I'm kind of struggling with This Land. It's one of the few -- and honestly I can't think of another just now -- songs in The Canon that is an explicit expression of class struggle. And the point of having a Latina sing it at the Inauguration was not to troll Natives, but to troll Nativists. As between settlers, working class people have as much right to be here as owning class people, Latinas as much as the descendants of WASP colonizers. And, other than the Indigenous Erasure, it's a really good song. Great tune, catchy affirming chorus. Our parents/grandparents sang it as children. (That Dave Rawlings version on the internet, a medley with I Hear Them All, is particularly inspiring. Other than, other than . . .)
The obvious issue, of course, is the 'Other than The Indigenous Erasure Problem' which pervades so much of everything, in an 'other than that Mrs. Lincoln' kind of way.
If he was alive today, Woody would be working at a way to resolve this. Obviously, the hard work falls to all of us (unequally, of course) to develop a new consciousness and a new Canon. Joe Biden isn't the Second Coming, and no one has a magic wand to undo 5 centuries of injustice. All we can do is plod forward, take our lumps when we misstep, and help our grandchildren understand the obligations they will inherit to continue the work.
Count me among team Darkness! Where seeds germinate, where fertile compost is made, where we're forced to use our other senses.
Yesterday I read a gloves-off take down of Gorman's poem from an Indigenous perspective. Today it hit me how tightly curated that poem must have been just for the occasion, which only strengthens your point about her exploitation.
Found you via Anne Helen Petersen and I've been feeling all of your posts deeply--but this one really hit me. (Especially your note about the darkness! The darkness and the mysteries within darkness are beautiful and necessary for life!! I've forced friends/family to listen to a way pettier version of this rant lately as we come out of the xmas cheer season, heh.) Thank you for sharing your writing.
“And these people had the audacity to use Amanda Gorman as a human shield to hide how shitty the United States remains even while they ALL had the authority to change it. That is reprehensible. We have to hold them accountable.”
Yes, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right. I really have no great expectations from Biden/Harris, other than not being the former president. Which is a sad thing to say, I know. But I will be blown over if the U.S. ever elects someone I can really, really, look up to. For me that’s just reality.
Wait a doggone minute here!!!!! I wanna know why you ain't gonna be able to pee outside any longer??!!! Whoever made THAT a rule, well, I cannot support their platform!!
I could not help but fall in love with Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's lilting melodic voice of word and stanza delivery, not to mention the way her hands flitted-about like the chickadees in my snow-laden forests, plus, her sunyellow coat, and her crown of hair held in place with a brightly-red tiara.
And, count me in on the vote for Darkness!!!!! Stars in the sky, Aurora Borealis, all the creatures that find safety in night travel, their voices lifted in The Choir of Nature. YEAHYEAH, as the old Pastor Emeritus hollers in church! Darkness reigneth!
Once again, you had me chuckling and nodding in agreement. Your posts are one of my favourite reads these days.....
Thank you Chris. I had many emotions on Inauguration Day and it was hard to feel budding relief (joy?) along with the lurk of “But still...”
While I loved Amanda’s poem, I too was still wishing for something deeper than a light in the dark and how we “must” come together. Those terrorists are not and will never be who I consider my ‘countrymen’. They’re not who I want to unite with.
Also, looking at them with a “vicious side-eye” hit the mark for me. That was excellent. This is excellent, and you too are excellent.
Yep. I felt legitimately dissociative on Wednesday due to the heaps of praise and optimism in the face of what I consider a humbling defeat, a failure to reach and fight for something more than our daily gruel in the midst of an era-defining crisis. Poetry and stories are important -- to some writers and creative folks they are everything even, and I think that seduces us into falsely thinking that their power to open minds and hearts can translate into political power. But this just felt like hollow and callous pageantry, and I was so dismayed to be one of the few in my social circles to feel that way (apparently, anyway: who knows what's really going on in people's hearts Offline). A human shield is the perfect way to put it.
Shit, Chris! Thanks for removing the blinders from my eyes. I don’t think Biden/Harris are saviors by any means, but it was such a relief to feel some measure of hope again that I didn’t sit with much of the other side of things. Thanks for the kick in the butt to do so.
It's reassuring that I'm not the only one that feels like this. It's good to see representation and hope prevail through turbulent periods, but we also need to remember that these problems and situations are always there. Whether it's boiling as it has been for the last two presidential terms, or simmering below the surface as it was prior and I fear will so in the near future.
I heard a phrase in a podcast, "you can't have unity without accountability". And that's what I'm going to employ and hope those that are ecstatic with this new administration will do as fervently as they did with 45. Growing up Indigenous/Diné, I don't remember feeling any sense of recognition from any previous administration...I hope it's different with this one...
Thank you Chris. The inauguration brought a feeling of relief, (yea I cried) followed by a feeling of being manipulated, the way movie scores are meant to do. Spent the day yesterday reading some of the bills our Montana legislature is trying to pass right now. Now for the phone calls and letters.
Thanks again, Chris, for awakening the rest of my brain and making me think deeper about "things". I enjoyed the inauguration fine. I expected it to pander to my progressive heart, and it didn't disappoint. I was a little reluctant to watch, though, because I expected it to be just, well, to be too performative, too scripted, too pretty. I think that's the root of your side-glancing stink-eye.
I recognize the need to retain my critical analysis. It's very easy to slip back to "normal" and forget all we've learned under Trump, re-embrace fantasy, putting off the hard-work.
I have suchhhhhh mixed feelings about this past week. On one hand you knew that the Empire would be cleverly packaging and selling itself, again, as the land of the free, complete with tear-jerking poetry readings from talented lovely young people as well as positively progressive-seeming executive orders.
And on the other hand, well, it certainly feels like the Exorcism that started last year is still underway. Imagine if all that intense feeling could be channeled into real revolutionary action. It's happened before and can happen again, even in the "belly of the beast."
The first voice I heard on Wednesday morning was that of a Black DJ on a community radio station. It was clear he was elated and relieved about the coming events of the day. I couldn't help but feel the same way, even though both he and I sense how far we have to go before people are truly free in the US and all over the world.
The hIstory of “This Land Is Your land” is fascinating. It, like so many really good protest songs, gets whitewashed and defanged. Guthrie wrote this in response to aggravation over the ubiquitousness of God Bless America (which btw was sung on 1/20/2121 in the MT Leg most legislators unmasked). I always want singers to start on Verse Three...
“Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing —
God blessed America for me.
[This land was made for you and me.]
When the sun come shining, then I was strolling
In wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling;
The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting:
God blessed America for me.
[This land was made for you and me.]
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
Agree agree agree! But also Deb Haaland. I want to believe that appointment will do some good.
I'm kind of struggling with This Land. It's one of the few -- and honestly I can't think of another just now -- songs in The Canon that is an explicit expression of class struggle. And the point of having a Latina sing it at the Inauguration was not to troll Natives, but to troll Nativists. As between settlers, working class people have as much right to be here as owning class people, Latinas as much as the descendants of WASP colonizers. And, other than the Indigenous Erasure, it's a really good song. Great tune, catchy affirming chorus. Our parents/grandparents sang it as children. (That Dave Rawlings version on the internet, a medley with I Hear Them All, is particularly inspiring. Other than, other than . . .)
The obvious issue, of course, is the 'Other than The Indigenous Erasure Problem' which pervades so much of everything, in an 'other than that Mrs. Lincoln' kind of way.
If he was alive today, Woody would be working at a way to resolve this. Obviously, the hard work falls to all of us (unequally, of course) to develop a new consciousness and a new Canon. Joe Biden isn't the Second Coming, and no one has a magic wand to undo 5 centuries of injustice. All we can do is plod forward, take our lumps when we misstep, and help our grandchildren understand the obligations they will inherit to continue the work.
You always make me stop and think. It's not always comfortable, but that's not the point. Thanks again for all you do.
If those two can lay peacefully side by side there just might be hope for all of us.
Count me among team Darkness! Where seeds germinate, where fertile compost is made, where we're forced to use our other senses.
Yesterday I read a gloves-off take down of Gorman's poem from an Indigenous perspective. Today it hit me how tightly curated that poem must have been just for the occasion, which only strengthens your point about her exploitation.
Found you via Anne Helen Petersen and I've been feeling all of your posts deeply--but this one really hit me. (Especially your note about the darkness! The darkness and the mysteries within darkness are beautiful and necessary for life!! I've forced friends/family to listen to a way pettier version of this rant lately as we come out of the xmas cheer season, heh.) Thank you for sharing your writing.
“And these people had the audacity to use Amanda Gorman as a human shield to hide how shitty the United States remains even while they ALL had the authority to change it. That is reprehensible. We have to hold them accountable.”
Yes, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right. I really have no great expectations from Biden/Harris, other than not being the former president. Which is a sad thing to say, I know. But I will be blown over if the U.S. ever elects someone I can really, really, look up to. For me that’s just reality.
Wait a doggone minute here!!!!! I wanna know why you ain't gonna be able to pee outside any longer??!!! Whoever made THAT a rule, well, I cannot support their platform!!
I could not help but fall in love with Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's lilting melodic voice of word and stanza delivery, not to mention the way her hands flitted-about like the chickadees in my snow-laden forests, plus, her sunyellow coat, and her crown of hair held in place with a brightly-red tiara.
And, count me in on the vote for Darkness!!!!! Stars in the sky, Aurora Borealis, all the creatures that find safety in night travel, their voices lifted in The Choir of Nature. YEAHYEAH, as the old Pastor Emeritus hollers in church! Darkness reigneth!
Once again, you had me chuckling and nodding in agreement. Your posts are one of my favourite reads these days.....
Thank you Chris. I had many emotions on Inauguration Day and it was hard to feel budding relief (joy?) along with the lurk of “But still...”
While I loved Amanda’s poem, I too was still wishing for something deeper than a light in the dark and how we “must” come together. Those terrorists are not and will never be who I consider my ‘countrymen’. They’re not who I want to unite with.
Also, looking at them with a “vicious side-eye” hit the mark for me. That was excellent. This is excellent, and you too are excellent.
Yep. I felt legitimately dissociative on Wednesday due to the heaps of praise and optimism in the face of what I consider a humbling defeat, a failure to reach and fight for something more than our daily gruel in the midst of an era-defining crisis. Poetry and stories are important -- to some writers and creative folks they are everything even, and I think that seduces us into falsely thinking that their power to open minds and hearts can translate into political power. But this just felt like hollow and callous pageantry, and I was so dismayed to be one of the few in my social circles to feel that way (apparently, anyway: who knows what's really going on in people's hearts Offline). A human shield is the perfect way to put it.
Shit, Chris! Thanks for removing the blinders from my eyes. I don’t think Biden/Harris are saviors by any means, but it was such a relief to feel some measure of hope again that I didn’t sit with much of the other side of things. Thanks for the kick in the butt to do so.
It's reassuring that I'm not the only one that feels like this. It's good to see representation and hope prevail through turbulent periods, but we also need to remember that these problems and situations are always there. Whether it's boiling as it has been for the last two presidential terms, or simmering below the surface as it was prior and I fear will so in the near future.
I heard a phrase in a podcast, "you can't have unity without accountability". And that's what I'm going to employ and hope those that are ecstatic with this new administration will do as fervently as they did with 45. Growing up Indigenous/Diné, I don't remember feeling any sense of recognition from any previous administration...I hope it's different with this one...
Thank you Chris. The inauguration brought a feeling of relief, (yea I cried) followed by a feeling of being manipulated, the way movie scores are meant to do. Spent the day yesterday reading some of the bills our Montana legislature is trying to pass right now. Now for the phone calls and letters.
Thanks again, Chris, for awakening the rest of my brain and making me think deeper about "things". I enjoyed the inauguration fine. I expected it to pander to my progressive heart, and it didn't disappoint. I was a little reluctant to watch, though, because I expected it to be just, well, to be too performative, too scripted, too pretty. I think that's the root of your side-glancing stink-eye.
I recognize the need to retain my critical analysis. It's very easy to slip back to "normal" and forget all we've learned under Trump, re-embrace fantasy, putting off the hard-work.
I have suchhhhhh mixed feelings about this past week. On one hand you knew that the Empire would be cleverly packaging and selling itself, again, as the land of the free, complete with tear-jerking poetry readings from talented lovely young people as well as positively progressive-seeming executive orders.
And on the other hand, well, it certainly feels like the Exorcism that started last year is still underway. Imagine if all that intense feeling could be channeled into real revolutionary action. It's happened before and can happen again, even in the "belly of the beast."
The first voice I heard on Wednesday morning was that of a Black DJ on a community radio station. It was clear he was elated and relieved about the coming events of the day. I couldn't help but feel the same way, even though both he and I sense how far we have to go before people are truly free in the US and all over the world.
The hIstory of “This Land Is Your land” is fascinating. It, like so many really good protest songs, gets whitewashed and defanged. Guthrie wrote this in response to aggravation over the ubiquitousness of God Bless America (which btw was sung on 1/20/2121 in the MT Leg most legislators unmasked). I always want singers to start on Verse Three...
“Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property,
But on the back side it didn't say nothing —
God blessed America for me.
[This land was made for you and me.]
When the sun come shining, then I was strolling
In wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling;
The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting:
God blessed America for me.
[This land was made for you and me.]
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people —
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God blessed America for me.
[This land was made for you and me.]”