Let the music speak for us....

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First a note to those who celebrate: I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. To those who don't, I hope you have a peaceful, untroubled day.

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This week's Roundtable is a discussion of music, life themes and the music that touches us most. (By the way, Julie, here's some Kajagoogoo.)

And two of my favorites from the 80s: Marillion and Tears for Fears :)

I'm also including this post in Wellness Wednesday because, after all, we all know that music helps make us better. While I'm too lazy to do the research, I know this is true.

It's been said that music tames the savage beast and I believe that to be completely true.

The music that has always spoken to me is the soft, the gentle, the folkish ~ the songs that speak for me, say things that matter when I don't have the words.

It can range from Jackson Browne's "Lives in the Balance" to Janis Ian's "At Seventeen". Music helped me process the things I saw around me when I was much younger, before I had my own voice. It helped me put it into words.

When Simon and Garfunkel sang "Sound of Silence", I felt as though those two men had reached inside me, read my mind, dove into the crevices and said what I couldn't say, particularly when I was so young and felt like no one in the world could possibly understand me. Adolescent angst was something near and dear to me.

I really did see myself as a tortured soul, another Jack Kerouac. And perhaps I was. It's a legitimate identity for many people.

Music helped us find each other, those of us who were on the sidelines, those of us who were alienated, those of us who never quite got caught up in the typical adolescent concerns. We discovered our commonalities and each other by listening to these songs that define so much of who we were as individuals and collectively. At least for those of us who grew up in the 50s, there were many topics we were not to discuss. Yet the "stuff" wilted and molded under the rugs. We learned at a young age that certain things were not to be said in polite company. The songs spoke for us.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

Music pulled the rugs up and exposed the underbelly of a way of life that was supposed to be a fairy tale and was really not so much a nightmare a blissful banality. This one by Malvina Reynolds comes to mind:

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of tickytacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and there's lawyers, and business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

The nightmares came later. Phil Ochs spoke to the beginning of the end. In NYC, when a woman was brutally murdered on the street and no one responded, he wrote this song "A Small Circle of Friends".

Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed
They've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff
Thirteen cars are piled up, they're hanging on a cliff.
Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it's gonna rain
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Sweating in the ghetto with the colored and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn't it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides we got the cops
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Oh there's a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail.
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine.
But we're busy reading Playboy and the Sunday New York Times
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides we're much too high
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Oh look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed
They've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Down in Santiago where they took away our mines
We cut off all their money so they robbed the storehouse blind
Now maybe we should ask some questions, maybe shed a tear
But I bet you a copper penny, it cannot happen here
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Each generation has its songs, the ones that take us back, remind us of the social changes that took place when we were most open to thinking, pondering and experiencing.

I've often thought historians should pay a lot more attention to music since it typically chronicles a culture more effectively than any academic tome. It journals what's important in the day to day lives of ordinary people, what a people have been through, where we're all going.

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