Thanks For The Memories

It is funny how the power of music can return you to a time and place long forgotten with a sense of familiarity. You can recall with clarity the emotions and sensual pleasures associated with the music. Just such a thing happened to me recently while watching a couple of concerts on television. One was a concert with a current Joan Baez who, I have to say, still has the right stuff. The other was one with Leonard Cohen at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970. Two performances separated by over 40 years but both with the power to evoke emotion and memory.

Of course, Baez was a voice of the sixties. She was acquainted with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and was already on the scene when a young Bob Dylan appeared. She is schooled in the traditional folk music and sings with a serious heart of the plight of the downtrodden and shares her talents generously with those who share her heart. The concert that I saw was with Ms. Baez, now with gray hair, closely cut rather than the long dark hair of her youth but still with the same intensity and devotion of that earlier time. She sang songs of her passion for equality and her hatred of war. With her voice I was transported to the time of my own youth when it seemed that all things were possible and that we could truly usher in a new age of peace and harmony. I remembered what it was like to not be encumbered with doubt and unaware of the selfishness and faithlessness of my fellow human beings. It was still possible to believe that a people could rise to attain the highest ideal in peace with his fellow man. That assurance is long past but Ms. Baez was able to rekindle those feelings and, along with them, the awareness that I, too, had been unfaithful to the cause.

In the other instance Leonard Cohen came on stage in the 1970 performance and in the words of Kris Kristofferson, it is difficult to imagine why he was not hooted off the stage like so many others, Kristofferson included. Cohen's delivery was flat and nearly monotone but it was evident that the basis of his music was poetry and, even though the lyrics were often indecipherable, one could discern that the basis for them was a perception of life and philosophy. I realized that just because I did not understand them all did not mean they were not understandable. His songs were those of humanity and the mundane things that often shape our lives. What were we to make of them? I think this is OK because it leaves a thoughtful person attempting to associate them with his own life and give them meaning in a personal way.

In both of these I became aware once again of the philosophy that surrounded so many of us in that more bucolic time. Bucolic only because of our optimism because we were surrounded by social tumult and a war in Southeast Asia that kept trying to devour us.

Now, we are forty years hence and that optimism and attitude of possibility seems so distant and so unrealistic. But is it really? The intervening years have brought to us incessant war and destruction of the basic institutions that tried to ensure that the wealth of many is shared by all. So, it is good to revisit the emotions and beliefs that were a formative part of the philosophy I still hold. I am aware that not a few will ridicule such reminiscences and considerations but I remain convinced they are not without value.

I remain convinced of the dignity of the individual and his or her right to be treated with respect regardless of station in life or derivation. It is evident to me that if we practiced this that violence would be far less necessary. Regardless of the evidence to the contrary I believe it is still possible to achieve peace without war. In short, I still believe in the inherent nature of people to get along.

Now we are bombarded with assertions that there must be winners and losers, that it is not possible to reach a consensus beneficial to all. And if you accept our behavior as proof then it may not seem possible. If that is the case it is just possible that we have abdicated our right to be here for what is humanity if it is nothing more than strife and conflict?

So, to Ms. Baez and Mr. Cohen, thanks for the memories. And thanks for the music that can rekindle things so long untended and restore them to life. What a gift music is! It is perhaps the most effective of the artistic endeavors humanity has created.

Peace.