Words to Live By

As I’ve gotten this blog going, I realized I needed to announce it by at least including the URL as a signature in my emails. And that reminded me of another signature I always meant to add but never did.

Elvis Costello burst upon the scene in 1977 with My Aim Is True, now a punk/new wave classic. The throbbing beat of “Watching the Detectives” and the poignancy of “Alison” mark what are probably the best-known songs, but it’s in “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” that you’ll hear what’s for me the album’s most unforgettable line: “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.” When things get really crazy in the world, I try to remember that lyric. And just like that effort of remembrance, it’s the “try” that says it all. 

That line always brings to mind another from 13 years earlier: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” The song was “My Back Pages,” the album Another Side of Bob Dylan, and it marked our folksinging hero’s presumed disengagement from the protest movement. Dylan implied, to the dismay of many, that getting overwrought about issues was an old person’s game (are you listening, teabaggers?), and in his next three albums he was to revel in his newfound youthfulness. He used to be disgusted, he was telling us, but he decided to let his amusement show instead.

There was a big difference between 1964 and 1977, of course. When Dylan penned those lyrics we were still shaken by JFK’s assassination, so maybe he was telling us that he was throwing in the towel. And with LBJ in the White House, it marked an escalation of the Vietnam War. But by 1977, it was all over – not only the war, but the draft as well – and an easier time to try to be amused by disagreeable events (if you could find any).

Now Obama is sending 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan, and the similarity is chilling – not only the war effort, but also the prospect of a committed liberal’s domestic agenda being overshadowed by fumbling foreign policy. There’s also a big difference between the two military actions: back then, we were being sent to fight against our will; now we have a volunteer army. And while today’s soldiers may be suffering under the weight of too many tours, those who haven’t joined up have no reason to take to the streets. Which makes one wonder if the powers that be prefer it that way.

So I’m still disgusted. Problem is, being amused keeps getting harder. But I try.