Lessons for Escaping our Cul-de-sac from Dylan, the Clash, the Stones, and Springsteen. Really.

This blog started out as a grab-bag, I thought I would talk about music, politics, my (supposedly) amusing thoughts about life as a dad, wry comedic reports from the day-to-day. It would be like my friend Andrea's blog. I couldn't do it though. I didn't have the gifts to make it work, and I started the blog when Barack Obama was trying to win the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton, so the blog became a platform for me to rant about and report on politics. I sometimes slip into old habits, and write about the Kinks or the Chi-Lites or Joel R.L. Phelps or X, always trying to tie them to politics in some way. This post is something flabbier and less focused than even those efforts at mixing music and commentary.

I've been thinking about how America can back out of the cul-de-sac in which it has been trapped. The conversation around the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shows how lost and divided we are. After the shooting, as everyone knows, we began a conversation about vitriol in our political discourse, we timidly asked some questions about gun control and the care we provide to the mentally ill. But the conversation will lead nowhere, the questions about automatic weapons and high capacity magazines will remain unanswered, and we'll continue to ignore the needs of the mentally ill. This is inevitable. We've seen it time and time again. And, most of all, we'll continue to argue about the future of the country from entirely different corners of the universe. I've talked about this elsewhere; part of the problem is an irreconcilably different vision about who we are as a nation, and what the fundamental requirements are for membership. Bob Dylan, once wrote about America, in his memoir, Chronicles: "You wonder how people so united by geography and religious ideals could become such bitter enemies. After awhile you become aware of nothing but a culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, of evil for evil." He was writing about the years preceding the Civil War, but it could be today. We are still divided by that schism.

Politics as usual cannot be a path out of this. Our political process is corrupted by money and irresponsibility and demagoguery, devoted to preserving wealth, dividing us, to serve the commercial and corporate interests and the wealthy, who view our splintering as a gift. Occasionally more hopeful politics percolate up, showering mercy on those left destitute by the Great Depression, redeeming the promise made to those freed from bondage one-hundred years after emancipation, fighting a war on poverty, promising health care to those previously denied coverage. But there is nothing sustained, and the forces of darkness or merely apathy and drift are restored to their place, and we roll back. Our politics are sisyphean.

Where does redemption come from? Or is it renewal we need? Innovation? Whichever, there are many places we can look for some directions, some examples or guidance. My inspiration was a realization that Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town, and the Clash's London Calling all had similar origins. Something occurred - a motorcycle crash, tax exile, a break with management and resulting legal action - to disrupt the normal creative process. The response was prolonged immersion in their recording studios, writing and revisions and group collaboration that drew on themes new to the artists, blending longstanding obsessions with new interests, reaching into the deep bubbling stew of musical expression, drawing on bluegrass, and gospel, and rhythm and blues, rockabilly, jazz, dub in the case of the Clash. What was put down on tape was a product of prolonged jamming, rehearsals, multiple versions of songs, some fast, some slow, some gentle, others savage. But the bands were in each case already so accomplished at what they did, that they found the groove in each song, even across its multiple embodiments.

There's something here. And, like I have said before, it requires collaboration. These performing artists jumped off the merry-go-round. They stopped, for at least a time, worrying about the annual obligation to deliver a new album into the hands of their fans and their record label. They went back to what inspired them, and spent time there, with musicians they trusted. This is a model for collaboration for Democrats. Over the next couple of posts, I'll try to unpack why.