When: Monday. Jan 13th 7:30PM ET

Where: https://youtube.com/live/Mopm7dyF4js?feature=share

Who gets 10%: https://www.foodlinkma.org

http://paypal.me/vancevancevance or https://venmo.com/vancevancevance or VanceFunder P.O. Box 17, Arlington, MA 02476

GIGS OF NOTE:

1/11 *CAMBRIDGE, MA - CLUB PASSIM 2 SHOWS* https://www.passim.org/live-music/events/vance-gilbert/ - about 9 tix left for one, 14 for the other

1/31 BEACON, NY -1/31 TOWNE CRIER - townecrier.com/events/cliff-eberhadt-and-vance-gilbert

*PRIVATE COACHING AVAILABLE - Contact me (vance@vancegilbert.com) for songwriting, performance, and voice coaching.*

**CUSTOM SONGS - Expensive, but sure, you want one about you or your family or something.**

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KEEP IT COMPLICATED

We like to land somewhere. Forgive me, with the airplane stuff.

When we read the back history about people we admire and discover action and behavior that is disruptive, shortsighted, and horrible, we endeavor to develop final ideas and opinions and to fall in some camp of being done with that individual, their crime, their capitulation, their contrition, their punishment, their redemption, their legacy, all of it.
That’s fair, particularly for aggrieved marginalized folks like women and people of color.

And btw men, in this world of systemic inequity, we get to land, often gently, and often call out where we’d like to touch down.

It’s easier to admire men, because it’s easier for men to end up at the top of somewhere to be admired. Their dirt is still dirt. And there is often never enough payback for what they’ve done to folks sans rolling back the very hands of time or watching them die writhing. Racist governor become apologetic ex-segregationist George Wallace, when asked about the attempt on his life 20 years post-event, replied “I’ve had 20 years of pain”. I’m betting that’s both metaphoric and lumbar.

So what do we do with these men who have done horrible things and then later in life done what they could with their man-earned platform to put back right what is systemically broken?

Some of us will erase the whole legacy of that person. Some will forgive. Some will wish the worst on them. Many of us will be vaccillative (yes, I made that word up) trying to make personal brain peace with what that person's done and what they did subsequently up to their dying day.

I believe that last option is a viable thing. Not landing is complex, and keeps you thinking. Not landing abhors dismissal. Not landing keeps the question in your mind, on your lips, in your fist, maybe always looking for the fix.

Next time you get on any jet plane to your destination, note that it was Nazi German science - science and policy that was rapidly and earnestly developing to eradicate selected groups of people and take over the world - that invented how those wings on your ride sweep back *per de rigeur* to make your plane faster.

We live with complication.

RIP Jimmy Carter and Peter Yarrow.