I met a girl who sang the blues
and I asked her for some happy news
but she just smiled and turned away
[Don McLean's tribute to Janis Joplin, in "American Pie"]
I grew up during the Viet Nam War, watching the gritty black-and-white newsreels on the TV every night accompanied by ‘body counts.’ Very young, I became aware that I would be expected, when I turned 18, to be shipped off to a foreign land to kill or be killed, for a reason which nobody could explain (a reason which, it now turns out was essentially non-existent).
Early on, this convinced me that the entire older generation was insane, starting with my parents. Not that I could put it in so many words, but if you’re looking for a good way to shatter someone’s trust, the failure to respect their life and/or future would an effective means.
The very first Rock And Roll album that I ever owned was “I Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die” by Country Joe and the Fish.
To his credit, my dad did actually like the title song. He found the line about “your boy comes home in a box” to humorous. I didn’t exactly find it quite so funny.
On the second side of the album was a song called Janis, which was Joe MacDonald’s tribute to the great San Francisco vocalist. Of course, nobody at the time ever explained that to me, and I had never heard Janis sing.
Fast forward to 2010, last night watching Joe MacDonald perform with Big Brother and the Holding Company, who still all put on a hell of a show. In case you haven’t heard, they have a singer (Kacee Clanton) who brings to life the whole persona of the late Janis Joplin. Which (being of that generation, I find both moving and eerie).
One thing for sure, their interpretation of Summertime is simply astounding. And I am sorry, it just isn’t the same on the album, as watching them up there on the stage performing it live. It wasn’t simply a reproduction of the sounds. The feeling is still there.
Janis Joplin was a dynamite-loaded truck careening towards the edge of a cliff. I don’t know if I would have wanted to watch. Even watching someone act it out is a little scary.
The question I find myself asking (about her, and Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and so on): would she have been so self-destructive had she known how enormous her mythology would grow to be? Conversely, would her fame have become so expansive had she not become a martyr for our generation?
Of course, we’ll never know. But I think it’s worth putting out the fire before it burns down the house.
Conspiracy theorists hypothesized that it was “the system” that killed them. I don’t think that was directly true, although the system does have a tendency to marginalize performers, musicians in specific, in a way that makes them particularly susceptible to maladies such as drug-addiction and other self-destructive patterns. The public is to blame in part, for idolizing the “bad-boy” or “bad-girl” image.
A bigger question: it has often been observed that during the 1980′s, the music industry noticeably clamped down on creative forms of expression. Why is it that we still listen to the songs of the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, which are clearly more expressive and free and creative than nearly anything that has followed?
So here’s the question: watching what is going on with Fox “news” (i.e. propaganda) and other forms of TV ‘information,’ (i.e. misinformation), it is clear that the right wing has become attentive to the power of the media, and ideas, to influence public behaviour.
So was that clampdown of the 1980′s the start of it? Because, after all, it was the creative performers who were asking some of the most important questions about our society, and the machinery of war driven by the greed of the ultra-privileged few.
Because it’s not about Viet Nam, nor about Afghanistan.
It’s about putting the tools in place for people to do the right thing.
Most people don’t have a lot of imagination. Which might be possible to change, but that’s not the point. People use what is available to them. The U.S. is (unquestionably, by far) the largest supplier of weapons in the world. [sources: ploughshares.ca and wikipedia]
If weapons are available, people will use them.
Why not make the instruments of beauty, harmony, and peace so plentiful instead?
The “not” only makes sense to the ultra-elite cringing in fear that their absurd wealth might get taken away.
As John Lenon said:
“All we are saying
is ‘give peace a chance.’”
August 9, 2010 at 12:54 am |
I do have to disagree that most people don’t have imagination: I think people are often numbed to one degree or another, and it is socially unacceptable these days to be awake. But it was socially unacceptable to be awake back in the 60s also unless you were part of or supportive of the counterculture.
Regarding self-destructive artists: It has been theorized that Sylvia Plath would not have achieved the cult status she attained without her final book of astounding (and disturbing) poems, Ariel, and her subsequent suicide, by the way. I liked your other points, but that particular one resonated with me as a writer–there is a segment of writers (Plath, Sexton, Lowell, etc) who were the models for my generation of writers; they were also suicidal and self-destructive. Even a luminary like David Foster Wallace ended up a suicide. Sylvia Plath’s son also killed himself, and it was a media circus. I feel that we still have a “bread and circuses” mentality. People would buy Plath’s book because they wanted to read work by “a madwoman.”
Anyway, you make good points here, and I agree with the marginalization factors and other things. Just my thoughts.
August 9, 2010 at 6:36 am |
I also think peace will happen when everyone begins to exercise that concept it in our daily lives. And it begins with the self. I can’t think of how many times I have been appalled by my own hypocrisy, reading a book about mindfulness and then getting in my car and calling some other driver an a*hole. When I do that, I am as bad as the people I am pointing my fingers at. And it is a daily mindfulness for me to change this behavior.
The very least people can do is treat the people in their actual lives with a measure of kindess and decency. I actually think that social or personal permission to treat people poorly and the inability to maintain basic, real compassion in the “community” of family, friends, and people one encounters in real life (even bad drivers and people who bother us somehow) is one of the reasons for social deterioration. We can blame “the government” forever, and it is absolutely a legitimate blame, but real social change can begin–at least as a seed– with the willingness to make personal changes and walk the talk of compassion for the world.
What I am saying is that It’s easy to be compassionate towards a concept. It’s less so when it’s towards a driver in front of you–whom you don’t even know and could be the nicest person in the world–who’s going too slow. But if everyone could learn to begin to become more tolerant, I do think there would be eventual lasting social change.