I've written a new tune, "In The End, Just Radio Waves And Static", which you can hear on Garage Band, here: http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSgYFC0a2w . It's a post-apocalyptic vision. A hopefully not psychic vision of our future, but something born of a cold, small fear. Something born of watching too many You Tube videos about the prophecies of Mother Shipton, Nostradamus and John the Apostle.

I'm not frightened of dying exactly. I had that fear dampened down in September 2001, when I nearly bit the big one, with a brain haemorrhage. I saw "death", and it was not nearly so big and terrifying as one has been led to imagine. I also saw the seeds of our planet's death, as I lay in my hospital bed, with that second plane hitting and hitting and hitting the second of those twinned towers, in constant action replay. Even in my fevered state, I knew a bunch of mad mullahs could not orchestrate an attack of that magnitude against the most powerful, most well-defended nation on this planet. Sadly, my first fevered thoughts proved to be vindicated (www.911truth.org )

Maybe we all deserve to die, for letting murderers and psychopaths take control of our lives. Maybe we are just not evolved enough to be able to peacefully co-operate and co-exist. It seems painfully inevitable that we will eventually - probably very soon - wipe ourselves out. If it isn't with weapons of mass destruction - as stockpiled mainly by Saddam Hussein's accusers - then it will certainly be because of the climatic (and maybe even seismic) havoc we are reaping, as we rape and despoil our once beautiful planet.

In some ways, I might have welcomed this collective self-destruction - after all, it is the pettiness of our skin, the blindness of our belief in our individuality, our isolation, each from each other, that causes such untold misery. In death, we will all be brought back to our true form, which is spirit, not flesh. Spirit recognises no boundaries. Spirit has no divisions. It cannot go to war with itself. It cannot steal from itself. It cannot neglect a part of itself. It cannot inflict pain upon itself. And yet, that is exactly what Spirit does, while encased in these separate bodies of flesh. So yes, part of me would have welcomed our collective death. Except....

Except that same month, September 2001, I became a father. I became blinded by the little parcel of flesh that I had helped to co-create. I became blinded by bio-chemical love, as all procreators do. I became jailed by the illusion of flesh. Like all fathers, like all mothers, I quickly grew to see myself as a guardian. I guard the little life that is my daughter's, just as preciously as any other parent. I may even kill to protect her, if push came to shove. I may even lay down my own life for her. So sucked in have I become to that bio-chemical illusion.

Yes, I see the bigger picture. Yes, this is all illusion. But what a beautiful illusion it can be; and I want my wee daughter to enjoy her allotted span of three score years and ten (and hopefully many more) before she shuffles of her mortal coil and joins the amorphous otherness of Spirit again. I want to shake George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. I want to shake Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Alasdair Darling. I want to shake the slimy, cold bodies of every politician from Downing Street to Darfur, from Beijing to Washington, from Stockholm to Sao Paulo. I want to shake them until some dormant part of their brain wakes up and they realise the consequences of their actions (and their inactions). Like me, most of them have children. Many of them will have grandchildren too. And surely - even though their blood is colder, their hearts more calculating than the rest of us - they must at least love their own offspring. They must surely want them to thrive, even if they don't give a rat's as about the rest of us. Sure, they do deals with multinational corporations and line their own pockets, to ensure that their offspring inherit their wealth and power. But what use will wealth and power be in a world that is no longer inhabitable? I'm guessing that all those politicians and big business people just live day-to-day, that they truly are blind to the consequences of their actions, because I cannot believe that they would willingly sacrifice the happiness and well-being of their children for the sake of a quick buck. Cold-hearted as they are, I cannot believe they are that cold-hearted!

It is with these thoughts rattling round my head, rattling round my heart, that I compose my latest tunes. The thought that we will all die son. The thought that my daughter may not live long enough to produce a daughter of her own. The thought that we have turned our abundant Mother Earth into a weeping, angry, vindictive crone. That one day she will shuffle us off, like a dog scratching away blood-sucking flees. And then, what then? All that will be left of us will be radio waves and static.

(Click here - http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSgYFC0a2w - and listen while you read the poem below)

In The End, Just Radio Waves And Static

What will we be in the end, but radio waves and static,
chaotic patterns of interference, perhaps detected,
but not understood, many years after
we have finally extinguished ourselves.

Maybe, high-powered telescopes will be trained
upon the dim star we once worshiped, long before
we were sophisticated enough
to bring about our own destruction.

Maybe those far off others
will be sufficiently technologically advanced
to be able to detect the cold mass
that was the planet we used to inhabit.

What will they suppose
when they hear the static encrusted voices
that once belonged to our leaders?

Will they try to decipher meaning
from those alien voices
that hiss and crackle through their atmosphere?

Will they speculate upon the reasons
for our demise,
or nod knowingly, sadly, sagely -
glad they had the luck to be so far away?

(You can hear more songs from The Melted Rubber Humans latest album, "Tunes To Play As The World Goes Up In Flames" at www.virb.com/melted_rubber_humans_2 )