50 Years....

WHAT WILL THE FUTURE, 50 years hence, think of us (in music and art) today?

I don't know, but 50 years ago saw HUGE songs like "Whiter Shade of Pale" and "All You Need is Love", and "I'm a Believer", and "Strawberry Fields Forever", and "Light My Fire". It saw music from Phillip Glass and from Steve Reich. Album releases like The Doors and Between the Button and Sorcerer and Are You Experienced and Surrealistic Pillow and Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits and Magical Mystery Tour and Waylon Sings Harlan and Sgt Peppers and many, many more...from Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard and Miles Davis and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and the Beach Boys and Dione Warwick and James Brown and the Monkees and Willie Nelson and Elvis and Bowie and Jimi Hendrix, and Otis Redding and Johnny Cash and the Yardbirds and the Temptations, and Dean Martin and Aretha Franklin and Zappa and Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson and Pink Floyd. And so many more besides.

Albert King's Born Under a Bad Sign and Merle Haggard's Branded Man and Frank Sinatra's The World We Knew and of course Big Brother and the Holding Company's debut (that introduced Janis Joplin to the World) and Cold Sweat by James Brown and Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy all came out in August of '67.

The final 2 months saw Disreali Gears and Amboy Dukes and Axis: Bold as Love and the Who Sell Out and Dusty Springfield's The Look of Love.

1967 saw the Summer of Love and BB King and Burt's Bond epic Casino Royale and George Benson and Julie London to Ritchie Havens.

I don't know what we'll look like in 50 years, but I know 50 years ago has set a very high bar.

Happy New Year!

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Poetry Series: To All Our Heartbreaks This Year

~To All Our Hearbreaks This Year~

Liz Fink Davenport

 (Last poem of the year)

Screw you. 

The poem could end here, Love. It could. We could tell all our clawed up heartaches to bugger off and never talk to them again. But there is a problem. They are all right there in your hands. So I suggest something different. Here is how we mend and learn and open our clenched fists for the first time since clenching them and hiding away the little demons. Take a deep breath. Unclench for me. Just a bit. You have got this. We are going to let out some things from that fist. 

Roll call: 

Heartache from love unrequited. Heartbreak from a mother’s loss. Heartdeath from “you are wonderful, just not what I want”. Heartdrowning from finding the last talk was the last and they are gone. Heartwrenching from all that you want is just at your fingertips and then the rug is ripped out. Heartsmodering from unforgiveness. Heartsmashing from hearing “I hate you, dad.” through a slammed door. Heartbleeding from trying. God, trying so hard and yet it’s always one more thing. Hearthardening from love placed in the wrong hands. Again. Heartmurder from self sabotage. Heartinceneration from who you never ever ever thought would ever betray you. 

All accounted for. Can you feel them all wriggling in your fist? Angry. Biting. Sulking. Wailing at the wind. They are pissed and you have kept them in your sweaty palm for 365 suns. Now, open up and look at them and thank them. Yes. I said thank them. Thank them for lessons learned, life lived, promises kept, tears that reminded you why we are alive, new chapters, and for sweet baby Jesus’ sake...for the very fact you were here on this earth to have them. Look at them and say thank you as they each fly off like small sparks from a campfire in the cold black night. They will fly. They don’t want to be in your fist anymore. 

Maybe you whisper, screw you to one or two as they take wing. But, my sweet and beautiful dirty human, you have lived this year. You have seen the best of others and the ugliest. You have breathed in and out and moved forward and that is commendable. So, as you close your eyes for the last time in this year and open again in the new...unclench your fists. Be gratitude and light. And say thank you. The little shits sure did make this year interesting. 

Now fly away. We have a new year of love to put in these now freed hands.