He was silently moving from table to table placing his packages and moving away. I took out my 2 bucks and put the pen in my bag. As he came back around to collect his pens, he took my dollars and we smiled at each other.

I watched him as he went to the other tables and was surprised to find that no one looked at him. People kept their faces turned away, stared rigidly forward, or became suddenly enraptured by their food. Instead of a man making a trade as a means of income, he became a ghost to these people, unseen and unwanted.

I could almost hear them thinking, “oh here’s another hand-out, he’s not deaf-this is just a scam, get a real job for christ’s sake, I already donated to ____ – that’s enough, can’t even eat in peace….”

How many times do we choose to not see the man or woman on the corner of the off-ramp holding some form of Please-Help-Me Sign, or the homeless person on the street? How many times do we flip the channel on the ads that show hungry children in Africa, or orphans in South America? How many times do we leave the room when the news talks about the war in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Why do we choose not to see? Is it because the world has so many problems that we would become so overloaded with the weight of it that we wouldn’t be able to get out of bed? Is it because we are so busy trying to keep our own lives together that we couldn’t possibly fit another thing into it – even in thought? Is it because we are afraid
to feel? All of the above?

Whatever our reasons, we only have to look at history to understand what happens when we choose not to see. The Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields, and Rwanda were only possible because we, as a collective, turned our eyes away. Genocide can only happen at the end of a long series of denials. A tiny act of averting our eyes,
multiplied by millions, over time, created it.

What does that say about our world now? Global warming, the economic meltdown, global poverty, and pollution (to name a few) did not happen like a tsunami force of nature that suddenly engulfed us. It happened over time, while no one was looking.

So next time there’s a pen in plastic placed on our table, or a homeless person standing on a curb, try to see the man or woman standing in front of us. If we can do that, we will be taking the first step towards changing the world.

Marisa

http://www.oneloveformusic.com

I’ve thought a lot about that movie line since I first heard it many years ago (I own the movie on VHS) and believe that it is a most beautiful sentiment.  I also believe that it is true.

(There’s another blog in here about how we create the demise of our own relationships by seeing our lovers through the eyes of jealousy, fear, and our own issues rather than from a place of trust, love, and who we are with them in any given moment, but I’ll save that one for another time).

As I’ve thought about it, I have realized that perhaps the best gift we can give to other people is a glimpse of how we see them.  To be a reflecting glass of their own beauty by letting them see themselves through our eyes.  The other thing this creates is a requirement within each of us to actually see the beauty in others, a skill I have worked hard to develop, but one I know many other people, especially now, do not have, or care to have.  One they are, indeed, afraid to have.

My point here is that we should all take the time to contemplate what it is that draws us to the people in our lives and then share that with them.  Freely.  Unabashedly. Fearlessly.  Powerfully.

Share it without anticipation of any reaction.  Share just for the sake of sharing.  Give them this small part of yourself to shine a light on the seeds of confidence and beauty that have been planted in their own soul.  We all have the seeds, it’s just that many of us don’t tend our gardens or have people in our lives to help us tend them.

Think about the powerful effect of creation this would have on our world if every single person did this for just one other person.  Rather than creating fear and strife we would create love and unity.  Rather than tearing down people, communities, and economies, we would strengthen and build those very things.  Rather than hiding behind the walls of fear and intimidation, we would break through them and eradicate them for all time.  If it can happen with the Berlin Wall as it did 20 years ago, it can happen again in Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and right here in the US.

Be bold and unstoppable.  Be a mirror for the inner beauty of others.  Friend and foe, known and unknown, loved and feared.  You may just see your own inner beauty reflected back at you.

http://www.oneloveformusic.com

I wonder? Is that really the case? I was once again on that repugnant of contraptions that we Londoners commonly refer to as “The Tube”. Now, on this particular journey, I confess to feeling a little heavy, perhaps weighed down by the catastrophic realization that even on a Sunday I was facing my metallic nemesis.

Anyway, as I launched my weary frame onto my carriage and sank exhaustedly into my well worn seat, my apathy was shaken by a couple (couldn’t have been beyond 16) who sprang buoyantly through the closing doors with all the exuberance of “star crossed lovers”. They were joined by Barney, a recent fury addition to the couplet (probably one won at the shooting galleries of the local fair that had brightly swung into town and one who was actually taller than the both of them). The fast, excitable talk soon waned to a more crushing tiredness that the tube tends to induce (see even the young aren’t immune), and before you could say “Romeo, Romeo, where for art…” (yes, I think you get the picture) they were fast asleep, his head on her shoulder, and her arms wrapped around the new man in her life.

Now, I reckon she got it spot on – the toy bear was definitely the more attractive option. Fury, soft, big, marble like eyes, and most pertinently of all a good listener who never interrupts. “What about our hero, the one who’s sharp aim had allowed Barney to become a part of their fleeting lives together, and one in which will form part of their memories for the remainder of their long years whether they be together or not,”…I hear you scream (long sentence and you must all be out of breath). Well, yes. What about him? How could he be so easily put aside? He has something to say. He is actually real. His heart beats. His lungs heave with big gobfuls of air.

Most importantly, chemical reactions take place in his body and physiologically make him react with the world and those round him as it does with her. So what is it about something that is so appealing to the eye it makes us forget everything that may be in the foreground to focus solely on that? I know I do it.

Well, my hunch is that it’s love, an overwhelming appreciation of something that sparks the most complicated of sequences within us. We love what we see or we hate it. We’re governed by instincts that simple. What strikes me is how much the things I love stay sharply in my memory no matter how long ago I saw them or felt the emotion. Furthermore, how the emotion complicatedly evolves with us. Unlike hate that remains singular and unfulfilled.

http://www.oneloveformusic.com

For almost all of us that have seen ‘The Dark Knight’, these lines are burned into immortality. They encapsulate the essential battle that exists between Batman and The Joker, as well as the internal struggle that burns inside Bruce Wayne. Thus giving rise to his alter ego.

On reflection they raise a much deeper argument on the status of our own lives. Is this really the case? Do some people have a predilection for violence, or chaos, or general all round malevolence? Are some among us destined to commit atrocities, just as there may be some of us destined to achieve greatness?

It’s a very convenient argument for some. Yes, we are all born evil and all that. There is no helping some of us. We just want to be bad, and, by hook or by crook, bad we shall be. Nah, I don’t buy it myself. It’s just that – too convenient. This argument lacks an appreciation of the world in which we live, a tough, often cruel environment that stretches the limits of our consciousness and our own internal conflict, a world that challenges us everyday, and examines us, often under the most trying of circumstances.

Now, in this environment we are faced with a choice. How that choice becomes manifest has so much to do with the environment in which we find ourselves, but also our own desire to make one decision rather than another.

For The Joker, he was never able to recover from the brutality of his father (if you believe that particular story) and so set upon a course of cathartic chaos. This story has been played out in many a life. Cause and consequence, rather than being impervious to it, we are shaped by it. We respond in a myriad of reactions that are all too human…and hey, why shouldn’t they be, we are after all human.

So, some want to watch the world burn, and others want to see it flourish.

Right, but “what would you have me do?” Well… “Endure, Master Wayne.”

It’s not really that easy is it? If it were, the world would be a place without conflict. Endurance, put in the simplest of terms, is the ability to continue over long, exhausting periods. To do this a series of steps needs to occur one after the other…oh, and for a really, really long time! But to endure that is what we must do.

The first step for us all is to log on to http://www.oneloveformusic.com. That’s the easy part. What you do beyond that is your choice….

My parents were both school teachers and couldn’t agree on two names that didn’t remind one of them of a nightmare student they’d had.

I have a “B”.

Just a “B”.

No, there’s no period after it, because it doesn’t actually stand for anything. It’s simply a “B”.

When I graduated from college, the Registrar suffered great angst over my lack of a middle name. He insisted that I must have my middle name on my degrees. He assured me that he wouldn’t laugh at it, regardless of what it might be.

“Is it Bertha?” he queried.

Sigh…

He guessed just about every awful “B” name in existence, each met with a more exasperated sigh from me than the previous. Ultimately, a copy of my Birth Certificate placated him and he acquiesced to the reality of my missing middle name.

In my sorority, they ventured to give me a middle name…settling, oddly enough, on Beezer, which means absolutely nothing, but in a strange twist of fate, is the name of my one of my friend’s cats, currently.

Well, a few years ago, my friend Steve sent me this e-mail. I have one line of it taped on a mirror that I look into every day. It says, “Stacy, you can make a HUGE difference…I am certain of that. People are so powerful when they want to be. BE powerful.”

Now, Steve is someone for whom I have great respect. A person of unwavering friendship, support and integrity. A real gem of a human being. So these words mean quite a lot to me.

I got to thinking the other day about my “B” and the word “be”. I thought to myself, “Stacy, your name, technically says, ‘Stacy, be Hess.’”

Hmmm…what does it mean to “be Hess”?

Well, it means a lot of things. And I started listing them:

Be honest. First with yourself and then with others.
Be kind. To yourself and to everyone you encounter.
Be real. Always.
Be happy. Really, when you boil it all down, what’s not to be happy about.
Be true. To your heart. To your values. To your beliefs.
Be you. There’s nothing more important than this.
Be understanding. Of the similarities and differences encountered each day.
Be conscious. Socially, environmentally, spiritually, emotionally.
Be brave. Don’t live in fear…ever.
Be powerful. We’re all powerful. And we’re more powerful together than apart.

What I came away from this with was one last “be”…

Be SOMEthing. It doesn’t matter what, as long as it has meaning to you.

ONELOVEfor…music is just eight days away (probably seven by the time you read this) and it offers you a chance to be.

Be an agent of change.
Be a promoter of peace.
Be a messenger of unity.
Be a provider of love.

Be someone who cares. Call a radio station or three or five and ask them to play “One Love” on 9/21 at 9:21 AM and/or PM (Pacific) on September 21.

Be someone who gets involved. Sign up as a ONELOVER at www.oneloveformusic.com and spread the word.

Reach deep inside and BE yourself. It is within all of us…we are born with it. All we need now is for YOU to find it and to BE powerful.

As my wise friend Steve said, “People are so powerful when they want to be. BE powerful.”

Don’t YOU want to be powerful?

Peace and please tell five friends about ONELOVEfor…music.

Stacy Hess

Amber Zuniga
cultureboulevard.blogspot.com

So I was walking down the strip headed back to my hotel with the fellas when I notice a man standing on the corner holding CD’s, which turned out to be his demo. As I approached, we made eye contact and he asked me if I was a fan of hip-hop. I told him I was a fan, but I failed to mention how much of a fan I really was as well as to what degree my involvement in hip-hop stems. He told me he’s a young rapper trying to get his hustle right by making music and selling it, as well as getting exposure along the way. He offered to let me listen to his mix tape, and tried selling it to me for 10 dollars.

First, I asked why he was selling it for so much money. He told me because there were 22 quality tracks on the mix tape. Then I asked him, if he really wants people to listen to his music, why not just give it away to people who are interested in listening? (Now one of the worst places to do so is probably the Las Vegas strip since a high percentage of the people walking by are probably intoxicated and won’t hold on to anything for dear life except their drink). He asked me, “If I give away my music, how am I supposed to eat?” …so I told him:

If you are really trying to get your music heard and build a fan base, you need to supply people with music to listen to. Unless you find that rare person that thrives off finding fresh new talent to listen to, or someone that enjoys following the career of an artist as they move up in the game, no one really wants to buy music from someone they’ve never heard of. Especially, when everyone can download music from an artist they know they will like, for free. You’ll make your money doing shows, because if you are dope on record then people will want to come see you live…from there your success comes from not just being a recording artist, but a performing artist as well.

That’s the gist of what I told him before I walked off. The point I was trying to make to him is that using your music as a promotional tool to build a fan base rather than as a unit to turn profit would be way more beneficial to an artist in the long run as opposed to earning the quick buck now. You could make some money now and acquire a few fans, or develop a large fan base that will ideally garnish you with enough people to sell out a venue for a show…I personally would choose the career move. 

By Randy Z.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Everyone. The only difference between those who are and those who aren’t is the road not yet traveled. That road is what leads to money. The people who take it are the ones who want it, no matter what. So they will do anything to get there, even if it means leaving their comfort zone (home, country, you get the point), and there is nothing wrong with that. As long as that road is taken for a noble reason…right? See, what really should matter is if money brings the people what they really want: happiness (or, in other words, the other road traveled). True, it is the same metaphorical road, but the outcomes are different. One leads to money which, in turn, can easily bring greed. The other brings prosperity, or happiness that doesn’t necessarily require money. It’s up to the person who takes that road. I’m sure that money can’t buy happiness per se, but arguably so, it’s a great substitute.

Those who still believe in the “American Dream” are the ones who aren’t even American. They are the ones who will risk their lives and their livelihood to come to America for that “better life” and better opportunities to reach that American Dream. It doesn’t matter what country they are from, they all want the same thing: to be happy. They get what they want since they paved their own road to go down. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to be greater because the dream that helped build America is still alive in them today.

So maybe what people should actually look at is if that road they want to take is what they really want. I would much rather be happy than be stuck in some dead-end job that pays well, but that is only my view on what being successful really is. 

 By Amber Zuniga

Police in the city of Orland have detained a man, after suspecting him of committing that vehemently blood soaked  atrocity of  putting cartoon posters up throughout the city.  How very sad, that in a country where free speech is enshrined into law, police should be acting not as a bulwark of people’s rights but as a tunicate on them.

This incident bares a grim resemblance to the Mohammad Cartoon riots of 2005, when radical members of the European Islamic community called for, amongst other things, the imprisonment and death of a Danish political cartoonist, who’s satire was published in Jyllandas-Posten.

What American police have done to a man alleged to have put up political cartoons of Barack Obama is rather  different—it is worse.  It is one thing for radical sectarian  elements in a society to demand the cessation of free speech/to call for the radical over-throw of  European values of Enlightenment liberalism, and social justice, but when police become the executers of such a vile, barbaric will, then the values of society have come under attack from those charged with buttressing those values. 

This is not an argument for or against Barack Obama, any more than supporting Jyllandas-Posten for publishing the Mohammad cartoons is a statement in favour of, or in opposition to Islam.  What taking this stand is about, is taking a stand for free speech, striking a blow for Enlightenment values, and reminding people of  the great Enlightenment values that have made both Europe and the English Speaking World, traditionally the most advanced societies in the world.  

When free speech is under attack, no matter what that speech may be, all of us should feel as though we’ve been unlawfully gagged, and after one is gagged, he or she can all the more easily be chained.  Let us therefore  be resolute in shouting in the most dynamically excruciating volume we can muster—we will n’er be silenced, we shall keep the flame of Enlightenment alive against all those who oppose it. 

By Adam Garrie

Matisyahu is a Jewish Reggae musician who has, somehow, conveyed a popular world view into just one song.  He wants no violence and hate, but rather, freedom and equality. This is a common desire among oppressed people in third world countries, but Matisyahu is from America. I’m not saying that the U.S has no freedom, it does (it’s the foundation of our country…), but the fact remains that there are still people who don’t believe in equality. They believe they are better because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, socio-economic status etc. So where does that leave those who are discriminated against? They get stuck in this permanent submission just because of another person’s one-sided view of the world. This is the America we live in today.

Americans pride themselves on being able to call their country a “melting pot,” but that is simply not true. I’ve heard another term that is a better description: we are a salad. It goes like this: The Lettuce acknowledges the presence of the Carrot and that’s it. Now, the Lettuce thinks that it is better than the Carrot because one can’t have a salad without there being Lettuce in it. But what the Lettuce doesn’t know is that the Carrot adds flavor and without it, the salad would just be rabbit food. This is an accurate representation of the American people. We acknowledge those who are different and put up with them (also known as tolerance). If the U.S truly was a “melting pot,” then people would acknowledge and accept those who are different from them, and not just put up with them. Our people are just tossed in a three thousand mile stretch of land, not mixed. Maybe all we need is some common ground to show that we are better when we work together to make what we have greater…otherwise known as ranch dressing.

Matisyahu’s song is beautifully written and just really sounds good. He knows how people are and wants change, and peace. He has hope for this world, and he’s not the only one.

Listen…and then you will see.

 to hear the song visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-aAZT15eHc

By Amber Zuniga

Amber is the latest writer to work with us and we are delighted to bring post her debut blog. She is a first year student at UC Riverside majoring in Creative Writing. Ideally she would like to pursue a career as an editor for a publishing company, but for the time being Amber enjoy’s using her blog as a medium to provide her own commentary on books she is reading as well as her perspective on other topics, too. She like’s music for the simple fact that she can hear it. She like’s reading because she can see words turn into images. She like’s writing because, well, she is the writer. These are the things that are real to Amber, they are palpable. She cherishes them since they can be taken away at anytime, so she take’s advantage of what she can. Anything Amber can see or hear inspires her, whether it is the clouds after a storm or a strum on a guitar. She didn’t choose to be a writer. At first, all Amber liked was to read. Then, it just came to her…She already knew that music was going to be part of her life, Amber just wasn’t sure how. All she knows is that she can write, she can give it a good beat, and hope it can make a difference.