Voices from the past

From as far as I can remember, I was out trying to invent new devices and new solutions to the problems I saw around me. I'd spend a weekend thinking my stuff through and then I'd expound it to my parents. I only ever got one answer: "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I must have heard that sentence more than a thousand times.

On another occasion, I was happily butchering a Tracy Chapman song on a cheap guitar I'd bought at a car boot sale. I actually quite liked the sound I was making and was quite proud of myself. Until my father told to stop because it didn't sound good and I was just annoying everybody.

I resisted that one after a while, and a few years later I would lock myslelf somewhere really remote and sing Mozart's Arie der Koenigin der Nacht and Haendel's I know that my redeemer liveth to my heart's content, thinking that the important thing was that I enjoyed it, and it didn't matter if it sounded bad. Once somebody walked by, stopped and told me that it sounded really good.

To this day, I abort most of my ideas, thinking that there must be a catch somewhere and that "if it was that easy, everybody would be doing it". I also very rarely take pleasure in singing or making music any more. Indeed my singing has gotten a lot worse over the past ten years. The Germans are on to something with their concept of Erfolgerlebnis (meaning: a structuring experience of success). I wonder how cool it would be, just to create whatever I feel like creating and to sing whatever I feel like singing without these voices from the past?

Around me, people go on creating things that I'm convinced I could have created. One of our acquaintances decided that the water in village he visited in Tanzania wasn't safe to drink. He raised funds among his friends and contracted a company to build a deep well that goes right into the phreatic table.

Along these lines, I think I'd really like to create links of solidarity between a church where I live and a church in the developing world because the later have got a hell of a lot of work trying to alleviate the plight of those people whom capitalism forgets.

I keep thinking: in this day and age how hard can this be? We need two bank accounts, a reliable supply of funds on our side and a reliable team of people to administer them on the other side. It really isn't rocket science and it sure doesn't take a Geography Ph.D. to set it up.

I can't belive I still feel disempowered and this is begginning to really anger me. A good kind of anger. A good bellowing of the Arie der Koenigin der Nacht is fully in order.