HOTEL CALIFORNIA

Hotel California is not only a nod to the Eagles song of the same title but an expansion of it. American Songwriter magazine calls the Eagles Hotel California "perhaps the greatest song ever written about the duality of the American experience and the human condition."

Like the original, the main character finds himself in a hazy, nightmarish realm. Questions are easy: "Is this a dream or reality? It's getting harder to tell." "Have I lost touch with rationality? Feel like I'm all by myself." Are his memories real? He doesn't recognize them. Is being deceived really that easy?

The questions continue and get deeper. "Can we edit our own history? Does it change the now to change the then? Can we reconstruct a memory if who we are is who we've been?" The world is always faced with its past, and all too often the focus is on the negative things that have transpired. But by erasing the past, or forgetting it, or ignoring it we risk the possibility of repeating it.

"Is this that Hotel California the Eagles sang about?" It's a lovely place. "I got inside and now there ain't no getting out." Plenty of room... Everything you're looking for - you can find it here - but possibly to your own detriment.

In the novel "The Magus" that was inspiration for the Eagles' Hotel California the characters are paper thin, desperate, corrupt, morally bankrupt and yet see themselves as an elevated state of humanity because of their wealth, their education, their philosophy, their pedigree. In the end they prove themselves to be not just as bad as anyone else but actually far worse.

Searching for something to fill the void everyone feels they turn to the excesses: pleasure, money, possessions, drugs, alcohol, sex. And they reap the harvest that comes with it. Broken relationships, no true friendships, infidelity, lack of trust, lack of compassion, little or no concern for their fellow man.

By the time we realize we're addicted it's too late. You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.

There must be something more: "So give me something to believe in, someone I can trust. Or give me strength for leading us to rise above. Before we become Babylon buried in our own dust."

We are caught up in a whirlwind, but in many ways it seems to be spinning downward and out of control. Within that spin is realizing the danger mentioned before, that we will relive the past, as in "what's gone around's come back around." I don't think I need to elaborate.

What I will say is that technology is playing a huge part in the disconnect that we all feel in one way or another. We are truly closer than ever but possibly never as far apart.

"Everybody's desperate to be free. Oh! Everybody's looking for a Neo." Another Matrix reference which in turn is a reference to the need for a savior. "But no-one's ever going to find a hero..." (and now one of my favorite lines on the record) "Shut down cutting lines of ones and zeros." Cutting lines, like cocaine, but lines of code; binary, ones and zeros. Technology.

The phrase "it is what it is" has become a staple of the modern vocabulary but what it really means is "it isn't what it could or should be." I like to think Eagles would approve.