I heard this song for the first time recently. It struck me as uncannily pertinent to the time of fear-driven manipulation that we seem to be living through.
Fear is a powerful weapon indeed, and it appears to be both far easier to scare people en masse than I had ever previously imagined, and harder to wake them out of a cloud of deeply reinforced fear once it is in place.
“We’ve got nothing to fear — but fear itself?
Not pain or failure, not fatal tragedy?
Not the faulty units in this mad machinery?
Not the broken contacts in emotional chemistry?
With an iron fist in a velvet glove
We are sheltered under the gun
In the glory game on the power train
Thy kingdom’s will be done
And the things that we fear
Are a weapon to be held against us…
He’s not afraid of your judgement
He knows of horrors worse than your Hell
He’s a little bit afraid of dying —
But he’s a lot more afraid of your lying
And the things that he fears
Are a weapon to be held against him…
Can any part of life — be larger than life?
Even love must be limited by time
And those who push us down that they might climb —
Is any killer worth more than his crime?
Like a steely blade in a silken sheath
We don’t see what they’re made of
They shout about love, but when push comes to shove
They live for the things they’re afraid of
And the knowledge that they fear
Is a weapon to be used against them…”
— Rush, “The Weapon (Part II of Fear)”
“Independence Day”. Let’s start by calling it that again. I’ve been trying to break myself of the “4th of July” habit, which waters the holiday down to a phrase that carries almost no meaning.
This year’s Independence Day finds me contemplating and worrying about the significance of the Roberts court ObamaCare ruling, and what it is likely to mean for the future of our Republic founded in Liberty. Have we, as it appears, chosen Safety over Liberty in a bargain that Ben Franklin warned us would yield neither, and thus forfeited the latter to encroachment by an ever-expanding central government designed to take care of us like helpless children? Some smart people who I respect say it’s not as bad as it looks, and I’m weighing their reasoning, but I have yet to feel I’ve reached any sort of confident conclusion on the matter.
That said: Never, never, never, never give up.
Here’s my slightly refreshed Independence Day playlist for this year, which I promise is more upbeat than the above. See my previous years’ Independence Day archives for other song recommendations. Enjoy!
- Five for Fighting, “Slice” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Five for Fighting, “Note to the Unknown Soldier” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Chris Ross, “Liberty” (iTunes)
- Krista Branch, “Remember Who We Are” (iTunes)
- Aretha Franklin, “Think” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Jon David, “American Heart” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Stuck Mojo, “I’m American” (iTunes, Amazon, blog)
- Rush, “Freewill” (iTunes, Amazon
- Madeleine Peyroux, “This is Heaven to Me”
(iTunes, Amazon, blog)
- Ray Charles, “America the Beautiful” (iTunes)
- Oscar Peterson Trio, “Hymn to Freedom” (iTunes, Amazon)
ps – The venture I started last year has been progressing nicely. I’m having the time of my life, and working toward an end-of-summer launch for the app I’ve been working on. More to come!
I have eagerly awaited this day for a very long time now. Today, for the first time in years, I own my own time again, and I’m officially embarking on the adventure of starting my own software development company.
I have a million and one things on my mind to do with this precious first day, let me tell you, so allow me to defer to my original announcement of this endeavor, which I think already captured the event’s significance to me pretty darn well:
I’ve had the entrepreneurial bug for a while now, and a new job for my wife that requires us to move cross-country has had the welcome effect of forcing/facilitating Decision Time. We’ve put our house on the market, and later this month will be moving to lovely Packanack Lake, New Jersey. I’ll have a couple months of working remotely for my previous employer ahead, to tie up loose ends and leave my areas of responsibility in the best shape I can, but come October 1st [OK, I ended up sticking around for a bit more loose-end tying than I originally planned on!] I’ll be striking off in pursuit of my own American Dream — which, to me, means taking a chance on myself and my ideas and aspirations, embracing risk and challenge, and developing my talents to their fullest, with the hope of producing things that other people find useful, and in the process making the work I love my living. I’m grateful to have enjoyed something close to that in my current job, but this is an opportunity to own the entire creative process from end to end, to challenge and take chances on my own design sense, and to pursue areas of application that serve other markets.
I’m tremendously excited, and am positively chomping at the bit to get started. There are plenty of logistics to take care of between here and Day One, but I feel lighter with the knowledge that I’ve committed to this new course, and that I’m giving myself permission to do the very things I yearn to. I also hope this change will enable me to do more writing here, and I mean to include among that writing the story of my startup venture as it unfolds.
As I set my sights on this Big Dream (and, when I think those words, Bill Whittle’s “Trinity” (part 2 here) is on my mind as having so brilliantly put into words what I feel about it), in the forefront of my thoughts is a deep and abiding appreciation for a culture that, in its very bones, cherishes, celebrates, and strives to exhort exactly this kind of big dreaming. What I’m setting out to achieve is exactly what a culture founded on the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness designed itself for. My gratitude for this opportunity is immense, and I mean to make use of it to achieve great things, while always remembering my debt to those who took tremendous risks before me to make it all possible.
As I later wrote, “Day One sitting at my desk in my newly appointed home office, ready to create wonderful things, seems a long way off now, but I’m so charged with excitement about it that it’s getting me through the day-to-day tasks necessary to reach my goal — and that kind of focus is exactly what I need.” Well, it worked, and I made it through, and I’m here and ready and eager to go, and part of me can only just barely believe it. This first day will necessarily consist of some basic logistical stuff — such as getting my workspace cleared and transformed into a de-cluttered environment where I can think — but damn if even that isn’t an exciting and fun task taken in context. This baby is mine. I’m creating the environment I want, the technology I want, the culture and vision of the future I want. I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Music has always been a huge motivator and connection to Important Stuff for me, and over the years I’ve accumulated a playlist of favorite entrepreneurial or otherwise inspiring songs that get me in the desired frame of mind to achieve. I’ve been thinking maybe I’ll make a habit of posting about one of them every once in a while.
There’s a lot of good stuff on the list, such that choosing a single Launch Day song to rule them all is no easy task, but when I think about it there’s a natural choice for me: I’m going with the Live in Paris version of Joe Satriani’s “Time Machine”, which I must apologize to my neighbors for cranking earlier today. Not particularly entrepreneurial — purely instrumental, in fact — but this one holds a deep connection for me, one that reaches back nearly two decades to some of my first serious thinking about my life, tugging at threads that have run through my life since, and striking those Mystic Chords of Memory that Bill Whittle has written so eloquently about. Turn it up and I’m back circa 1994, cruising up California’s Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica to Malibu to clear my head and think, with the album version (a worthy listen) driving my speakers for all they’ve got. I made Big Plans then, let me tell you, and now, today, I’m keeping promises made to myself long ago, and embarking full-throttle on fulfilling them. The feeling of elation is beyond my meager ability to describe. This is exactly where I need to be.
More to come soon!
I have loved and enjoyed music all my life, but have never before or since experienced anything like the two weeks or so after 9/11, when, for the first time, I found it impossible to listen to any music at all. Music I had treasured all my life, with which I had felt a deep emotional connection, and in which I had sought refuge through many crises, fell flat on my ears, and seemed a distant artifact of another life that I could never return to.
I don’t remember any particular moment when I was first able to break out of that isolated silence. I think it was a gradual and tentative process. Thankfully, the human mind has a remarkable ability to adapt and recover, to put tragedy and horror behind and get on with the necessities of day-to-day life in the present. Eventually my ability to enjoy music somehow found a way to coexist with the gloom in the back of my mind, with daily thoughts of that terrible day and its consequences, of the fight we’re now in and how ill-equipped we seem to be as a culture to prevail.
It took years for our creative culture to begin to make sense of 9/11 and its world-changing aftermath, and for songwriters to grapple successfully with this extraordinarily difficult subject. The two superb songs that are especially on my mind this year are relatively recent.
Tuesday
John Ondrasik, who records and tours under the the band name “Five for Fighting”, wrote a remarkably stirring song about 9/11 and its psychological aftermath called “Tuesday”. Released on the 2009 album “Slice” (Amazon, iTunes), and given a fitting intro by John on his “Live in Boston” album (iTunes, “Tuesday” reflects on the ordinary day that became anything but, on the helpless sense of loss, of uncertainty whether further attacks would come, and our inexorable tendency to gradually forget, as even the most awful of memories slowly recede into our increasingly foggy recollections of the past.
John spoke briefly about “Tuesday” in this Big Hollywood interview, and was kind enough to confirm the lyrics for this post. I can’t do this deeply moving song justice in prose. — Go and have a listen…
Tuesday
One year like any old other year
in a week like any week
Monday lying down,
half asleep
People doing what people do,
loving, working and getting through
No portraits on the walls
of Seventh Avenue
Then Tuesday came and went
like a helicopter overhead
The letter that she left,
cold addressed in red
Tuesday came and went
one, one September when
Will she come again?
The thing about memories
they’re sure and bound to fade
Except for the stolen souls
left upon her blade
Is Monday coming back?
Well, that’s what Mondays do
They turn and turn around
afraid to see it through
Tuesday came and went
like a helicopter overhead
The letter that she left
cold addressed in red
Tuesday came and went
one, one September when
Will she come again?
Tuesday came and went
one, one September when
Cold and dressed in red,
how could I forget?
Tuesday came and went
like a helicopter overhead
Will she come again?
Remember (9-12)
I found Jeremy Hoop’s “Remember (9-12)” just a couple of weeks ago, and it has replayed in my head ever since. More directly than any other song I’ve heard about 9/11, it addresses the West’s willful blindness and perilously persistent state of denial regarding what we’re up against.
“Peace, prosperity, pride. Our wizards said there’d be no ebb to this tide,” the song begins, conjuring the Fukuyama-esque belief that seemed to prevail through the 1990s — the belief that we had reached an “end of history”, that the future from there on held not the familiar historic cycles of conflict and the periodic return of tragedy, but an unprecedented deviation from all human history to date, in which liberty’s light would expand inexorably to illuminate the world and raise up all of humanity. To be sure, we had willfully shut our eyes to the threat of Jihadist warfare that had clearly announced its intentions (c.f. Osama Bin Laden’s 1988 declaration of holy war against the United States, and the subsequent bombings of the USS Cole, US embassies, and, in 1993, the World Trade Center). Together with their nearly 3,000 victims, the 9/11 Jihadist attacks on the United States irrevocably killed this naïve delusion that we had somehow escaped history’s grasp.
“And the sages did not see the spaces to hide, or the cracks in the footings, termites inside…” A dual reference, perhaps — to the 19 al Qaeda “termites” who had concealed themselves in plain sight among us, training for their horrible task in our flight schools, and living in our neighborhoods — and also to the damage of our own doing that had crept into our culture’s foundations, leaving us vulnerable to such an attack and only weakly able to respond to it. The lyric instantly brought to mind the opening of Bill Whittle’s superb 2005 essay “Sanctuary”, which I’ve quoted before:
What’s worse than crawling under your beloved house and seeing the foundation’s rotten with decades of termite damage?
NOT crawling under your beloved house and seeing the foundation’s rotten with decades of termite damage.
(Sadly “Sanctuary” is no longer online, but it can be found in print as part of Bill’s “Silent America” essay collection. I’ll keep an eye out for its return, and update the link in my Bill Whittle essay index when it surfaces.)
Jeremy goes on with uncommon songwriting grace, recalling our brief unity (or perception thereof?) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, our determination to remember that day and understand its implications, and our subsequent withdrawal into an even more willful blindness, an insistence on doing the impossible, on retreating to the “9/10” mindset that had allowed the attacks to happen. “Just seven short years, oops! we’ve blown it again. The bubbles this time around are bigger times ten” We stand on the precipice overlooking an abyss, it seems — one that threatens to swallow us as surely as other civilizations before that have abandoned their own defense. If 9/11 wasn’t enough to wake us up, to snap us out of our willful denial, what will it take? Is there any hope that we, as a civilization, will avoid passively free-falling to our demise? Some of us still struggle to sound the alarm loudly and clearly enough so that our countrymen will hear and take heed, but it often seems a futile endeavor … as if no one is listening.
Can we put them back, pull the slack, right the track
But it’s business as usual, we’re playing the fool
Though no bodies falling to the ground, no smell of jet fuel
The carnage lying round the bend’s as real and as cruel
Much like the equally absurd notion of airliners full of passengers and fuel being turned into weapons and flown into buildings full of people, the idea of a devastating biological attack, or of a radioactive crater where a major city once stood, will continue to be nothing but a figment of far-fetched, scare-mongering fiction. Until it isn’t.
Many realms gone before have marched to their December
While the crowds cried “all is well!”
That fate will be ours if we don’t remember
Those days after, days after
The towers fell
…
Remember, Remember, Remember…
Jeremy Hoop can be found on Twitter as @jeremyhoop.
Remember (9-12)
Peace, prosperity, pride
Our wizards said there’d be no ebb to this tide
And the sages did not see the spaces to hide
Or the cracks in the footings, the termites inside
Then darkness broke through that clear morn in September
When our land saw the blackest hell
I swore what I’d be, and I would remember
Those days after…
When what to my wondering worry worn eyes
Mere strangers at once turn near kindred with binding ties
City to city to wide open country skies
No left or right, black or white, hands on hearts, all please arise!
The light that shone through those dark days like an ember
Lit the fires of the citadel
And we swore what we’d be, we would remember
Those days after the towers fell
Short memories, of braveries, of slaveries,
Prone to retreat
And walk through the door, like Rome before, forevermore
Known in defeat
The remedy, no mystery: know history
Or be doomed to repeat it.
Just seven short years, oops! we’ve blown it again
The bubbles this time around are bigger times ten
The Animal spirits broke loose from the pen
Can we put them back, pull the slack, right the track
But it’s business as usual, we’re playing the fool
Though no bodies falling to the ground, no smell of jet fuel
The carnage lying round the bend’s as real and as cruel
Many realms gone before have marched to their December
While the crowds cried “all is well!”
That fate will be ours if we don’t remember
Those days after, days after
The towers fell
Remember the days after
Remember the day after
Remember the day after
Remember, Remember, Remember
With the signing of America’s Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the bravest members of our founding generation pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor”, assuming tremendous personal risk so that an independent nation of free people, the like of which the world had never seen, might have its chance at an anything-but-certain beginning. Today — two hundred and thirty-three years later — we are still free because of their vision, courage, and sacrifice.
I’ll be out celebrating today with my wife, her mother, and our four-month-old son, starting with a neighborhood parade in the morning (we’ve got our son’s stroller all decorated!), then on to enjoy other parades and festivities in Foster City and maybe Redwood City, wrapping up with watching fireworks (of course!) that I hope our little guy is still awake to see.
In celebration of the occasion, I offer a playlist of some of my favorite liberty-themed songs, along with this concluding passage quoted from Stephen Vincent Benét’s 1941 radio script “Listen to the People”, which I’ve mentioned before and highly recommend reading in its entirety. Its words ring as true today as ever.
Find it and keep it and hold on to it,
For there’s a buried thing in all of us,
Deeper than all the noise of the parade,
The thing the haters never understand
And never will, the habit of the free.
Out of the flesh, out of the minds and hearts
Of thousand upon thousand common men,
Cranks, martyrs, starry-eyed enthusiasts,
Slow-spoken neighbors, hard to push around,
Women whose hands were gentle with their kids
And men with a cold passion for mere justice.
We made this thing, this dream.
This land unsatisfied by little ways,
Open to every man who brought good will,
This peaceless vision, groping for the stars,
Not as a huge devouring machine
Rolling and clanking with remorseless force
Over submitted bodies and the dead
But as live earth where anything could grow,
Your crankiness, my notions and his dream,
Grow and be looked at, grow and live or die.
But get their chance of growing and the sun.
We made it and we make it and it’s ours.
We shall maintain it. It shall be sustained.
Following are some favorites new and old from my music library, with iTunes and Amazon links provided for your convenience. The songs span a range of styles/genres, such that I’m not sure this holds together incredibly well as a mix album, but on the upside there should be a little something in here for everybody (and I love ‘em all).
- Steve Vai, “Liberty” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Jon David, “American Heart” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Aretha Franklin, “Think” (iTunes, Amazon)
- The Cult, “Wake Up Time For Freedom” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Harold Faltermeyer & Steve Stevens, “Top Gun Anthem”
(iTunes, Amazon)
- Stuck Mojo, “I’m American” (iTunes, Amazon, blog)
- Rush, “Freewill” (iTunes, Amazon
- Ella Fitzgerald, “Don’t Fence Me In” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Five for Fighting, “Freedom Never Cries” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Five for Fighting, “Johnny America” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, “American Girl” (iTunes, Amazon)
- Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, “Into the Great Wide Open”
(iTunes, Amazon)
- Madeleine Peyroux, “This is Heaven to Me”
(iTunes, Amazon, blog)
- Oscar Peterson Trio, “Hymn to Freedom” (iTunes, Amazon)
Steve Vai’s glorious 1990 guitar anthem “Liberty” spills over with soaring celebratory joy, and is about as natural a first track for a playlist as they come. Jon David’s “American Heart” is a brand new favorite I just discovered two days ago, thanks to a recommendation from my good Twitter friend, songwriter @ConservativeLA. With its timely message, it won me over instantly. “Go on, raise the flag / I’ve got stars in my eyes / I’m in love with her / and I won’t apologize.”
Some of my selections aren’t specifically patriotic songs, but fit the broader theme of freedom in some way. I put Aretha Franklin’s “Think” next because I just love, love, love it when she busts out with gospel verve singing “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”. After having that bit stuck in my head for ages, I finally identified the song it was from this year. Love it.
The Cult’s “Wake Up Time For Freedom” is next. I just couldn’t resist. (The entire “Sonic Temple” album rocks mightily, by the way, and is a must-have.)
Next up, another great guitar anthem, the end title theme from “Top Gun”. This soars with so much of Eddie Van Halen’s phrasing style that I’ve always mistakenly attributed it to him. A great, soaring track that ages well in my book.
I wrote about Stuck Mojo’s “I’m American” last month — another much enjoyed new discovery this year, also thanks to @ConservativeLA. “Hate me, blame me / You can’t shame me / Come and stand with me / I’m American.” Rock. On.
Then it’s “Freewill” by Canadian prog-rock power trio Rush, as great a celebration of freedom in music as I’ve heard. The live version I linked to is from the same, excellent “Exit…Stage Left” album whose “Red Barchetta” inspired the title of my blog.
As with many a Cole Porter song, Ella Fitzgerald sings “Don’t Fence Me In” like no one else can. A truly great and fun song and a timeless classic beautifully done; one of my wife’s favorites too.
John Ondrasik writes and sings some truly great original songs under the hockey-inspired band name Five for Fighting, and has been a loyal supporter of America’s deployed fighting men and women. “Freedom Never Cries” is a timely meditation on taking our freedom for granted, and the way events can wake us up to a renewed appreciation of its preciousness. “I took a flag to a pawnshop / for a broken guitar / I took a flag to a pawnshop / How much is that guitar? / What’s a flag in a pawnshop to me?” The next track I’ve included, “Johnny America”, picks up the mood with an unsurpassed expression of American optimism against all odds. “Here comes Johnny America / Riding hard up Mission Hill / Some say he’ll make it to the top today / Some say he never will / Though he’s just a child at heart / he’s old enough to fall / Nobody in a hundred years / can touch him, faults and all”
Tom Petty’s “American Girl” is just plain fun, and “Into the Great Wide Open” is to me a classic expression of the American Dream.
I put Madeleine Peyroux’s rendition of “This Is Heaven To Me” (a great song whose history I’m very interested in but haven’t managed to track down yet) next to last, because I just can’t manage to listen to it without getting all choked up with tears in my eyes. If there is a more perfect expression of what freedom means, sung with more beautiful grace, I haven’t heard it yet.
When I hear them say, there’s better livin’
Let them go their way, to that new livin’
I won’t ever stray
‘Cause this is Heaven, to me
‘Long as freedom grows, I want to seek it
If it’s “Yes” or “No”, it’s me who’ll speak it
‘Cause the Lord, he knows
That this is Heaven, to me
If you’ve got your hands, and got your feet
to sing your song all through the street
You’ll raise your head when the day is done,
shout your thanks up to the Sun
So when I hear them say there’s better livin’
Let them go their way, to that new livin’
I won’t ever stray, ‘cause this is Heaven, to me
‘Cause this is Heaven, to me…
I close the playlist out with a piano instrumental: Oscar Peterson’s by turns reverential, playful, and celebratory “Hymn to Freedom”. A true gem.
Hope you all find something new to enjoy in here. Wishing you a very happy Independence Day!
A collection of musical selections and quotes in honor of Memorial Day. I also highly recommend reading or re-reading Bill Whittle’s “Honor”, the first of his superb “Silent America” essays, as I just did. (Also recommended: a moving address by Donald Sensing that I linked last year.)
I am moved and humbled beyond words by the actions of men and women throughout our storied history, who have risked and sacrificed their very lives to secure our safety and liberty. What more profound love there could be for a nation, an idea, and one’s fellow man, I can’t imagine. May they have our undying gratitude and commitment to ensuring that their sacrifices will not have been in vain.
Listening:
from Oscar Peterson, Night Train: “Hymn to Freedom”
from Dave Brubeck, Private Brubeck Remembers: “Don’t Worry ‘bout Me”, “We Crossed the Rhine”, “For All We Know”
from Five for Fighting, Two Lights: “Two Lights”
Quotes:
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” — General George S. Patton, Jr.
“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” — Sir Winston Churchill / George Orwell †
“We fight wars not to have peace, but to have a peace worth having. Slavery is peace. Tyranny is peace. For that matter, genocide is peace when you get right down to it. The historical consequences of a philosophy predicated on the notion of no war at any cost are families flying to the Super Bowl accompanied by three or four trusted slaves and a Europe devoid of a single living Jew.” — Bill Whittle, “History”
“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” — George Washington
“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” — John Stuart Mill
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
— John F. Kennedy
“We can’t share the earth with pure evil anymore than we can share the earth with smallpox.” — David Gelernter
“Evil must be confronted in its womb and, if it can’t be done otherwise, then it has to be dealt with by the use of force.” — Vaclav Havel
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke
“The front line now, at this critical time, is in the hearts and minds of our own people. That’s where the real battle is now. That is our weakest point, our breach, our point of failure. We have not made the case to enough people and time is running out.
So maybe now, at this absurd point in this new kind of war, we’re the crack troops, we old and useless pajama patriots reduced to printing up pamphlets to sell war bonds to the weary, to make the case for holding on to an unglamorous, uninspiring, relentless grind because that — not Normandy and Midway — is the face of war in this gilded age of luxury and safety and plenty.” — Bill Whittle, “Deterrence”
“We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down.” — Sir Winston Churchill
† The “rough men stand ready” quote is frequently attributed to both Winston Churchill and George Orwell in various forms. It is a beautifully focused statement, whatever its true origin.
