For the first time in some months I updated the songs on my MySpace profile. I hate the site and its miserable UI, but it's the most important social networking site for a musician, so I should pay more attention to it.

But as I looked at the songs I had up there, I realized that the change I was making had more to do with shuffling the songs around. Things have changed, dramatically, since the last time I added new songs. The last thing I added was the "John McCain Blues" video, and, well, he is down the drain. It's not relevant anymore, thankfully.

I also removed "Dear Leader," a song I wrote after the 2004 elections that began, "When I was young / We used to have elections." The idea for that song came in a conversation at Rocky Sullivan's, the now-defunct political watering hole, during the nightmare of the Democratic National Convention. That was a much darker time, and maybe we'll be able to look back at it as the low point of a bad period, rather than a harbinger of more frightening things to come.

So it's gone, and maybe I'll have some more optimistic songs in the future. I think we all owe it to ourselves, and to our country, to practice hope not as a slogan but as an attitude, as an inspiration, as the impetus to get out there and do the work that must be done. Some of that work will be activism and volunteering, but a lot of that work will be in everyday life, in conversation, in the way you respond to someone who talks about how government never works, or Obama will never really make a difference, or all politicians are crooked. To the extent that any of those things are true, they're true because we allow them to be. Because we're complicit in our despair and inaction.

It's time to end that. Hopeful songs are harder to write than cynical songs. It's easier to be snarky and cynical than to believe you can actually make a difference. But it's worth the effort. Look what we were able to do this year.

( Other songs I added )

Tags: politics, songs