Redtree Times

Childe Hassam- Rainy Day, Fifth Ave 1916

And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it’s alright, it’s alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what has gone wrong

–Paul Simon, American Tune

Another Fourth of July. Independence Day, marking this day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress adopted our Declaration of Independence. Since that day, for the last 247 years we have been in a constant struggle to live up to the promise that this country offers.

It seems it is always one step forward, one step back. We have always had to contend with the forces of hatred, bigotry, and greed as we try to achieve America’s promise of freedom, equality, and opportunity for all.

It’s a hard journey but worth the effort. For all of us.

Paul Simon wrote the song American Tune in 1973, at the height of the Watergate scandal, the continued war in Viet Nam and widespread social unrest. It felt like we were on the brink three years before our bicentennial.

50 years later, it feels much the same. Different scenarios, same reasons.

At this year’s Newport Folk Festival, Paul Simon performed American Tune with Rhiannon Giddens. The original song had the lines:

We come on the ship they call The Mayflower.
We come on the ship that sailed the moon.
We come in the age’s most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune.

For this occasion, Simon wanted to point out that many of our citizens did not come on the Mayflower or even by their own design. Many were here already. Simon changed those lines to:

We didn’t come here on the Mayflower.
We came on a ship on a blood red moon.
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune.

The blood red moon is an Old Testament reference to the book of Joel that prophesizes: The sun will become dark, the moon red as blood, before the overwhelming and terrible day of the Lord comes. It is a warning of the apocalypse that will occur when people lose their sense of love and justice.

We are certainly in the age’s most uncertain hour so this song seems appropriate to the day. 247 years later, the promise of America might be teetering but we are still standing. The experiment and the struggle continue.

And that’s reason to take a moment or day to celebrate before we get back to the fight.

Here’s Rhiannon Giddens and the revised version of American Tune.