A couple days ago I posted a song by Tracy Chapman. It reminded me of another song of hers, one that leads to greatly mixed feelings on my part. First, the song:
Tracy Chapman - She's Got Her Ticket
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwpeyM_FGs
Beautiful song. So why do I have mixed feelings? Well, it stems from the fact that while some people are great artists, they are not necessarily the world's greatest thinkers.
I saw Tracy Chapman live in concert a while back, in Minneapolis. This was during the Elian Gonzalez affair. She said that Elian Gonzalez should be returned to Cuba, which is an issue that separates the men from the boys, so to speak, even though it is one of the very few issues where there is an obvious right and wrong answer. Then she played "She's Got Her Ticket" later in the concert. I don't believe she got the irony there. Great singers are not always great thinkers. Or even thinkers of any kind.
All of that song, every damn word, could apply to Elian's mother. She gave her life to get her son to freedom. And this is what we do to her memory.
"Give your life and invariably they leave you with nothing."
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment