Reflecting on what happened yesterday at Congress…

January 7, 2020.

Hello friends, what can I say, it’s hard to write about music today… This blog is primarily meant to celebrate the arts and music and so many things that are beautiful in the world. But right now no one feels like celebrating or posting about music in business-as-usual fashion. A Trump-incited mob attacked and desecrated the United States Capitol yesterday. The footage and details coming out are shocking, and surreal: How Capitol Police were completely overwhelmed, how portions of the Capitol Police are clearly compromised, with some officers letting rioters walk in freely or participating undercover in the insurrection, how the Department of Defense refused at first to give Maryland Republican Governor the go ahead to send in the MD National Guard, how these white supremacy militias and insurrectionists broke in and ran through the halls, banging on the office doors of barricaded congressional lawmakers and staff, and vandalizing the sacred halls of our American democracy. The evidence can go on and on and on…

A friend asked me a couple days ago to curate a couple songs about “America” — I could explore any themes I wanted. In this other essay, which has yet to be written, I had a hunch that I would be exploring the idea of America as both a dream and a paradox. For instance, America has always been a myth — to those who live here and those who hear about us abroad. We think of ourselves as “Leaders of the Free World”, and we pride ourselves on the idea that anything is possible here. We tell ourselves that we’re the best — economically we’re a powerhouse, politically we’re beacons and spreaders of democracy, culturally we dominate as well — exporting our food, music, movies, entertainment, etc. But our dream is also an illusion: We see the Capitol get outrageously ransacked, and we tell ourselves “this is not who we are”. It seems that we are either continually searching for this dream or wiggling ourselves out of our hypocrisies. As John Steinbreak once wrote, “One of the generalities most often noted about Americans is that we are a restless, a dissatisfied, a searching people.”

We’re still lost and searching today, trying to figure out what this nation is and how we’ve fallen so far. A song that comes to mind is Simon and Garfunkel’s “America”. The rendition I share below is a 2020 cover done by Courtney Marie Andrews, Molly Sarle, and Liz Cooper. In the song, Simon is returning to America from England with his then girlfriend Kathy. He feels lost, confused, and unsatisfied. The song, released in 1965, encompasses so much of the feelings of the nation during the 60s. The Vietnam War was in full-swing, the North Koreans were gaining ground, youth were in revolt, and both JFK and MLK would be assassinated.

While the song starts out optimistically and joyfully ("Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together….//Laughing on the bus, Playing games with the faces”), near the end of the song, there is a kind of ennui and despair that sets in once the cigarettes are gone and the magazines are read (WBUR). As one music critic puts it:

‘Simon’s “America” character is empty and aching and he doesn’t know why. Perhaps he’s discovered that the American dream has been, all along, vain and illusory. But Simon’s lovers forever search, if not for an idyllic American reality then for an unceasing American hope, one that will shepherd them through the tragedies unfolding, then and now, outside their bus windows’ (WBUR).

Everyone I’ve talked to feels similarly lost and disturbed at all we’ve seen. We’ve said for so long that this isn’t “who we are”, but shit man, this is who we are. Somehow (though I’m not sure how exactly), we need to stop the exponential spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, come together as a country, and directly confront the violent racism at the core of all this. It undoubtedly seems that domestic terrorism (not external terrorism) is the gravest threat now to the health and success of our country. In short, we have a lot of work cut out for ourselves. Until then friends, we move forward, search, and long for a better, more equitable America…