The Captain of Her Heart Wednesday, June 09, 2004

An old friend, a Springsteen fan and besieged supply-sider living in Taxachusetts, writes:

Isn't there an ombudsman I can report you to anonymously at the WSJ
concerning your heretical Ronald Reagan views? Where the orthodoxy?
Where's the love?

I'm sorry: I just don't feel it. In retrospect I can muster up respect and maybe some awe at the achievements. I definitely feel the passing of an era, and get a sense of diminuendo about our current leadership. And, after reading his speeches and letters, I can safely call the guy a brilliant operator. But the love just won't come. He deserves it, I know, more than the idiot songwriters I worry about or Spock, for whom I cried. It just ain't there. All my feelings about him come at a remove. Something about him struck me, and still strikes me, as an act--a supremely competent one, and a supremely correct one, but still an act.

Now, back to my music correspondent, who writes in with a strangely apposite comment:

I guess that I would agree with your underlying premise, but am more swayed by emotional impact than the promise of a solution: A song that lays out how we're destroying the earth would probably hit harder than one that evidenced the benefits of recycling.

First off, just to be a heartless prick: We're destroying the Earth? You sure about that?

Second off, I agree completely! I don't want treatises. (PJ Harvey: I can't believe life's so complex/When I just wanna sit here and watch you undress. Boogie on, reggae woman!) At the same time, I'd like the guys who are smart to be smart about everything. Or at least as open-minded as they imagine themselves to be. (Witness the link above, and then ask yourself whether Sting would ever write a song inspired by it.)

My music correspondent goes on to mention 9/11 songs and how they mostly fall flat. I agree, as I wrote in The Daily Worker a while ago. The best, I think, is Becker and Fagen's "The Last Mall"--which avoids all the usual temptations (mawkishness, anger and why can't we be friends?):

Attention all shoppers
It's Cancellation Day
Yes the Big Adios
Is just a few hours away

It's last call
To do your shopping
At the Last Mall

You'll need the tools for survival
And the medicine for the blues
Sweet treats and surprises
For the little buckaroos

It's last call
To do your shopping
At the Last Mall

We've got a sweetheart Sunset Special
On all of the standard stuff
'Cause in the morning --that gospel morning
You'll have to do for yourself when the going gets tough

Roll your cart back up the aisle
Kiss the checkout girls goodbye
Ride the ramp to the freeway
Beneath the blood orange sky

It's last call
To do your shopping
At the Last Mall

Now that's an original take. If we aren't snarky jazzbos, the terrorists have won!

@ 6:10:00 AM,

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