I tried to figure out the right Memorial Day mix of pop culture and politics to opinionate on this weekend. But try as I might nothing was working.
Until Bruce Springsteen did the job for me.
They don’t call him the Boss for nothin’!
Singer-songwriters can do that. But when they’re also the superstar frontman for their own superstar band, and have just begun an international tour, well, that’s even better.
Meaning not only can they get a message out with talent and charisma but they have a humongous platform from which to do it from.
Fame indeed!
It’s difficult to live your entire life in a country that has always aspired to liberty and justice for ALL – even in decades where it has fallen far short of them – and watch it being slowly dismantled, one principle at a time, by a man who seems to operate primarily on vengeance, rage, pathological self-glorification and bottom line personal grift numbering in the many millions, and now billions, and counting.
But here we are.
Yes, we know
One could ask the question, how much money do you need once you reach a billion plus, but let’s not. Because we all know that by the time you surpass a billion it’s not about the planes, cars, yachts, houses and hookers – it’s about the power.
As Mel Brooks once famously joked in his 1981 film, The History of the World, Part I:It’s good to be the King!
I think he’s wearing less makeup though
Though history and literature show us that while it might be for, well, a time, for most Kings it’s a very mixed bag. And for many it doesn’t end well. At all.
What’s that old expression? Oh, right –
Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I generally don’t like old expressions but in this case and in this country it feels apt.
Preach, Chairy!
Or as I said not so famously to my husband this week, I feel like we’re in the beginning of the fourth act of a five-act Shakespearean-like tragedy where the King will be doomed after destroying parts of his country but, like all great plays, we’re not yet sure what His doom will look like or exactly how it will play out.
I know that might sound like nasty, wishful thinking but I am absolutely sure of one fact: After a lifetime of movies, books and miniseries, I can recognize a doomed, over-the-top main character in a larger-than-life modern-day tragedy a million miles away. And so could any of you with a brain.
See: Cable news
But what most of us are unable to do is to sing and communicate it as well as Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen.
Memorial Day is a time to honor those who died while serving in the United States military for sacrifices made in defending the freedoms our country has tried to always stand for. So I can’t think of anything more patriotic in May/June 2025 than to post two clips of The Boss at a recent concert in Manchester, England. He encapsulates what it means be a real patriot by putting himself front and center on the firing line of dissent in order to push back against what seems to so many of us to be our first aspiring Oval Office dictator.
I’ve been a sucker for singer-songwriters ever since in fell in love with Carole King as a teenager in the seventies. It’s a long story but the short version is that “she spoke to me.”
Not literally but with her words. Meaning when you’re so lonely inside that you fear no one will like you once they discover the real you, a song like You’ve Got A Friend means everything.
You just call out my name, And you know wherever I am,
I’ll come running to see you again,
Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall, All you have to dois call,
And I’ll be there,
You’ve Got A Friend….
If you wonder why so many of us deep down sensitive baby boomers prefer a call to a text, well, that pretty much says it all.
I mean, all you have to do is text just isn’t quite the same thing.
Reba knows
In any event, for me these days there’s a different kind of fear and loneliness. One that’s difficult to describe except to say it’s a feeling of being let down by so many of the people I came of age with in a country I thought I knew but don’t know at all.
It would be easy to make this merely political but it occurred to me this weekend that it’s not. There’s a callow self-centeredness permeating the air, determined to change the norm of what’s right and wrong. A shifting back in time to what is moral and acceptable, sometimes to the 1950s and, other times, to the 1850s.
This cartoon is from… 1908 #notkidding
A societal, redefinition to the alt right where the media actually indulges in rational discussions (Note: That is if we’re lucky) on whether it’s okay to snatch people as young as two years old out of their schools, their streets or even their beds in the dead of night and fly them to a foreign gulag in a country they’ve never been to without a hearing, much less a trial.
A time where it’s okay to openly shout at or discriminate against people with a different skin color, gender preference or even income, insultingly and/or at the top of your lungs, and even use a nasty pejorative word about their ‘kind” (Note: And by “kind” substitute the word for a particular group you’d have seldom heard implied, much less said out loud in public 10 years ago) as they do so.
Without a doubt
A place where those in authority promote the Christian Bible and the virtues and obligations of parenthood while dismissing anyone decidedly non-religious, or atheist, or voluntarily childless as lacking a strong moral compass, selfish or simply immoral.
Listen, this is not the language of my friends and family. But it IS what is becoming the language of our country. Questions are being posed in the public square to which the vast majority of American know the answer to.
Two letters
NO – it is not right to snatch people off the streets, without a trial, never to be heard from again.
NO – you don’t have to be a Christian or have/raise a child to be a moral, loving, worthwhile, contributing member of society.
And NO – it’s not okay to be racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ethnic phobic or, ______________. (Note: Fill in the blank because you truly do know the rest of the categories).
Yet somehow, in some fashion, this is all on the table again and up for discussion.
American voters = Dory
In my random 3:00 am nights awake I wonder, Is bringing slavery back, next? In my mind’s eye I can actually hear some of those voices arguing, It depends on the circumstances. Why can’t we at least debate it?
Lately, I’ve come to realize that in the last few weeks, okay months, I once again find myself turning to another singer-songwriter to get me through. This time it’s 28-year-old Noah Kahan, a Grammy-nominated folk-pop performer from Vermont who plays guitar, banjo and mandolin, sounds like a cross between Paul Simon and Cat Stevens (Note: He cities them as two of his big inspirations) and has dealt with mental health issues since he was a kid – so much so that he used funds from his success to establish The Busyhead Project, a mental health initiative that provides information and resources to end the stigma around mental health.
Bonus: Good hair
I didn’t know the latter before I started listening to him. I just gravitated to his music and his words. But in retrospect it all makes sense. Who better to help you when you’re feeling rather hopelessly disoriented than someone who has been dealing with those feelings most of their life? It made even more sense when I began watching videos of him performing. He reminded me of the type of burly straight guy who was kind to me in my younger years. The sort of mostly silent fellow who’d actually exchange a few words with me if we were at a party or some dumb function, and then ask me a question or two about myself and actually listen to the answer.
His song Stick Season, which is also the title of his breakthrough 2022 album, derives its title from that time in New England when the leaves have fallen and the trees are bare but the snow has not yet arrived. Again, it makes sense I’d be listening to this over and over again as I drive through the hills of sunny L.A. since in my view we are awaiting some great societal snow to wash away a kind of cold ,chilly creepiness threatening our land.
Or perhaps that’s just me liking flowery, melodramatic metaphors. (Note: Perhaps?)
It’s kind of exactly what the Mamas and Papas sang about… but without all the California dreamin’
In any event, in Stick Season, Noah writes about a relationship he’s sort of in during a transitional period in his life.
…And I’ll dream each night of some version of you That I might not have, but I did not lose Now you’re tire tracks and one pair of shoes And I’m split in half, but that’ll have to do
So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad No, I am no longer funny, ’cause I miss the way you laugh You once called me forever, now you still can’t call me back.
And I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks….
Make of the meaning of the song what you will.
All of ’em
It could be a relationship with a girlfriend.
But it might also be one with a boyfriend.
Or even an old friend, lover or family member.
Someone or something that’s been in your life forever but you feel you’ve never known.
notes from a chair 