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Project: Drown Out Ashcroft

Circa: whenever it was that it came out that Ashcroft was writing songs and forcing his staff to sing them

Background: When John Ashcroft's awful, maudlin ballad "Let The Eagle Soar" blanketed the nightly newscast for about a week, I decided something had to be done. Someone needed to provide an alternative to this kind of brainless patriotism; those of us who felt differently needed to stand up and sing out our own songs. So I sent email to everyone I knew telling them to send me a sample of a song they liked, or of them singing.

Sordid details: This is one of those unfinished projects I feel really bad about. I wish I had really thrown myself into making this work, spent all my free time doing it. I might have developed something for This American Life, if I'd been timely about it, and not been shy about going out with a recorder and a mic and asking total strangers to sing for me, the way I said I was going to do. I also wish I'd told more people to call me and sing to my answering machine, which was a much easier thing to do than to get non-technical friends to fiddle with AIFF files and such.

Why was it left unfinished?: I was feeling depressed about the prospect of war, and a scathing email from one friend who was angry about the spam I sent cowed me, and I never followed up.

What I learned: When you have a really great idea, go with it, even if people give you flack.

Prognosis: I ended up with a couple links to songs from two friends, and then two fantastic answering machine messages -- one a wonderful rendition of "Unchained Melody" bawled into the phone by my dad and stepmother, and the other a chirpy version of "I Spent My Last Ten Dollars On Birth Control And Beer" as sung by Jen Howk. I don't think I could have thought up two more perfect antidotes to Ashcroft's claptrap if I'd tried. I saved these until one day, in a moment of absentmindedness, I unplugged my answering machine, and they were lost forever.