Music Friday: "Hoping Machine"

With the shootings in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Aurora, Colorado this past week, it's easy for me to get angry, morbid, and even more misanthropic than I already am.

I just don't get it. 

Today "Hoping Machine" from New Multitudes is speaking to me. A video and the song's lyrics are below.

If you''re not familiar with the album, it's a collaborative album by Jay Farrar, Anders Parker, Will Johnson, and Yim Yames. They're playing Woody Guthrie songs.

Hoping Machine

Lyrics by Guthrie, Music by Farrar

Don’t let anything knock your props out from under you.
Always keep your mind clear, let your plans come out of mistakes.
These are the plans, and nothing can tear down
Made out of things that have already been torn down.

Whatever you do, wherever you go,
Don’t lose your grip on life, and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine.

Music is the language of the mind that travels,
Carries the key to the laws of time and space.
Lonesome train whistling down the silent wail of wind,
Life is the sound, creation has been a song.

Whatever you do, wherever you go
Don’t lose your grip on life, and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine

Out of order...

Quick to manufacture their schemes and ideas
Faster than any turn a tide can wash you out.
Word is the music, and the people are the song.
Tomorrow's chances feel like a singing god.

Whatever you do, wherever you go
Don’t lose your grip on life, and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine.

Out of order...