October 2025 – radical druid

Between a Place and Hard Rock

Published on October 31, 2025

I love hearing songs I haven’t heard in a while. That’s why I’ll test drive streaming service playlists like “70s Hard Rock” and hope for the best: that it will include essentials like AC/DC, Sabbath, Kiss, UFO, NWOBHM, BOC, etc., along with the usual suspects Zeppelin, Floyd, Bowie, Purple, Who, Stones. But skip Boston, Kansas, Styx, REO, Foreigner (after Double Vision). You can include Van Halen (Roth) and Aerosmith (pre-MTV). Maybe Rush (up to Permanent Waves). Don’t overdo the Cheap Trick or Nugent. LOL. And definitely put in some punk. I may 60 but I’m not dead!

We love classic rock because we remember a time when we were young, employed, had our own car (that ran), a little pocket money, a small bag of something extra, and a whole lot of things we absolutely didn’t need to take care of right this minute. Nothing but time and brain cells to burn. The good old days? I’d rather be here now. Having survived that nonsense. And not really missing it all that much. It wasn’t real either, then. It just took us a lot longer to find that out. Offline. Because online was only a dot then, not a com.

The Cotillion

Published on October 16, 2025

Will you be respectable down at the spectacle
once the event has begun?
When do you plan to have fun?
How long does a show like that run?

Will you be elegant at the extravagance
after the champagne is gone?
What will be left to build on?
Who will survive to the dawn?

Will you be delirious at the experience
before you slow yourself down?
Are you a serious clown?
What good is that much renown?

Will you be the piety for notoriety
until their next ship comes in?
What are you hoping to win?
You only get that one spin.

16 OCT 2025

Lose Your “Authentic” Self

Published on October 11, 2025

It feels like not that many years ago there was an interest, almost a “movement” if you will, to seek out and embrace our “authenticity”, to “get real” with ourselves and our world, and cut through all the game-playing to get back to the essentials of human living.

Am I wrong? Was that just in my head – or maybe just not in the South?

In any case, we seem to be living now in a post-truth, post-authenticity world, where it’s easier to adopt a persona (especially online) rather than be who you really are. Maybe it’s thanks to the Trump years (which ain’t over, are they?).

Maybe it’s “reality” TV. Maybe it’s because when we isolated during Covid a lot of us realized we really didn’t like ourselves all that much. Maybe it’s because of our fascination with Artificial Intelligence (AI) created not from just facts, but from our illusions, misinformation, misperceptions, and flat out lies.

Have we ourselves become deep fakes of human beings? We made corporations people. We make bots our friends. We add filters to our photos to make us younger, better looking, and cooler than we ever actually were. We imagine a world where we don’t actually have to accept responsibility or be accountable.

As Jello Biafra once quipped, the conveniences we demanded are now mandatory.

But life hasn’t gotten any easier, has it? Real life, that is. Every day here and now.

Well maybe it’s not SUPPOSED to be easy. No muscle grows without resistance.

Trees that don’t experience the wind never put down deep roots.

11 OCT 2024

Month: October 2025

Between a Place and Hard Rock

The Cotillion

Lose Your “Authentic” Self