews allowed here and no Jews allowed here and no Blacks here. They come here and it’s the same thing.

Jewish people in this country were discriminated against during World War II as well. “Oh yeah, we fought World War II to save the Jews.” Okay, why were you so hateful to the Jews in your own country if you’re so worried about the Jews in Poland and Germany? People didn’t like people of other religious groups or races in the U.S. at that time. I think the reason why World War II was fought was because all these politicians wanted to be the big dicks that control the world and Hitler was too much competition for them so they put him out of the picture. It was all about politics and money. I don’t think it had anything to do with ordinary people in general.

Sadly you want to believe that was more of a motive and perhaps for some it was but yeah, it certainly wasn’t the only reason.

That’s something I never understood. “Oh yeah, we saved all these lives.” The Civil Rights Act wasn’t passed until 1964. How the hell do you explain that? How do you explain treating non-Whites in the U.S. the same way that Jews were treated in Germany? How do you explain that and I don’t think you can.

No, certainly not. I can’t imagine having survived during those events and then coming here seeing the same thing. The same attitudes of others. I used to not think about these things because I would just become entirely overwhelmed by how sad it all is. Actually until recently I did not know a lot about the Holocaust because every time I would read about it I would just become so upset. I didn’t really know what to do with the information but it came to a point where I didn’t want to be someone who couldn’t handle something so I would walk away from it no matter how upsetting that something may be. Sometimes it gets overwhelming because we wish we could do something bigger. Sometimes the best that you can do is be as aware as you can possibly be of the realities of what has happened and what goes on. Share whatever you’ve seen with others who you feel might find it beneficial or interesting. You can only do as much as you can do. Sometimes it feels overwhelming because you feel you could do more. I certainly felt that way. I volunteered at Auschwitz for a week. In one way I felt really happy about that and in another way in light of all this what have I really done? We can only do what we can do. I think it’s really important not to let that feeling of how huge something is prevent you from doing anything. That’s how a lot of people feel. There is always going to be an element of evil in the world. I don’t think we can make that disappear. I feel we have one of two choices. We can live in a world where there’s a lot of evil and good people are so brought down by it that they do nothing. Or we can live in a world where there’s a lot of evil and good people do what they can to provide something good in the midst of all of it. Maybe those two options don’t sound entirely stellar either way but if I had choose between the two, I would pick the world where even though you can’t save the world there are people who are contributing something positive. No matter how small it may be it does make a difference. It all sounds kind of cheesy but it’s all we can do.

There are people out there who are doing some really fucked up shit politically and otherwise and there has to be at least a small group of people in this world that are sane. Whatever little part we can play in that is very important. That’s why I enjoy my webzine. I may have a government that’s trying to basically be in the opposition of the rest of the world but at the same time I’m still in contact with people all over the world and we still have diplomatic relations. At the end of the day that’s all that matters. Ordinary people still have diplomatic relations. That’s my little contribution.

It’s so important. That really is what makes a difference. Individuals doing that. Imagine if every person thought well me doing this doesn’t make a big difference and everyone stopped. The world would be a completely dismal place.

Well, we’ve covered everything from your new record to the state of the world like we normally do. Any other thoughts or comments?