Bakers, Bankers, and Poets

There's only 3 types of people in New York City.

1 - Bakers

The bakers... bless them... they get up early and get to work. They do it to feed their families, but they end up feeding and supporting the rest of us too. They bake the bread, keep the place tidy, run the trains and the trucks and the busses and the cranes and they do not get anywhere near enough credit for keeping this city and the world running. Bless them.

2 - Bankers

Next you got your bankers. Pirates that don't know they're pirates. Always trying to get something for nothing.

They run the banks of course, but you also find the bankers in board rooms and executive suites and government offices around the world.

Many have secret fantasies about actually putting a knife to someone's throat, just like great-great-grand-paw-paw.

The bankers harbor a sense of superiority to everyone else, and they’re constantly getting together to spend the bakers’ hard work to spin fawning yarns that justify why it should be them - and only them - who get to make decisions that affect all of us.

But when you balance out the good and the harm that they do, the bankers are deep in the red.

3- Poets

Finally you got your poets. These are your musicians, painters, actors, dancers, writers, weirdos, and wanderers who're drawn to and stuck to New York, huffing off her mainline flume direct to earth's molten core.

Every one of 'em would eat their own beating heart if only they could figure out how to capture the color.

At night, some of the bakers become poets, howling at the moon, showing us how good it could be, and tickling Dionysus’ chin.

In the morning the poets go back to baking, but once in awhile, one of them will sign a big enough contract with the bankers to become a banker themselves, and then exploration takes a back seat to ‘profit’.

Because the bakers and poets are so busy thinking about their process, they don’t notice how dark the minds of the bankers actually are.

Near Future

They'll never admit it, but every banker is afraid. Afraid that the baker and the poet will realize how little the banker contributes, and how much they take.

Then what happens?

At what point does the rapacity of the bankers cripple the ability of the bakers to actually make bread?

What will we all do then?

100 years ago, you could spend 1 barrel of oil and get back 100. Now it’s about 1 to 7. And there’s a lot more mouths than there were back then.

Which means that soon our stores of burnable energy will be all used up. And before that happens - right now - the bankers have greater incentive to steal than ever before.

And the bakers are gonna keep baking, until there’s no flour left. Bless them.

So it’s down to the poets, to see what is happening, and dance a different dance than what we been dancing: a dance so compelling that the bakers and the bankers down tools and join in.

Because that’s all any of us really want anyways.

Togetherness.

Where EVERYBODY bakes.

Sleep well,

Dan Flag

Written on the D train, late night, from Grand Street to 145th.