The 60s in the USA, defined the way music could affect politics. However more subtly and almost by making it too honest – they were the most stark portrayal of degenerate value systems. A clarion call to the sloth infused masses , that had reduced freedom to a noun. After the relative security provided by the second world war , a sense of suitable and often shrouding calm had spread over the allied nations – specially the middle classes of USA and the UK. Smoldering under the surface of white picket fences and industrially produced fairytale suburbia, was the dissension of lost wonder. People atrophied into a state of such candor less exchange , that layered realities settled in like thick dust covers over unused emotional tomes. It was the perfect soil to sow the seeds of revolution. And systemic change came from all actors. The most powerful ones were sung. Poetry became an intrinsic salvationary craft which overwhelmed even the political hegemony with its probing portrayal of honesty. Within this atmosphere hundreds of words were born and killed – some among them stuck around, like residual dirt which not even religion or media could wash away. In my opinion the two greatest proponents of this movement came from the Beatles and the pen of Paul Simon.
Eleanor Rigby
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Eleanor rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father mckenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
The Beatles
The Dangling Conversation
Its a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.
And you read your emily dickinson,
And I my robert frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what weve lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.
Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theater really dead?
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
Youre a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.
Simon and Garfunkel
These songs did more than capture the decayed and hollow structures that now represented middle class life. They provided a caveat for the futility and overt sense of function that had crept into every element of life – from religion to literature, from the theater to marriage. It was as if a whole generation had suddenly lost the primary cause to be a part of anything meaningful. And within this rather hypocritical yet favored existence, the fundamental power of society had been handed over to the political and economic hegemons who then molded our values. It was a disease which they disseminated – from prognosis to decease. From within these two vehicles of mobilization came the empirical awakening , that was a part of the revolution which defined the 60's in the west as being the harbinger of the systemic change which ultimately replaced the way we live in society.
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