I guess this is about misguided efforts. Trying to be the protector when all you do is remove choices.
Music, as Berlioz said, "Is a noble art and a sad profession". So it's no surprise that when my daughter showed a talent for it I was scared stiff she would want to try and make a living out of it, perhaps. I had done this and they were the hardest years of my life. The most underpaid, unrecognized and under valued individuals I know are all musicians.
So I had her take piano lessons and, as I expected, she reacted with antipathy, becoming an accomplished pianist who played a mean Rachmaninoff but who had no interest in performing, creating, and devoting her life to the wicked mistress, music.
I succeeded. I won.
Clever me.
Perhaps this was at a time in my life when I was distancing myself from art, when I thought it trivial. I don't know. I only know I have come to regret the decision as my love for music, the need to express, communicate ideas, has come alive in my life again, and what I maybe deprived her of is my most beloved pursuit. Maybe it made no difference, but I can't help wondering.
The song sits in the second position on the Beautiful Accident CD, and as its subtext shows the attempt by modern society ro cure all ills with the war to end all wars. The Great War. World War 1. It was supposed to save us from ourselves, to reinvent society as a new and better thing. Of course it was misguided and represented the end of the golden age of modernism and the beginning of a dangerously poor Europe. Society distanced itself rom the great questions, the new frontiers. It became mired in the battle to save itself.
The song was written, like most of the others, during the first decade of the 21st century, against the backdrop of 9/11 and the bunker mentality that ensued.
You can hear it on:
http://www.jango.com/
http://www.reverbnation.com/
http://www.itunes.com/
Performed by The Third International
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