Years ago, I got to know the late, great singer/songwriter/raconteur Kinky Friedman when he embarked on his gubernatorial run for our great state. One of his pitches to potential voters was that a musician could run the government better than any career politician could. After all, musicians stay up and work late and get things done.
Politics could definitely learn a thing or two from music.
I wrote in this space when we last met that I’d be laughing my something or other off if a certain high-profile midterm race went the way that it was predicted to go. Well, it did, and many other races also saw longtime incumbents unseated. While I figured I’d be laughing and saying “I told you so!” at many who have made their political persuasion key parts of their identities and would be lamenting the losses of their idols, I kind of worry about the mental health of some of ‘em. If social media is any kind of accurate barometer for what’s going on in their lives, many of them are convinced that the end times are approaching. To that I say: it was just an election. If We the People are unsatisfied with the job the new crop of lawmakers do, we can vote them out, too, next go ‘round.
So, to segue into something much more pleasant, here’s a scenario: my lovely lady Kristin treated us to an Acid Bath show for my birthday this past weekend. To say it was an amazing experience might be selling it short by a great deal. To watch one of my favorite bands, which I never thought I’d ever get to experience live, perform one masterpiece song after another — opening with “Tranquilized” and closing with “The Blue” — was the happening of a lifetime.
Although I found it hard to hold back tears as vocalist Dax Riggs sent a shout out to the band’s late bassist Audre Pitre before ripping into the lovely “Venus Blue,” the whole context of the show found it hard for me to stifle the happy tears.
While standing in line, I got to converse with a man who’d loved the band since the ‘90s and, due to hard times in his life, didn’t think he’d get to take in the show. His friends all made sure he was able to go, and I later saw him right in front of the stage, in front of where Kristin and I stood, mesmerized by every word and every note played.
The connectedness of everyone in that room was a most beautiful thing. From middle-aged cats in plaid and khakis to goth girls in full makeup and dark accoutrements, everyone was there, joined together by the shared love of great music, despite whatever superficial differences might have been present.
That’s the thing about music: it has the ability to bring folks together in ways that few other things in this world can, and it doesn’t care how much money you make, where you comes from, what religious denomination you belong to, what your opinions are or what political cult you support. The music simply asks you to listen, to experience it.
A die-hard country music fan and a hardcore punker might disagree about nearly everything under the sun, but they can both stand shoulder-to-shoulder at a show, and sing along to a melody that means something to both of them. A whole room full of strangers can become a beautiful community when the first chords of a familiar song ring out. There is pure magic in that.
Music has never required us to agree with one another before sharing an experience, and it doesn’t demand that we pass an ideological purity test or prove our loyalty to a particular side, nor does it divide us into moronic divisions of red and blue, or conservatives and liberals, or insiders versus outsiders. It deals and speaks in a language that exists above and beyond the din of all that noise.
Just like the tableau I described above: people who have never met and might otherwise have little in common can find themselves dancing, laughing, singing along and celebrating together at a good concert. For a few hours, the things that ordinarily separate us become unimportant. Nobody was asking anyone next to them how they voted last Friday night at the show I was at, nor did anyone in that room care what church the person next to them attended or what their bumper stickers might state. They were simply enjoying the same sonic experience and feeling something together.
At its best (or most functional) politics should be about finding common ground and improving the lives of people who share a community, but all too often, it has become an exercise in identifying differences and manufacturing grievances and outrage, and convincing people that those on the other side are somehow enemies. Music, however, works in precisely the opposite direction. It reminds us that we can have different backgrounds, different beliefs and different perspectives, while still enjoying something together.
It’s definitely a lesson worth taking to heart from the concert hall or the barroom.
We’re only human, and we don’t have to agree on everything in order to get along. We don’t have to share the same opinions to share a table, a friendship or a song. There is always room on this old planet for different voices, for different instruments, different rhythms and different perspectives, and that, my friends, is what makes music so beautiful in the first place.
Maybe the world would be a little better if we all spent less time arguing over what it is that separates us and more time celebrating the things we share. We could all stand to turn down all the political noise now and again, turn up the volume and listen.
A good song does not ask which side you are on. It just invites you to sing along.
Chris Edwards is editor of the Tyler County Booster, a sister newspaper in the Polk County Publishing Group. He can be reached at cedwards@polkcountypublishing.com.
