More on April 18th AIR LA meeting

OK, so that police thing turned out to be a stunt. To the people not to experience it personally it has been obvious from the start. To me it wasn’t and I’m damn sure (just as I’m sure my mind is torn to pieces) that some of the present at the um, let’s call it performance, have been terrified at least for a few seconds when that fake SWAT team has raided the room. Apparently 6 people have been detained by the “policemen” to another place and questioned. I can’t help thinking what must have gone through their minds. After all this is the USA and as little I know but the USA today is not how it has been 5 years ago. A lot has changed and not in a good direction. People’s minds have changed for sure and for good.

A Spiraler named Taryn who has been there has posted a beautiful story about her experience at that meeting; so beautiful that it ruined all of my stability :

That was not a show, it was an unforgettable experience.

Understand that the build up began six days previously when we got the resistance phones. That is a long time to wait by a well charged phone longing for a ring to answer your uncertainties and hopes. Speculation only led to more questions and more possibilities and ultimately you just had to accept that you would be taken on someone else’s ride. I didn’t know that would be literal and I didn’t imagine last night could have been better than any of the ideas I had about it.

After the calls started coming a few of us self-organized and had a motorcade from Echo Park that went up onto the freeway in the shadows of the downtown skyline then down again winding through a narrow alley into a plastic-blackened, fenced in parking lot. We were instructed to surrender anything of value except our phones and identification. We were corralled into a corner of the parking lot sealed with yellow caution ribbon and told to wait an hour. We signed releases for our likenesses in multimedia formats that concluded with “I am getting on this bus of my own free will. I don’t know where I’m going or what will happen to me when I get there.” And really, no one could have dreamed what was to come.

The baby blue bus was creaky and dilapidated. Black paper curtailed sight through the windows and a black curtain blocked the driver’s carriage. The standing-room-only ride was rife with twists and turns that had people gripping their safety bars. The feeling of uncertainty added to the experience and made it ride like a rollercoaster at times. Inclines and declines indicated we were in the hills – we were absolutely in the woods in terms of knowing what might happen next.

The first room of the compound could have been any American community center. It looked like the kind of place you find scout meetings or Friday night bingo from the way the folding chairs were arranged into rows. Everyone sat so quietly there you could have heard a nail drop. After five minutes on the edges of our seats, the speaker came in. He was like a younger Samuel L. Jackson only he used a fictional character to say something very real.

The speech ended and we were directed through a door. Then with the help of OSR members brandishing AIR bandanas Zapatista style, we were directed up a narrow and rickety staircase. We honestly didn’t know if we were headed back to the bus or where we were going. It was entirely disorienting and creepy. The first room of the compound didn’t hint at the labyrinthine vastness of it. After we were upstairs we crossed an outdoor bridge into another building and rounded yet another dark corner to find a fright, err, freight elevator. The first ten or so got in the elevator and the rest took the stairs… but we all went down.

I didn’t know what was happening but I heard someone say the magic words “Is that a stage?” Not exactly, it was a six inch high platform the size of my kitchen. The band was already on it and before most of us had even figured that much out because the room was pitch and we were still getting situated, they bombarded us with Beginning of the End. NIN are pretty damn good at surprise entrances in general, but this was like a freak-out ride with a free fall you don’t see coming because you’ve been kept in the dark the whole time. The whole entrance concept was turned on its head in that the audience was making it while the band waited for us. Up until that second we really didn’t know they were there. Even afterwards on the bus we couldn’t believe what had happened.

The first four songs were all American debuts and it’s all kind of blur right now. When you’re nearly eyelevel with the band and there’s no barricade you don’t really know how to react. There is no precedent for an event like this. You can’t not get worked up to Survivalism live; every syllable of the chorus is thrown like a punch. There, you’ve got your fist. Last is so good live it makes straight guys dance well. March of the Pigs finally let me shake off the vestiges of disbelief and confirmed that it was a crazy, one of a kind NIN performance – but a NIN performance none the less. Before seeing it in this context, I hadn’t realized how well We’re In This Together fits with the YZ concept. I think a lot of the older NIN songs will end up with new significance on the coming tour. The Frail sets a heavy mood, it’s reflective and also gives one the sense that there is something wicked yet to come. I eyed the full set lists taped to the ground expectantly. Yet (as is so often the case) just when you think you know what’s coming next Nine Inch Nails have a way of catching you off guard and blowing you away.

I didn’t want to go. When the raid started I looked towards Trent for a clearer indication of what was going on. As I was getting pushed out I saw him put his hands before the look of terror on his face as he crouched beneath a hail of hallow gunfire. It was brilliant.

I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have been there. When we first got on the bus Ms. OSR instructed us vaguely about the first ever meeting but hit the nail on the head when she called it “[an] historic event.” What kind of band does this? I’ve never heard of anything like it before. It was like theatre in the round inverted: the players outnumbered the audience and imprisoned us from the periphery.

I’m seriously awe struck. I’ve thought that NIN are the greatest band in the world for a long time. Even though there were long gaps, the albums were always worth the wait. But this is something else – the scope of it goes well beyond any previous art form I’m aware of. It’s a proud day to be a fan.

The speech in question at the beginning of the meeting is good; weird at first sight but good :

AIR LA meeting 04-18-2007 speech

What the hell were you thinking? I just want to start by saying, you’re all dead! You were seen gathering around a piece of protest art. A shady guy in a van gave you resistance themed material, and you took it, in public, without knowledge of who they were. What if they were if FBI, NSA? We gave you phones; cell phones send a signal out to the network every 10 seconds or so. Remember after 9/11 there was a bio-terrorism scare some guy sending the anthrax spores through the mail, the FBI caught him by triangulating on his cell phone signal. So, you self identified as dissidents, you kindly agreed to carry tracking devices on yourselves, you showed up for a resistance meeting and you singed a waiver that gave us permission to do… ANYTHING. You allowed yourselves to be hustled onto a van, you let us take away any way of communicating with the outside world that you had. We then drove you to an unknown location and led you down to this room; if this was Nazi Germany, I would walk out that door laughing, and fucking Zyklon B would start hissing out of the vents.

You learned a lesson, guys. In a real resistance, you don’t get a lot of second chances. Look. you’ve seen some scary website about what the future might become, me too. So let’s start by saying, you’re not crazy, I’m not crazy, and go from there. ‘Cause like most people, I need a kick in the ass to change. I mean I was sort of politically aware, I guess, but mostly back then I read the Drudge report every now and then, and felt guilty if I didn't get around to voting on Election Day. Then awhile back, some people I know, came across a.. uh… call it a transmission… uh… a few broken pieces of the future. That’s some scary shit, it shook my belief that it, you know, can happen. The other weird thing was, we thought we recognized a some things. Uh, a couple of names, uh, a certain style of a piece of art, the sound of the music. So we sent some of this stuff around to some people we thought we recognized. Obviously, we didn’t say, “dude look, you’ve been beamed back from the future”, because none of us wanted to get get enemas from Nurse Ratchet in a state psychiatric facility. What we did instead was, we sent a piece of work to the person we thought created it with a note attached like, "Hey, is someone trying to copy your style?" Like that. For instance, we sent a music clip to a certain artist, and said, “hey this sounds like something new, is it a uh bootleg or is it maybe somebody trying to leak something out of the studio on you?” A couple days later there’s something in my inbox from this artist, the subject line is, “How the fuck did you get this?” Turns out he had written the exact words down in a notebook a few days ago, he hadn’t even started recording the song. The rest you know. We’ve been trying to find as many of these transmissions as possible, trying to get them out there. People are waking up to this shit! I mean they’re painting street art, they’re writing songs, I’m involved with a website, Open Source Resistance, maybe you’ve seen it?! [audience responds with muffled affirmations ] Yeah! Is this the future? I don’t know, but I sure as hell hope not.

Unfortunately, that future is closer than you think. Think about what you all have witnessed in the last few years, right here in America. In the aftermath of 9/11, the current administration has done unbelievable damage to civil liberties. If you are not a US citizen, and the government decides, God help you, that you are an enemy combatant, which that can define pretty much at will. They can throw you in jail and keep you there, FOREVER! Is there anyone here who is not a US citizen? [one audience member indicates yes] Hey! Just being here at this meeting might be sufficient cause to call you an enemy combatant. Ok, if we were the feds, we might have set this up to scare the shit out of everybody else, but you, you don’t go home tonight. You, get a one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay. What about those of us who are citizens? Tonight, you’re lucky, but what if there was another 9/11 attack? Big terrorist attack, something bigger even, something say, right here in LA soon. Lots of people killed, big chunks of the city evacuated. Do you seriously think the feds wouldn’t extend the Ashcroft laws to make catching terrorists a priority? Listen, I don’t wanna have my plane hijacked by Islamic terrorists either, I’m not crazy, but in the big picture there aren’t a lot of those guys and they don’t have a lot of money. The government has lots of money, and guns, and cops, and lawyers, you don’t want them to get in the habit of using that shit on ya. Keep them honest. Use your voice, be heard!

So what are the ordinary real things we can do to make a difference? Listen, you don’t have to be Gandhi to get involved. If politics seems big and vague, cut it down to size. You don’t have to stop the war in Iraq, look maybe you think you aught to give a shit about Iraq, but you just don’t. Listen, I grew up in Orange County, when they built state route 241 back in the ‘90s, I didn’t pay attention. They said it would make the commute a lot easier, and I was all for that. Then they bulldozed it, right over the Laguna hills, they literally cut the top of the hills and dumped the fill dirt in the valleys. They mutilated it, the place that I grew up in. So then they want to build a southern expansion to 241, they wanna bulldoze it right through the San Mateo Creek watershed, which has 11 federally recognized endangered species. They want to run it up to San Onofre State Park and the Donna O'Neill Land Conservancy, and they want to wipe out the last piece of pristine coast in southern California. Which by the way would wipe out Trestles, surfing buddies of mine say it's the best break in So Cal. Do I look like a surfer? But I joined the Surfriders association because those are the guys who are fighting the hardest against this thing, because it’s local and they give a shit. [audience member “Yeah!”] Yeah! The last attorney general threatened to sue the TCA if went ahead with the 241 extension. If you give a damn, when you go home tonight, send an e-mail mean bean Jerrod Brown, our new attorney general, and tell him the exact same thing, that’s all you have to do, to start. Does that make sense? Look, I’m not asking you to be Gandhi. I’m just asking you to stop, and recognize what matters to you and make a seeing effort to actually change your world and other people who do vote on American Idol. All I want is this: WAKE UP AND GIVE A SHIT! Open your eyes and pay attention, don’t just swallow the spin, everyone’s fucking spinning, governments, gangsters, fortune 500s, the guy next door, do not swallow what they’re shoving down your throat. WAKE UP AND GIVE A SHIT! And for God’s sake please, do not blindly follow the line of bullshit I am giving you right now, I do not want you to buy what I am selling! What do I want? I want you to… [audience “Wake up and give a shit!”] Nice. Do your own thinking; find out where you stand on things that matter to you. I had this really nice thing I was gonna say about how mad I was that you all showed up and all that shit, but let’s skip the bullshit. The future is ours to change, we better fuckin’ get on it. It’s time to move.

I’m puzzled.

And still happy to be a none-American.