08-07-12

1059 hrs. Hello from beautiful Edinburgh, Scotland. I am here yet again for what has become one of my favorite rituals. The Edinburgh Festival is a long standing institution and for the last few years, it has become a great part of my tour.



I have not checked in here for a couple of weeks. The shows and the travel on the European festival circuit keep me hustling from place to place. For the last several days, it’s been a lot of hotels, taxis and airports as well as a few shows.



As to the shows, they have been going really well. I am always better off when I am touring. The audiences have been great and even though some of the circumstances have been trying, rain, long drives back and forth from the sites, delays at airports, etc., it’s been great.



So far, the high point was a few nights ago, having a chance to watch the Stooges rip it up in Katowice, Poland. Damn, that was a lot of people and they were totally into it. The Stooges played The Passenger off Iggy’s Lust for Life album. That was cool.



As some of you know, there are a lot of American shows coming up. The Capitalism Tour starts soon. Shepard Fairey has made a really cool poster for the tour and he wrote me yesterday and told me they are back from the printer and they came out looking good. I will go to his studio next week and check them out.



I will be on tour from early September to early December. Most of the dates are on the site and the ones that are not will be soon.



It is saddening to be far from America and read such awful headlines like the ones coming out of Wisconsin. The deaths of the Sikhs, the shooter and the grave injury of the policeman are all awful, of course.



What makes things all the worse is that the event, like the recent shooting in Colorado become politicized. It’s the deaths of Americans. I don’t know where there are “sides” on this but somehow, it goes there.

Banning guns, not a solution. Banning “assault” weapons, however you want to parse and define that term—that train left the station long ago. America will always be up-to-here with guns and no president potentially from Kenya or elsewhere will ever take them away. So, Americans have to deal with the fact that guns are here. It’s really not the guns that bother me, it’s the people. That’s the harder solution—how to deal with the person who wants to shoot a church full of people anywhere. If you take the shooter’s guns, you don’t take his hatred and ignorance away. He just goes and gets a different weapon. Intent is the vehicle. A gun is just something in your hands that actualizes your intent.



So, what do you do about that? I reckon that there definitely could be a more rigorous gun program in America that would be healthy. Yearly tests, re-upping the license frequently. That could possibly make things more transparent but of course, that will get fought as well. What needs to be done is what has always needed to be done, what should have been priority one in 1865 when the whole bloody mess finally came to an end. Equality. Equality, education and the sanity derived from these things would make America better and better with every passing hour.



You meet Americans all over America and they are so fantastic, so dynamic, strong, generous, amazing. Then you look at some of the stats that America endures as to suicide, veteran suicide, gun homicide, hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by poor living. For a country that gave the world Stevie Wonder, things can be better.



It would be work and it would mean a lot of people leaving their bullshit at the door. I think we are headed there and we are encountering bumps along the way. Change is hard and this century alone, what a 12 years and some months it has been culturally, scientifically, technologically.



President Lincoln took a bullet for every single American past, present and future. If he were to come back right now, I would want him to be impressed with America. On my better days, I try to pull my chin up to that bar. Some days are better than others.



I have three shows here in Scotland and then I will be with the exception of three Canadian dates in November, back in America for one show after another. I can’t wait for autumn and to be going state to state.



This Saturday’s radio show is going to be a great one, please tune in if you can. The Oh Sees album we are playing in hour 2 is fantastic.



Thanks for reading this.

Henry