Jam Mechanics S2:E01: The Jam McCabin

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And. We. Are. Back!

Jam Mechanics returns for season 2 with our first guest prompter (Our longtime collaborator and artist, ⁠DeepBlueInk⁠!). In our first episode back we reveal the fate of Jam Mechanics Mansion (Castle?) and reflect on the ocean that separates our two co-hosts

Jam Mechanics is a podcast hosted by Matt (The Narcissist Cookbook) and Bug (Bug Hunter) where we are challenged to write a song demo from scratch every episode

Our Music:
⁠⁠The Narcissist Cookbook

⁠⁠⁠⁠Bug Hunter⁠⁠

Feel free to reach out to us at:
Both: hello@jammechanics.com
Bug: bug@jammechanics.com
Matt: tnc@jammechanics.com
and follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, and Spotify! Please share the show (and our music) with friends!

-- SPOILERS FOR THIS EPISODE BELOW --
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Challenge: Transatlanticism
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BUG'S SONG
Title: Agamemnon
Lyrics:
I am aboard the Agamemnon, we are laying down a line
It's gonna cross the ocean floor, the greatest project of our time
A telegraph from Newfoundland will reach the Irish Shores
but by by the time this note arrives you will not love me anymore

I am aboard the Agamemnon, laying cables in the sea
For the purpose of the president to parley with the queen
As for me, I've got this letter that I'll send you in the morn
but by the time this note arrives you will not love me anymore

You will not love me by the time you read this note
You told me you would wait if I had to go
I keep your photo in a locket to remind me of my home

but while aboard the Agamemnon I have so much time to dream
of a world where I can reach you with no middle-man between
And maybe when we're done I'll get my turn, as a reward
but I never got that chance, now you don't love me anymore
When I made it to Niagara, you didn't love me anymore

You will not love me by the time you read this note
You told me you would wait if I had to go
I think of you so often with no way to let you know

This is only the beginning, this simple cable in the sea
Soon we'll have radios and satellites and waves we cannot see
No one'll know the pain of loving one they cannot reach

I'd commandeer the Agamemnon and I'd sail it back to shore
it's just a faster way to learn that you don't love me anymore
so I'll keep laying this cable for the lovers not yet born
so that they may never hear "No, I don't love you anymore"
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MATT'S SONG
Title: The Tollbooth
Lyrics:

When Britain's national health service was launched in 1948 
it set sail in the wake of the second world war
when the country's citizens
the upper and lower classes both
the rich and the desperately poor
had served together, side by side
and the ones who survived the horrors
came home demanding
to no surprise
more

we did not fight, they said
in our millions
just for things to return to the way they were
we didn't die
they said
in our hundreds of thousands 
just to save a country where the leading cause of death is poverty
and perhaps for the first time in british history
the aristocrats and the working class
agreed on something
largely
that arming the nation and teaching them how to fight and die for what they believe in
makes their demands somewhat more convincing

and so 
barely three years after the soldiers had come home
on july 5th, 1948
the british health system was torn out by the follicles and rebuilt in a new vision
that it would be free at point of service, that no one, NO ONE, would be turned away or trapped into debt by lack of personal means
that it would be available to everyone who walked through the doors of a hospital or a GP's office
and that the well off wouldn't be able to skip the queue
this was radical beyond comprehension
a truly universal healthcare system
doctors across the nation barred their doors and hired personal security
so sure were they that the empowered impoverished would storm their offices
demanding medicine and aid
only to find
on that monday morning
a polite queue of people in need
who for the first time were able to receive the treatment they would have had since birth
if they had been born into a wealthier family

the trouble is
healthcare is one of those futureproof industries
like plumber
people are always going to need water
and if you can fix their pipes you are, within reason, set for life
and the hospital and the doctor's surgery are no exception
people are always going to get sick
they're always going to get injured
at the very very least
everyone has to be born
and everyone has to die
and you would be an idiot
would you not
if you had the opportunity and the presence of mind
to not set up a tollbooth at the well-worn bridges that lead into and out of this life

i am being faceitious of course
who thinks like this
who is so calculating and cruel
that they would look at the legions of dying and sick
and feel not compassion
but greed
who would see not the faces of their own parents, friends and children
but a sea of investment
a captured market
a well of bottomless profit

it would be inappropriate for me
to delve too deep into the catacombs that are the American Healthcare System
if you are listening from those shores, then you know
better than i do
how it feels to live in fear of a broken bone
of a cough that won't go away
of a necessary surgery or a birth in the family
I have personally met people who were having to choose between treatment for a treatable disease and a slow death
So as to have something to leave their loved ones in their will
A meagre windfall, after all, is infinitely preferable over a cascade of debt
Maybe, at best, you are simply aware of how lucky you are
To not fear these things as many do
The privilege of being able to treat mild maladies as the inconvenience they are rather than an existential threat

I bring this up only because
The profit machine that is the american healthcare system
Is hungry
And needs to be fed
There is no such thing as too much money
There is no endgame in an investment portfolio
Where you find the princess in the very last castle and the credits roll
There isn't a kill screen where the arcade machine craps out and kicks you back to the beginning
The score just keeps getting bigger and bigger, the numbers getting longer and longer,
Separated by decimal points and letters and commas
And when the numbers get so unwieldy that we run out of space, 
Eh, we'll just start printing the end of year reports in landscape
The machine needs to eat
And the painkillers and bloodied sheets of 333 million people could only satisfy it for so long
Its eyes, inevitably, have turned east

And what do you think it sees?
When you have broken your arm and are getting it cast at 3am
When your parents start visibly ageing and wilting
When your child gets a cough that won't go away
Do you think it wants to help?
Or do you think it wants to eat them?