Towards the end of 2016 I was in shock. Not about Brexit, Trump’s election or right- and left-wing cultural wars that dominated the news cycle. Not even about the failure to systematically report on the one real problem facing humanity; climate change. No, Leonard Cohen’s death in November 2016 made a bad year truly horrible. With the deaths of David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen we lost the holy trinity of creativity, love and wisdom. And it shows. No one will remember 2017. In wine terms it would be called a mediocre vintage at best. The best music of 2017 is nowhere near the best of 2016. Some of my favourite artists (most notably Arcade Fire and The National) released albums that were frankly a bit disappointing.

I’m happy 2017 is almost over now.

For 2018 I just hope that you will do a couple of things:

Listen to Gorillaz’s ‘Plastic beach‘ and understand the urgency of global warming and climate change. We don’t have 20, or 10 or even 5 years anymore. One or two years is all we have before the process becomes irreversible. Be scared, change your behaviour and elect political parties and individual politicians accordingly.

Listen to Kraftwerk’s ‘The Man machine’ and begin to nurture the idea that not all technology is good, that in this age of almost unlimited information people are more misinformed than they should be, and that we have handed over data and privacy control to a couple of technological behemoths. Be careful what you use, switch off when costs outweigh benefits and don’t treat Facebook, Google and Twitter as a basic necessity.

Listen to PIL’s ‘Religion’ and extrapolate to all religions. I have nothing against religion as long as it is not meant to suppress people or (negatively) affect the freedom of renegades or non-believers, or actively shown in the public domain. And yes, as long as only women are walking around with a head scarf it does indicate suppression, no matter what creative reasoning is used to try to proof the opposite.

And prey to the God of a bitch spelled backwards is dog

Not for one race, one creed, one world

But for money

Effective

Absurd

Listen to Janis Joplin’s ‘Me and Bobby McG’ and think for a moment about what ‘freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’ actually means. For me it means that everyone who claims that you can say whatever you want because there is freedom of speech, missed the point of what freedom of speech means.The fact that you can do something, doesn’t mean you have to, and civilisation also means that you don’t have to insult other people.

With that I would like to end 2017, even though we still have a couple of days to go. I will officially bury 2017 now. Take care.