simplerich

Once upon a time there was a digital music service that would provide corporate music with commercials sent to the stores on a monthly subscription service so there was some sort of corporate identity thing along with the sound of the shopping experience. If you’ve ever been to a Fazolis you’ve encountered it for sure.

So, I’m at a store not listening to the background music… that’s what it’s for. It’s in the background… and then I heard it… they lyrics to Bob Dylan’s Hurricane:

And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger

Do you care to guess what the first word I heard was and what the next words were? Just on a guess?

Now, the song’s about… I’ll let songfacts.com say what it’s about:

This is about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a boxer who spent 19 years in jail for a murder Dylan felt he did not commit.

That’s the short version. The longer version is a black man was convicted (his conviction was eventually overturned) of killing some white people and his jury was made up of all white people… in 1966. Bob Dylan didn’t think he did it and wrote this song to draw attention to the injustice of the situation and hopefully do something to get Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, out of prison.

That’s all very cool But that’s not the part of the song anybody who has heard it today hears. What they/we hear is,

“crazy nigger No one doubted that he pulled the trigger.”

So, I’m not asking if it’s legal to play the song or if it’s a good song. I happen to believe protest songs and such are a powerful tool for change. I happen to think this song is NOT a bad song. It’s not all that entertaining or anything, but it’s a protest song it’s not supposed to be fun. I’m not even going to debate if it’s still topical today or applicable, especially when crap like this is happening where power-crazy police attack minorities (disabled lady in this article) just because they like the power. (no implication of racism here for obvious reasons.)

What I’m asking is, just because someone CAN play a song does it mean they should? What does it say about them when they do that? Does it say anything? If I were listening to the lyrics from the start of the song it wouldn’t be shocking. If it were a contemporary song getting enough radio play that I’d recognize it if I came in during the middle of the song it wouldn’t be an issue… but no radio station is playing this song with any regularity in 2011 and almost nobody 40 or under is going to recognize the song at all even if they’re told the name and who younger than thirty would know who Bob Dylan is/was?

Is it good judgement to play that song? Is it OK for the employees to sing along with the music on their corporate radio? Is it OK for them to sing at the top of their lungs the names of this song? If it’s not… should they choose to play that song? Bob Dylan’s use of the words is protected as freedom of speech. It’s being used artistically. But the same word can be used during the course of a crime and change it from a simple assault to a hate crime… when a word carries that much baggage with it is it a good idea to identify one’s self with it or, if someone complains about it, to defend it’s usage?

I’m a big advocate of the freedom of speech… some battles though I ask myself “are they worth fighting?” What is gained by their insisting on playing this not terribly entertaining song in their stores?

It was 2008 that I wrote a post entitled Mourning Has To End At Some Point regarding the attacks on the USA on September 11, 2001. I think it still stands up 3 years later.

That title brings the imagery of a funeral to the date that has come to be one thing only, the day we were attacked.

My Facebook stream is filled with posts that end with, “We Will Never Forget.” A week a year we remember it publicly, putting ashes in our hair and memorializing the things that happened today 10 years ago. This post isn’t about today. There is an awful lot of stuff out there about today. We all mourn, memorialize, and remember in our own way. I get that and I don’t make any judgement on any of that. The attacks we as a country suffered were something that everybody experienced in their own way.

But.

The weeks after the attacks the country was shocked, stunned, and came together in a catharsis of grief, shock, and anger expressed as a brief period of ultra-patriotism, pride, and outrage.

After the funereal meats were put away, the dishes cleared, and the flowers wilted we, as a country, not specifically you and me, but all of us, began to do what so often happens after a funeral. The death here was the death of a period of growth, optimism, wide-eyed innocence about our own invulnerability… after the immediacy of the funeral was over we split up… we fractured like a family after a funeral of a wealthy patriarch who had no will.

People on the left and right of the political spectrum took the eagle as their totem and began to beat everybody else with how they were the real Americans, the real inheritors of the standard erected by those three emergency responders on ground zero in what is now an iconic image of that day. I choose that image as the image for the post, not the image of the towers burning as DrudgeReport.com did. The optimism of those men raising our flag, all of our flag, on that day, in the clouds of dust and smoke… that image is one of hope, of fighting on, of us saying “NO!” to everything the terrorists were trying to say. That’s the image I hold in my mind 10 years later.

Sadly, the eagles, the American Eagle that each side claims as their own has turned into a vulture picking on the bones of who we were before.  They no longer think of us collectively, but in an US vs THEM way that is akin to one side of a family insisting on the dining room set because Uncle Sam promised it to them, or so they say while the other side insists they’d been told the same thing. The family that is our country is tearing itself apart in a way the terrorists couldn’t by tearing down buildings and killing people. The family that is our country is allowing those who represent us, to scrabble for the scraps of the legacy of the world before we were attacked at the expense of the other side of the aisle. There can be no victory, we are told, unless the other side loses. There can be no progress in any direction if the direction isn’t to the left or to the right, depending on who is doing the talking.

Enough of the sides. If we don’t exist as a family, together, even when we disagree with each other, we don’t exist, period. Benjamin Franklin said it years ago when he said, “We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.” We’re facing that choice today as a country. As we tear apart our country ourselves, 10 years after the terrorists tried to do it TO us we have to make up our minds to exist as a country, and sometimes we will have to not win at the expense of everyone else on the playing field. There are times, in a family when we have to let someone else have the dining room set because the family is worth more than the dining room self is to us.

So, today, 10 years later, I’d like to remind people not that the buildings fell, but that the other iconic image of that was of our flag being raised… of 3 men saying the buildings fell but we’re still here, one nation, one country, one huge group of people with disparate ideas but one flag and one hope, that tomorrow is better than today, and we’re willing to do what we can to make it that way… even if it means, sometimes, letting someone else having the dining room set.

I’m declaring commitment bankruptcy. I’m taking a vacation for the rest of the month. If there’s something “we always do on…” I’m probably not doing it. If I show up, EXCELLENT! But don’t plan on my being there. If there’s something I’ve said I’ll do I will, I’m not a liar. But if it’s something you’ve assumed I’d do, assume that for July I won’t. If it’s something you’re thinking about asking me to do… to avoid hurt feelings all around, just assume I’m out of the state on business and ask whomever the next person in line is. If there is a tradition of us doing something on a certain day or time… I wouldn’t count on that continuing in July… you’ll be disappointed if you do.

Yes. I’m serious. I’ve said “yes” to everybody but myself for longer than I’m comfortable with and the stress of it is not starting to get to me, it’s gotten to me. I’m starting to not like it when my friends call. I’m getting grumpy face when it’s time to go do that thing we do on… I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I’ve said “yes” to just about anything anybody’s asked for too long. What I haven’t said yes to is what I want to do. Other than running I’m very busy doing things for other people and I wind up squeezing what I want to do in between doing things for everybody else. I’m living my life in the commercials between everybody else’s life. I’m done with that.

But Rich, that’s selfish! Yes. Yes it is. If you get angry with me for it I’m sorry. If you only liked me for the things I did for you, I’m sorry about that too. But at some point we all have to do things we want to do… you want me to do something and that’s something you want. Right now. I don’t want to do it. I don’t even care what it is. If it’s not sit in my recliner and play video games until my eyes burn from forgetting to blink I don’t want to do it. I seriously want to do that so bad it hurts.

I’m at the point where social calls feel like work and I don’t want our friendships to be work. I’m taking a break not to get away but to get to the point where I don’t WANT to get away. The timing is good. I’m about to be out-of-town for work for a week so I’ll be gone anyway. Just tell yourself I’m gone for the rest of the month. It’ll be easier.

And in the future… when you ask me something, and I say “no” and you then guilt me into doing it… remember that you’re the jerk here. I take “no” from you, and I wish you’d take “no” from me… because honestly, I’m easy to talk into a yes if you’re a friend. A real friend… a real friend wouldn’t take advantage of that. When you say, “Come do X” and I say, “No thank you.” and you say “Why not? What else do you have to do…” I’m 42 years old. I don’t have to tell you why not. If I say “no” it’s because I mean “no.” I don’t have to justify it. An invitation is an invitation… it can be accepted OR declined. If it can’t be declined it’s a command and honestly… I don’t care who’s reading this: you have no power to command me. I don’t consent to be governed in that way. Please, feel free to invite me, and I’ll feel free to accept or decline, and honestly, thank you for the invitation.

PS: One of the things I’m doing is reading an advance copy of a book and THAT is fun! I’ve only gotten to do this three times and it’s an honor every time someone chooses to share with me something before it’s finished… before it’s “ready for prime time.” You know who you are and thank you. (I don’t know if I’m supposed to say who it is so I’m not… but they’ll know.)

I went to High School in Germany because my parents were teachers for DoDDS and us kids got to go with so we were uprooted from Southern Alabama and flew to West Germany to go to school in schools on the Army bases there. This week the school I went to High School in closed for good as the base is closed. I didn’t think it would matter. It was just a place right? I hadn’t been back since I left in ’86. Mannheim American High School (GO BISON!) closed for good this past week.

It does mean a lot to me though. I guess I’d just always thought it would be there. It’s a time of my life that’s so different from how it would have been. It was a transformative time, not in just the way High School is transformative but like I said, I’d gone from small town, Southern Alabama to West Germany. We travelled. I saw the Berlin wall when it was still there. We drove through East Germany. Our senior trip was a week an Spain, they would serve us alcohol lol. I hadn’t thought about a lot of High School for years. I don’t know why. I just sort of moved on. When I would think of it I would remember it fondly.  When I spoke of it I always smiled.

Then came Facebook and say what you like about the dreadful privacy issues with Facebook it’s allowed me to reconnect with people from High School and see what they’re up to. We were all in Germany, and now we’re all over the US and the World. It’s hard to just bump into a fellow Bison at the grocery store or in the mall. We’re too far-flung. But now I’ve seen what cool people so many of them are. Some that I barely knew then I know better now. We’ve turned out pretty good I think. When I listen to people talk about their High School experiences with metal detectors, or guns, or violence I remember that MAHS wasn’t like that when we were there. There were some bomb threats, but I don’t think they were real. I think they were people trying to get out of tests… and at least one where someone bumped the alarm with his elbow outside of Herr Valerius’ class… that was a fire alarm, not a bomb threat, but fights? Violence? Any of that? Not really. There were cliques, but they weren’t hard or firm… maybe? I don’t know. There were some, sure. It was high school after all. But nobody was ever really an ass about it. Overall, it was the perfect high school full of perfect kids who were all perfect all the time. *grin* Nope, not romanticizing it at all.

For graduation, my sister, whom I’ve talked about before, got me a scrapbook. At the time I thought it was kind of cool. It was a leather-bound picture album and she’d taken pictures of LOTS of people I knew in high school, and had them write something in it. This was in the 80s… she’d had to use film and get the pictures developed, put in the book, and brought to school over and over again without me noticing. We rode the same bus. We lived in the same house. She was mixing with SENIORS when she was a Sophomore. I said there were no cliques, and there weren’t but STILL! Some things aren’t done! She did them.

It’s only now, when I look back at the scrapbook, and it’s the only thing I got from graduation except for my tassel, that I still have, when I look back at the scrapbook I’m struck by how amazing a gift that was. Not just how thoughtful it was… but to approach complete strangers and ask them to do that. That’s pretty brave and pretty cool.  Not just to get their pictures, but then to approach them later and show them the picture, many of which were taken “on the sly” and say, “Hey… could you write something here to Rich it’s for a Graduation gift?” I suspect there was help. I suspect it passed from hand to hand and classmates talked to each other… but I don’t know that.

Now that my High School is closed I’ve got my tassel. I’ve got my yearbooks. I’ve got the greatest graduation gift ever from my sister, and I’ve got my High School friends I’ve reconnected with through Facebook. So, to my High School, closed now, you’ll be missed.