Playing Fair and Being Kind

Since I’ve made the Fourth of July a day of mourning for myself I suspect this might be a good way to be “up”until then. More on this later. Right now I want to celebrate a song I’ve listened to before but not until today have I listened really hard. Have any of you heard of or heard Madeleine Peyroux? Quite a songbird, she is. A sweet voice and pretty kisser to be sure. The song is “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”. These are the lyrics:

I’ve seen love go by my door
It’s never been this close before
Never been so easy or so slow
Been shooting in the dark too long
When something’s not right it’s wrong
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go

Dragon clouds so high above
I’ve only known careless love,
It’s always hit me from below.
This time around it’s more correct
Right on target, so direct,
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go

Purple clover, Queen Anne lace,
Crimson hair across your face,
You could make me cry if you don’t know.
Can’t remember what I was thinkin’ of
You might be spoilin’ me too much, love,
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go

Flowers on the hillside, bloomin’ crazy,
Crickets talkin’ back and forth in rhyme,
Blue river runnin’ slow and lazy,
I could stay with you forever
And never realize the time.

Situations have ended sad,
Relationships have all been bad.
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud.
But there’s no way I can compare
All those scenes to this affair,
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go

You’re gonna make me wonder what I’m doing,
Staying far behind without you.
You’re gonna make me wonder what I’m saying,
You’re gonna make me give myself a good talking to.

I’ll look for you in old Honolulu,
San Francisco and Ashtabula,
You’re gonna have to leave me now, I know.
But I’ll see you in the sky above,
In the tall grass, in the ones I love,
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go.

I’m not intending to bore you with my own personal interpretation of the lyrics. I’m sure you can enjoy them on your own. Therefore my work here is done. Now on to tomorrow.

The Fourth of July. A day of mourning for people who are capable of looking behind the facade. First I will put the piece I wrote last year right here to set the tone and then I will get to it.

THE 4TH OF JULY

(fucking yay)

It is the fourth and it is after dark, after nine P.M. I sit and listen to explosions from the Harbor and the noise reverberates around the hills and up the rivers and off the islands and boats filled with glassy-eyed people taking it all in. What is the meaning of it? At one time I would sit and watch the fireworks exploding above my head along with hundreds of other patriots. None of us realized the exhibition was designed to keep us entertained as the bosses made money from our labors and filled us with empty pride. The foolish empty pride that like puffed rice did not fill us up with anything. Empty and shallow and utterly filled with lies and empty promises like the uncle pulling quarters from behind your ear or three card monte or like throwing a stick for a dog and how funny the dog looked when you really held it in your hand instead of letting it fly. So in order to keep us interested the 4^th happened every 12 months or else we would catch on and maybe figure it out and become unmanageable. People sometimes do that you know. Not often enough but it could happen just the same.

I watched a documentary about Nina Simone this afternoon. She figured it out a long time ago. I think I know why she did. She is twice oppressed. She is a woman and she is black. I fell in love with Nina Simone during the documentary. I fell in love with the anger and hate that rose up in her that spilled out and flooded the stage where she performed and filled her life with poison and bile and distrust and resentment toward those who saw her skin color and her assigned gender and scoffed and told her she was out of her league. She figured it out right away and then spent her life telling everyone that there is no Statue of Liberty, there is no Star Spangled Banner, there is no big old cracked bell in Philadelphia. She told us that there is a small cadre of old white men calling the shots and all we are allowed to see and feel are songs written to pacify us and to fill our bosoms with pride in what we are not allowed to see or allowed to hold in our own hands. There are lots of things we are not allowed to really have but we are allowed to admire and desire and to fight over in the work place. The competition to barely smell that obscure object of desire keeps us focused and a bit hypnotized and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Add to that ethnicity, race, class and education and see what confusion that will lend to a point three five billion souls wrestling in the streets over a bit of comfort.

Predictably, when Nina Simone allowed her anger to escalate after the deaths of the little girls in the church in Birmingham and she became more radicalized and her intensity grew and her friends couldn’t keep up with her and she grew frustrated with the perceived lack of action and problem solving that this country ought to be capable of she became alienated. Her friends contributed to her alienation by wondering and accusing her of being crazy. They had doctors come to examine her. Can you just feel the level of insult brought by their actions in response to her genius? She could not make them see the depth of their misery and their oppression. She became militant for good reason. She loved Dr. King but she told him she would not be turning the other cheek. She would rather gun down the oppressor and die in the effort than to continue living as she had. I don’t blame her.

So she came under control through medication and she certainly knew she had capitulated and that further tightened the spiral of her failing career and her sanity. She escaped and disappeared and behaved badly for a long period of time. This is the story I think of when I hear the explosions outside and I imagine the people who are sitting with faces turned skyward admiring the red and white and blue of the occasion. I think how they are paid enough money for their labors to be slightly comfortable but not moneyed enough to share some of it with those they have crowded out of a job and who are suffering in bread lines and in lines that humiliate and lines that exhaust and anger and frustrate them. The lucky ones, and they are truly lucky and not more capable than those who are unemployed, the lucky ones somehow blind themselves to the plight and the vagaries of demographics in reference to income, race, ethnicity, and pure fucking luck.

I have lived a charmed life and I know it. My gender and skin color have had a lot to do with much of it. The rest has been pure fucking luck.

Peace,

G.M. Goodwin

4 July 2015

So I went looking for a photo of an old man with a small American flag to post here. I couldn’t find what I was looking for right away. Instead I saw this photo and I said “perfect”.

So time moves along and part of the memory file I keep hidden is I know where my old pals are. When those rockets and their red glare and those things bursting in air are all done my old pals remain as before. I think wars are part of the national avoidance behavior defense mechanism. It’s easier to be angry and violent to avoid the labor of being social, communicative, and neighborly. So to ease the guilt (that certainly must be painful by all indications) we, as a nation, find divergence in huge displays of another national avoidance behavior titled ‘patriotism’. Instead of going to Arlington National Cemetery on the Fourth of July and saying we’re sorry we got you all killed because we are too stubborn to back down during a tense event, we avert our gaze and blow up more shit in the air and wave colorful rags in each other’s faces. So be it. Just don’t expect me to join in these weird parties.

I’ll leave you with a “Happy Third of July!” and this stanza by Madeleine.

I’ll look for you in old Honolulu,
San Francisco and Ashtabula,
You’re gonna have to leave me now, I know.
But I’ll see you in the sky above,
In the tall grass, in the ones I love,
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go.

Peace and I love you,

George Goodwin 3 July 2016