Iraqi Refugee Music

This music video is done to the song "Right Now!" The Youtube website says this: "Impact of War on Iraqis and the refugee explosion. What is America doing to help? Call your congressman and ask!"

I strongly recommend the same action.

I do have a history with this song, however. It was played, to different photos (very different photos) at the memorial service for a young man that I had been friends with. He was about 26 years old when he died, and he died in a whitewater kayaking accident. His friends put together the music and photos, and I understood it completely because I also used to do whitewater kayaking. Other people at the memorial service did not understand it at all. (And I had some trouble with the line 'turn this thing around' since death is not reversible.) What they saw was a young person who risked his life and lost it in the process. What I saw, and the others who were really into whitewater kayaking also saw, was someone who lived his life to the fullest and took serious risks to do that. And he lost, which we all knew could happen. It was not the first kayaking death that we were exposed to.

With whitewater kayaking, the river takes and holds your full attention. There is no time to think of extraneous things when you are in the middle of a class four or five rapid. (I never did class five stuff, just some class four.) The water absorbs you completely, and in those precious minutes you know you are fully and totally alive.

Scott Bristow was the young man who died back in 1998. That memorial service, and the other events around that sad time, really showed me the power of relationships on the internet. These relationships are as real as face-to-face relationships, and reach across time and distance. Never doubt that.

Maybe one day, instead of the internet changing our lives, we will use the internet to totally change our world. God bless to all the kayakers and the peacemakers. Here are some words to the song:

"Don’t want to wait until tomorrow – why put it off another day?

Turn this thing around – right now – until tomorrow – come on, it is everything.

Right Now – catch that magic moment and do it right here and now."