And now for something completely different
An examination of Joe Henry's song, "Our Song" (Civilians, 2005)
To start with, the entire song has the cadence of a dirge.
I saw Willie Mays
At a Scottsdale Home Depot
Looking at Garage Door Springs
At the far end of the 14th row
Willie Mays is the hero and guide. Like Virgil in Dante’s Inferno. He represents that which we aspire to (greatness, distinction, being the G.O.A.T.—a relatively new phrase in the vernacular). Of all places to run into a truly singular American hero—the ordinariness of a Home Depot in the middle of what is a desert, but which has been transformed through brute force and environmental exploitation into a human population center--emphasizes what must be disconcertingly the realization of change someone of his generation[i] (b. 1931) has seen. The absurdity of Home Depot itself, a symbol of late-stage capitalism at its finest, is just icing on the metaphorical cake.
His wife stood there beside him
She was quiet and they both were proud
I gave them room but was close enough
That I heard him when he said out loud
In Brave New World, Huxley describes people coming out to watch (for spectacle) the Savage, who had left civilization and was living in a lighthouse. If I could just listen in on Bob Dylan’s musings which led to Highway 51 Revisited, would I? You bet your sweet ass I would. Eavesdropping on a G.O.A.T.
This was my country
This was my song
Somewhere in the middle there
Though it started badly and it's ending wrong
The lament. Keep in mind this was written in 2005— the thick of the Iraqi invasion. Despite assurances from Donald Rumsfeld, the Iraqis had not in fact greeted us as liberators. The abuses of Abu Ghraib had become public. Many Americans, no longer festooning their cars with empty gestures of tiny American flags, were wondering why when a bunch of Saudis took down one of our greatest landmarks, we were invading Iraq.
Or, as that philosopher David Byrne said, “you may ask yourself ‘well, how did I get here?’”
This was my country
This frightful and this angry land
But it's my right if the worst of it might still
Somehow make me a better man
I just finished a book on Precolumbian Archaeology in Florida.[ii] Fascinating read. The Paleoindians of Florida arrived here around 10,000 B.C. A partial skeleton of a Bison antiquus, an extinct species of bison, was found in the Wacissa River with a broken stone projectile still lodged in its skull.
How homo sapiens got to North America is still, at least in my mind, debatable. Sure, there was a land bridge (although Milanich disabuses us of the notion of it merely being a bridge—people during that period were living on the Bering Land Bridge, not merely migrating through), but archaeological finds from Little Salt Spring[iii] include “the head of a nonreturnable wooden boomerang. Carved from oak, the tool is similar to boomerangs used by Australian aborigines.” (Milanich, p.53). Thor Heyerdahl did it—who’s to say some enterprising group of homo sapiens, tired of the crowds in Australia, couldn’t have fought the Trade winds to come here. We are a peripatetic species.
But however the first North Americans got here, they found a paradise. Large fauna with no natural evolutionary response to homo sapiens. It was a buffet for the taking. And exploit it we have. Ever seen a Carolina parakeet? Or a Great Auk? Long leaf pines used to build houses in Bagdad, Florida were alive when the pyramids were built. In three generations, a forest was obliterated—decimated is too kind a description because that’s literally one tenth—the long leaf pine forest was ninety-five percent logged. I suspect the only reason five percent survived is because those pines were in areas too remote or swampy to get a mule into. Ever seen an ivory billed woodpecker?
The extinct species of bison above was hunted to extinction by our Paleoindian ancestors. They didn’t know better, they were hungry. There used to be giant sloths in Florida and land tortoises as well. The Carolina parakeet was found in the old growth forests all along the Gulf Coast, as was the Ivory billed woodpecker. Yet Joseph Forsyth, the founder of Bagdad, couldn’t have known he was robbing future generations of seeing these magnificent birds by cutting long leaf pine—he had a business to run and children to feed. People at that time couldn’t imagine there being an end to those virgin forests.
But what was once small scale, although by the time the Spanish arrived in Florida, shell middens basically extended all along the Gulf Coast, has just accelerated. Or, as Gillian Welch said,
Said it's a mean old world, heavy in need
And that big machine is just picking up speed. (Hard Times, Gillian Welch)
The answer to David Byrne’s question “how did I get here?” is answered later in his song: “letting the days go by…”[iv]
The sun is unforgiving and
There's nobody would choose this town
But we've squandered so much of our good will
That there's nowhere else will have us now
This makes me think of global warming and the fall of our country in the eyes of the rest of the world from the Marshall Plan to Vietnam to the aforementioned Abu Ghraib.
We push in line at the picture show
For cool air and a chance to see
A vision of ourselves portrayed as
Younger and braver and humble and free
This gives me black and white visions of 1950’s teenagers with three D glasses in a movie theater. Indians were bad and the conquering settlers were the heroes. Randolph Scott was the American ideal—white and firmly in charge. No need to worry about anything.
This was our country
This was our song
Somewhere in the middle there
Though it started badly and it's ending wrong
This was our country
This frightful and this angry land
But it's my right if the worst of it might still
Somehow make me a better man
I've started something I can't finish
And I barely leave the house it's true
I keep a wrap on my sores and joints
But I've guess I've had my blessings too
Gratitude is a helpful exercise when feeling anxious or depressed. Brushing your teeth too. David Foster Wallace wrote about those who die by their own hand having across the board worse dentition than the rest of the population[v]. Of course, David Foster Wallace committed suicide as well so take that for what it’s worth.
I've got my mother's pretty feet
And a factory keeps my house in shade
My children they've both been paroled
And we get by on the peace we've made
I don’t know. Willie May’s blessings? I love the children getting paroled—there is supposed to be a bounce back era with adult children. Maybe that’s the peace he’s describing—I’m still waiting on my 21 year old daughter.
I feel safe so far from heaven
From towers and their ocean views
From here I see the future coming across
What soon will be beaches too
More global warming scenes come to mind. Also, the relaxation (contentment?) that comes with age and the realization that there’s no need to make a point anymore. You have been passed up like a mortally wounded Boromir by the Uruk-hai orcs.
But that was him
I'm almost sure
The greatest centerfielder of all time
Stooped by the burden of endless dreams
His and yours and mine
He hooked each spring beneath his feet
He leaned over then he stood upright
Testing each against his weight
For one that had some play and some fight
He's just like us I want to tell him
And our needs are small enough
Something to slow a heavy door
Something to help us raise one up
I love the metaphor of a spring both helping to slow a heavy door and raise one up.
This may be much more than you bargained for, but I felt compelled to write it all down. After the fallout of the appropriately named Trump v. United States, I feel as disoriented with my country as Joe Henry’s Willie Mays.
Endnotes:
[i] The Silent generation. Born between 1928 and 1945. Sandwiched between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, much the same way those of Generation X feel sandwiched between the Boomers and Millennials.
[ii] Jerald Milanich, (UF Press 1994)
[iii] Little Salt Spring is a 1 acre, private salt spring located in North Port in Sarasota County. Warm Mineral Spring and Little Salt Spring are the only warm water mineral springs in the State of Florida. The water in Little Salt Spring is geothermally heated. Deep below the Earth's surface, water flows up from the Florida Aquifer into the Spring through a spring vent. Little Salt Spring was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and is recognized as an important archeological site containing Native American artifacts.
[iv] Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads 1980.
[v] Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, 1996