‘All at once, the world can overwhelm you’

When I find myself feeling overwhelmed, I find companionship in Jack Johnson’s music.  I admire that he has synthesized the things that trouble him and the attention his talent brings him into a good cause, http://allatonce.org/.

Here’s a poignant excerpt from his recent interview with Mother Earth News:

MJ: (On the title of his latest album) I know there’s a commitment to change and activism in there, but also enjoying yourself and letting loose.

JJ: It was tricky, you know, trying to pick a title, and something that would refer to maybe some lyrics and the way we’re thinking of using all of our resources all at once. And the song on the album is called “All at Once,” and it touches on a lot of the fears that people have right now, the ideas of all these different things that are going on in the world. With that song, it kind of starts out at three o’clock in the morning and the lyrics that I wrote, where the first line is [singing] “All at once the world can overwhelm me. There’s almost nothing that you could tell me to ease my mind.” Sometimes the lack of sleep—I get to this point where I’ll get really anxious about things and nervous, and that’s the feeling the song starts out with. And then it turns around and turns into more of this major key where it’s, [singing] “I wanna take the preconceived stuff from underneath your feet. And we can shake it off, instead we’ll plants some seeds. We’ll watch ‘em as they grow.” Sometimes I feel like there’s hope. You know, sometimes I have a lot of hope. Sometimes I have despair. It was meant to be uplifting. Even though we’re up against a lot of these huge challenges that sometimes we feel like we can’t actually overcome them…Then, other times we feel like we have to solve it. I think the ‘all at once’ reference for us, we were thinking of it as trying to use all of our resources at once, just trying to use all of this attention I have on myself to do something really good, which is to use money for nonprofit groups that are focusing on things specific to their areas that they know in their city better than anyone.

Regarding the oil spill and plastic in the ocean, he essentially says that getting others to care about something they can’t see starts by showing them the beauty of the natural world. 

MJ:The ocean is obviously a big part of who you are, what you sing about, but the ocean is largely something that’s invisible to the public in terms of what we’re doing to it environmentally, they don’t see the garbage gyre, or the marine life and the changes in the ecosystem under the surface, say, when there’s a horrendous oil spill. So how do you get people to care about something they don’t see?

JJ: Well, I think it depends. Getting adults to see it. That’s one topic. And then with kids, I think it’s really important to actually not show them—in a way—some of that stuff, because I think that what’s going to happen at an early age is, you start showing the kids the problems—it’s almost like they start becoming desensitized because they’re so used to it. I think it’s really important with kids just to show them the beauty of nature and teach them a profound respect for nature, to get them outside and have any significant experiences, and then at a certain age, once they, you know, when they reach high school and they start to do reports and things like that, then it’s important to see these things and see what humans—what our effects are on these natural beauty.

Go to the east shore of any of the Hawaiian Islands, and that’s a pretty big lesson on how much plastic is ending up in the ocean. Basically, the Hawaiian Islands act as a filter out in the middle of the Pacific. It’s basically a long pile of plastic along the shores. We go to the east side to surf a lot. And when you get over there, it’s just always so shocking to see piles of plastic along the beach. And it’s really sad to see. I think that’s something you can’t really avoid.

I know that when I step away from the computer and get out of my townhouse, I feel like the fat people in Wall-E stepping off of the spaceship onto Earth again.  By stepping outside or away from the BlackBerry and the news and the computer, I find solace, peace, joy, and a connection to nature and the people (and pets) who are with me.

Makes me wonder what’s so bad about being human. (See the NY Times Article on Singularity entitled “Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday.”)

Happy 7th Anniversary to my husband today.  I promise to step away from the computer more often and take more long walks with you.