The real cost of technology has not been to jobs or the economy, but to the human spirit. Huge cyber wastelands have replaced what was once a society of human interaction. We’ve sold our souls for the convenience of not having to know that they’re there. We’ve sold our souls with no repurchase guarantee.
Some people have many channels in their head like a radio. Others have only static, interspersed with very few moments of clarity. They live in a self-imposed interference. The reality of their nature being FM, as they ramble the AM stations consumed by the noise. So many of my early years were filled with this AM wandering, always in motion, with my direction in doubt. The clear channels, usually unwanted and tuned out in my programming, were hidden resevoirs of what I had forgotten to learn.
Some of us though, have only one clear and consistent channel. It is a short wave to the future and the past but plays loudest in the present. Crazy Horse was like that. Like all true prophets, he saw through the superficiality and into the meaning that connects all of life together. His channel had no on/off switch, and he needed no advertising or endorsement to drive home his message.
The price for this clarity he had already paid, and he would ultimately pay again. His message, although often unwelcome, was the warning that his tribe needed to hear. His station was not a place on the dial, but a frequency into the heart of one refusing to change. It was a respite, and last hope, from the threat that European civilization posed to the Oglala Sioux.
The truth, resonating from the deepest places in his heart, burdened him because so few wanted to hear. His message was ignored by those who still lived in denial. He would remind them: "To live truly free comes at the highest cost of all," and like many great men the idea of Crazy Horse was more welcome than the reality of who he was. The line crossing over from storytelling — to living the story — left many behind. The message in his words was often covered over by the smoke of what many still wanted to hear. So often he said: "Looking into the fire you either know or you don’t know," and the difference lies not in the music of the dance — but in the dancer.
The campfire oftentimes had an illusion unto itself. Its chanting would enlighten the few while only warming the many in a comfort that could not last. Like Muzak, which tries to convince us today that any noise is better than the quiet it replaces, the Oglala Sioux continued to hear a similar monotony — with their heads in the sand.
As I pull into Tuba City, my memory yearns for the simplicity of my old BSA Gold Star, where more was not necessarily better and whose soul I could always find. The clarity of its exhaust note would reach deep inside me, reminding me that the truth is always spoken to one directly, and the importance of its message only strengthened with time.
Kurt Philip Behm: June, 1971