| Joe Henry: Conversation With A Great American |
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| Written by Jim Walsh | |
| Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 01:45 AM | |
 Joe Henry Reveille: Strange times, Joseph. Henry: The older I get, the more I’m convinced that every human reaction can be traced to fear. Fear of everything; fear of just plain old mortality, for starters. Reveille: The country’s all about that at the moment. The government selling fear on a macro level, and on the micro, human beings reacting to fear of their own death and what thye're being told to be afraid of. People are wigging out out there. Henry: Right now, there’s some completely imagined idea of the world and our place in it, because A) we’re terrified of the ramifications of what that actually is, and B) the responsibility that comes with the fact that we have so fucked up as a country. I don’t think Bush has any intellect at all, but if he did, I don’t think he could ever accept the responsibility of what he has wrought. He clings to this idea that this is the great crusade, and God’s plan, because to accept responsibility for what has happened on his watch, who could live with that? Who? Reveille: No one. People aren’t built to withstand that kind of self-scrutiny, so it’s a constant state of denial. Henry: People jump off a building because they ran someone over. Think about trying to accept, “I willfully, wantonly, arrogantly caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and fucked up the entire idea of the United States as an institution, as a beacon of some kind of hope in the world. And it will take decades to recover.” You know, you could just slink off to the lecture circuit if you could accept that. I’ve fantasized plenty of times about Colin Powell at a press conference: “You know what? I’ve got to say something. This whole thing has been a deliberate sham. We orchestrated it, we lied to have it, we were power hungry, and here’s how we did it.” He’s a person who I think is struggling. Reveille: When you say he’s struggling, I just wonder how deep into denial and group think they all are. I always go back to corporate America -- and this gets to your record; everything we’re talking about gets to your record – when people are immersed in corporate culture, they can’t see their way out. They can’t see other ways things get done. Henry: That’s true, and when you say how deep are they immersed – very. But Powell, especially, being a career military man where everything is service. If your commander says, “Jump on that grenade,” you jump. I’ve seen enough from him over the years to see that he’s a person with some kind of moral compass, even though he’s forsaken it. I might be superimposing this on him, but I just have this instinctive feeling that he’s really struggling with all this, like, “These fuckers have sold me down the river. They knew I was a good soldier, and they took advantage of the fact that I was a good soldier. They used me as an executioner.” Reveille: You almost have to fantasize, otherwise you relegate them to alien status. And they’re not aliens. They’re us. Henry: I don’t believe that human beings are bankrupt, except for the true sociopaths – of which I think Dick Cheney is one. I have these fantasies because I’m looking for ways to see the humanity in people that I want to despise. I don’t like what it says about me that I would despise anybody. I understand that people out of fear go really far off the rails. So I find myself fantasizing about, “What’s the most human thing I can imagine about this person who I’m disgusted by?” and it’s that they’re wrestling with despair because they’ve sold out their humanity. Reveille: I do the same thing. When they found Saddam in the rat hole, that footage of the hole was all over CNN, it was around Christmas time, for two weeks. There was a white plastic chair that was tipped over, and the first thing I thought was, “I know that chair. I’ve sat in a chair like that at a barbecue or got it at Target or something.” I could feel how my hips shimmied into it and how someone might have tipped it over. I wondered if Saddam did the same thing, so in that moment I knew something about Saddam Hussein: He sat in that chair and struggled with that chair, and if that can be done with the great monster of our time, and if I can think that George Bush and I might have a conversation about baseball, then there really is not that much difference between us. And to call them “they” isn’t helping anything. This really speaks to your record, because the theme seems to be so much about keeping your wits in these times. Maybe at this point, the people who are keeping their wits are supposed to show the rest of us how to find other ways to be, or remind us of what can be. How America was. Henry: I have this impulse that tries to see people deeper than what they stand for. And it’s my shortcoming when I don’t allow myself to see their humanity, because as I understand it, it’s their unwillingness to see somebody else’s humanity that’s gotten us into this place. You know, who am I to say, “You fuckheads, look what you’ve done,” if I do the same thing? If I render them as inhuman on some level, which allows me to hate them guilt-free, then I’ve just stepped off that narrow ledge into the thing that allows me to find them expendable because they’re not human. It’s the great paradox, because I am full of disgust. I’ve never been so outraged. I was just in Europe doing publicity for this record, and every conversation turned into this. I’m ashamed to be an American abroad right now, because I feel some call to account for who we are and how we got here. Reveille: And we should feel shame about what’s happened. We can’t just go, “It was them, not me.” Henry: We elected him twice. Reveille: Yes. You and I. And all those bumperstickers that say otherwise, “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For…” are part of the same system that got us into this. Henry: We get the government we deserve, as a collective consciousness. The reason I don’t like Bush and Cheney and company is because I don’t like the mirror that’s held up to me as an American. I’m disgusted by it, and knocking the mirror over is just putting my fist through it. It doesn’t change anything about what it reflects, it just takes it out from in front of my face for the moment. Reveille: I read a great thing once that talks about this idea of personal change, and it uses the metaphor of a ship – that change is like a giant ship, and you start the change by turning the wheel first. The ship doesn’t start moving right away, but eventually it starts to turn and you get to where you want to go. There’s enough cool things happening, enough grass-roots things coming from people and not governments, that make me think the ship is starting to react to the wheel being turned. Henry: It’s going to take a good while to turn this thing around. It’s a cumbersome process. Reveille: But things happen fast in America, too. It’s not like Europe that way; new eras happen quickly. Henry: I said this in Europe quite a bit, that I think a big problem is that this country is so big that the idea of changing anything is a real abstraction – especially when there are people who are anxious for us to believe that we don’t matter. When 30,000 of us can gather for a peace rally in Hollywood before the invasion, and it gets reported as 5,000, that’s the machine saying “you don’t matter.” Reveille: We were in San Francisco that day. One hundred thousand people, and the news reports said 10,000. Henry: So you can have meetings and fundraisers and yet it’s a pebble in the ocean and the ripple will never reach the other side. I maintain that if we were a smaller country, you could really feel the tension and desire for change. If we understood how galvanized a lot of people are, we’d be on the steps of the White House with torches and rocks, going, “You’ve got two hours to pack your things and get out.” But because the country’s so big, the idea that your collective anger can change anything is a real abstraction. I said to a few journalists when I was in Europe that anybody right now would have to be, in the truest sense of the word, a revolutionary to actually uphold what it actually says in our constitution. It’s a fact. Reveille: And when you know that, and when you know the truth of what this country has become and the various wars it has gone into and the absolute shithole it’s in now, there are times when you feel like you’re going crazy, like you’re the only one and you worry about becoming the ranter, the sputtering dude on the corner with the “The End Is Near” sign. Henry: I was at my sister-in-law’s house last week, enjoying some fine wine by the fire, and I realized how loud I was talking. And Melanie (Ciccone, Joe’s wife) was going, “Can you tone it down a little?” Reveille: It happens to me a lot. And we’re fairly quiet dudes; I don’t think of you as a ranter, but I’m getting that way.  Reveille: I think this is a very rare moment. When you think about the ship turning, it took all these kids dying, the crumbling of bridges in Minneapolis, the failure of the government in New Orleans, and all these connect-the-dots to make people finally go, “This government is not working, and it sure as hell is not working for the people.” It feels like the fall of corporate culture. It’s obvious at this point to say that we’re a badly run corporation being led by a bad CEO, but working people are finally figuring out what that means to them. I think artists see the future, and I think they’re attuned more to what’s coming – they suss things out through means other than straight information. You’re a couple steps ahead of the populace when you’re tapping into sounds and words and paint and other things. So it’s an exciting time that way – it’s happening in Minneapolis with tons of cool music things and start-up new media; real back-to-basics organic stuff. It’s a historic time, because there are pockets of things going on that have that element of revolution that you’re talking about. The shit’s gonna fly. Henry: It’s already flying. I watched the movie “Bobby” this weekend, and listening to that speech by Bobby Kennedy at the end, I was just like, “Oh my God. Here’s this attorney general talking about `love’ and `compassion.’” Reveille: I saw a J.F.K. speech on the History Channel a few years ago, where he was talking about love. Imagine that – the leader of the free world talking about love. The crux was “look out for your neighbor.” Incredible. Henry: I think Bush is so full of self-loathing and his particular brand of quote-unquote Christianity that’s based on fear and judgement. What if he sat up one night and read what Jesus said, rather than what people said about him? I’ve been going to this Episcopal church in Pasadena that’s heavily political – the one that the I.R.S. has been after since the last election. They’re probably the most progressive, most influential Episcopal parish in the country. And the priest of that church, Reverend Ed Bacon, has become a good friend of mine. It’s a heavy thing there. He preached his last sermon there before the summer break and basically said, “We’ve all been hoodwinked. This idea of the cross and blood being the symbol of Jesus is not what Jesus had in mind.” He said, “We shouldn’t be wearing crosses around our necks, we should be wearing little gold tables around our neck.” Because the whole point of the Jesus story was not his death, it was that he invited everybody to the table. Reveille: Listening to the record, I couldn’t help but think -- where did you first get the idea of true love? Henry: I’ve always been surrounded by unconditional love. Again, to quote my friend, this priest Ed, “don’t ever underestimate the power of unconditional love.” He’s a complete radical, and he always talks about “the radical inclusivity of God’s love.” It’s not about the Christians are right, and the Muslims are wrong. Every religion that exists is, at its core, fundamentally about inclusion. And when I think about it, I never didn’t feel anything but completely loved. And my friend Ed was talking about his friend, Desmond Tutu, once. And the whole crux of his sermon was, “Desmond Tutu loves being Desmond Tutu.” You’re around him for a second, and even though he’s seen the most heinous things, he is a person who is just uncontainably delighted by himself and his place in the world. And the whole key of living is to love yourself for exactly who you are and as God made you – however you perceive to God to be, him, her, it, whatever. Only by loving yourself completely, and taking delight in who you are uniquely, have you freed yourself to then love everything about somebody else. So I was raised being loved and supported unconditionally, before I even knew that people were being raised without that. And so I’m an incredibly nervy bastard, because I have this confidence – confidence isn’t the right word, because I’m not always that confident – but I have this power in my step, and I’m willing to accept it and embrace it because I’ve never known what it’s like to not be loved for who I am. It’s an incredibly powerful thing. It’s been an incredibly subversive thing, because it happened before I understood the mechanics of it. Reveille: The word “delight” is good here. To take delight in yourself is what it’s all about. Henry: The universe not only invites you to love yourself, the universe insists upon it. God insists upon the fact that you find a way to completely love who you are, and take delight in what is completely unique about you and your place on this earth in this moment in time. And only by doing that can you look at the George Bushes or whoever and do the same. It’s a frighteningly simple notion, as is “love conquers all.” Reveille: Is there any significance to the record being released on September 11? Henry: I’d be lying if I said there was no significance. But they gave me three release dates to choose from: last Tuesday, this Tuesday, and next Tuesday. I chose this Tuesday. Up until now, I fought for a long time to not let anything topical enter a song. Because nothing dates worse than a topical song. As soon as you make a record with something topical, you trap it in the tar pits of its time, and we all aspire to do something that’s not only of our time, but outside our time. And yet, every single thing I tried to write, there was some political undercurrent and smoke that seeped under the door. Even a song like “I Wil Write My Book,” which set off to be a declaration of the liberation of love. And yet here comes the bridge, and I still find myself referencing what I recognize as my anger about the moment in which I’m living. I’m feeling a responsibility towards this. I didn’t make the decision to write songs with a political subtext, but I did make the decision to let it happen when I saw that it was happening. So when that date was presented, I thought, “Why not? Why not connect that dot?” Not because I think my songs are driven by that event, but because I understand the alignment from that moment to how it tells us as a country about the fear that was already there and ready to be exploited. But I would never write a song about politics. Nothing about politics has a musical idea to me. I do understand that politics blows like wind through the scenes of this album; blows the hats off the heads of many of the characters. Reveille: I also hear a father going, “I gotta mind the store, here. I’ve got two kids coming up in this world, and not only my kids, but everyone else’s.” Henry: I used to be selective as an artist and I’d say, “I choose not to write about that. I don’t choose to let that touch me.” There was a period in the ‘80s when I didn’t vote, because I had a reason that I understood from Bucky Fuller that to vote was to acknowledge their authority over me, which I didn’t want to acknowledge. But at the same time, I realized I was not allowed that luxury. I was not allowed to be that irresponsible on behalf of a whimsical idea of choice that I thought I had. I ultimately felt like, as an artist, I had a responsibility to give voice to things that kept coming up in songs for a reason. I would not let myself be unengaged. Reveille: It seems like a lot of artists are stepping up and writing about the fragility of the human experience, almost as if they feel like it’s now or never. Henry: These are brutal and terrifying times. But I agree with you – I think these are fantastic times. I’ll hear myself on a music business panel going, “The changes that are happening need to happen. In fact, they’re 25 years late coming. Yes, it’s disconcerting and it’s unnerving, but it’s essential.” And as soon as I hear myself say that about the industry in which I participate, I also understand the truth of that as it applies to me, a citizen of this country. Joe Henry website "You Can't Fail Me Now" by Joe Henry, from Civilians |
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| Last Updated: Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 07:59 AM |
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