I was thinking about the reasons why I liked The Incredible String Band when I was young, when I was a teenager and in my twenties. I remember hearing them for the first time on a famous LA FM radio station, when FM radio was just beginning to be the medium for non-commercial, or progressive rock and roll, as opposed to what was called "bubble-gum" rock. For some reason, I can't remember the station, maybe KMET or KPPC.
The song I heard was The Water Song, and it wasn't really rock music or folk music, it was in a category all its own, as was most of the group's music. The lyrics are a little mystical, "O, wizard of changes/Teach me the lesson of flowing", and they incorporated the sound of falling water in the song, which was a very 60's (or early 70's) thing to do. I loved them dearly--I graduated from Donovan to them, and never looked back.
And then I thought of how much I loved The Lord of the Rings, which I first read when I was 12. I remember when I was talking to Sue and telling her how much I loved the books, she had said that she hadn't really ever gotten into them, that they had seemed too simple to her, too black and white.
I hadn't seen it that way, but if I had I wouldn't have cared, for that was how my world was. Well, it wasn't black and white--it was just black.
Reading those books gave me one of my first inklings (no pun intended for all you Tolkien fans) that the world could be something besides sordid.
I also thought of Richard Thompson, a lonely, skinny extremely bright kid, who stuttered, with (by all accounts) a strict, domineering father, taking refuge in his music, in his guitar. I thought of some of his darker songs, and there seem to be more of these than anything else. It makes me wonder about the things that shape us.
Families can be pretty scary things. Would it be safe to say that most of our anguish comes from there?
They can be twisted, and no one on the outside can see it.
An artist will use it as grist for his mill--and I think I'm fairly safe in saying everyone else will bring it to the new family they create with whatever partner they choose (and that's a whole other can of worms). It just perpetuates itself like that through the ages.
I've broken the cycle merely because I'm not part of a new family.
Well, and one also would like to think that the ton of therapy I've had would help if I did have a new family. We may never know....
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