Ashen

Perhaps her face would not look so ashen
If she won the Lotto, got that car,
Took that cruise she’s sure she deserves
Found her ideal flesh enhanced
Saw her stock surge, bagged her gold…
But then her soul’d be gone.

For Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan, troubador sublime, just turned 68 a few weeks ago. That's 68 in human years, and I, like a faithful dog, went out and fetched his latest CD offering, Together Through Life. It's true that his voice is a raspy skeleton of its former raspy self, yet the cutting edge irony that pervades his best lyric writing is still there after all these years. I particularly like the last track, "It's All Good," which satirizes the sugar-coated sunny optimism that much of popular media and Madison Avenue will shower the public with, especially through the use of trite cliches (like that of the title) for soundbytes.

In tribute to Bob Dylan's moving one step closer to septagenarianism, I offer up this blackly humorous blues lyric (to the tune of "Meet Me in the Morning," c. 1974 Blood on the Tracks). Or in tribute to Quentin Tarantino.

I Save My Tenderness

Well I’m getting awfully hungry
And there’s a pig out in the street
Said I’m getting awfully hungry
And there’s a pig out in the street
Think I’ll just take him with my bare hands
So I have something to eat

They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
But I fire back I ain’t so vicious
I save my tenderness for you.

I live in a downtown dungeon
There’s a bank just round the block
Yes I live in a downtown dungeon
There’s a bank just round the block
But I’ll have me some that money
I’ll crack the safe, I’ll smash the lock

They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
But I fire back I ain’t so vicious
I save my tenderness for you.

Well I’m jobless fifty weeks now
And any day they’ll stop the check
Said I’m jobless fifty weeks now
And any day they’ll stop the check
I’ll just go get work as a bouncer
Or a hit man, what the heck.

They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
They tell me that I’m vicious
To think up the thoughts I do
But I fire back I ain’t so vicious
I save my tenderness for you.

You

It’s an opaque nightly war
Millions of neurons at battle
For the uppermost hand in my brain
Lists and laundries, notes and meetings
Quite adept at rendering me insane
All of this smoke screen
All of this jive
All of this leaving me
Less than alive
For there is only
Has only been
Will ever be
One flame
You

Late Inning Stadium

Watching these pinstriped young men
Gracing the field, grazing the fields
Green pastures without valley or shadow
They are younger than the sun
And I am older now than time
The ball that they chase is the sun itself
As I sink low into the sunset
I see myself within that uniform
As the moon rolls up past the lights

CSN, Y???

Link to a song lyric apropos my post from yesterday:

http://www.lyricmania.com/crosby+stills+nash+++young-stand+and+be+counted-lyric.html

What America and China Have in Common

An interesting piece appearing today on CNN’s website profiles the states of mind of Chinese youth who were born post-Tiananmen Square uprising. The story focuses on one Chinese college junior in particular, who knows “next to nothing” about the incident and its political/cultural implications. He does, however, know a great deal about computer technology, karaoke singing, and drinking and girl-hunting, pursuits in which any cultural consciousness has apparently been drowned in 21st century China. There is one fact, however, that seems to validate this yojng man's desensitization: Discussion of the uprising and pre-1989 politics in China are, in fact, illegal.

I was struck by the parallels between what goes on now with the youth in China and what has happened in post-1960s America. Much like their Chinese counterparts, the youth of today have largely morphed into techno-savvy, club-friendly, social media hipsters who could care less about the group consciousness movements of the sixties, the colorful era of civil rights, long hair, hippies, the Beatles, and all things countercultural. China is going through the same numbification that we did, twenty years later. The only thing that’s missing in our deal is going to jail for reminiscing about the past. We just make biopics about it.

Wall of Numbers

I can see myself at 15
Chasing the ball chasing the girl
Looking out at the hills and the endless sea
Everything in the world so infinite to me

But between myself and this vision
Is a wall higher than I can see
And thick enough to encase 200 of me
How do I scale this wall
How do I tear down this wall

I can see myself at 5
Off to school and the wonder of being alive
Opening books delving into life´s mysteries
Everything so endless to me

But between myself and this vision
Is a wall higher than I can see
And thick enough to encase 200 of me
How do I scale this wall
How do I tear down this wall

I can taste the wine touch the grass feel her lips drink the water
If only for this wall
And soon I will be 75
Staring hard at reflections of me
Regretting my failings savoring a few moments
And realizing the wall was not a wall at all
But something I created to keep me from me