To supplement the income I recieve from Adequacy.org, I travel the nation's coffee bars and communist book shops, singing my own blend of folk/rock. Although I had many songs dealing with the pain and questionings rising from and regarding about the post-9/11 world, I had not yet begun to express my feelings, thoughts, and ideas regarding the post-9/11-post-9/11 world.

What would it be like for America -- really, the world -- to lose its innocence again? The world after September Eleventh after September Eleventh would be totally different, and this would be a deeper loss than all the other times America has lost its innocence: The Kennedy Assasination, The Other Kennedy Assasination, Pearl Harbor, The Lindhberg Kidnapping, The Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle Murder Trials, The Sacco and Vanzetti Murder Trials, World War I, The Teapot Dome Scandal, The Civil War, The Trail of Tears, The End of The Gold Standard, The Revolutionary War, The Salem Witch Trials.

September Eleventh is the greatest loss of innocence for America, the deepest piercing of our nation's many, seemingly endless, hymens. For this was a profound loss, one that is greater than could be imagined, one that sits on the circle of chairs that forms the border of imagination, where thoughts wander around like toddlers under the supervision of a preschool teacher, and September Eleventh gets up on that chair and jumps over it, taunting the children that are American Thought, and the children cry and yell at September Eleventh, but September Eleventh just laughs and laughs and ignores the teacher and won't play nice, for it is September Eleventh and doesn't care about that.

I was thinking about this while trying to write a folk song, summing up my feelings about the 9/11 after 9/11. I was in the throes of a good cry, stumbling down the street, hoping that the city would reveal the essence of what was lost and what was found on that fateful day, and what would be lost and what would be found on the fateful day after that fateful day.

To placate the homeless stalking me like fleas on an Irishman's carpet, I threw handfuls of change out of my pockets as I walked. I threw it indiscriminately, in random directions, every few steps. What good is money in the post-September-Eleventh-post-September-Eleventh world? Would such a silly thing even matter -- and if it doesn't matter, could that mean the terrorists have already won?

As I wept and walked, shining bits of metal rhytmically flying in clouds from my pants, a large crowd of scampering homeless picking up the change in my wake, suddenly it came to me. The perfect song came to me, and it came fully formed, like an infant coated in girlie-goo sliding from his mother's tightness. I had it! I had a folk/rock song that expressed my complex, ambiguous feelings regarding the post-September-Eleventh-post-September-Eleventh Era!

I sang my song of hope and redemption, and the homeless behind me, as if psychic, sang harmony behind me (except for Surly Red, an old dude who kept up with the monotonic muttering monologue about the Jews he always does.) Here are the lyrics:

Nine One One,
Won't you feel me when I'm gone?
Nine One One,
Won't you feel me long and strong?

When the bar-room lights are low
And the closing time has come,
Nine One One,
Oh ho, oh Nine One One.

When you call me, I'll be there,
Like a look into the night,
Nine One One I hear you calling,
And I sympathize your plight.

Oh, we sing of Unicorns and Firemen strong,
But as kids no more we'll miss them though they're strong,
And who will sing to me a sleepy song?
Nine One Wah-hong,
Nine One One.

I should be able to get this song into rotation on public radio. I hope I've touched your lives as deeply as I've touched mine.