the end of the innocence

i had a discussion with my sister some weeks ago about don henley's 1989 classic the end of the innocence. go watch it, i'll wait here...

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn't have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standing by

When "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly

But i know a place where we can go
That's still untouched by man
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind

You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

O' beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king

Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

But i know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us

I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say good-bye

Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

what was interesting is how different our memories of the song were. she finds it very political, whereas the only politics i can find is the stanza about the tired old man that we elected king (has anyone ever described reagan more aptly?). for me, that summer was the one where i had a very painful broken engagement. i was devastated and lost 17 pounds in a week, mostly in tears shed. that felt like the end of my own innocence and a real transition into adulthood. it caused my life to change course...shifting from plans to attend u.c. irvine to iowa city and the university of iowa. looking back, i think it made me less trusting of potential boyfriends for years afterwards, really ending my own romantic innocence...poisoning my own fairy tale. in other words, i found the song very much about my own situation, even though reading the lyrics now, i can clearly see that it was about one's parents splitting up. my own happily ever after had failed (thank odin now, looking back), so i sang along at the top of my lungs as i drove my little gold pontiac fiero and felt like the song was written specifically for me. especially after i met a handsome summer fling who gave me back some confidence and made those lines about the tall grass in the wind and the small town in each of us ring true. it was really more or less the anthem of the summer of 1989 for me.

for my sister, her departure for college was on the horizon and she felt the pressure of that. i think we both thought that our parents wouldn't be able to survive the empty nest, having such separate interests. so the words about daddy having to fly spoke to my sister and she felt a heavy weight of responsibility for keeping them together. and watching the video, with its odd 50s feel (aside from the shots of tattered reagan posters and ollie north), it does seem much more political that it ever seemed to me at the time. and though i was home that summer, i definitely didn't feel the same pressure my sister did to be the glue holding our parents together. in the end, their marriage held, though some part of me still wonders why when they shared so little. i suppose staying together was just what you did in their generation (speaking of the 50s).

in these times, where our entire existence is smeared in the nasty politics of our post-truth era, it does seem that our innocence has ended once and for all.

* * *

today's lack of truth has its roots in postmodernism.

i heard about this piece here on T.O.E.
and i'll admit to feeling a little guilty for all that derrida, foucault and baudrilliard i read in college.

* * *

the problem is way deeper than trump. 

long live live theatre!

we saw an updated musical version of the three musketeers last evening at the utzon (he of sydney opera house fame)-designed music house in esbjerg. and the music was...wait for it...80s glam rock with a bit of madonna, cyndy lauper and eurythmics thrown in. and as weird and possibly awful as that sounds, it really wasn't. it was awesome. a cleverly-done update that made the three musketeers story relevant for today and totally struck the right notes of nostalgia for those of us who grew up in the 80s. to take a story that everyone knows so well and has seen a million times and to couple it with music that we've all sung along to a million times transformed both into something new and fresh. it was a bit of what the russian formalists called "making strange," and it just worked. it helped that the acting was great, the music was great and the lighting was very cool. and the way they played with mixing english and danish was brilliant as well. in this day and age with all of the amateur talent competitions in prime time and "reality" television featuring people of limited talent, it was refreshing to see performers who were just genuinely good at what they do. and theatre just lends an immediacy and an intimacy that watching netflix on the iPad just utterly lacks. long live the theatre!

the soundtrack of our lives

i recently went to hear a storyteller. he had fully embraced the hippie lifestyle back in the 60s and it seems that he even managed to remember a lot of it. as he began, he read some introductory remarks from prepared notes. he was a bit stiff in his presentation and i was a bit worried about how the evening would go. but then, he took off his reading glasses, abandoned his notes and began to really tell his story. he was transformed into a different person - warm, lively, authentic and real.

he had brought a record player along and real LPs and he used music throughout to tell his story, which began clear back when he was in the fourth grade. a substitute teacher introduced the kids to the kind of jazz that was performed by a Danish jazz musician called Papa Bue and it was a revelation for him. in my ears, it sounded much more like 20s and 30s dixieland music, not 60s, but my musical upbringing came later and in a different cultural context.

what i loved was the way he used music to underline his story and to trigger his memories. and even tho' much of the music was before my time, it still brought forth my own memories of music. for him, the radio station you had to tune into was radio luxembourg. he sat with his ear glued to it and even recorded favorite songs from the radio, being frustrated when they interrupted a song before it was over. it made me recall tuning in late at night to AM station KOMA in oklahoma, where they played the beegee's tragedy every evening around 10 p.m. during one long summer in the early 80s. we couldn't get KOMA during the day, only at night, but even that was pretty amazing, considering there were two whole states in between us and them.

it got me reminiscing about my own musical memories. one of the earliest is of sonny and cher. i can remember listening to cher's gypsies, tramps and thieves on our very advanced 8-track player. i recall the feel of the buttons and the click as it moved between tracks and the scratchy blue carpet that was on the floor in front of the stereo. cher's hair and costumes were just spectacular, and i could picture them as i listened to the stories she told with her songs.

there were a lot of country music stations in the area where i grew up, and i remember singing along to the oak ridge boys and alabama and swingin' by john andersen. some of the first non-country music i had, on LP, was barry manilow. "oh mandy, well you came and you gave without taking..." along with the soundtrack to grease, i practically wore those records out. it was difficult to be a rebel when you were listening to barry manilow, so it may give you an idea of what a tame sort of child i was.

after that came the gogos and the cars and steve miller band's abracadabra. there were other storytellers, like john cougar mellencamp, tho' i don't think i ever owned any of his albums. (why oh why don't songs tell stories anymore?) and then there was madonna. and cyndy lauper. i couldn't choose between them, i loved them both, they spoke to my very soul. and prince, i remember thinking his song kiss was a message to all of us ordinary people, that we had a chance (you don't have to watch dynasty, to have an attitude...). there are so many memories attached to all of that music. much of it involving long drives in the car. i can still picture a stretch of road between madison and brookings where i heard dire straits' money for nothing on my way back to college one sunday night.

some music i came to late. i was only able to ascribe meaning to the eagles' hotel california after i lived in california for a couple of years and experienced for myself the soullessness of orange county in the late 80s. then that whole, "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave" line made so much more sense to me.

we all have an individual soundtrack to our lives. some of it shared. most of it deeply private. some of it indelibly linked to memories, some of it just washed over us, leaving no trace. it was nice to be reminded of that by hearing someone else's story. we need more storytelling in our lives, good old-fashioned spoken word.