The Day The Music Died

THIS POST IS INSTALLMENT #1 of a new series. In my current state-of-mind over the current state of affairs I'm searching for ways to find footing, forward-thinking, with a bit of escaping. So far, my tools include:

• Prayer -- prayers of lament and thanksgiving

• Exercise -- the kind for meditation, balance (both mental and physical) and flexibility (both physical and mental)

• Socializing -- stepping outside my very narrow and brittle comfort zone

• Substance Abuse -- I am treating myself to dark strong coffee drinks, frozen yogurt, peanuts, dark chocolate, and the occasional high-quality cheeseburger

Now I'm adding to the list of coping mechanisms a deeper immersion in the arts. I'm practicing my drums more. I'm even practicing the piano. I read an article that piano practicing is good for arthritic fingers because of the movement. "Motion is lotion," the article said.

I'm also going back to the greatest hits of my First Coming-of-Age, in the late 60s, when we had a president of questionable integrity and motives, and were stuck in a needless and seemingly unending war.

Those songs helped by giving a way to look at the zeitgeist. The power of poetry delivered with new, creative, culture-shaping music. So, for a few posts here on the old blog I'm going to remember and recommend some of those treasures that are serving again today in my Second Coming-of-Age to help me navigte the unrest and blurriness. Now, for the first installment, two tunes that are on my mind and heart and greatest hits list: Stairway To Heaven and American Pie. [Yes, I know I said songs of the 60s and both of these are of the 70s, but that counts too. It's my blog and I'll cry if I want to.]

members of led Zeppelin: john paul jones, robert plant, jimmy page

There's a video I've watched over and over; it's still moves me. It's an episode from the Kennedy Center Honors. You can watch it HERE:

In the video the band "Heart" is giving a tribute to the living members of Led Zeppelin by covering their song "Stairway to Heaven". The drummer playing with the band is Jason Bonham, son of the late John Bonham, drummer for Led Zeppelin.

jason and john bonham

Now when I watch the video it breaks my heart because the beauty marked by the Kennedy Center Honors is now gone--because the Kennedy Center is no longer the "Kennedy Center". It has been unworthily renamed by the illegitimately self-appointed chair of the Center's handpicked committee. Now the center is being shut down for "two years". And the words of Don McLean ring in my head:

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music
Used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died...

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died...

They were singin' bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin', "This'll be the day that I die."

--selected passages from Don McLean’s American Pie

FACES

“How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

— C.S. Lewis. "Till We Have Faces".

REMEMBER SCHOOL PICTURE DAY? Best shirt or dress, hair done, smile rehearsed and hope for the best. Ever wonder why the picture-taking tradition focused on a person's face? Why not a picture of the back of the head or the torso from the neck down? Because our face is who we are--with our unique smile, and eyes and nose and ears. Our face is us--our personhood, our humanness, our giftedness, the window to our character and personality.

my amazing missus

I was having a discussion years ago with a wise, wise friend. We were talking about discipline for kids. He said, "I'm not opposed to an occasional attention-getting swat on the bottom; BUT! NEVER, EVER SLAP OR HIT SOMEONE ACROSS THE FACE! To slap someone in the face is to take their worth and value. It sends a message of disgust, ugliness and even hate."

To be faceless is to be invisible and less than human. I wrote a piece a while back and mentioned the masks that are worn as a part of the costume of ICE agents hunting down humans in the name of a mission to remove the worst of the worst. I bring it up again here to say that I believe that by wearing a mask these agents somehow take on a different persona: a tougher, less tolerant, insensitive, no-nonsense, macho, zealous version, like those who wore the white pointy hats and robes of the cross burners. Maybe they are really that way. Or; maybe without all the garb and gear, behind the mask, he's just a guy, trying to do the right thing and make a living. "Hide my FACE and no one can see me." I guess sometimes the mask has a dual purpose: hides identity and shame.

I watched the hearing the other day of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in front of a House Committee. In the seats behind her sat a number of the victims of the pedophilia ring of convicted child-sex offenders Epstein and Maxwell. Bondi was made aware of the fact that the victims were sitting right behind her. She was invited to offer a word to them or at least turn around and acknowledge them. She wouldn't do it. Why? Because if she had they would have had faces--they would have become real people to her and she did not want that. She had planned her course for the hearing and she couldn't execute the plan if she felt any empathy at all. So, just ignore them, don't look at them, totally dehumanize them so that you can continue the cover up the nightmare that stole so much of their personhood. It was the equivalent of a slap across the face of each one of them.

“No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.”

— C.S. Lewis. "Till We Have Faces".

NOSTALGIA

THAT'S A BIG WORD. It needs to be because it carries a lot. Here's sort of a concensus defintion from a few dictionaries:

A yearning to return to an earlier time remembered as happier or more pleasant, or a former place evoking happy memories; a longing to experience again a former happy time.

See what I mean?!

I'm fully aware of the biblical warning about too much sentimentality:

“Don’t long for ‘the good old days.’ This is not wise.”

— Ecclesiastes 7:10 NLT

More than likely I'm misunderstanding the theology here, but a little looking back seems innocent enough and even wholesome (as long as we don't get stuck back there in some kind of "Back To The Future" time warp.) I'm not trying to read the mind of the writer of Ecclesiastes or diminish his wisdom, but he was pretty deep in his "Life is meaningless" phase in chapter 7. I've always been pretty good at finding a way to justify straddling the lines of biblical mandates while staying within the guardrails of protestant guilt. [Is it metaphor mixing if your examples are on the same road, the one with a strong center line and high guardrails? We can burn that bridge if we come to it.]

It looks to me like there's one more loophole in the reminiscing rule: maybe it's okay to journey back to the good old days; we just shouldn't "long" for them. It's sort of like that shadowy line between temptation and lust. Lust is a sin; temptation is not. Remember the truth is that Jesus was tempted in ALL ways as we are yet without sin. Still there is that definition of nostalgia which includes words like longing and yearning. Let's call what we're doing nostalgia-lite. We're just visiting the back-in-the-day for awhile, resting in the innocence and the beauty of simplicity. We'll return to the present after the holidays when we make our forward-looking resolutions for 2026. We should probably drop some gingerbread crumbs on our sentimental journey so we can find our way back though.

Now that I've established that we can do some harmless, seasonal reminiscing let's get started. This time of the year is just bursting with opportunities for nostalgia. All the triggers are here: the sights and sounds and smells, the music, the twinkling lights, wreaths and bells and trees; peppermint and pine. When it comes down to it, isn't that what the season is about: remembering and celebrating? Senior adulthood requires that I watch and read the news and acknowledge the reality that many, too many, in our world have little to celebrate. The harshness of the world in front of them is bound to obscure the promise of hope and peace. Nostalgia for many is bittersweet at best.

Admittedly, nostalgia for me these days is a way of escape. Without getting too bleak, I find the debasing of civility, the dehumanizing rhetoric of politics and the blurring of what is really good and true and beautiful to be disheartening. So, reverie is like layering on warm quilts, turning on a good movie like "Love Actually" or "While You Were Sleeping"; blocking out the uglier ooze. Another tactic for me is to try to provide an alternative to all that while creating the fodder of future nostaligia for the kids and grandkids--sort of like that hapless hero of happy family memories creation: Clark Griswold. In the classic story of Clark and his high hopes for the ultimate Christmas, "Christmas Vacation", we get to see the perfect portrayal of nostalgia: Clark sitting in the attic, wrapped in discarded clothes, watching old home movies of Christmases past and remembering them "better than they were." And in the background we hear the song...

Christmas is the time of year
For being with the ones we love
Sharing so much joy and cheer
What a wonderful feelin'
Watching the ones we love
Having so much fun

I was sittin' by the fire side
Taking a walk through the snow
Listening to a children's choir
Singing songs about Jesus
The blessed way that he came to us

Why can't it remain
All through the year
Each day the same
That's what I wanna hear
It's truly amazin'
That spirit of Christmas

All the kinfolk gather 'round
The lovely Christmas tree
Hearts are glowing full of joy
Sense the gifts that we're giving
And the love that we're living

Why can't it remain (Why can't it remain?)
Oh, all through the year (All through the year)
Each day the same (Each day the same)
Ah, that's what I wanna hear
Listen to me, it's truly amazin'
That spirit of Christmas

Every year our boys would decorate gingerbread houses their mom made for them. And, for seventeen years and counting she has made them for our grandkids and hundreds of other peoples kids and grandkids.

This year for Christmas I decided I wanted to relive the moment of one of my favorite Christmastime memories--the year I got a real Lionel train set. In true Griswoldian style I've created a little Christmas village for my new train. In a few days the grandkids will make their houses and they will become the homes that the train encircles, all done in the spirit of treasurable moments.

Quickly, these moments will pass and I'll ask, as the song does, "Why can't it remain all through the year, that spirit of Christmas?"

---

CLICK HERE TO hear the version sung by Chuck Brown and Eva Cassidy.

CLICK HERE TO watch the clip from the movie.

RELEGATION

The cheap seats, back of the line, general admission, the bench, boarding group C, looking in from the outside... Sometimes we might feel like we have been relegated to something "less than". But hold on to your dinner roll a minute.

Tis the season; a trip in the grocery store and the first displays to greet you are the boxes of Stove Top, the cans of yams and bags of marshmallows, cranberry sauce and of course the trifecta of key ingredients for the green bean casserole. Besides the turkey these are the key fixin's on every Thanksgiving table--or should we say "tables"--plural. Just as the pilgrims before us, at any family gathering there will be the lowly Kid's Table. And, by lowly, I mean literally, physically lower than the big table; and also low enough to create a sense of longing to see the day when we can move up. But maybe the Kid's Table has gotten a bad rap and/or rep. Maybe it's not the place of relegation it appears to be. Maybe it's not a bad place to be.

Look at it: there's little chance of walking away from the kid's table stuffed. You've probably only had to eat "just one bite" of something. The only thing you're eating for sure is the big dollop of Cool Whip from the top of your pumpkin pie, or if you're lucky (as our grandkids are), you'll have a spray can of something akin to whipping cream which you can shake vigarously and squirt directly into your mouth.

As for discussion, the Kid's Table talk is free of politics and religion. The most heated conversation I've heard lately at a Kid's Table was the one between our two grandboys ages 8 and 5: Is fishing a sport or not? The 8 year-old who loves fishing is firmly on the side of definitely a sport. The 5 year-old, who had a successful T-ball season says "No Way!" He also doesn't feel that cheerleading is a sport. Luckily his older sister the cheerleader wasn't at the table.

This week, on November 17, our oldest Grand turned 17, her "golden" birthday (the calendar day of her birthday matches her age). I asked her about being the oldest at the Kid's Table. "When does one promote to the Big Table?" She said "Maybe 18?" with a hint of innocence lost in her voice. So this year will be her last at the Kid's Table. The little ones will miss her. The grown-ups will still be the grown-ups.

As kids, my brother and I, along with our parents, would make the pilgramage to a little town in Louisiana where our Dad was born and raised. Our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were there, as was the Kid's Table. We knew our place. We were reminded of what that meant on the long roadtrip "over the river and through the woods". "Eat a bite of butter beans and try the duck. Remember to say yes sir and yes ma'am. Asked to be excused from the table when you're through eating."

It seems like in the deep south, knowing and staying in one's place was a sign of respect--respect for tradition and acknowledging social and familial status. It was also expected. And, in the 50s and 60s, those expectations could have an air of relegation to them.

Remembering the One from whom all blessings flow, with a counting of some of those blessings, a deep breath or two of fresh air and grace, all of the tables become important, they all become the same height, they are all in the same room, the same significance and fraught with the potential to listen and learn and love.

Maybe there's something we can discover from the Kid's Table. Are there grateful little hearts at that table? YES! Sometimes gratitude is most evident in joy. Watch the joy and fun radiating from that little table. Maybe when Jesus talked about being like the children he was pointing to the Kid's Table. Maybe if Jesus were to come to our house for Thanksgiving He would sit at the Kid's Table. Maybe I should too.