Are we still a serious people? Really?
A weary, incredulous voice asks me this question some Friday nights. It would be easy to dismiss it as the caterwaulings of an irrepressible cynic, but I always think there's more to the story when I hear Bill Maher talk about America.
He sounds like a man who'd very much like to be proven wrong.
Or are we still patting ourselves on the back for things our grandparents did 60 years ago? We consume too much. We don't make anything anymore. We don't eat healthy food. We don't teach our children math and science. We're not ambitious. Are we still a serious people? Do we still have the political willpower to do important things in this country?
I don't think my answer would be snappy enough for his show. I'd get a few sentences in, and then the music would turn on and Bill would cut me off with a smile, and my point would be forgotten by the time he was halfway finished with the week's New Rules. In fact, I don't think I'd give him a point as much as a story.
Stories are strange, strange things. If someone wants to tell you one, they have to pluck a moment out of time, sit you down, and whisper in your ear. It all started when -
Things aren't like that in the real world. Events are intertwined, one ricocheting off the other, always building to something, but never really reaching a definite climax. But if you want to tell a story, you have to pick out a moment, a place where everything started. I couldn't tell a story about why America's #1 even if I wanted to. I don't have the life experience. But if I wanted to tell a story about what makes America special, I would start at the Olympics. I think we relate to the Olympics differently than anyone else. Not because we win a lot of medals, but because I can't imagine a physical manifestation of the idea of America more perfect than the Olympic Games. The runners don't look like the swimmers don't look like the weightlifters don't look like the guys playing badminton. They have different accents and hail from different places. They come from snowy fields in New England and suburban gyms in Ohio, from the streets and unpaved dirt roads in California. But all of them pump their fists when they win, and bury their heads in their hands when they lose, and do that U-S-A chant that nobody likes but us, but we do it anyway because it's awesome.
It's not mere racial diversity, it's the diversity of experience that comes from interacting with so many different types of people over such a long time. Adaptability. Seamlessly adopting that cool thing someone else is doing into ourselves and making something new that someone else will take and adopt into something new, on and on, over and over again. The remix is every bit as iconically American as jazz and the cowboy. When you're attuned to a heterogenous culture, the words, values, and experiences of others resonate in places they could never have dreamed of.
Most people who know about Sam Cooke also know the story behind this one: he wrote it after hearing Bob Dylan's song, Blowin' in The Wind; he was impressed with the song and amazed that some kid named Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota would be able to write with such clarity on the civil rights movement. Cooke's own song would inspire the equally iconic The Times They Are a-Changin, later on in the year. As the stories of these two vastly different men intertwined, neither of them could have imagined the story would resonate with Dylan's son, long after Cooke was robbed and gunned down in a dirty motel (almost 45 years ago this month, actually). When he sings "Cupid don't draw back your bow/Sam Cooke didn't know what I know" through clenched teeth and a resigned sigh, I always think of the emptiness that comes with high expectations, whether they were Cooke's hopes for love or Jakob Dylan's desire to be something more than a link on somebody else's long and winding chain.
But in doing it, he made something that doubtlessly resonated somewhere else, with somebody who didn't even know who Sam Cooke was and looked him up just to hear what the hell Jakob was grunting about...
And no matter what Micheal Jackson's screwed up in his life (plenty) he's got it, or at least he had it. It wasn't just natural talent or great production or the force of his own charisma that made so many people relate to him. He straddled different worlds, and that shone through his best work, I think. the melody of soul, the visceral punch of R&B, New Wave's slick polish. It created something that people instinctively... respond to.
For better or for worse.
So when the question is asked -
Are we still a serious people? Really?
I don't think the question is tied into some notion of exceptionalism or world supremacy. If the economy goes to crap and the Mexicans steal all our jerbs and our women (and they probably could, they're very attractive people), and the military downgrades to "can probably protect us from a French invasion", the thing that will make us us will be our ability to learn from each other, and adapt when times make adaptation absolutely necessary.
I think we can. I think we've done it before, if not always as quickly as we should. I look back at the Civil War, at World War 2, with an eye not just on the heroism of the moment, but the cowardice and compromise that made those desperate actions necessary. While Sean Kelley is about twice as smart as I could ever hope to be, I think I could encourage those who think the experiment is already doomed.
We aren't the first generation to fall asleep at the wheel.
The superficiality of American culture is an easy target to hit. But the culture, like the people, has an uncanny ability to reflect what's around it and make something a little different, a little better. America doesn't have China's numbers or fervor, or Europe's (usually) communal spirit, but I think we have an intense understanding that our stories and experiences don't belong to ourselves. We've inherited these things, whispered promised to a future our forefathers were grimly determined would exist.
We heard them. And they resonate in places they could never have dreamed of.
See? Stories are strange, strange things.
- also at stereozeitgeist.com