“Care” and “vigilance” exist on a rhetorical continuum.
“I take care to . . .”
“I am vigilant to . . .”
“We must be careful we don’t . . .”
“We must remain vigilant that we not . . .”
One of the deep benefits of a childhood and adolescence that (ideally) subjected every decision to the question, “What would please Jesus the most?” is the understanding it gave me of the necessity, as well as the very real dangers, of Vigilance. It led me to the adult understanding that Care is what produces The Good Stuff.
Art — a vital element in The Good Stuff — exists somewhere just outside the boundaries of mere vigilance.
Another benefit of my pious childhood: I understood that every single time I turned on the radio I was enjoying the product of people who were moral midgets at best, and utter monsters at worst.
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| “Being a muse is a thankless job, and the pay is lousy... I suppose it could be considered unfortunate that hearing the intro to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ come over the grocery store’s speaker system is my signal to hit the checkout counter and get out, ASAP.” Van Morrison muse Janet Planet, right. |
I also understood that this stuff existed on a plane that the artists on my team simply weren’t attaining. The Good Stuff resided a little closer to the Platonic Ideal than did the Christian Stuff.
The common, if not universal, misunderstanding at the time was that artists were required to be monsters in order to produce The Good Stuff. There is a hint of truth in that sentiment, but in the '70s nobody artsy was taking the hint, EVERYBODY was behaving monstrously.
Cut to the Pandemic Present, where Vigilance is very much a necessity — a matter of life and death, in fact.
Van Morrison is set to release a set of songs protesting masks.
He is not at all alone in his sentiments — I am continuously surprised by arty types who out themselves as virulently anti-mask. It doesn’t change my admiration of their previous work, or even alter (much) my enjoyment of them as public characters. I’m disappointed certainly, but I understand I’m as capable as anyone of being gobsmackingly thick about things, particularly when it comes to matters of vigilance. To that end I hope to inform my vigilance with as much care as I can muster. One example: I mask up whenever I step out — less for my sake than for those I encounter.
Also in the news, J.K. Rowling takes a break from her Twitter-feed of clanging concerns over trans-gender politics to release a novel in which the villain is a fella wearing a dress. Hardly her finest hour, by my reckoning, but it has no bearing on the majestic empathy painstakingly woven into the Harry Potter series. My daughter self-identifies as Trans — the HP books remain the most precious in his library.
Conversely there is something a little perverse and self-defeating about re-tooling artistic works from the past to ease the social anxieties of the present. Changing the lyrics of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” so you can sing it with a clean conscience suggests you probably don’t appreciate what makes the song so powerful and discomfiting to begin with. Trust me — I grew up on Christian Rock. The saddest truth I finally had to acknowledge was taking an AC/DC song and replacing the word “balls” with “Jesus” was not an improvement.
Which is not to suggest either Van or J.K. are playing their A-game right now — they’re not. Mebbe replacing the word “mask” with “Jesus” is an idea whose time has come?
All I know is when Jo and Van were playing their A-game — Harry Potter, Astral Weeks — we got work that stands just outside the merciless glare of vigilance. We got The Good Stuff.
This post is the product of vigilance. My fiction, and my bread and soup, are the product of care.
13 comments:
I've been thinking about "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". I've always been somewhat ambivalent towards that song. But I think it got a pass from me (and other people) because it was Joan Baez singing it. (I think she's the one who made it famous, even if she didn't write it originally). And who is going to accuse Joan Baez of being an apologist for slavery?
Also, the raw emotion in her voice when she sings it (and I think her version is better than The Band's) makes it all to easy to get swept up in that song. And makes it very hard to hate.
And it used to be so easy to view the whole song as just a tribute to a bygone era with little relevance to today's contemporary politics. But now it seems that the confederacy is a hot topic again, so I can understand why the song is out of favor.
I read the article you linked to, and I can sympathesize with the guy somewhat. If I had grown up in the South, and had been surrounded by the people he was surrounded by, I think I would have wanted to write a response song as well.
But... as Todd in the Shadows once said about "The Dawn of Redemption"... Response songs always suck
* Sorry, "Dawn of Correction"
This guy is a little kinder toward our revisionist singer than I am, and unpacks the song's history and consequence with more care than I do. But to my mind it's a song written by a Canadian Mowhawk, so just how dense does a listener have to be to treat it like a "The South shall rise again" anthem? This sort of thing is just a repeat of the 14-year-olds in '84 who were singing Springsteen's "Born In The USA" like it was a pro-Reagan anthem. I'm finally with Greil Marcus (#7): "If the philistinism of this [revision] doesn’t make you cringe, what might is the fact that regret over fighting a war that deserved to be lost fills every word of what used to be the song as Helm sang it."
"Mohawk" I mean -- I need another cup of coffee.
I enjoyed that slate article. Thanks for the link. I thought his point about how subjective everyone's experience of art can be was very good.
He tiptoes around the possibility of its cancellation ("I understand the position of those who’d prefer to relegate it to the dustbin"), the subtext being "Ain't likely to happen." Who knows what goes next, though, really. But otherwise I appreciate his efforts at equanimity toward all listeners.
As a result of this back and forth, I've had "The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down" stuck in my head now for the past couple days. But there are worse songs to get stuck in your head.
I re-listened to the Joan Baez version, and it's just as good as I remembered it. Better even--a really powerful song. I love her version. I've always liked that song even though I've occasionally been uncomfortable with it. I really hope the song itself never gets cancelled. If someone wants to try to re-interpret it though, well, that's all part of the game, isn't it? As long as the re-interpretation doesn't replace the original.
I've also been mulling over what the Slate article said about how the song was interpreted during the Vietnam War era. I think he's right, but it's a bit telling that a modern audience now needs that to be explained to them. It means that the interpretation of the song has arguably shifted over the years. And it also calls up that old question about how much does the artist's intent matter.
I mean, if (as the Slate article indicates) the song is popular among Southern apologists nowadays, and if progressives also begin to interpret the song as being a Southern apology, and if both sides agree on what it means, does it even matter anymore that it meant something different in 1969?
I apologize for the earworm, Joel. That can be awfully annoying, and if TNTDODD, or anything by The Band, is not to your taste it can be a torment. Glad you went with Baez, though -- her cover really is remarkable.
I won't make the argument for keeping a song in some sort of revered stasis (though I prefer that to quietly letting TNTDODD acquire status as a South Shall Rise anthem). And if this kid feels compelled to monkey with the lyrics, he's welcome to go nuts -- Resurrection Band appropriated "Whole Lotta Rosie" for their own (holy) purposes, and would probably argue its improvement. But I would argue -- and I think you would, too -- that what TNTDODD meant in '69 matters hugely to its cultural value. Introduce that song to anyone from any decade that came after it, and, yeah, the song's meaning gets sludgy real quick. But at the time it was a punch in the gut, and kids tuned in to the radio felt it because they got it. It behooves listeners to do a little work, fer cryin' out loud. Singer/songwriters shouldn't have to preface every tune that leaves their lips with a clarifying sermon. If today's "Progressives" attended the concerts I did in the '80s they'd know better than to ask for such a thing.
"I would argue -- and I think you would, too -- that what TNTDODD meant in '69 matters hugely to its cultural value."
Well... You've got me thinking about this now. How much does it matter?
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there are folks like you talking about this. And I'm glad there are articles like that Slate one you linked to that get into this song's history.
But, when a 20 year old kid hears the song for the first time, what really are our expectations for how much research he's going to do into it?
My guess is that 1 out of 10 will maybe check the Wikipedia page. I'm not sure how many will bother going further than Wikipedia. And the Wikipedia page doesn't give any of the nuance that the Slate article does. Which is understandable, I guess, because Wikipedia is only allowed to state what can be cited by a concrete outside source, and as the Slate article seems to be saying, the connection between TNTDODD and the anti-war movement was more of just a vague feeling than something that anyone ever spelled out concretely.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm really glad you linked me to that Slate article, but I wouldn't expect anyone else under 40 to really understand the legacy of TNTDODD. I mean, music buffs, sure, but not your average joe.
I think this happens a lot, no? Some piece of art which meant one thing to one generation loses its original meaning when a next generation grows up in a different culture. (I'm trying to think of examples, and I can't at the moment, but give me a day or two. There's got to be tons of examples of this, right?)
On the subject of TNTDODD and Wikipedia--the Wikipedia page links to an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/08/virginia/23415/ He's wrong of course--he was born in 1975, so he probably doesn't get what this song meant to the kids in 1969. And yet... at the same time, his feelings are legitimate.
TNC's "feelings are legitimate" -- I think gets closer to the root of the problem I'm having with these discussions, here and everywhere else.
TNTDODD seems (to me, at least) an unusual and even slightly regrettable hill on which to plant my flag. I was never a fan of the Band, and even less this particular song. It's always surprised me when someone whose opinions I pay close attention to starts talking reverently about either (Terry Teachout is a good example). I've had an easier time getting behind Jefferson Airplane or The Grateful Dead or even The Doors, and I think it's largely because the "country" stylings the Band took on just rubbed me the wrong way. Didn't much like it when Dylan went through that phase either.
But my godson's younger brother dug them in a YOOJ way. Got turned-on to them via The Last Waltz, learned to play all the songs on his Telecaster, just generally -- and here's that word again -- revered who they were and what they did. Pretty crazy in some ways, considering he was the same generation as my daughter (who could not begin to be arsed about The Band). And at his funeral it was my bittersweet privilege to hear Joey and David Landreth singing "The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." Re: the latter, the boy's father approached Joey and said he understood their generation had difficulties with this song, so if Joey or David had any such feelings he was perfectly happy to withdraw the request. Both said they had given the song very careful consideration and had no troubles singing it, at least for this particular day and occasion. To add to the ironies, the deceased was a Métis lad -- in kinship with Robertson, to some degree.
All this is to say I now have my own feelings about this Band and their music, what it means and what it all merits, or ought to merit, from the people who care to listen to them play or get played. But my feelings are a childish base on which to argue much of anything.
I think good criticism begins with feelings, but never properly concludes the work, because art exists outside those feelings and generates new feelings that can't ever be completely put to bed. That's what makes it art.
Moving mediums, take a picture like "Piss Christ." No shortage of Christians who have very powerful feelings about what is exercised in the composition and display of that photo. A person could argue that some of those feelings are "legitimate" -- the artist and gallerist are actively disrespecting people within a particular intersection. Another person could argue those feelings are illegitimate. A crucifix in a glass of wee-wee pretty much sums up the attitude most of Palestine had toward this historical figure, at the time -- indeed, sums up the attitude of the various "nones" and atheists and whatnots who will argue that Christianity is an irrelevant, oppressive religion based on superstition. (Personally, I always thought it was rather charming how supportive of the photo the late Sister Wendy Beckett was).
Hey, "feelings" are a great way to generate criticism, and if art isn't generating feelings, it's just another dud. But feelings and criticism ... that's kid/young adult stuff. Art is the Good Stuff. So I will argue it is up to the listener to hitch up their grown-up undies and, like TNC, do the grown-up work of articulating why your feelings matter, even as you step back and let the song continue to be the song. Because if it's crap, it'll disappear quickly enough.
Oops.
I guess I'll take the liberty of repeating myself again just to re-clarify my position.
I actually like the song.
When I first heard it (around age 18?) I was confused by what seemed to be sympathy for the Confederacy. But I knew enough about Joan Baez to know that she was the last person you'd ever accuse of being reactionary. So I assumed that the song had some sort of progressive meaning, even if the surface level reading of it did seemed to be sympathy for the pro-slavery confederacy. I assumed at the time that Joan Baez's purpose on the song was just meant to humanize the enemy, and remind us that both sides suffer in war. And that's been my interpretation since then. (I'll happily sing along to the song when it comes on the radio).
But... I'm sympathetic to people who are bothered by the song, because I can see where a surface level reading of it is problematic. I think you (and the Slate article) are right to point out what the song meant in its original 1969 context, but I think it's a question how much we expect people to know about the context.
And I do mean it is a question--I actually haven't made up my mind about it yet, I'm just thinking outloud and asking the questions. I may well come around to your opinion in the end, but I'm still on the fence about it at the moment.
Regardless, I've enjoyed this back and forth. It's got me thinking a lot about how art is interpreted, and whether or not taking a surface level reading of the art is a legitimate way to interpret it, or whether we have to take into account original context and artist's intent. It's had me thinking a lot the past few days, and I've enjoyed the intellectual stimulation.
I hadn't realized this song was played at your godson's brother's funeral. I hoped I haven't pricked any sensitive areas.
...you know, I still haven't seen "The Last Waltz". One of these days...
Hey Joel -- no worries re: sensitivity. The truth is I'm grateful to have this added layer of value to these songs which, as I say, I was never previously fond of. It's Anthony's music, which is a lovely thing.
Where I am sensitive, though, is on the issue of setting limits for artists. And the list of limits seems to be getting extreme. Even "staying in your own lane" is a tightrope act (to mix metaphors). People give the Puritans a bad rap, but man the Puritans had NOTHING on the current culture. If you want me I'll be over here holding my breath waiting for the bonfire of the vanities to subside.
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