The other day I mentioned how a song can change as it ages through our life. Today’s quote comes from a song that holds that power. At least it does for me.
When I was young I thought this song was an anthem that celebrated how awesome it was to be a young American. When I was fifteen I wasn’t smart enough to understand the lyrics, so I just heard them.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized it’s a pessimistic take on the American society. It touches on the hatred, political mistrust and violence that America exhibits, seen through the eyes of a British pop star.
It isn’t that I’ve lost my love for this David Bowie song. It just doesn’t have the same magic it had. I’m not that twenty year old shnockered on Jägermeister shouting “we were the young Americans” at a kegger because those were the only lyrics I really heard.
Yesterday when I was blazing across 31st after work and the song came on Betty’s radio it sounded hardened to me. A symbolic take on a long mediocre career and the failures of marriage.
“We live for just these twenty years, Do we have to die for the fifty more?"
This song was no longer a drunken anthem for a young punk, but a cynical canticle for a middle aged man.
I once remembered President Nixon’s years as the time I played with GI Joes and pretended that I was Dick Butkus.
Now I look back at that fallen administration as the beginning of an era where the president was no longer the King. Bowie foreshadowed how the role of the presidency would become a mockery.
That twenty year old kid had so much success in front of him. This old man can look back at the failures and defeats the rest of the years brought along.
I had a bedroom in the basement that was underneath the dining room floor when I was young. My father would take the hind legs of a dining room chair and pound them on the hardwood floor.
“Too loud! Turn it down!”
Well I turned down the volume and listened to the words. David Bowie gave us a beautiful look at how we see our lives growing up in a painful society.
Sometimes it is good to interpret the mistakes that have been made…
McCarthyism, racism and Watergate.
Life isn’t always as beautiful as Vivaldi can make it.
Here is today’s assignment….
Listen to “Young Americans” with the sound cranked to eleven. Just like you did when it was fresh to your ears.
Then listen to it cranked to four. Like you do when you’re driving and you can’t find an address. Google the lyrics and read along.
That is a lesson in how music can change as we age through our lives.
Another Smokey day in Chicagoland. Someone needs to teach these Canadians how to properly extinguish a campfire.
I just remembered about the bills I have to pay, they were due yesterday.
Two for Tuesday Chalkheads….
