What the hell happened to America?

That's what they're going to be asking in the not too distant future, although most people of average intelligence are asking already. Yeah , okay. Sure. This is still "America" but clearly something fundemental has changed. Ever since 9/11 I haven't been feeling all that free. Granted, G.W.Bush made it known, everything has changed since that terrible event in 2001- though what I have come to belive he actually meant was something more like- WE ARE ABOUT TO CHANGE EVERYTHING- SO GET WITH THE (NEW) PROGRAM- AND SHUT THE HELL UP!- or something like that.

Everyone should remember where they were when the towers fell, even if they were totally wasted, which, I may have been, I'm not sure. I know I was in L.A. house-sitting for a friend, I had been up all night working on a piece of music that I just sort of pulled out of the air. It didn't have any lyrics on the morning of 9/11, but it was cool, and I was tired, so I went to lie down with the radio on KPFK (Check out www.kpfk.org for all the news they don't give you on FOX NEWS) Exhausted I almost fell asleep instantly- almost.

On the radio they were talking about how a plane had hit one of the Trade Towers. I nearly missed the whole thing completely due to my sleep deprived state. For a moment I was pretty certain that I was just dreaming...I mean, if a plane had really hit one of the towers, then it'd be on like every television station in the country, right?

So I got up, went back out to the living room, flipped on the tube, and- HOLY CRAP!! I had got up in time to see the second plane hit, at which point it was clear to anyone with a central nervous system that this was definitely not an accident. Being the liberal-lefty that I am the first thing I said was, "What did we do?" I don't know exactly what I meant by that, but hey, I hadn't slept for like twenty-four hours, and I sure as shit wasn't going to sleep now.

Like nearly everyone else, I just stared in horror for a period of time. Then I popped a tape into the VCR, because...well, because.

At some point I know I called my wife, who was about a hundred miles away. Honestly, I don't know what we said to each other, but really, what does one say?

I thought about my buddy whose house I was watching. He was somwhere in the Anza-Borrego wilderness camping. "He doesn't even know this has happened" I thought. Imagine that.