Even In These Darker Times, There Is Much Cause For Which... To Be Hopeful. We Will... Rise.

Paul Simon wrote this. . . as a profound national lament.

A lament for a nation that in his eyes. . . had lost its way (as I feel we all have, in the past week). I offer it today, on this the collective birthday -- echoing "peterr" at EW, because. . . it is also full of the hope of a new day, a new alliance, and a new. . . confidence -- in our shared concern for our fellow humans. Do take a listen, here (and below):

. . .The music that Garfunkel played for Simon was a part of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion that became the stand-alone hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.” Even without the words, Bach’s music has the feel of conflict, betrayal, and death. Bach’s music was not the music of Christmas, but Lent. But even though he couldn’t make the tune work for that Christmas album (that never got made), Simon didn’t forget that music, and he finally found the right words to express what the music was saying. . . .

In the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as the Vietnam War continued to spew destruction and death in ever-larger measure, and as Richard Nixon was elected president, Simon mourned for his country. He knew the pain of national mistakes, the fog of confusion over the nation’s founding story, and the forsakenness of separation from what that long-ago Fourth of July promised. And he and his nation were, above all, weary. . . .

Resolve with me, all you of good will, to pick yourself up, dust the clay from your shoulders, and start anew -- tomorrow in the luminous but clear(er) dawn.

Onward, and out.



नमस्ते