Journal of. Published under the auspices of the HiSky* Trust, founded 1957 to promote disorder. (*Hiss-Key)
David Raffin (postHumorist, poet, Metaphysicist)
(*Metaphysics : Branch of philosophy dealing with first principles: abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.)
Rabbit needed a place to rest. And the safety in the open was a matter, as usual, of grave importance.
So he claimed the right of the land and began to dig. Down. Sloping down. Into the cool and welcoming Earth. Some creatures were displaced, with as much grace as could be administered in the circumstance, and the network of tunnels joined the network of tunnels that formed the local underground. A refuge of perpetual night.
One digs to escape, dig it?
There were moles in the underground.
It was to be expected. As the Rabbit was relaxing after a cool dig, in the splendor of his new digs, one of the moles literally tripped over him.
“I say, who’s there?” shouted a mole in a hoarse whisper.
“I am just an adventurer,” said the Rabbit. “I am not a fighter.”
One digs to escape, dig it?
“Well, sir,” said the mole, “you are a malingerer! Hiding away from the troubles of the world! A shirker. What do you say for yourself?”
“At the moment,” said Rabbit, “nothing.”
The accusation was not without some merit.
“Deadly silence,” said the mole.
And there were dim eyes all around. They shone in the light of the Fire. In the underground. There were moles in the underground. Suspicious. For good reason.
One digs to escape.
“We are the consolidated underground,” said the mole. “We are what is left of those who came before. Scraps. Bits and pieces.”
“Where will you go from here?” asked Rabbit.
“Onward,” said the mole. “To the inevitable ending. We fight no longer to win, no longer is it personal survival which drives us. We fight especially hard when we cannot win, for then our actions matter even more. For then it is a matter of righteous history.” He shrugged his slight shoulders. “We travel the underground. It provides escape routes and comfort. Comfort is, you know, fleeting in this world.”
Among the moles were scattered others. To the far side was a shrew. Her eyes illuminated and flickered reflecting the Rabbit’s light.
Dig it?
“Now,” said the mole, “we construct the story of our glory. Battling against great odds we keep true to our ethics. And hope that our ideals emerge victorious. You see young Vanja. She joined us after her village was destroyed. We have scattered into cells and travel the tunnels. We emerge one at a time and tell our story at random locations, to random listeners. Then we retreat back underground. It is the only way. Vanja is particularly adept at this kind of warfare. It is like starting a thousand fires. It is uncontrollable. It is unconquerable.”
“Have you heard,” said Vanja, “the song of the traveler? It is reverberating everywhere. The traveler landed in a field. Fell out of the sky. And arose. It was a celebratory feast the traveler had landed on the outskirts of. There were park benches and food. Flowers. And merriment. But the traveler saw above the festivities hung the body of a man, dangling over the events. Still. And no one else gazed toward the sight. Instead, children played and lovers fraternized, even quarreled over trifles, while above the man twisted in the happy breeze. And the traveler said, ‘Who is that man? Why does he hang around here?’ And the crowd turned ugly. For it was not a topic of polite conversation. And words were minced. And there were misunderstandings and malice. And the traveler left, for it was not the destination, you see, but afterward people kept looking at the hanging man, who they had previously forgotten. And they were ashamed. But they did not know what to do about it. And that is how the picnic was spoiled, but there were disagreements about why.”
“I’ll take the shooting. I’m used to that. I’ve been shot a few times in the past, and I guess I can stand it again.”
—Joe Hill
I was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund but more commonly I was also known as Joseph Hillström. But to my people I am known as Joe Hill. Always will be. Born in Sweden, 1879. Killed, some say, in the unholy state of Utah, by the Starvation Army, 1915. Still, here I am. Very revealing. My popularity? As it is, I attribute it to the value of my message. Do you know my friend Fred Hampton? He said, “You can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill a revolution…you can jail a liberator but you can’t jail liberation.” I wish I’da said that. But I got a lot of good ones myself, and I begrudge nothing from my good comrades.
That is what I said, about getting shot, to the judge in Salt Lake who sentenced me to death because I was a revolutionary. That wasn’t the crime, it rarely is. Subterfuge is the greatest ally of the oppressors. Smoke and mirrors. Carrots and sticks. Illusions. Truth the greatest aim of the revolution. The truth of the Unity of all life. Forget that and risk the future. Betray the revolution. Those who control the narrative try to drown out the signal. Power is very corrosive. The replacement they offer is plentiful without being satisfying, profits out of balance. A comrade, regardless of the propaganda, is an individual dedicated to Unity and charged to work toward the elimination of all needless want.
You know what I have? A song in my heart. Each chorus built of individual voices, brought together for a higher purpose. A guitar has multiple strings which work together to strum. A ballad of love a lament of martyrdom. If one knows no words they can always hum. In time the words will reemerge to make manifest.
A song is repeated more than any speech. It gets stuck in the head. It trans-mutates. It triggers. Triggering is the full focus of the true artist, who is by necessity a subversive. A revolutionary. A true artist is so far along the trail they are as likely to be hated as lauded. Revolution requires time.
My friend Thomas Merton says, “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” Both important pastimes. Sometimes the most productive thing is to pass the time.
A lot of my songs are parodies of the songs of the Starvation Army. A counter-point. And which are remembered? Mine are. I made Casey Jones a union scab. I pointed out the irrelevancy of pie-in-the-sky on an empty stomach. A karmic I-owe-you dishonored.
But the act of creation allows one to change a thing into another, to trans-mutate. For all intents and relevant purposes. There is nothing but change. Stability is an illusion. There is the past, the future, the now, the then, and the ideal. Some look in the past to find the ideal, some to the future. And they will fight over it. Fight over something which isn’t there, which exists only in the boundaries of the mind. Fluid. Even the ideal of the past never really existed. We almost always remember better the good. Or envision it. But sometimes you have to look at the bad. There is no other way to address it. Ignoring it with your head in the sand, digging down to make a hole, a home, albeit temporary, is rarely the best option. It is best to have an ideal. A good one. Always a good one. The best. Something to live up to.
I always tried to make friends wherever I went. It was easy for me, in a way, because I brought the music. Still, I was poor, an itinerant worker. So were my people, my audience. Listeners, backup singers. I joined the IWW, the Wobblies, the One Big Union. I cartooned for their newspaper. Our newspaper. And I wrote songs printed in their Little Red Songbook. Our Little Red Songbook. A songbook for all the people. Many printings, still sought after today.
I was an immigrant. A Swedish speaker. But I learned English as I traveled the country and became an artist in a new culture. But we were hated. By some. Loved and aided by others, those disposed to Love.
When a town, controlled by the robber barons of the local industry (and were there ever a shortage of such!), declared the union illegal, when they pledged to jail all unionists, the call went out through the IWW and the Wobblies surged to town. We filled the jails. We overwhelmed the system. We broke them when they tried to break us. We stripped them of their only dear possession: money. And if they would not share it they would lose some by protecting it, watch it drain away. But they took solace they were still not sharing! And what is money but an imaginary marker of time, time transferred from the worker to the robber barons so they can stockpile other people’s time. Think of themselves as timekeepers. Regulators. Lords. Leave the time to their heirs. Build shrines to their own glory as many starve. We would not allow such oppression to stand unchallenged.
I could not be there, but in 1919 the city of Seattle stopped for five days in a general strike of fellow workers. Wages frozen by years of what they called a “Great” war, an innovation on the old, the authorities were content to starve the workers to feed the war. And the workers rose up. It was part of the larger struggle, same as the Diggers on Saint George’s Hill in 1649. Two years later, in 1921, the sailors joined the people in Kronstadt in a rebellion against the Soviet government because they also failed to feed the people, having established a new class structure to replace the old, as the revolution spun. Out of control.
I provided anthems of resistance which reverberate through time.
I observe, report, pass it on. Pass it on.
The world is divided between the haves and the have-nots. Their numbers are not equitable. The larger class serves the smaller. The larger class makes possible the luxury of the smaller. The system functions to serve the smaller class. They control it. It is sold as the natural order.
Many are employed as servants, but over time things do change. While today there are still many servants employed by the leisure class, more and more workers toil on factory floors. Construction. Building the future worker’s state under the nose of the taskmasters.
Times change. The hermit is on the wane. Hermitages. Men (men only for it is a sexist trade, as men are not employed in whore-houses, to each opposite work) employed by the manor born to live in a shack (a hermitage) on the outskirts of the estate. Near the road in. To be seen, but not heard. Split from the herd. Kept isolated. Alienated from his fellow workers as well as his product. What is the product? Possession. Alienated even from human touch. That is one way to impede the spread of the resistance, One Big Union.
But no more – they won’t even let a man alone!
Now one must be cramped alone together, closed in, alone in the crowd, still alienated from the fruits of their own labor. Revolution. Revolution. Revolution.
I was arrested.
I was not charged as a revolutionary, though, as I say, that was the true charge. It was a matter of the honor of a good woman.
So when they asked, and they asked, “Did you kill that man? Did not he shoot you and wound you?” In various formulations I said, “I am innocent of this charge. I have robbed no store and shot no shopkeep. My injury is honest; as am I.” For this was a different matter which were none of their concern and risked the reputation of a fine lady. And I had earned this gunshot wound piercing my lung in order to protect her honor, as I would face the next.
I would not tell them the truth. The story of the triangle. The woman. The other man. Which was nowhere near the shopkeep’s end.
The boy eyewitness, after brought to look at me, said, “That’s not him at all!” But he changed his song when they reasoned with him. Though I had no motive. And there had been no robbery. And I was not there.
I will tell you, brothers and sisters, to not waste time mourning my body but to busy yourselves organizing the greater resistance.
I told my friend Big Bill Haywood, “Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t wish to be caught dead in Utah.” He told me he would arrange to have my ashes divided up into 600 small packets to be mailed to union locals around the world.
David Raffin
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