Stephen Carl Baldwin

 
Occupy Broadway, December 2, 2011, Times Square

Photo: Stacy Lanyon

In the last three of four years, I became a musician, not the kind of musician who is able to support himself completely but someone who does street music, music in the subways, music in public spaces, and then when Occupy came along, I went down there because I needed to see what was going on. I knew this thing was going on. I had seen a few reports on the internet, so I knew there was this gathering, and I went down there the first time because I just wanted to see what this was about. I think the next time I went down, I brought some percussion equipment, and the third or fourth time, I brought a guitar. 

When I went down there, it just seemed that there might be a role for me as a musician. Music can reach people in a special way. I found other musicians. I found an audience. Some of them were receptive to what I was doing. Many of them were just passersbies who were oblivious and just gave me dirty looks, and then, of course, I found something that I wanted to write about as a songwriter. I wound up doing the old folks songs first and then doing some parodies and then eventually writing some original material. 

I found a certain fellowship, other musicians, other people who were more ideologically aligned with my own beliefs than I had seen in one place in maybe forty years, and I kept going back. I realized that the Zuccotti thing couldn’t last, so I wanted to get down there as much as I could because I thought that it really was going to go away and was going to be stopped, as it was. Zuccotti was cleared out on November 15^th. 

Then, we became this wandering diaspora, moving from place to place, trying to find a home, the home we had lost, and that home we had lost was our home because of the other homes we had lost, people being thrown out of their homes, people being homeless, people having a sense that they had no future, and I often think of this as a metaphor for Occupy. The metaphor of homelessness is very powerful. The home, the America I grew up in is no longer there anymore. My home is not there anymore. I have no home, but I have other people, and perhaps that is my home, not a physical place, but a home in the heart. That’s what I think I’ve found, and I hope never to lose that home.

I’m fifty-five years old. I’ve led a long and somewhat pleasant life. I think when one gets to that age, once realizes that time is finite, one begins to lose one's physical powers. It’s possible to see that now I'm at this point in my life where I have to plan and live my life, so I can make a graceful escape from the planet when the time is right, and this is why we want to plan for retirement, so everyone wants to start planning for the grand exit. Part of me resists that idea. There’s got to be another act for me before I have to leave. There’s gotta be something for me to do, and maybe it’s a little grandiose, but I could make a difference. 

I’m fifty-five, so I was a little too young to have any real involvement in the counter-culture in the 1960s. I was just a few years too young. My older brothers and sisters or the guys and gals four or five years ahead of me, they were the ones really involved. I was just a kid. I think this is true of other people I’ve talked to in my precise age bracket, but when Occupy came along, it was like, “Now we have our chance.”  We’re not kids anymore, but we went through this, and maybe our role is to try and provide a little guidance because we’ve been through some of this before. It’s not just a repetition, but there are common themes. 

I’m losing my physical powers. My time on the earth is finite, but I still have enough that I can get out as much as I can and do this music thing. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to wait. I want to do this now. Now is the time. It’s very important right now. I can’t go, “You know what, I’m busy. I’ll come back in six months.” It might not be anything in six months. There’ll be a planet in six months, but this is a very special moment, and I think a lot of people recognize it. It came from nowhere like a black swan. It surprised everybody. What a surprise. What a wonderful surprise.

I don’t see the world that it will bring about as being radically different. I’m not a radical reformer. I don’t think it’s necessary to tear down the whole system and rebuild it. Maybe this is a function of my flirting with Utopia at a younger age. I don’t think we have to burn down this house to build a better one. I think we just need to clean up our act, and I think Occupy has already done that. It’s changed the conversation, and people are waking up. They have woken up to so many different things. I have a hard time enumerating all of them. 

Here we are. I’m just looking around at our little table. We’re all strangers. We’re not old friends, but we have fellowship here. It’s a special fellowship, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing. It’s not based upon money. Maybe it’s based upon involvement in a common cause or dreaming a common dream. 

I’d like to just see us become a little bit more caring as a nation, as individuals, and I’d also like to see people less afraid of expressing themselves in whatever form that is. I’m like this too. I don’t want confrontation in my life. I’d like everything to go smoothly, but then you wind up sorta living in a bubble where everything is predictable, sorta living your life on rails. Maybe I want a more spontaneous world where things are less regimented, just a little less regimented. I guess I’d like a more human world for people. 


Interview by Stacy Lanyon

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