EVEN THE BIRDS ARE PISSED

when everyday life looks like something from
 daphne du maurier & hitchcock- you know something very significant is about to happen.  2020 is fuckin harsh!

RICK CASTRO: DIARY- 4/6/2020

So This Is How The World Will End: by Rick Castro 4/6/2020

6am, lightly raining and an ambulance just passed by my cabin window with their red lights flashing.

There are roughly ten homesteads on this street, three are family members, two who are not here, one, (auntie Nicky) is deceased, and one home is abandoned. In all my  fifty-three year history of coming to Bee’s cabin, I have never, ever seen an ambulance. 

There is no hospital for 40 miles. To wake up to this image, starts me day off with a bang.

I didn’t realize birds flew during the rain… Is this normal? These crows are hovering about… 

I would say that’s the first time I’ve seen birds fly in the rain…..

I like the rain….. I liked in the city, and I like it even more here in the high desert. It’s so steady and relaxing, like a non-sexual massage. When I lived in LA, (remember way back then?) I made a point of walking whenever it rained. Being a southern CA native, rain was an anomaly. A special occurrence when concerned newscasters would predict, “a storm” and everybody would get into car accidents, because the drizzle would make the oily road tops slick. In the high desert it has the same rarity without the drama. 

Yah! Our live stream just started with me goth buddy~ Parma Ham. 

We’ve never met in real time, (how old fashion) but have been in contact for about a year online. We had plans to do an exhibition at his goth club WRAITH, in London, then the plague hit and wiped out all our plans. ALL my exhibitions- projects- jobs have been cancelled…. gone… Currently I have no income.

Parma reached out to me to present my images during his live DJ set, and HERE it is!- 

I love it!… I’m 100% grandfather goth. Parma is the current wave. With his gravity defying mohawk, and partner, make-up queen Salvia, together they are creating goth culture for the 21st century… They are the future; the harsh/isolated, virtual brave new world.

Goths instinctively understand plague. Original gothic is all about plague mass~14th century with the Black Death, 16th century with the Italian Plague. Then the 19th century got literate with Edgar Allen Poe’s, Mask of the Red Death, (inspired by consumption) and gothic heroine Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s, The Last Man; the first post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. My goth era, 1980s/90s understood and dealt with the AIDS plague. Now Parma and his goth~comrades are taking COVID19 head on. Goths are instinctually introverted and standoffish, they don’t even want to try to fit in. As my dear, late sorceress, goth diva Camille O’Grady said way back in 1974, 

“In the future everyone will wear black.”   

So this is how the world will end.

copyright-rick castro- 4/2020

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TOMORROW DOESN'T BELONG TO ME

Who remembers the scene in the classic film Cabaret, (1972)

 where Sally Bowles, (Liza Minelli) Christopher Isherwood, (Michael York) and Maxmillian Von Heune, (Helmet Griem)  stop to have lunch at a rural beer garden in Weimar Germany?

Oblivious to the world, they talk about drinks, parties and travel, while a young peach-cheeked lad begins to sing in a cherubic voice- Tommorrow Belongs To Me.  As the song progresses a couple farmers join in, then waitress and staff, then the entire military troop-Nazis. Sally Bowles and company are forced to leave making the statement, 

"do you still think you can control them? 

The other day I attended a farmers market in the quaint town of Wrightwood in the San Bernadino mountains. I've been going to Wrightwood since I was a kid. My parents have a little cabin not too far from there. In a small community auditorium were a smatter of folding tables with fresh produce, farm raised eggs, homemade baked goods, tamales and the most amazing smoked salmon I've ever tasted. Everybody knows each other.

 The vendors are Mexican, Japanese, caucasian and black. In the corner was a MAGA booth run by a surly looking man & woman. They looked like caricatures of what one might image to be "poor racist trash." They noticed me immediately and grimaced in my direction. 

I glared right back boring holes thru their thin, receding hairline skulls. 

Every now and again someone would walk up and talk to them. 

I wondered why they were allowed to have this booth with ethnic minorities on either side? 

I'm assuming the Wrightwood community approved. 

Someone decided this is equal opportunity. 

The other morning I was at an original diner circa 1948 on route 66 Victorville. As I ate my pancakes a table full of MAGA men were spewing hatred against "illegals," and convinced California will go red in November. "wait and see, " they taunted. As the Mexican delivery man walked by they feyed excuses for their minority rant. Not an apology, but "he's one of the good ones," type mentality.

This slow overtake of MAGA mentality is now present. Not only in red states, but here in California. In parts of rural areas of my childhood memories, and many parts of sprawling LA County.
Let me be clear, MAGA is not about equality. At its core is a racist, xenophobic, supremacist way of thought, with a wish of going back to something that never existed. The current powers in the white house will never do anything for these MAGA people. Ever! They are too poor. Kanye and Steven Miller have the goods $$$. Small town USA MAGA's will never be allowed a seat at the table. They will be the brown shirts.

Tomorrow doesn't belong to me.

BELLUM IS LIKE A DREAM

1.1.2020.WEDNESDAY.6AM