When Old Sounds New

One of the great pleasures of listening to music for me is the unpredictable sparks sometimes generated by rubbing something well-worn up against the present. Frequently it's a matter of lyrics seeming more apropos than ever or taking on wholly new meanings. A simple example would be Don Henley's phrase "this tired old man that we elected king" ("End of the Innocence"). I've favored that song for years, but it's moved up a few notches in my mental playlist lately. Of course that particular example demonstrates that this pleasure can have a certain bittersweet quality to it - a cynic might even use this example to improvise in the direction of losing innocence over and over again. And it hardly needs pointing out that a primary fresh nuance has to do with the multitude of serious questions about that "elected" part this time around.

Changing scale, I had a chance the other day to be blown away again by Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On." A disk with some serious shelf life, that one. It resonates with me more than ever, both words and music. I have the vague sense that on release it was somewhat of an anomaly, leaving many unsure what to make of it. Now it seems like a terrific inevitable gift, able to create its own context.

And finally, changing media and stretching this theme rather seriously, if you've not yet done so I urge you to attend to the speeches by Senator Robert Byrd in the last week on the Rice and Gonzales nominations. The connection to this post is the grounding of Byrd's opinions in long-established law and tradition, including citations of the Constitution and Federalist Papers. Some of it seems so novel in this age of fun-house mirrors as to resemble an emergence from a fit of amnesia. In the context of all the events of the past four years it is boggling how much dissonance can be set off by a treatise on the balance of powers or any number of other fundamental principles embraced by those wily Founders.

And, bringing it all back home (so to speak), in discussing recent executive overreaching, the Gonzales text refers to "A President placing himself above the law, in effect, crowning himself King."

I think I feel a Tea Party coming on!

We Do Roux

Time to get the oil heating here. Flour on deck. We'll get to the holy trinity of onions, pepper, and celery shortly. The idea of course is that the result, like that ethereal namesake dish, while embodying all the ingredients, is a whole 'nother thing, with wonderful synergistic qualities of its own. I'm still at sea a bit on the technological nuances of this medium, never having webbed or blogged before and with insight on html limited to what the abbrev stands for. I have fantasy of adding pics and proper links shortly. Education in store, please bear with me.

Primary anticipated ingredients for this particular gumbo include music back at least to the '50's, literature, cinema, and most importantly a generous seasoning of progressive politics, but we'll see where it leads.

I'm a fan of Paul Williams, founder of Crawdaddy magazine and unrepentant writer/cheer-leader for rock music. I don't specifically remember catching him in his early magazine incarnation, being pretty devoted to Rolling Stone in the '60's and otherwise preoccupied, though I know I also read Crawdaddy. But I have at least three of his books under my belt now, most recently "Back to the Miracle Factory," focused on rock in the '90's. Williams has a remarkable knack for finding words for the usually pretty ineffable qualities of music performance, inspiring new ways of listening and getting new artists into my play list. If you're interested in recharging your musical batteries, PW is well worth a read. Miracle documents his passions for Dylan, Young, Brian Wilson, the Velvet Underground, R.E.M., and Smokey Robinson, among others. Not the least of Williams' virtues is broadmindedness; rock, folk, rap, and soul all get some attention in Miracles, and eclecticism when it comes to music is no vice to my mind.

I'm not sure I'd ever viewed "Night of the Hunter" ('55), described as R. Mitchum's greatest role in at least one review, prior to this weekend. I had the good fortune to see it twice, a rare luxury given competition for time and screen access. The film has a sort of fairy-tale veneer that for me tended to slightly contain my imagination for horrific potential of Mitchum's preacher-psychopath with switchblade always at the ready, while still evoking disembodied dread a child might experience. Especially on second watching I was intrigued with the ark/parade of front-row animals including owl, toad, rabbits, and fox, as well as domestic critters.

And, ok, let's get some politics in too. Tannen's established role as author of best-sellers on the subject of communication challenges we all face make this post especially interesting:

January 30, 2005 by New York Newsday / Long Island

Time for Talk - The Triumph of Marketing Over Dialogue Results in a President Leading Much of the Nation Where it Doesn't Want to Go
by Deborah Tannen


We keep hearing about how polarized Americans have become, but polls reveal impressive agreement among a majority of us with regard to the major issues facing the country. What is surprising is that the majority opinion differs starkly from the policies propounded and pursued by the party and the candidate that the recent election put into office.

A Los Angeles Times poll found recently that many Americans (between 52 and 69 percent, depending on the issue) are skeptical about President George W. Bush's proposed changes to Social Security, believe that the Iraq war has been badly mismanaged and do not want the president's tax cuts made permanent if it would worsen the deficit (which it would). Sixty percent say they believe that improving the country's infrastructure would do more to stimulate the economy than tax cuts. The Times reports that "an overwhelming majority of Americans believes Washington is unlikely to make much progress on the country's key problems."

And what of the "values" vote that we are told separates Americans on the issues of gay marriage and abortion rights? A Gallup poll dispels this notion, too. When asked to rate the importance of 18 issues facing the country, a majority placed these two "values" issues at the bottom (16 percent and 19 percent respectively). Even more striking, a CBS/New York Times poll finds that only 22 percent of respondents nationwide believe that abortion should be illegal.

How can there be such a disjunction between the positions a majority hold on the issues and the way a majority voted, three months after a presidential election that aroused more passion than any in memory, in which basic questions about the direction of the country were at stake?
I think the answer has something to do with a failure of public discourse. The campaign aroused a lot of passion, but not a lot of discussion of the policies that would result if one or the other candidate was elected, nor of the effect these policies would have on citizens' lives.
[continues: see link]