Ah, Music. It has the power to soothe man's soul, I always say. I might have heard that somewhere.
Indeed, music takes us to wonderful places we've never lived. It can tell us a story without using words. It lifts us up from the mirey clay and then drops us back into said pit of dispair. It can make us laugh; it can make us cry...it can move us to protest...or to worship, realizing that music is not empty of spirit, whether good or bad.
Music has power over me. You, too?
I figured as much. I can be moved in one simple series of chords to dance the Dance of Joy. But if the next song is loud or aggressive, I may take up a broomstick and break it in two with my bare hands, panting like a pirate in battle, while threatening to kill me a li'le squarelle or somethin'. I know that's dumb. But it's what music does to people like us - you and me.
Music is powerful.
So, I am a Beatle's girl, myself. I was just fourteen. You might say I was a musical perverbial kneehigh...oops. Wrong song. (Now we're both going to sing Nashville Cats for the next week or so, being forced to make up lyrics where we know none...)
But I digress. So I was actually in the 7th grade when I remember the Beatles hitting the airwaves like a tsunami from Across the Perverbial Pond.
I promptly fell in crazy-mad love with John, Paul, George and Ringo...along with every other woman-child under the age of 22 in the modern world. Dressed in their tidy matching suits, hair just an inch or so "too long" with those adorable English accents and crooked smiles, I confess I worshiped them. More than Elvis. Four times more. More than even God, I suppose. I'm being honest.
(Have I told you this story before? If so, then read on. It won't hurt you...besides. I've got a new angle this time.)
Now, my mother did not love the Beatles, John, Paul, George and Ringo. As a matter of fact, she hated them. She saw their "long hair" as an omen of change. She saw right through those cute, innocent boyish faces singing sweet love songs like "Love Me Do" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to the rebels they would later become with hair like Jesus without a comb. My mother was not fooled. Nosirree!
So while my best friend and my neighbors were all listening to the Fab Four for hours every day, I had to settle for listening to WTMC Radio playing Sonatra (I still don't like him) or worse...my mother singing "Birmingham Jail", off key, and very loud. (I miss that a little bit, though.) I got to hear the Beatles only when I was visiting someone else's house. Sigh. For a girl jacked up on Pre-teen Hormones, I was beside myself with shame, frustration, and grief brought on by being the only dork in the neighborhood. And, mind you, that was before we even knew there was such a thing as a "dork"...
Yes, I was a dork before ever there was such a thing as a dork, thanks to my stubborn, Beatles-hating mom. Disgraced, I told no one except, mayhaps, my best friend, Molly.
Enter: The Beatle's First Real Song. Yep. Paul McCartney finally wrote a song that I knew my daddy - himself, a fabulous singer - would actually acknowledge as "good music". So I borrowed Molly's new 45...(that was a small vinyl record with a big hole that played one song on each side at 45 RPM's...)
Daddy came home that night and got his usual martini - moderately priced gin, 3 olives, on the rocks, a splash of Vermouth...). I had a plan. While Mama was cooking, and before he could get himself situated at the piano with previously mentioned martini, Daddy's nightly routine, I grabbed his hand and escourted him into the family room where a small record player sat on a humble little brown table, lightly dusted with cigarette ashes and marred with numerous water rings, awaiting the miracle that was soon to transpire.
I said, "Daddy, I want you to hear a song." And then I put it on...
"Yesterday...life was such an easy game to play...now I need a place to hide away...Oh, I believe in yesterday..." Paul's sweet, romantic voice wafted through the smoke-filled room, (it was the '60's, my friend) even into where my mother was cooking chicken, wooden spoon in one hand, cigarette in the other.
Daddy was gonna love this song. I knew it. The Beatles with their long hair and their not yet rebellious ways, had stumbled at last, into a new world of music beyond anything other rock and roll bands had dared to explore. This sweet love song was accompanied, not only by the usual guitars, but a romantic symphony of strings, as well. Yes, something that my father could appreciate...for sure.
"That's a beautiful song, isn't it, Daddy?"
Of course, he agreed. How could he not?
"There's nothing bad at all about that song, is there, Daddy?" I asked.
Daddy agreed. So then I layed the punch line...or set the line. Whatever. You get the picture.
"Paul McCartney is singing that song, Daddy. He's one of the Beatles. This is a Beatle's song."
Daddy smiled. He loved the song. It was evident. He probably was thinking of how he could sing that song, playing it on the piano, and we would sing it together...just me and my Daddy. We did that a lot, me...and...okay. And my sisters, too. We all had our times, with Daddy at the piano. What a sweet memory...
By now, the room was filled with peace and romance that only can come from a love song. That was when I had to make my biggest move. With tears...yes, but genuine, I swear - the pure tears of a girl child...trying innocently and with all her might, to manipulate her dear father...I asked him if I could have some Beatle's music, and he pulled me onto his lap, chuckled softly, and hugged me as he said, "Yes, of course you can, honey." (I've a feeling he was feeling a little guilty, not having known it was so important to me. I mean, the tears might have dealt the final blow. Probably. As a parent, I know that feeling well.)
Mushy story? Indeed. I love mush.
Oh. But Mama? Mama insisted from that moment until the day she died, that "Yesterday" was an old song that the Beatles had stolen from some little known crooner lost in the desert of Nevada or...I don't know. Something like that...I still watch for it on the evening news.
ENTER: Miley Cyrus and her latest adventures in performance video.
I don't want to talk about how trashy it was, though it was more than a little softly pornesque, but I want to talk about how things digress over time.
From her latest video, it was obvious that Miley was not coming up with anything truly original. She just took the sluttyness of her music heroines one step further than sluttiness has been in a long, long time...let's say, for instance, the Romans might have been more trashy when they entertained the citizens of Pompeii with sexually explicit song and dance moves, right before they fed the Christians to the lions...
Back to Miley. The influence of Madonna and Lady Gaga was quite obvious to me. Skimpy clothes, vulgar movements, the big, wandering tongue thing going on - blaacht! Of course, long ago, Madonna's influence might have been Cher's old botoxed self, skinny as a light pole, hollow, overly made up eyes, dressed scantily in a see-through dress, split between her breasts down to her...belly button...in the front and in the back. And then, let's see... Good Old Hollywood does have its moments, too. Bonnie and Clyde...Mrs Robinson...those are the ones I saw...
Think of the song "Maggie", by Rod Stewart. Or was that the one about spreading wings...I loved that song. I can't tell you the lyrics, because my granddaughter might read this. They're totally suggestive, and not something a mother would want her innocent, virgin daughter listening to.
Back once more to Miley. This stuff has been coming for a long time. Like my father once said, if you give people an inch (as in the Smother's Brothers and their cuss word on TV, and Lucy and Ricky sharing the same bed instead of twins), they will take a mile. And then another and then another. It is human nature.
So when we all look at Miley, and Harumph in disgust, we need to realize that we have all had our hand in these changes. Every time we accept a lowering of the moral standards of the day, humankind digresses.
Look at abortion, for example. Who'd have thought in 1973 that abortion on demand in the first trimester would ever lead to partial birth abortion in the '90's? Now there are whispers of post-birth abortion? (Yes. Killing the baby after birth. You hadn't heard about that? It's true.)
So, dear reader, everything in the world deteriorates - ashes to ashes, dust to dust and all that old graveyard talk. Buildings tumble, bridges rust, paper crumbles (and paper money loses its value), linen and silk and wool all eventually fall apart. Even societies falls apart. Especially in absence of (or rebellion against) a most high God. That's what is happening to us, my friends. We in America and around most - maybe all of the world, are abandoning the powerful Godly principles of the 10 Commandments laid down for all of us by a good and just God. (Kicked the Bible out of school libraries, and the 10 Commandments out of courts, kicked prayer out of graduation assemblies, for starters.) And what we are finding in it's place is a life floating on a sea of despair, without purpose, without order, without logic. Hungry sharks circle us.
Okay. I'm depressing myself. You, too? Sorry. But you get the point.
So you see, Miley Cyrus is just one more rock star rung in the ladder downward into the pit we were warned about in the Good Old Days. But as citizens of this beautiful world, we can't just sit by and let things continue in this downward spiral, doing nothing. God has called us to do more. But what to do? I suggest to start with getting back in touch with God. See what he really says in that how-to book called the Bible. And then, even if it means losing a kinda-sorta-friend or two, we need to be speaking up for what is good and true and just. We need to lovingly (and I emphasize "lovingly") educate people to what is happening, and what has been lost.
That's a start. From a little seed grows a mighty mustard tree.
Confession of a sinful artist/writer/wifey-mom/living-in-my-childhood-as-much-as-possible type: Righteousness too often illudes me. I know you knew that. Don't remind me...However, righteousness is my life's goal. It is a worthy goal, it is.
Yours, too? Yeah! Pinky finger pull.
See you in the near Whenever. In the meantime:
Be brave.
Be true.
Be Godly.
Be strong.
Be wise.
Be have, my darling, be have.
And...Pray. Pray a lot. It's not too late.
Hallelujah!
Deborah
