‘All Hale, Ed!’

Ed Hale, the iconic singer of the rock group Transcendence, never known for doing things ‘ordinary,’ definitely did it his way in what may be the ‘interfaith wedding of the year!’

On February 13, Hale’s last Triple A radio hit single, ‘I Walk Alone,’ no longer applied to him as he and the beautiful Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai, began their life together in a style that crosses all cultural barriers.

At a church on the corner of Park Avenue in New York City, they were joined in a formally Islamic fashion in a traditional Persian wedding, followed immediately by a traditional Christian wedding.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Ed Hale about all this, and first wondered, being that he just married his soul-mate (congratulations!) in a Multi-Interfaith, one-of-a-kind wedding, if he could kindly explain this a little more. “Thank you for the congrats. Nahal and I knew that if we were going to have a wedding that it needed to be special. Something that was bigger than just the binding of the two of us as one. If we wanted to do that, we could have just eloped off alone the two of us and done it privately. But we felt a responsibility to our friends and fans and family… we wanted to share it.”

“Many people already knew our story. How long we had been together. How in love we were. Always the iconoclast, I wasn’t too knowledgable about weddings per se, but I knew that if I was going to get married in public that it had to be about more than just the two of us. So we really worked hard at this idea of ‘celebrating love,’ in all its shapes and forms… rather than just making it about us.”

Continue reading click here

In the meantime, Transcendence does indeed have three new CDs releasing this year including the band’s official two new albums, The Great Mistake (EMI) and All Your Heroes Become Villains (DVG), and a new rarities and unreleased tracks album called The City of Lost Children. Stay tuned for release dates.

To best stay informed of the latest, head to Facebook and add as a friend or subscribe to this site or the band’s site either through email or RSS Feed.

I’m sending you all an email to a few of my New York friends because many of you were sponsors of my peace delegation trip to Iran last month and/or were awesome email/phone supporters. So I wanted to let you know the details of the official presentation I will be giving about it here in NYC.

The last two months have indeed been insane with almost more work post-trip than the trip itself. A lot of interviews and articles and yes even the obligatory appearance on Muslim TV — (which was quite “candid cameraish’ I must say).

My official presentation about the trip in New York City will be this coming Sunday. I pasted the details below for you in case you have the time to come – and are interested in this subject. It was quite the experience and we learned a lot. More than anything, we were brought there specifically by the Iranian government to bring back a message to the American people…

So that is why we do these interviews and presentations. It isn’t necessarily a “perfect message.” But it is a real message – as opposed to what we hear on the news here in the States… which is just ‘the White House said…” So, that will be the aim of the presentation. To show some pictures, tell some stories, and answer as many questions as possible about the subject.

The presentation will be filmed (so dress sharpJ). By the way, since I have you all on the line at once: Our show Transcendent Television got picked up by Warner Home Video for distribution!!! No, we’re not on traditional TV… YET, but this was a real surprise blast of forward momentum out of nowhere that was very welcomed.

If you want to see the first DVD they are going to officially release you can see it here because there are segments still on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AE689FEEAE0C2E66 It is the “Going to Ghana” series I made last year.

Many of your beautiful faces I have not seen in a long time… I know we’ve all been over the top busy. Such is life in New York. It has been a crazy year or more for many of us. But I would love to see you! If not Sunday, then hopefully soon.

(For you rockers in the bunch, it does begin at 12:45. I know that’s early, so if you don’t show, don’t sweat it. I TOTALLY understand. J)

If you do decide you can attend, let me know, and I will make sure that lunch is reserved for you. if you’re not sure, feel free just to show up. Hey, this is New York. Who knows what we’re even going to do tonight let alone Sunday!!!

Hope all is well with all of you and would love to see you there.

Ed Hale

Below is the description of the Presentation:

Ed Hale will give a talk about his recent Peace Delegation trip to Iran entitled “The Value of a Single Human Being”

Sunday June 1st starting at 12:45 PM

Mark your calendars for Sunday June 1st 2008! Ed Hale who just recently returned from a 15 day peace delegation to the country of Iran with 13 other Americans will give a presentation about his experience. The trip was sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Iranian government. The 14 delegates held formal meetings with leading government officials and religious leaders including former president Mohammad Khatami and three reigning Ayatollahs to discuss how to improve US/Iran relations and foster more peace and harmony between our countries. Ed will share his experience with us, as well as present a slideshow of photos from the trip and also answer questions about this increasingly important issue. He also brought back some delicious samples of traditional Iranian food, tea, and candy to share with the group.

As always the session will offer a valuable opportunity for group sharing and interaction. Lunch and drinks will be provided for all.

Transcendence lead singer Ed Hale has been chosen to be one of 14 delegates going on a Peace Delegation to the country of Iran with The Fellowship of Reconciliation.

New York, NY, Feb 25, 2008 – 14 delegates chosen from across the United States will be going on a Peace Delegation to the country of Iran with The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the world’s oldest peace organization headquartered in over 40 countries worldwide and started in 1914 in Switzerland to prevent war in Europe. College radio darling Ed Hale, lead singer for the rock group Transcendence has been chosen to be one of the 14 delegates.

Along with 10 others the group also consists of writer Larry Beinhart, best known for his infamous book turned movie Wag the Dog and Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin, Carah Lynn Ong, Policy Analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington DC, and journalist Robert Dreyfus, contributing editor and writer for The Nation, Rolling Stone, and The New Republic. The group will tour Iran for two-weeks, primarily focusing on the major cities of Tehran, Esfehan, Shiraz, and Qom and holding formal meetings with the country’s leading government and religious leaders in an unprecedented move since the Islamic revolution almost 30 years ago to discuss US/Iranian relations. The group of 14 Americans will also visit schools, universities, newspapers, radio, and TV stations to foster more peace, harmony, and solidarity between the American and Iranian people.

They will meet with three reigning Ayatollahs, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador to the United States, the Minister of Culture, and with the former two-term Iranian President Mohamad Khatami. The Fellowship of Reconciliation is a non-religious, not-for-profit organization that has been sponsoring trips such as these for over eighty years all over the world. Their primary mission is to foster peace and understanding between peoples of different cultures during times of high conflict in order to attempt to prevent war.

Ed Hale is the lead singer in the rock band Transcendence (Universal) and is also known for his outspoken human rights and peace activism and volunteer work around the world. He just returned from two weeks of home building in Africa with Habitat for Humanity (see YouTube) and made two separate trips to the Gulf Coast last year to help rebuild homes for Hurricane Katrina victims in Biloxi, Mississippi. He and his bandmates have two new albums coming out this year, The Great Mistake, and All Your Heroes Become Villains.

An interesting sign of the times, the funds to help pay Hale’s expenses were raised entirely online using social networking sites such as MySpace, the band’s fanbase, and something known as the ChipIn widget. Fans and friends were encouraged to post comments and donate anything they wanted to. The “widget” tracked the progress in real-time so all could log-on at anytime to see how much money had been collected and watch as the goal was reached and read comments from fans from around the world.

Hale has been keeping a blog about the trip online and will continue to post reports while he is in Iran. Upon his return he will be speaking at various events around the country about the experience and will be available for television and press interviews about the experience.

To learn more about the Fellowship of Reconciliation organization and how you can become involved click here.

For more information http://edhale.chipin.com/ ed-hale-goes-to-Iran-with-peace-delegation 

 

Ed Hale Transcends Iranian Conflict
2008-02-08 11:30:32.993,
Story by: Joshua Pressman for CMJ

Ed Hale, lead singer of New York-based rock and roll outfit Transcendence, will partake in a peace delegation to Iran. Hale will be part of a 13-person envoy that was hand-chosen by the Fellowship Of Reconciliation (FOR) to serve as ambassadors of peace. FOR—a Switzerland-based organization that has sponsored preventive measures against war since World War I—has arranged visitations to schools, universities, newspapers, and TV stations with hopes of bridging the cultural gap between American and Iranian people. The funds for Hale’s mission are currently being gathered by way of a ChipIn widget, which enables fans and friends to contribute financially to the peaceful vision.

To join in or read comments from fans and friends who are contributing to the mission or to read Hale’s personal blogs about the endeavor click here. 

www.edhale.com
www.forusa.org

Buy It At Insound

Article Here

The blog is by its nature an extremely ego-driven endeavor. The things written in a blog are to be seen by others. And hopefully, whether the blogger admits it or not, the blog will be adored by its readers; or more exactly, the blogger will be adored by its readers. So as I proceed with this blog (let it be known that will be the last time the fucking word ‘blog’ — somehow made pretentious for this writer ((by this writer)) will be used). This writer admits that this writing is being done for both private and public reasons.

Though probably unremarkable to those accustomed to it, if such folks exist, writing on a laptop on the sidewalk in the East Village on a chilly spring night after seeing mediocre jazz and watching the brand new fresh out of the editing suite “trailer” for a friend’s reality TV series about himself is novel to me.
Allow me to explain. Today I had the opportunity to hang out with Ed Hale, lead singer and songwriter for a rock band I play in called Transcendence – though we are more a collective of many revolving around our shared love of certain musical styles and our excitement about what we create when we jam together. I am the drummer in aforementioned group. We have been together for six years. Though ever since his move to the Big Apple and my move to Atlanta, we don’t get to see each other as often as we used to. Pretty much only in the studio when we are tracking a new album that may or may never be “officially released” or when we tour, which as of late as been infrequent at best. Ed Hale is in his early 30′s. He recently returned from Biloxi, Mississippi, where he and a church group were helping to rebuild homes devastated by something known now as Hurricane Katrina – as if it were a living breathing entity. To the victims it certainly was I am sure.

Ed was a team leader because of “a basic knowledge of carpentry” acquired in his youth. This is strange. One doesn’t think of Ed Hale as a “team leader” on a christian mission trip to rebuild home. Nor does one consider him a person who “acquired basic carpentry skills in his youth.” In his ”unofficial” online blog The Transcendence Diaries, at last count over fifteen-hundred pages – of which he makes no apologies – he dedicates countless entries vehemently asserting “humanity’s need to free itself from an unhealthy addiction to the belief in Gods and Goddesses,” and yet he attends this church that he is a loyal member of religiously, forgive or admire the pun. In this, as in so many other examples, Ed Hale is a walking contradiction; except for the fact that it is entirely in line with his nature, so much so that one gets accustomed to it rather quickly. And therefore his contradictory nature can actually quite quickly seem normal – which is a frightening thought.

He smokes cigars. He is in his early thirties, sings in a rock band, dresses and looks like he sings in a rock band, but smokes cigars This makes no sense. Before concerts or recording sessions, he can be found in cigar lounges around Manhattan with the usual assortment of cigar chomping old men discussing of all things real estate and the stock market, subjects he is obsessed with; but he punctuates his impassioned discussions about these topics with equally passionate diatribes about his love for the newest Strokes or Rufus Wainwright albums coming out. A fact that certainly must confound the other patrons at these cigar lounges who are usually well past age fifty and spend most of their time talking about sports or something called “the markets.” This is very strange.

He is a guy who quotes Ron Burgundy from the Anchorman movie to the server at the restaurant at lunch and who will then turn around and want to talk to you dead-on seriously about the Gnostic Gospels or quantum physics or “super-string theory;” all in one breath. He will then end the discussion by casually mentioning that he believes Wedding Crashers is the best movie of the year. And you get a sneaking suspicion that he just might mean it. This is strange.

He fronts a rock band whose members live in three different cities, and who haven’t played a show together in over a year. Yet he funnels a significant amount of money into making records with this band. He flies from New York to Miami to record with them. He flies from New York to Atlanta to play one show with them simply because I currently reside here. He sees no problem with “taking some time off from touring with the band” so we can “record two or three or more albums.” He has no idea how or when these albums are going to be released. We are offered “record deals” (if you can call them that in this day and age) for each of the albums that we record and it takes Ed years to make up his mind about which deal to choose. This frustrates the other band members. But not Ed. Because by the time we have reached the point of negotiating a record deal for album A, Ed is already hyped up about album B, C, or D that he can’t wait for us to “record” and has forgotten entirely that we have still not released album A. It is strange. Besides the obvious fact that it is also maddeningly frustrating for the rest of the band who wouldn’t mind releasing any album any time in the foreseeable future - since after all we are a band. But Ed seems more interested in us recording than he does in anyone ever hearing what we recorded. Or perhaps he simply forgets and gets sidetracked with new inspiration. Either way, it is strange.

He is reasonably competent in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian. I do not know how a person accomplishes such a feat. Especially an American. I have seen him have entire conversations with servers at restaurants in Polish, though he claims not to speak Polish. I find myself wondering why he knows Polish — of all things. He claims he has conversations with God while in the bathtub and he is almost unfailingly kind, a trait not missed by those who are closest to him. And there are many of those. Because of this fact, he is called “the Ambassador” by his friends – an aspect of his life that has taken on such ironic authenticity – though it is in effect still a joke to him and others, that he was recently offered a chance to become a “Civilian Diplomat” and travel to the Axis of Evil world of Iran in order to negotiate peace with their government leaders. Ed Hale is actually seriously thinking of going to Iran and thinking that he will indeed be able to create more “peace.” Despite what most would consider obvious and numerous reasons to turn down such an offer. This might be mentioned or it might not be in between casual conversation with Ed revolving around various other topics that he might find more inspiring in that moment. He often refers to himself in the third person. Strangest of all perhaps, he has spent the past year and a half filming a reality show — mostly about himself, which is called “Transcendent Television.”

During our time together in New York, we stopped in a restaurant on 5th Avenue the other day for me to pee. After the beautiful French hostess informed me where the bathrooms were and I headed towards them, he casually told her, “I’m his gay lover by the way. I have to wait for him while he pees.” There is no discernable reason why he said this. It is strange.

He wears black jeans or black leather pants most days of the week. In fact, he is almost always dressed in black. Even in summer. It is strange. Ed Hale has built and sold three successful businesses “as a hobby” he says in the last ten years in between recording and releasing six moderately successful albums. He claims to be “flat broke” and yet he appears by all accounts to live like a millionaire. Unlike the rest of us who actually are flat broke, I have come to believe that Ed Hale doesn’t know what “flat broke” really means. It is strange.
He often switches topics in the middle of a sentence, unable to defer a new thought that has popped into his head. One often feels as though they are having ten conversations at once with him. From what we know he is not “on drugs.” This is actually how he is. And yes it is strange.

Now bear in mind two things: one — Ed Hale is not the strangest person I know. But he comes damn close. Perhaps because I consider him a friend it is the only reason that I do not classify him as the strangest person I know, because he certainly comes close. Number two: I only point these various and admittedly trivial characteristics of his out to prove a point in a grander scheme of things. That point to follow here now.

Ed Hale would be considered by almost anyone from anywhere a strange individual – “eclectic” or “quirky” or “eccentric” come to mind. So do “odd” “weird” and “out there.” These words usually have a negative, or at most, a guardedly positive connotation. Guarded because we are all afraid of people different from us. Probably necessary for some evolutionary purpose, our distaste of those who are different kind of sucks when it comes to loving our fellow humans. It is hard to love that which makes us uncomfortable.
Every characteristic or action of a person falls into one but no more than two of the following categories: good, bad, and meaningless. Each of these traits come alone or can be combined with the independent element of “weird.”

As a quick illustration:
Cheating on your spouse, beating your children, being a Cubs fan – bad.
Giving money to the poor, being diligent – good.
Preferring iceberg lettuce over romaine, using a PC instead of a Mac – meaningless.

Certain actions like the ones above fall neatly into one category. But others add “weird” as a qualifier. (Note: Things that are good or bad can’t be meaningless, and good and bad at the same time is also impossible (in real life—no “you must kill the president or the terrorists will kill your family” scenarios, thank you)).

For example:
Jogging while listening to the same Gloria Estefan song on repeat — weird-meaningless.
Giving a homeless guy some money and letting him use your shower — weird-good.
Killing kittens and throwing them out a window at schoolchildren (weird-bad).
Dipping donuts in iced coffee, sitting down in the shower — habitual activities by the aforementioned subject of this article, Ed Hale – weird-meaningless. But weird nonetheless.

It is late now and the streets of the east Village are getting quieter. I am reflecting back on my friend and fellow bandmate and the things I shared about him and about how one might react to them at first glance. My point in all this is to suggest that when we look at a person, let us try to redefine where some of the “weird” things go, and to see more and more of those things as “weird-good” instead of in the other two categories. See if we can forgive their strangeness. Embrace their strangeness. There is a certain “morality” to strangeness. We can attempt to see the beauty in imperfection. So I end with this: Treat the weird as good until proven otherwise.

In regards to whether or not our band will actually release the two new albums that we finished recording over a year ago, I would be remiss to not at least admit to sympathizing with fans and friends who want to hear them as badly as we do. All we CAN say is that we have two new albums coming out this year. But life itself is strange. We said those same exact words last year from what I remember. Stranger still, Ed is now in the recording studio recording two new solo albums, though why they are called “solo” albums since the same band members are playing on the album as on all previous Transcendence albums is beyond me. One being the 24 song long ”girls” album that is comprised entirely of songs with girls names in the titles. And another one that is “just noise and nothing but noise — no music or anything resembling music allowed.” Yes, this too is strange. But in its own special way, it is a good strange if one chooses to view it that way.

Bill Sommer
Originally published February 18th, 2007 here

 

WASHINGTON SQUARE NEWS

New York, NY

August 01, 2005

by Meera Subramanian

Ed Hale is warming up over a steaming cup of Dunkin Donuts decaf. He talks about, among other things, his weekly schedule (French language lessons one night, kickboxing classes another), his ambitions for a reality television show where he interviews a famous Bishop and other random people, his novel in progress entitled The Cosmos is Great and Large, Darn Right, (“like Huck Finn with superheroes”), and about the Army General’s uniform that hangs in his closet.  Dressed in black fitted jeans, a black DKNY shirt, and black boots, he slips easily into the New York City landscape, recently transplanted from his native Florida.  His curly, shoulder-length brown hair is pushed back from his face with a pair of dark sunglasses, also DKNY, and his heavy-lidded blue eyes are eager as he talks about everything and everyone that gets him excited, punctuating his explorations with an easy laugh and expressive stretching out of words like “brilll-yant!”  This is all on decaf, remember.

But Ed Hale is, by profession, a rock musician.  Lead singer of the band originally named Ed Hale and the Troubadours of Transcendence, shortened to Transcendence by fans that filled Miami venues.  Singer-songwriter, guitar and keyboard player, Hale’s sound is reminiscent of Bowie, U2, and the Beatles blended with a unique world-beat undercurrent.  His music has been described by reviewers alternately as lush, original, bland, well-crafted, perverted, mildly entertaining, and hauntingly familiar yet futuristic.

By no means a music critic, I hear good ole rock ‘n’ roll, heavy on guitars and drums, with a solid driving beat.  A few of the tracks on Transcendence’s third album, Nothing is Cohesive, which is being released this month, slow down more than usual and become a dreamy mix —  love songs to Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso, or Hale’s own sense of becoming.

Ed Hale is a work-in-progress, a man evolving.  It’s easy to forget that music is even Hale’s first passion, what with all his talk about emerging consciousness and revolution.  And money.  And women.  Oh, and religion too.  Not necessarily in that order.

He says: “honestly, seriously, everyone thinks I’m thirty,” but the faint lines on his high forehead and smile lines around his mouth reveal a few more years.  He’s old enough to have become established as a world renowned musician as well as in other more practical realms.  “My non-capitalist days are behind me.  I’m a capitalist,” he says off-handedly. “I own companies.”  Was it four, or five that he mentioned?  Vitamins.  Real estate. A record company.  “I believe in social responsibility,” he says, but he drives around in a convertible BMW.  “I dig that stuff.  That’s why we have America.  It doesn’t mean that you don’t give.”  And he does give.  One friend, Kerri Huckabee, remembers learning that Hale was sponsoring kids in need all over the world and cutting checks to numerous churches and charities each Christmas.  “He didn’t even mention it.  He just does it.  We go out to dinner and then drive around town looking for a homeless person to give the leftovers.  And then Ed gives them money too. That’s how he is.”

Getting Radical

It was in this spirit that Hale sought out protest leaders of the anti-globalist movement when they arrived in Miami in 2003 to oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement.  He’d watched the 1999 WTO protests on television and been inspired enough to write the song, “The Journey (A Call to Arms)” from the band’s 2002 album Rise and Shine that he describes as a “wake-up call for his generation.”   He walked into the makeshift welcome center of the protest movement, where organizers from groups such as United for Peace and Justice, SmartMeme, and the Citizens Trade Council were scrambling with limited resources to organize thousands of people. “I’m wearing shiny pants and my hair’s all coiffed,” Hale recalls.  “I said, ‘I want to help you. What do you need?’”   He offered the headquarters of TMG Records (one of his companies) for the week, located in one of the buildings he owns.  They moved in and set up shop.

“I expect rock stars to be assholes,” explained Patrick Reinsborough of San Francisco-based SmartMeme, “But Ed Hale was quite an angel, and he’s got CDs!  He sounds like Bono!”  Hale set up the new Media

Hooked on street protest, Hale went costume shopping.  An Army General’s uniform seemed perfect, and when the Republican National Convention hit New York City, he tucked his long hair under a hat, painted a sign that said “Peace!” on one side and “World – We’re Sorry!” on the other and stood silently, “acting like a fucking pissed off army guy” among the thousands that had gathered. 

Getting Religion

Raised Catholic by his single mom as she moved him and his brother from town to town in pursuit of work, Hale said, “I lived in sixteen towns before I was eleven.”  Now, he explains, “I’m not a believer but I like going to church.”  Church is just another place to soak up the nectar of life.  “Most people write off religion.  Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. My soul believes in God, but I don’t, ya know? It’s weird.”

His latest focus is the all-black Abyssinian Baptist
Church in Harlem, where he recently inquired about membership, mainly to avoid having to stand in line with the other white people who come from all over the world to visit the house of worship listed in Frommer’s guides in every language. Emerging from a recent service on a cold winter day, he sums it up: “It gives me juice.”

Transcendent Television

But getting juiced up in Harlem isn’t enough.  When it comes down to it, Hale’s better at squeezing his own juice than drinking up others’.  An idea sprang out of his time with the protest organizers in

For example, what would a rock singer and an Episcopalian Bishop have to talk about? Hale spent a year and a half getting the runaround before he finally landed an interview with the controversial Bishop John Shelby Spong (best-selling author of the book, Why Christians Must Change Or Die).  With cameras rolling, Hale and the Bishop ended up talking for five hours in the study of Spong’s New Jersey home, where they covered everything from the state of religion to Hale’s personal theories.  (Done with the “Age of Technology,” Hale claims, the “Age of Personal Expression” is next, and with it will come complete human evolution, where mankind becomes humankind.  “That’s where we are now, the Personal Expression Age. But who am I to name an age?” he asks with a laugh, but it’s not necessarily a rhetorical question.)

While the Spong interview was years in the making, Ed Hale is just as likely to have as intense a conversation for just as long at, say, a café on the Upper West Side on a Sunday afternoon, where he recently befriended a Metropolitan Opera singer.  Kevin Chap, CEO of Polar Productions, describes Hale as a “true social butterfly.  It wears off on the people around him.” 

Chap and Hale are transforming the recorded interviews into a pilot for Transcendent Television, which Hale describes as reality TV meets talk show.  Chap calls it: “A look at life from the other point of view.” 

Whether a studio like 20th Century Fox is willing to pick up a reality television show with people talking, as opposed to undergoing radical plastic surgery or eating worms, has yet to be determined.  Chap said, “Ed likes to see the best in human nature. He wanted to bring the hopefulness of humanity back into reality television, but the reality TV business is not necessarily based on that concept. Would people rather watch a baby being born or a car accident?  Unfortunately, it’s usually the car accident. Transcendent Television is a brilliant idea though. We will see.”

The Seeking Continues

But for all the flash that Hale portrays – the glossy albums with young naked women, the sunglasses after the sun’s gone down, dropping up to a grand on clothing a week – Chap considers Hale “a stubborn headstrong artist” unwilling to sell out.  In an Ink19 review of Rise and Shine, Transcendence’s first album, Hale is accused of just the opposite: “Hale…seems to admit that his brand of cross-cultural consciousness is nothing more than a way to buy hipster credentials and corporate consumer satisfaction.”  But Chap contends, “Ed would rather take a loss than compromise his artistic concept.”  Whether he is more pure to art than image is hard to tell.  “Prostituting my integrity to secure this false celebrity,” he sings on “Bored” from the band’s latest album, Nothing is cohesive.

But really, most people don’t turn seeking into a lifelong quest.  Most are quite content to do what needs to be done, settle down to quiet lives (Thoreau would say of quiet desperation) filled with simple pleasures and pastimes.  When asked what the meaning of life is, they just shrug or refer to whatever particular religion they belong to for a convenient answer. 

Maybe The Transcendence Diaries, Hale’s online blog written under the rubric of The Adventures of Fishy is more honest than Hale intended, when he writes, “Still finding myself obsessed with a quiet secret subtle and almost constant gnawing at my insides about the unbearable sadness of how impermanent everything is. Our lifetimes are short here. I remind myself that it is up to me to find meaning while I am here. I try to live my life to its fullest and even then I cannot shake the deep underlying knowing that they are all just moments lived and then soon forgotten. Where is the meaning in that?”

Meera Subramanian is a grad student at NYU majoring in journalism. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

A cold day in November, 2004. Dasher and I were supposed to be filming an episode of Transcendent Television. But it was dificult to maintain focus. During the filiming of me casting my vote in that year’s presidential elections, I had commented to a camera man, on camera no less, who i thought would win. I casually replied “C’mon man.” “Well what if Bush wins?” he asked me. “It’s not going to happen,” I responded. How could it? I mean, serioulsy. How could it even be close? Didn’t most of the country watch the debates? Certainly that would have been the final nail in the coffin of this dark season of Howdy Doody gone mad, this shameless lame duck masquerading as a president. Reputation and even actions aside, surely the debates showed how close to mentally challenged the man was, how insincere, how incompetent, how utterly incapable; and more than that certainly it was clear from that point on how sold out he was to the higher powers that be — and not those that reside somewhere near the pearly gates through which at some point we all must pass, but the greedy and sinister dark powers that rest right here on planet earth lurking behind corners, barking orders at men like GW as if they were dogs or children. The results of their demands all in the name of money or oil or other natural resources, or simply more corporate power, and sadly many at the expense of much innocent life, more losses of civil rights and liberties, and far less happiness than we are used to in this great great country of ours.

 Surely the debates told the story clearly enough to most american people that Kerry, despite his constant flip-flopping and teetering, would win by a landslide. There was simply no way the people, the people, who are the people? would vote Bush and Cheney back into office again. Perhaps another CEO job for Cheney with some giant insensitive multi-national of avarice. Bush could run another baseball team perhaps or continue his record-setting executions in the great old state of texas for all we cared. We’re Manhattanites. If Texans want to kill each other in record numbers proving once again that the old adage “two wrong don’t make a right” does not apply to the barbarian classes, let them. But for God and Country’s sake get these men out of American government before they destroy every last bit of progress we have made over the last two-hundred years.  

And so it was thought. So it was hoped. “So what are you going to do if Bush IS re-elected?” the cameraman continued to chide me. I didn’t see it as a possiblity. I had greatly over-estimated the perceptual abilities and the intelligence of my fellow citizens. But i hadn’t a clue. Yet. “I dont know. Probably move to France.” What else could we do? Endure? We had just endured four miserable years. And they were much worse than we ever could have imagined. The Bush Cheney regime had already murdered over three-hundred thousand Iraqi people in cold blood by inititating a fake war on “terror” by attacking an innocent country in broad daylight for all the world to see. I toured the streets of many cities and towns all over the world during those years and was constantly reminded of how truly hated this man was by the people of the world. I was ashamed to be an American when i travelled abroad; not because of anything we did… and surely we have done a lot to be ashamed of over the last five hundred years, but because of what we didn’t do. We allowed a corporate-controlled puppet regime to steal the most sacred office in our government right under our noses and we did nothing about it. Many of the most civilized nations on the earth were more than merely frightened of America now. They were downright disgusted. At its arrogance, its apathy, its insensitivity to the crises it was causing in the middle east; and the potential crises it could cause the rest of the world who lived along its borders.

America that three-hundred million headed monster that looks right into the lens of the world camera and says ‘fuck me, eat me, drink me, buy me’ and without batting an eyelash ends its shallow greedy sexist sales-pitch by saying ‘or I’ll kill you.’ That became the new slogan of the red white and blue. “If you’re not with us then you’re with them.” I believe that was the way GW put it on international television to make it clear that we had all gone truly mad or we’re being held by force against our will, prisoners within the walls of our own once-proud nation. Held captive by a band of renegade theives and killers who looked an awful lot like mainstream middle-american corporate hustlers and used car salesmen. In each and every country that i visited in those four years the first question that i was always asked when i was introduced as an american was inevitably “How do you feel about Bush? How do you deal with Bush being your president? Do a alot of people like him there? How did he become your president?”

What intrigued me the most was how quickly the sentiment changed during those four short years. Travelling abroad as an american once meant being greeted with open arms, with adulation, with envy, with giant smiles and anticipated high fives. Now people in foreign lands seemed to feel sorry for us. We appeared enigmatic to them. Sad, beaten down, defeated, to be pitied. We have an alleged democracy. And yet it was clear to the rest of the civilized world that our democracy had failed us miserably in the stolen election of 2000. “Why didn’t they count all the votes?” people would ask me referring to the cluster-fuck of Florida that sealed our fate. “How can you have a Supervisor of Elections in one of your States who is clearly partisan and who worked as one candidate’s election campaign? Shouldn’t that be illegal? Why did you all allow all those black voters to be denied their right to vote? Shouldn’t you have a revote? We would here,” they would tell me in a cafe or restaurant or bar.

When i hadn’t a reply except to sit there looking dejected and helpless and saddened by our sorry state of electoral affairs they came to quickly realize that we now, American’s of every race color age and religion, are finally experiencing what most of the other great nations of the world have at one point or another in their own countries due to their much longer histories. A totalitarian, nearly facist government thinly disguised as a democratic republic, one without ethics or morals or regard for its people. One without respect for laws, world opinion, human rights, or the seeing eye of the international community. Worse for everyone, one without respect for the truth or concern for human life. Not even the environment got away. So we endured.

But good news and better times were on the horizon. Kerry was certainly still a “company man.” Sold out long ago. But the fact that he was both a war hero and then a war protestor spoke volumes about his character. Could you ask for a better man as president of such a rich and powerful nation? Probably not. At least not then. And we didn’t have time to do so. We needed to get him in regardless of his shaky stand on many of the issues. In time, his character had already proven, he would settle into the issues and make the right decisions. Once all the campaign consultants and yes men and pollsters cashed their checks and fled for the hills, he would start setting things right again. If anything he would make a damn good bandage on the open wound that America had turned into till we found a good surgeon.

Or so we thought. But something insideous transpired that fateful evening. The guerilla regime that had overtaken the white house had run a nasty campaign of childish pranks, hate-filled and jingoistic, sexist, arrogant, deceptive, and most of all ignorant. These thugs were white bread. All the calories without any taste or nutritive value. Instead of showing respect and honor to the man who should be king and then debating him intelligently about the issues, as any real president would do, GW and his frightfully senseless cabal of liars and theives mercilously attacked the quiet contemplative war hero and congressman called Kerry. They chose not to speak of issues, but only of fear and terror.

They used what in philsophy, logic, and debate is known as fallacies of consequence — appealing to false consequences of fear rather than proving any particular point. If their campaign were a doctoral thesis they would have received an F. In a debate they would have been booed by the audience and docked a point and warned not to make the same mistake again. But they did it over and over and over again. To the point where the only issue seemed to be terror. How much terror can we as american people inflict on the world around us so as not to have the same done to us. Let us kill for you so we will not be killed. We will terrorize every country who gets in our way in the name of fighting terror. We cannot tell you who the enemy is, but we will kill every last standing man woman or child until we are sure that they are dead and we are safe. Let us rape this land before our enemies do it first. Fuck the envirmonent, we need the money. Fuck healthcare. If you aren’t wealthy enough to afford it, you’re better off dead. Education? Who needs it? Look at us! We barely speak english and we’re ruling the most poweful nation in the world.

With the flesh and guts of recent victims dangling from their jaws and fresh blood smeared across their smarmy dogged faces they appeared on countless news programs spitting out lies so obvious and blatant that many news shows would ask them to thier faces why they kept lying and then run short segments highlighting them repeating the same words of deceit over and over again to show them how many times they lied: “we beleive Iraq is harboring weapons of mass destruction and terrorists and if we don’t continue our crusade to conquer that land and its people we will be unsafe here in america.” Cheney would stare coldly back into the eyes of the journalists interviewing him and report that he never said anything about Iraq harboring weapons of mass destruction. And then the journalist would replay five to ten different scenes where on different episodes he said just that. As if to say, ’Sir you are the vice president of the united states and therefore out of respect for this office i will not aruge with you about this but rather i will let you argue with yourself. The people have clearly seen that you either have no respect for the truth, or you are simply ignorant of the concept itself. But either way you are a liar and worse yet you are using these lies to kill innocent people in our name.

On and on it went. And by election day 2004 the good kind working people of this great land who huddle in the safe center portion of its belly were so confused that many did indeed cast a vote for the warpig butchers and henchmen of the giant corporate monoliths whose intention it was to eat these same poor people’s children for breakfast or maybe just keep sending them off to fight their battles for them in some foreign country undeserving of yet another attack by the wicked american imperialists. Frightened or just confused? In the end who knows.  But it happened. And america went from pitiable to pitiful to despicable in the eyes of the world community.       

So instead of working that day following the election Dasher and I sat in the park. We were speechless. Shocked beyond words. A freind stopped by who was doing a piece about how New Yorkers were responding to the news for a local paper. We spent an hour or so together in mourning. Our camraderie in that moment founded upon a rather sorrowful state of affairs. Less than a year later my friends and I would hear news that one of our own from the high school days had been killed in action in Iraq. He told his family and friends that he volunteered for the marines after the US government announced that there was a clear connection between Iraq and the attacks on 9/11. Even though we tried to explain to him that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 he didn’t believe us because he had seen them say it on TV countless times. He felt it was the least he could do. His mother spoke at the funeral and said that the best way for us to “support the troops was to get them the hell out of there because they have no business being there in the first place.” It was the first time I heard applause at a funeral.