Two songs

Truly good music is timeless. Last year, Ball of Confusion by The Temptations came on my headphones and it hit me like a baseball bat.

“Well, the only person talking about love thy brother is the preacher
And it seems nobody’s interested in learning but the teacher”

It feels like no one is listening today. I follow the pope on twitter and he is talking about taking care of immigrants, but it feels like he is the only one. Everyone else is talking about how we can ship immigrants to other countries, or lock down the border or keep them in their home countries.

“Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration
Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to our nation”

It’s amazing how that 50 years after the song came out, the list of problems is unchanged. BLM is all about segregation, integration, aggravation and humiliation and it’s resulted in demonstrations. I never thought racism would disappear over night in the US, but in some respects, it’s not budged at all.

“Ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that’s what the world is today”

At the end, what is the answer? No one seems to actually know.

This year, I came across another hit that seemed to be trying to remind us today, even though it was written 40 years ago about a law passed over 60 years ago.

“Standing in line, marking time
Waiting for the welfare dime
’Cause they can’t buy a job
The man in the silk suit hurries by
As he catches the poor old ladies’ eyes
Just for fun he says, “get a job”

Wasn’t that the heart of the Trump campaign? Not an answer to poverty, but just a callous dismissal of anyone in need.

“well, they passed a law in ‘64
To give those who ain’t got a little more
But it only goes so far”

There was a different time. Lyndon Johnson ran partly on the campaign of making “War on Poverty”. The laws passed expanded food stamps and created Medicare and Medicaid. It’s impossible to tell how much effect they had, but the poverty rate decreased after the new laws. As the song says though, they only go so far. Today we still have poverty, but with new causes that require new thinking.

“Because the law don’t change another’s mind
When all it sees at the hiring time
Is the line on the color bar, no, no”

Hornsby was also talking about racism and the Civil Rights Act, but it’s the first part that struck me today, “the law don’t change another’s mind”. It’s true. All these laws that help people and are generally popular, but people vote for politicians who they think are going to kick the undeserving off the programs. We can’t change their minds…

“That’s just the way it is
Some things will never change
That’s just the way it is
Ah, but don’t you believe them”

Something I love about this song is the twist at the end. There are a lot of protest songs, but they always seem to end in sadness or a call to change. Hornsby toured with the Grateful Dead and it feels like an old hippie thing to say, “don’t you believe them”. Maybe that’s where we need to start. So often, people on all sides are busy shouting complicated solutions that no one can understand. Maybe we need to take a breath and just not believe that change is impossible.