Last night, songwriter Chris Rea channeled for me the ghosts that have been haunting us all in the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon blew sky high and then sunk to the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, taking 11 men with her to its despoiled, watery grave.

I don't watch much television. I have especially avoided watching the news reports from the Gulf that show clips of the Deepwater Horizon exploding into hellfire and brimstone before collapsing into the sea. I likewise cannot bear to see video of the consequences of that horrific catastrophe as played out in the tidal flats and the bayous and the beaches and the oyster beds and the rest of our beautiful Gulf. There's only so much anger and sorrow I can accommodate at any one time.

I grow angry - nay, furious! - because so many of the disasters I could foresee on the horizon have now come together in this one senseless tragedy of epic proportions. Corporate greed, a failed energy policy, politicians in the pocket of campaign contributors, corrupt regulators, short-sighted consumers, arrogant Exceptionalism - all these and more expressions of our collective disease have triggered an environmental calamity that is as unprecedented and irreversible as it was predictable and preventable.

The gods are punishing us, and they have turned loose Satan himself, it seems, from the bowels of the earth to drive home their point.

I can avoid the TV with success, as proven, but last night I learned I cannot escape the ghosts who remain unsettled by our pathological addiction to the devil's crude. There I was, past midnight, consuming hydrocarbons in my eighteen wheeler as I hauled the mail between Madison and Milwaukee. I punched up the iPod to listen to music at random, and Chris Rea's song "The Road to Hell (Part1)" was the first up and Part 2 followed. It was the first I had listened to these songs in months.

This song was first published in 1989. I have loved the music and the emotions it evokes, even if I never quite understood the word picture being painted. Yet, last night the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up and I developed a churning in my gut while listening to the lyrics. It was as if it was the first time they had ever been made available to me.

What kind of sorcery was this, I thought? This song predates the advent of most deepwater drilling, yet here was the ghost of one of the roustabouts on the Deepwater Horizon telling me his story about the day the drilling rig blew up. He also wanted to offer some lessons he learned with benefit of wisdom gained in dying. And he did so not with subtle allusions or base generalities. No, these pictures he was painting were specific to this disaster; to the experience he knew as a fearful mother's child confronting certain doom and catastrophe and of the lessons learned that he wished to impart to others.

I reprint the lyrics below for those who cannot access the music. But I encourage you to listen to the song as written and played by Chris Rea to gain the full effect of the mysterious way in which he channels a ghost from the Deepwater Horizon, using poetry somehow written long before these drilling rig workers suffered and died in this senseless explosion.

These men were not heroes. They cannot be afforded any special status among us commoners who simply try to get by in this world. This man who narrates his story in Rea's song could have been my son. He could have been your brother, or father, or neighbor, or any other schmuck who is loved by others and who is simply trying to make a living for himself and his family. It is nonetheless with a profound sorrow that I mourn his senseless death and that of his comrades. And in the throes of that sorrow, I have discovered that this horrible death has gifted us a prophet who calls to us from the afterlife. "Oh, look out world!" he says. "Take a good look what comes down here. You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well."

These words have been with us since at least 1989, and they have been ignored in our rush to prod deeper and deeper into the earth for our sustenance. This ghost now tells us it was only a matter of time before our luck ran out ("And all the roads jam up with credit...") and that we at last drilled deep enough to stick a pipe into the devil's lair itself, unleashing a satanic fury into our Gulf.

As Satan's bile and venom continues spewing forth into our seas and onto our shores, we'd do well to listen to the lesson the roustabout ghost offers in song and poetry for our consideration. At the very least, we must heed the warning and steer clear of continuing our catastrophic journey chasing the devil all along the Road to Hell.

The Road to Hell

(Part One)

Stood still on a highway

I saw a woman

By the side of the road

With a face that I knew like my own

Reflected in my window

Well she walked up to my quarterlight

And she bent down real slow

A fearful pressure paralysed me in my shadow

She said "Son, what are you doing here?

My fear for you has turned me in my grave"

I said "Mama I come to the valley of the rich,

Myself to sell"

She said "Son, this is the road to hell'

 

"On your journey cross the wilderness

From the desert to the well

You have strayed upon the motorway to hell!"

 

 (Part Two)

Well I'm standing by the river

But the water doesn't flow

It boils with every poison you can think of

And I'm underneath the streetlight

But the light of joy I know

Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows

And the perverted fear of violence

Chokes the smile on every face

And common sense is ringing out the bell

This ain't no technological breakdown

Oh no, this is the road to hell

 

And all the roads jam up with credit

And there's nothing you can do

It's all just pieces of paper flying away from you

Oh look out world, take a good look

What comes down here

You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well

This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway

Oh no, this is the road

Said this is the road

This is the road to hell