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Posts Tagged ‘The Staples Singers’

What Was

Posted in Biographical, Music, Quote, tagged , , , , , on February 7, 2021| 2 Comments »

 

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.”

― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

Short one today for this Sunday morning. The painting above is a little guy, a new 2″ by 4″ piece called What Was, headed to the West End Gallery for the Little Gems show. It’s one of those pieces that speak to me of the search for home, a theme that has been pretty prevalent in my work over the years.

I very much identify with the excerpt above from Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence whose story incorporates the search for home by Paul Gauguin, which eventually took him to Tahiti. I have always felt a bit out of place, even in this place where I have lived all my life.

Yet, I don’t know what place or situation might ever make me feel truly at home. Maybe that’s the purpose of my work, at least for me personally. To formulate an idea of what home might be.

I don’t really know. But I know that it has a strong pull.

Let’s leave it at that. For this Sunday, on the theme of home, I am returning to an old Staple Singers song from the late 1950’s. I played Uncloudy Day on this blog recently and this song, I’m Coming Home, is very much in that same vein. It’s from the same timeframe and has that same sort of sharp underlying guitar line from Pops and powerful vocals from a very young Mavis Staples. Great song to kick off a cold Sunday morning.

Have a good day.

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The Weight

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , , , , , on October 28, 2018| 1 Comment »

We have become more and more numbed to the cascade of horrors that seem to take place on a regular basis here. But this week seemed worse than most, marked by dark and deadly deeds around this country. These acts were not done by 9 year old Honduran girls struggling on a highway 1000 miles away. Nor were they done by women who protested the Kavanaugh nomination nor blacks who demanded justice in the legal system. Nor was it football players kneeling on the sidelines during the National Anthem.

No, these were done by white men based on irrational prejudices and hatreds which allowed them to frame themselves as somehow being victims.

This week:

Two black adults were shot down in a Kentucky supermarket. The killer had attempted to enter a predominately black church just before he came to the supermarket. Fortunately, its doors were locked.

Early in the week, multiple pipe bombs were sent around the country to mainly political leaders who had spoken out against the actions of this administration. The man responsible was a fanatic follower of the president who attended his rallies and adorned his van with all sorts of right wing propaganda memes, including pictures of many of his targets with the cross-hairs of a gun superimposed over them. He was a rabid defender of the president* on social media.

Then yesterday, horror of horrors. Eleven Jewish congregants were killed by a gunman in The Tree of Life synagogue in the Pittsburgh neighborhood that Mr. Rogers called home. 6 other people, including 4 police officers, were also wounded by the man who had a history of hate speech in his social media accounts. In our long and bloody history, this was the deadliest shooting of Jews in America.

And in the midst of this horrible week, we had a president* who proudly proclaimed himself to be a nationalist at a rally. The term nationalist is most often associated with groups that believe in and demand a purely white racial identity for one’s country. They view all other races as being inferior, as being threats to their place in the social hierarchy. Undeserving takers.

They see themselves as victims and these others as scapegoats on which responsibility for most any problem can be heaped. While they believe that  nationalism is a term of strength, it is actually a term of weakness, of a culture of  seeing oneself as victim.

This is well known information, not obscure in any way. When he used that term, when he glorified that word, he knew what he was doing. He knew what triggers he was pulling among his base.

And if his ignorance is genuine, he is unfit to be in the office.

Regular readers know where I stand on that subject.

There is no coming together moment in sight nor do these nationalists desire that. This nationalist  president* continues to shamelessly spew a steady stream of incitement and an ever increasing litany of lies even as these tragic events unfold. He continues to portray himself as a victim even as he falsely poses as a strongman. He simply does not have the ability or the desire to unite this country.

And those who helped him get to this point– the moneyed interests and congress– are too invested, too implicated, and too morally weak to stem this tide of division. They will offer thoughts and prayers but nothing more.

Nothing.

The events that took place this week feel as though they could be the starting point for a new period of even greater horrors to come. At this point, our only recourse is to vote for a sweeping change in the government. That is the only chance we have to change the course on which we have been set.

It might well be our last chance.

Vote for change. If we don’t, the blood will be on all our hands.

Okay, this Sunday morning music is The Weight from The Band and The Staples Singers taken from the film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Have a quiet Sunday and take a few moments from your day to think about those lives lost in Kentucky and Pittsburgh. And remember, you still have the power to change this.

Vote.

+++++++++++

 

 

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