3 Chords & the Truth: The knowing

You have to admit there's one thing about American life that's easier today. It's easier to be a depressive.

That, I think, is a sane reaction to . . . American life today. And all you have to do to get there is pay attention.

But that's not healthy, you might say. You likely are correct. But tell me this: How healthy is it to check out from the world around you, to no longer pay attention, to live in a world faux-sanitized for your peace of mind?

Does balance exist? Where might it be?

These are the questions confronting every episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. And to tell you the truth, they're not easy questions, and it's not easy to do a music program that aims neither to ignore our reality today nor to wallow in it with no respite in sight.

PERSONALLY, I think the root cause of this country's social and political brokenness is some sort of American civilizational collapse. Try "keeping it real" amid a nationwide nervous breakdown while also trying to be somewhat entertaining.

"Keeping it real" could make you a total depressive. Being tight and bright might tend toward delusion, with a certain head-in-the-sand je ne sais quoi. If you live on this side of America's Ironic Curtain, behind authoritarian lines somewhere in a red-state enclave, it helps to do your show from a culture-war bunker.

What does this have to do with a freeform music program, this Big Show, going out over the Internet during troubled, spite-infused times? I suppose both nothing and everything. Your guess is as good as mine.

I tell myself this weekly 90 minutes is a refuge, though not one for delusional thinking. Maybe the better analogy is a sanctuary for what beauty and sanity we can preserve. Maybe it's the audio version of a candle in a dark room.

Whatever it is, I'm certain that 3 Chords & the Truth is better than the prevailing social and political ethos -- at least in many quarters to the right of me -- of burning the motherf***er down, because one's grievances (justified or no) demand it. The nihilism of the "burn the motherf***er down" crowd has no Plan B and no plan for what comes next.

The only thing left, as one stands in the ashes following a conflagration of one's own making, is "Well, f***."

"Well, f***," indeed. Maybe the truth of the Big Show is that all we can do is remind folks of what they're putting the match to -- so much beauty, so little regard for it. I don't know . . . but I reckon that's not nothing.

All I do know is that a country full of mental toddlers really shouldn't be allowed to play with matches. Now here's something to listen to by the warm light of the flickering flames outside as you recall when we were better than this.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.