Wednesday, April 16, 2008

MY EXISTENTIAL JOURNEY WITH MARLEY

Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit

But my hand was made strong by the hand of the Almighty
We forward (flowered?) in this generation, triumphantly

Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom
Cause all I ever have
Redemption songs, Redemption songs

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time

How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look
Some say its just a part of it...we've got to fulfill the book

Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom

- Redemption Song Bob Marley



Bob Marley's albums formed much of the musical backdrop as I grew up. His songs were anthems to us African kids trying to forge an identity in the midst of the rapidly deteriorating continent we happened to be born on. The idealism he represented seemed so attainable and yet so far from reality in the increasingly despotic world we saw around us.

Bob Marley 1945 - 1981

Bob Marley was of course a Rastafarian and because of him, everything related to Rastafarianism was stamped with an undefinable coolness we were all desperate to imitate.

Restafarian cultural markers like wearing one's hair in dreadlocks was considered extremely enlightened. When I was around 16 years old, I had a single dreadlock growing out the side of my head as a tribute to Bob Marley. This long prong of hair jutting perpendicularly to my right gave me the appearance of an injured wildebeest but I was none-the-less thrilled to be part of a subversive subculture even if only within the confines of my boarding school.

Once, while on an official school trip to a musical event, we ran into a group of genuine Rastafarians who towered above us with their massive tangle of hair. We stopped in our tracks in wonder and admiration. We were envious of their stylish looks, their lofty thoughts and their palpable coolness.

For their part, the Rastafarians stared at us quietly and for a moment, time stood awkwardly still.

Years later, I suddenly came to understand that particular moment when the Rastafarians stood silently looking at us. We, being in strict school uniform, were dressed in sharply creased pants , splendid maroon blazers and in place of dreadlocks, closely cropped hair. They (as I now understand from experience having come across a hoard of smartly dressed boarding school youth and feeling ungainly and unkempt), were struck with envy at the discipline and order that we represented from our elite boarding school. In their minds, they saw us inhabiting a world that they would never be part of and that we would emerge from the ivy-laced halls as the nation's powerful princes when our scholarly pursuits were done.

We were of course both mistaken.

The Rastafarians were not the angelic free creatures they appeared to be. They were probably stoned out of their skulls and held no lofty thoughts in their heads beyond the rolling of the next fat reefer. For all we knew, those guys may not have even memorized both the studio and live concert versions of Buffalo Soldier...tsk-tsk.

As for us, we were not the grand marquis that we appeared to be either. Rather, we were lower-to-middle class kids whose parents scrapped their fingers to the bone to send us to the school that promised to form us into princely analogs.


Back to Bob Marley...

He was brilliant as a song writer. The first four lines of his masterpiece "Redemption Song" are sublime; probably as lyrically transcendent as the American anthem, Star Spangled Banner.

Look how the third and forth lines fold back over the second line by having the events of the latter lines chronologically occur before the line that precedes them.

Old pirates, yes, they rob I.
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
from the bottomless pit.

An artless writer would have put it thusly:

Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Minutes after they took I
from the bottomless pit,
Sold I to the Merchant ships

You are probably asking yourself why I compared it to the "Star Spangled Banner".

Look at that same structural device being used here:

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

The last five lines describe events that are chronologically before the first line giving us the same poetic effect that Bob Marley does in "Redemption Song".

Bob Marley's song introduces us to the character who speaks of himself in the pidgin form of first person, "I". Marley packs an entire biography into these four lines in a way that could leave you muttering to yourself for weeks.

Marley's character tells the story of being stolen from his home by pirates and thrown into a holding pit. Some point later (probably feeling like an eternity), he is brought out of the cell and within minutes of emerging squinting from the darkness, finds himself sold to the slave ships headed for unknown shores and an unknown fate.

Wow...

Why am I in an existential meltdown that is sending me back to Bob Marley searching for a state of innocence and realism?

I think this is the answer to that question.

The country of my youth (Kenya) recently had the massacre of about 1000 people over a vote that went sideways. Apparently, the most expedient way to resolve the miscounting of votes is to hack men, women and children into bone-flecked slabs of flesh.

The country of my middle-age (Canada) seems unable to resolve whether it is committed to fundamental freedoms like the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. The other day, a new freedom was discovered in Canada that gave a kitchen worker the right to work with public food without washing his hands.

Oddly enough, even though Canada has the perspicuity to discern the subtle human rights that would release citizens from the inconvenience of sanitary hand washing, the country is ambivalent about the freedom of speech even though this freedom is one of the main bulwarks against the true inconvenience of being hacked into bone-flecked slabs.

Does Bob Marley have any answers?

Not really...he is just a lot of fun to listen to while reminiscing about the innocent days gone by.

I know that the image and spirit of Bob Marley have been co-opted by leftist groups along with pot-legalization groups and every group of crackpots and tin pot dictators that have ever assembled under the sun but when I listen to Bob Marley, I hear him calling people to take responsibility for their own lives and that, to me, separates him from the crazies who huddle under his umbrella trying to gain legitimacy from his legacy.

Listen to another of his classic songs "No Woman No Cry" and enjoy a few moments of pleasure with me.

Click the image below to go the Youtube version of the song.

Every little thing is going to be alright.

posted by Wild 8:46:00 PM |

Some Truths

Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.

At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.

Reading when you're drunk is horrible.

Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly.

You're never quite sure whether it's against the law or not to have a fire in your back garden.

Nobody ever dares make cup-a-soup in a bowl.

You never know where to look when eating a banana.

Its impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat.

Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly.

Rummaging in an overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.

You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses.

Everyone always remembers the day the janitor got up on the school roof and threw down all the long lost balls.

The most embarrassing thing you can do as schoolchild is to call your teacher mum or dad.

Every man has at some stage while taking a pee flushed half way through and then raced against the flush.

Old women with mobile phones look wrong!

Its impossible to look cool whilst picking up a Frisbee.

Driving through a tunnel makes you feel excited.

Old ladies can eat more than you think.

You can't respect a man who carries a dog.

There's no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you've got your hand or head stuck in something.

No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers.

The most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on an upturned electricity plug.

People who don't drive slam car doors too hard

You've turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood specifically to stir paint with.

Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose.

From Wicked Thoughts.

posted by Wild 12:34:00 AM |

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