Sad as it is, there's a lot to be learned from watching American politics. Everybody likes to have somebody to look down on. Nobody likes to be looked down on.
If you don't take part wars will be waged in your name, at your expense to enrich a class of cheaters. If you do take part your side will lose. Unless your side cheats. Voila, civics!
Sometimes you run outta' stuff. Doesn't matter. You'll always have pretty much what you need. The universe takes care of that. Run outta' dreams, though, and you're done.
It's all about the love when you get down to the only layers that matter.
How do you know when you're lying? To yourself, I mean. My list of excuses for not working, not writing and recording, is getting unwieldy. Most of them have some validity, it's true. Maybe it doesn't really matter if it's mostly about laziness.
Most folks who do what I do have more to work with. Writer's block. That's a good one, there. A writer can merely express the disappearance of a muse and be let off the hook.
Me? Every woman's my muse. Writing takes nothing out of me. I could sit here and pour out twenty new songs before the sun goes down. I'm not bragging. I never claimed to have written a good one. Any of the twenty would probably be as good as any of the other ones that I've written.
Here are a few examples of what I tell myself daily to keep from writing.
Nobody buys cd's.
I never sold any, to speak of, when they did.
Those gutters should be cleaned before the rains start tonight.
I've written and re-written the same two or three songs for years. Decades. Centuries!
The world has no use, literally, for another Ronny Elliott record.
Oh, I could go on for pages but that gives you the idea. If it sounds like I'm whining, like I'm feeling sorry for myself, I'm not. I'm lucky to have sold any records at all. Grateful, too. I will find a different excuse not to clean the gutters. There's nothing sad about my insignificance as a songwriter. I honestly believe that we're all a part of the grand exhibit and I feel like I've had the best seat at the show.
Love? It's like playing piano. In my head I'm really good at it. There's nothing else to write about.
We've lost one of the real heroes of my lifetime. Of anybody's lifetime. Muhammad Ali has died at seventy four years of age after a thirty two year bout with Parkinson's disease. He was a shy, skinny kid from Louisville who won a gold medal at the Olympics in Rome when we first met him. Cassius Clay. Taking a page from Gorgeous George, he learned to shoot from the lip and to back it up. Great goodness, could he back it up!
We may all argue forever over whether or not he was the greatest fighter ever. He was certainly the most entertaining. What we won't quibble over will be his place in history as a man of peace. He refused to step forward as his name was called for the draft during the Viet Nam war.
Stripped of his heavyweight title and sentenced to five years in prison for draft evasion, Ali spent four years free on appeal, not allowed to fight. He toured college campuses lecturing on racism and war. His allegiance to Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam made him all the more controversial during what should have been the peak of his career.
In 1971 the Supreme Court reversed his conviction and Ali returned to the ring beating Jerry Quarry. Six months later at Madison Square Garden he lost the first bout of his professional career in "The Fight Of The Century" against Joe Frazier.
He went on to win his title back two times. His boxing career was the source of his spotlight. His moral convictions made him an American hero. Everybody wants to be remembered. Here's Muhammad Ali's idea of how we should remember him.
I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times. Who was humorous and who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him. And who helped as many people as he could. As a man who stood up for his beliefs no matter what. As a man who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love. And if all that's too much then I guess I'd settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people. And I wouldn't even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.
Somehow I managed to convince myself that the death of rock'n'roll was sad, like losing a beloved aunt or the loss of a pet. Of course I am a worrier and I'll find a reason to fret. When the headlines on the teen magazines warned us that calypso was destined to end the social phenomena, I turned on Harry Belafonte. I despised him for years.
Now as my old friend is being kept up on a steady 4/4 on life support it seems only natural to pull the plug. Let 'er go, boys.
Turns out it's not the end of the world. I've got the music and the souvenirs. I've got my memories. Hail, hail rock'n'roll.
If I don't get hit by a bus I'll live to see the last mountain gorilla, the final Sumatran elephant. When the snow leopard breathes his last and the only giant panda outside a zoo croaks, I'll still be fretting about war.
Real poets are threatened with extinction. Soldiers are not.
I'm putting it all on fuchsia and I'm letting it ride. If love loses, I'm going down with it, boys.
Remember when the music mattered? Maybe it never did. I've become really suspicious of nostalgia. I'm not waiting for Halley's comet. Heck, I'm not even waiting for a full moon. I'm trying to catch every raindrop and I'm listening to every mockingbird's song.
