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I Hope It Don’t Turn Away
The world as it is
A friend on that other platform, Mitchell Stirling, wrote a wonderful piece last week on the 50th anniversary of Neil Young’s On the Beach. Do you know the album? Do you wish you did? I swear, you do wish you did, or do, if we’re talking present tense.
I’m present and I’m tense, but listening to Neil’s second side — consisting of “On the Beach,” “Motion Picture,” and “Ambulance Blues” — I feel the pressure falling. I don’t know what strikes me more: that this record came out when I was 18 and a college freshman, or that back then, Matt Gaetz wasn’t alive.
Think of the fun we had, never knowing or believing that a creature like that would one day slouch through birth and find his way just a few invertebrates away from heading the Justice Department. Not that there weren’t creatures slithering all over Washington in the 70’s and many who wanted to be. Both George Wallace and Lester Maddox ran for President, but at least we had the good sense to elect Nixon who, while slimy, at least had never allegedly trafficked in young girls.
In my freshman year at college, something pretty weird and political happened, and sure, you’ll say that weird and political are synonymous, and I’ll say, “Sure, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen like that.”