Blessings on all stories.
This is not to say that all stories are equal. That would be fake news. Some stories are boring as hell. But the fact is that someone blesses them, fake or otherwise and therefore, in some overarching sense, "blessings on all stories."
I grew up with stories in various forms. I loved them. And still do. One format was music.
When I was a kid, songs had stories embedded within them, as for example "The Golden Vanity," (scroll down -- last song) which was far from the touchy-feely happy-ending songs that followed in its wake. Songs were not afraid, in that time, to be sorrow-filled. Kids were allowed to face death and sorrow. It was part of growing up.
Or Pete Seeger's "Talking Union." A shit-kicker that was also in-bounds for even a kid.
Or, somehow without words for this kid, Strauss' "Blue Danube" waltz. Waltzes have always told stories, yummy stories, in my mind.
But allowing these shards of music to float up this morning, I realized it was another marker of age. I never really moved on. I stayed with the stories I thought were blessings and others probably find hopelessly out of synch. Rap music, for example, never entered my consciousness as music any more than sandpaper did. It was coarse and without art and immersed in a self I had no interest in or love for. True, there was Beethoven et al to soar me or tear-stain a cheek, but I took that as a natural progression from the blessings I had already chosen.
My blessings are still hung up in the backyard -- clipped to a loopy cord by clothes pins now long out of fashion.
Old man toe-tapper. Old man Romantic. I guess it will have to be enough.
This is not to say that all stories are equal. That would be fake news. Some stories are boring as hell. But the fact is that someone blesses them, fake or otherwise and therefore, in some overarching sense, "blessings on all stories."
I grew up with stories in various forms. I loved them. And still do. One format was music.
When I was a kid, songs had stories embedded within them, as for example "The Golden Vanity," (scroll down -- last song) which was far from the touchy-feely happy-ending songs that followed in its wake. Songs were not afraid, in that time, to be sorrow-filled. Kids were allowed to face death and sorrow. It was part of growing up.
Or Pete Seeger's "Talking Union." A shit-kicker that was also in-bounds for even a kid.
Or, somehow without words for this kid, Strauss' "Blue Danube" waltz. Waltzes have always told stories, yummy stories, in my mind.
But allowing these shards of music to float up this morning, I realized it was another marker of age. I never really moved on. I stayed with the stories I thought were blessings and others probably find hopelessly out of synch. Rap music, for example, never entered my consciousness as music any more than sandpaper did. It was coarse and without art and immersed in a self I had no interest in or love for. True, there was Beethoven et al to soar me or tear-stain a cheek, but I took that as a natural progression from the blessings I had already chosen.
My blessings are still hung up in the backyard -- clipped to a loopy cord by clothes pins now long out of fashion.
Old man toe-tapper. Old man Romantic. I guess it will have to be enough.
Somewhere or other I got the notion that out of your history you should cling to the best parts, and try to forgive the rest.
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