Keep the time preparing a post to under an hour. Daunting rigor, that. But it’s the discipline needed if the daily
regimen is to be maintained. Can we hem
the parameters in and 事半功倍 [1]? We can free write garbage and tick a
box. Rather pull up handful of sand and blow
into it with salty water. Quickly.
Lord Salmons whom I believe is from Jamaica has a lovely song
called ‘Great ’68.’ I don’t think I need
to tell you when it was recorded. The
chorus is “you should be great, great, in this 1968.” The pacing, delivery is almost a Trinidadian
Calypso. And it is perhaps a final paean
to unbridled optimism in Jamaican popular music. Lord Salmons didn’t get the memo. He remains smiling and buoyant while singing
about Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey.
A final attempt to be upbeat in that noble, naïve way that Ska and
Rocksteady largely embodied, up until that year, before all sentiment, all pacing,
all the musical atmospherics change, so dramatically.
The Jamaicans had taken first place in the annual Festival
Song Contest with “Ba Ba Boom” the previous year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jamaicans
It was an irresistible invitation for young and old to learn
a new dance step for that year, 1967. Lord
Salmons is similarly looking for a good year.
Everyone should work to improve his or herself. Dig into 1968 with a smile and a can-do élan. He doesn’t mention assassinations, embassies
assaulted and cities burning. One
assumes they hadn’t yet come to pass.
Perhaps he’d still insist upon an annus
mirabilis regardless.
Niney the Observer, who apparently gained a moniker when he lost a thumb, releases “Blood and Fire” less than two years
later. There are no more calls for good behavior, or collective optimism. I
don’t believe he was smiling. It is too
late. Rather and for the foreseeable
“judgment has come and mercy has gone.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niney_the_Observer
I can recall naiveté in China. One needn’t go all the way back to the first
two years of my life. Indeed, visiting
Beijing in 1968 would unlikely have felt “great.” My birth year in 1966 saw more than a little
‘blood and fire’. Certainly it was the
first of ten, undeniable annus horribilis. And of course, the early nineties, when I
finally arrived here were comparatively innocent as it concerned interaction
with the outside world. But it was
hardly benign.
In the ‘Invida’ chapter of my Seven Deadly Starbucks
(7DS) manuscript I discuss how the flow of envy was unidirectional and
predictable when I first arrived in 1993.
These days the sin of envy bleeds out wherever it flows the easiest,
unwanted envy from Chinese, invidious starring at Chinese, considering
what they have, considering what I have.
Everyone is disoriented.
It would have been difficult to remain smiling, and great,
in 1968. You cannot rely on yesterdays’
momentum, yesterdays’ simplifications.
Collective perceptions, prevailing attitudes can change completely from
one year to the next.
But we’re still in between, between, this year and
2014. The hour allotted, however, is
up. Mercy has gone.
[1] Shìbàngōngbèi: Half the work, twice the effect; the right
approach saves effort and leads to better results
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