June 16, 1973

Seeing as the Irish jig kept the crowded immigrant staging areas of New York and Boston minimally humane, seeing as Gospel music resounds in black churches--islands in the South--as strongly as ever, seeing as powerful all-male choirs whipped up the Soviet population to resist the (worse of the two) oppressors, seeing as millions are bombarded with music which says alternately that life is worth living and that all is hopeless, I am going to make the suggestion that we have music to thank for our godless liberal culture. I've been wondering exactly why my beliefs are shared by so many people, since they--reasonably speaking--don't lend themselves to propagation. Then a large part of the answer hit me: "our" music is disseminated by the largest music industry in the world. (That is, of course, problematic in its own right.) What do I mean by "our' music? Well, all I am trying to say is that while in everyday life our rational minds are taking every little point and torturously nitpicking it, and while our minds exhaust themselves running on hamster wheels of doubt and searching, and while we pursue radically individualistic paths which make us like spots on a balloon being inflated, we find some connection with complete strangers when it comes to music.

I gues this isn't new, this notion of music as group-builder and hive-mind. But I'd like to find a way of explicitly harnessing it for I don't know what. I'll take it in baby steps. I'd like to make one suggestion: we eliminate elitist, snobbish scenesterism. It takes up too much of the energy of otherwise decent people, keeping up with endless sub-sub-subgenres and lording oltra-obscure knowledge over everyone else. That kind of music divides. Other than that, anything goes because I'm not a leader or a mastermind or an inspiration or a teacher or a guide or even a "proper" musician.

Consider: "Oh, mothers and fathers throughout the land / no, don't criticize what you can't understand / your sons and your daughters are beyond your command / your old road is rapidly aging / please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand / for the times, they are a-changin'"