Blue & Gold Release
The inspiration for this song came from visiting Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 right before and right after Maidan. In 2014 you could feel the tension in the air. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew something big was boiling under the surface. That of course was a president with a 20k/year salary and a 75,000,000 dollar house and all the inherent corruption that goes along with vestiges of the Soviet Union. Things that stuck out in 2015 were the paving stones on Khreschatyk Street ripped up and repurposed as shrines to the heavenly hundred - soldiers and civilians shot dead by Russian snipers set up on the roof of Hotel Ukraine but who fled with the president to Russia when they lost - a feeling that the air had cleared a bit in the aftermeth and the Ukrainian flag hung, draped, tied and spray painted just about everywhere. The signs of a liberated people who painted “Slava Ukraini!” (glory to Ukraine) in blue and gold on government buildings, monuments and hulks of burned-out military equipment.
Sadly as I write this Ukraine’s journey into the light is getting a bit darker. The simplest answer to why is greed and a burgeoning Russia-CHICOM alliance. Ukraine is the third largest country in Europe behind France and Russia. It is rich in natural gas, it is the “breadbasket” of Europe and it has a lot of natural resources. I doubt that Vladimir Putin cares too much about western sanctions as I believe he is going to use Ukraine in part as a show of strength to Xi Jinping and financially he intends to sell Ukraine’s gas, food, etc. to China. The only thing standing in his way are the Ukrainian people. However this shouldn’t be the case because of a little discussed or mentioned thing called the Budapest Memorandum. At the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had the worlds 3rd largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. They gave them up in exchange for security assurances from the west. Had they not given them up, something horrible could have happened, but they also would not be in the current situation.
I took a train from Kiev to Odessa on the black sea with some friends. We were drinking beer with a buddy “Vlad” who we met on the train as he was sitting near us. As I watched out the window passing by us were the most golden wheat fields I’d ever seen glowing yellow under a cloudless blue sky and stretching from horizon to horizon. It was blue and gold on an endless plane. I remember saying to Vlad as I stared out the window: “Hey Vlad, I think I know where you guys got your flag from…”
This song is for all my friends in Ukraine. Слава Украине!
“A widow placed one on a shrine, it was one of hundreds in a line”