My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 1, #33, April, 1996

WE WILL ROCK YOU

In case you're wondering why I know more about rock music than a fiftyish lady has any business knowing, blame it on my love for poetry. It all began when I was trying to find out who sang the line "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." I went to my quote books and discovered that there was no quote book of rock music lyrics.

So my son and I edited a collection of great lines from rock music, only to discover that the reason no such book existed was that publishers didn't want to mess with getting hundreds of permissions from hundreds of publishers. The end result is that we have an unpublished manuscript, and thousands of lines from rock music floating around inside our heads.

That turns out not to be a bad thing. The lyrics I am talking about are first class poetry. I was amazed to find out how much superb language is being lost to grownups who don't listen to their kids' music. I am convinced that if poets wish to be heard, they need to form rock bands and sing their words.

Poetry, like epigrams and jokes, has the virtue of brevity and wit. It crystallizes complex ideas and emotions in a few perfectly chosen words that can start you thinking, or help to sum up your thinking.

Many of my columns have taken off from a particularly good rock music quote. Take my musings on our Congress, for example. When I wanted to talk about why the Republican leaders are so scary, the words of the J. Geils Band came into my head: "Briefcases drawn and loaded, these men travel halls in packs, deciding mankind's future." These guys are so caught up in ideology, they have no understanding of the complexity of issues, and they don't even try to find common ground. They are more interested in grandstanding for their C-SPAN audience. "Listen to the Congress where they propagate confusion primitive and wild." [R.E.M.] They are so very, very certain, and so very, very wrong that it frightens me, because I agree with R.E.M.--"the only thing to fear is fearlessness." And our Republican leaders care so little about what their policies will do to ordinary people; it makes me think of the Church's line: "Oh, what a feeling, baby, knowledge and brutality."

When Gingrich brings the polluters into the conference rooms of Congress to write their own environmental rules, and the NRA in to write the crime legislation, how can you NOT think of Peter Schilling's song, "Let's Play U.S.A."?

Won't it be a lot of fun? Every man will own a gun.
Shoot the one whose point of view makes a point that bothers you
Go on and pollute the land. Clean air will be sold in cans.
Did you hear the master plan? One nation under Disneyland!

When I worry about the government abandoning any responsibility for our children and our homeless and our unemployed, I think in the words of U-2: "We're one, but we're not the same. We get to carry each other." Because the problem is, if we hide ourselves away in our rich, tidy suburbs, and allow bad things to happen to the hopeless people at the bottom, the bad things spread, and affect us all in time. The Grateful Dead had it right when they said "Wherever we run, we'll never get far from what we leave behind; we can run, run, run, but we can't hide."

You know, one of the great things about America was that we always used to make sure that everyone had a chance to succeed. That's what our public libraries and schools and universities, and the scholarships and loans that made it possible for poor kids to get there were all about. But our new leaders are starving our public institutions of oxygen and cash; it's getting to the point where success comes to those who choose their parents carefully. Your Martin Newell says it all: "Lots of well off older people, not so many young. Shall we help them climb the ladder? Let's remove the bottom rung."

When I hear vicious, bigoted remarks about blacks and Hispanics on talk radio, and when I see the respectable media embracing racist nonsense like Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve, I react in Bruce Hornsby's words: "Hey old man, how can you stand to think that way? Did you really think about it before you made the rules?"

Because we can't have thought about it much. We're a lot nicer people than those racist ideas suggest. And the problem is that racist words and thought become self-fulfilling prophecies. If we constantly tell people they are inferior, that they have no chance to succeed, they eventually stop trying, and we'll never find out what brains and talent we wasted. It's like the Sundays say: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will finish me off."

Sometimes, when I see the ugliness and mean-spiritedness of our political landscape, I think, like Todd Rundgren, "Must be a factory somewhere keeps on cranking them out...violent men, hardheaded women, unloved children."

Since so many of our middle-aged and older people are mired in bad ideas, I have to rely on our kids to come up with better ones. Kids are ruthless in their idealism, and contemptuous of older folks for compromising too easily. "Someone set a bad example, made surrender seem all right." [Rush] Well, it's not all right. Right is right, evil is evil, and evil must be challenged. Any country needs the idealism and energy of its youth to keep it from sinking into complacency and corruption. As the Railway Children sing, "We must protect this urgency"; it forces us to be better people.

Of course, that urgency is damned uncomfortable. And dangerous to the existing order. No wonder so many older people don't really want to hear it. Cat Stevens says it all: "From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen." Weren't we all?

And the people who don't like those ideas sometimes set them on fire. "The church of matches anoints with ignorance and gasoline." [XTC] I hate the bookburners. I am, of course, a lover of books. They liberate us, free us from "the lizard part of our brains, giving the orders." [the Church] They turn ideas on their heads, introduce new information, new perspectives on old issues. Bruce Cockburn tells us to "Pay attention to the poet" because "you need him to show you new ways to see."

And books delight us. The Church says "Volumes have secrets. Take them on holidays." Don't I wish! We just finished moving into a new library, and we've been working so hard, and getting so little sleep, that in the immortal words of Elvis Costello, "I've been talking to the wall and it's been answering me."

Rock lyrics sometimes start me thinking about my own life. When you get to be my age, you start to think about what you've done with your life, what kind of dent you've made on the world. "When you look into the mirror, do you recognize someone? Are you who you always hoped you would become, when you were young?" [Del Amitri] That's a hard question, because we always fall short, don't we? I find comfort in the words of Engine Alley: "I'm not a might have been; I am a gonna be." Like Rush, "I'm not giving up on implausible dreams." I say, like Janis Ian, "Nothing is forever young, and I'm not done--this train still runs."

Have I impressed you yet with our children's words? Suzanne Vega says "There must be passion in the language." And there is, oh, indeed, there is. Our kids know it, because they listen to it.

My Word's Worth Archive

Current column

Marylaine.com/ home to all my other writing

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

I'll write columns here whenever I really want to share an idea with you and can find time to write them . If you want to be notified when a new one is up, send me an e-mail and include "My Word's Worth" in the subject line.