Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Gray Matter

I read Swimming to Cambodia, by the late Spalding Gray, a few weeks before my first business trip to Thailand. The timing -- mid-1986 -- was coincidental but valuable: Gray's description of Bangkok was letter perfect. Indeed, I found Gray's vignettes from filming The Killing Fields more memorable than the film itself. The widely-praised movie seemed to transfer the saintliness and suffering of Cambodian Dith Pran to NY Times reporter Sydney Schanberg because the latter returned to spring Pran from a Khmer Rouge death camp.1 And the flick implied, or was interpreted to imply, America was responsible for mass murders committed by Pol Pot et. al. Today, the same viewers insist genocide must be tolerated--so long as it's confined within a single sovereign. Gray's one-man Swimming to Cambodia routine began life (largely) bombast-free, though later performances became polluted with polemics.

One of my favorite folk-ies was Phil Ochs (yes, I like folk music). With moderate production values and a thin voice, Ochs was a topical songwriter first and singer second.2 His best works were "delivered with searing wit, ingenious wordplay, and catchy, hummable melodies." But, unlike his contemporaries Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton, Ochs's "passionate investment in democratic socialism" left him stuck in the summer of love after easy targets like Nixon and Vietnam folded in the 70s. Ochs knew he Ain't Marching Any More, but what next?

Both Gray and Ochs were suicides. A near-fatal auto crash in 2001 left Gray depressed; after several attempts on the Staten Island Ferry, his body was found in NY's East River in early 2004. Ochs lost both folk and focus, flirting with increasingly absurd identities "including an attempt to channel the spirit of the still-living Elvis Presley," then "hung himself in his sister's bathroom in '76."

The decline and fall of Gray and Ochs weren't identical--Gray's psyche and brain scarred by accident; Ochs's persona swamped in alcoholic self medication. But some commonalities remain--each painted himself into a political corner beyond the span of any artistic life raft. Apolitical before playing a cynical and dissembling U.S. counsel in Killing Fields, Gray first characterizes the Khmer Rouge as "this weird bunch of rednecks," then, in the very next sentence, relates they "had been educated in Paris in the strict Maoist doctrine." (STC at 16-17). Redneck and communist is a neat trick--twisting meaning into buzzwords signifying nothing more than whatever the speaker hates. As Orwell wrote, "Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’."

Ochs wrote a powerful ballad about Southern racism, ruined by its refrain. Ochs sings: "Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of/ Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of," which always prompts me to shout: "But that's what they wanted and you [the "royal you," that is] wouldn't let 'um!" Part 1 of STC ends with the line "I suddenly thought I knew what killed Marilyn Monroe." (STC at 59). The answer, I guess, is genocide. By the time Ochs proclaimed “if there is any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara,” the radical left realized America had "grown older and wiser" -- but couldn't adjust.

Once we vowed "never again." Only yesterday, Jesse Jackson demanded we "fund the black resistance instead of the South African government." Now, "no blood for oil" is code for "no effort for liberty." Or, put differently, see, hear and speak no evil.

Relentlessly topical, few Phil Ochs songs outlived the last Century. One that endured is "When I'm Gone," released a decade before Ochs died, his own eerie epitaph:
And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here
Totalitarian commies aren't rednecks and even the bloated, drug-addled Elvis would thump Che in a fair fight. Such wisdom was central to surviving the 60s.

____________

1 The movie also jump-started Sam Waterston's pompous liberal acting career, seen weekly on TV's Law & Order.

2 Three important exceptions are Changes, There But for Fortune and When I'm Gone, each resonating with a warm tenor vibrato.

4 comments:

Freedomnow said...

I think you are exaggerating a bit, but there is truth to the fact that they hung on to irrational anti-Americanism. However, the lyrics of Mississippi are classic and for the most part right on the money.

Another favorite musician with a similar anti-American background is the great Gil Scott-Heron. It is amazing that during the years his career flourished 1970 to the late 80s, American blacks and the country underwent a huge transformation for the better.

While integration and other social legislation vastly improved the lives of American blacks he still carried on about a racist government.

Although he wrote many anti-substance abuse songs, as well as those celebrating the black family he recently went to jail for possession of crack cocaine and domestic violence. How sad.

Phil Ochs and Gil Scott-Heron made some fantastic music and even though I disagree with some of their lyrics, they were great lyrists too.

@nooil4pacifists said...

Perhaps a bit, but I have the impression that 24/7/365.4 topical songwriters had shorter shelf lives. (Pete Seeger is one exception--but he put propaganda before song; when Hitler invaded Russia, he recalled and withdrew his month-old first album of antiwar songs; his second "first album" urged a "second front"--advancing the invasion of Europe to relieve the pressure on Stalin. Like many leftists, Seeger's pacifism was a thin cover for from anti-Americanism. See Ronald Radosh, Commies at 35-38 (2001). Tom Paxton is Ochs's somewhat less topical Doppelganger--and Paxton's still writing and singing; still great.)

I loved Gil Scott-Heron in the late 70s--indeed, I twice mixed small-arena concert sound for him in the NYC area. But I've not thought of, much less listed to, him in 20 years. Which is my cue to head for a CD store--avoiding the topical.

OBloodyHell said...

> Today, the same viewers insist genocide must be tolerated--so long as it's confined within a single sovereign.

Weirdly enough, this does not seem to be the case.

For the life of me, I don't grasp the disconnect present in the point of views being nudged towards by the local university newspaper -- an independent newspaper -- which endlessly rails on with the eternal anti-Iraq litany... Even as it continues regularly writing about the genocide in Darfur, with the (to me) perceived need for/call to action (otherwise, what difference does it make to write long articles on it twice a week?)

...That the abandonment of Iraq inevitably will turn Baghdad into another Darfur is somehow utterly lost on them.

...That Darfur is utterly lost until all involved are tired of fighting with each other -- exhausted unto death with it -- There is simply no way at all that anyone on earth has any business sticking their heads in to it unless they are prepared to start with some heavy duty line-up-against-the-wall shooting -- this, too, seems to be utterly lost on them.

Mystifying.

Private Beach said...

Phil Ochs' later career moves were not as bizarre as you make them sound. Ochs understood that Americans largely absorb their ideas through popular culture, and he also knew that far more Americans listened to Elvis and Buddy Holly than to Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Furthermore, unlike some more snobbish leftists, he wasn't prepared to write off all those who preferred "Okie from Muskogee" to "Give Peace A Chance" as ignorant rednecks unworthy of consideration. What I think Ochs was trying to do, however imperfectly, was find a marriage between leftist politics and the brash energy of pop/rock music, in order to convey political ideas through that medium.

I would also take issue with your view that few of his songs will last. The topical songs of one era tend to find echoes in the politics of another, so what was written about Vietnam acquires new resonance when applied to Iraq (just as the Korean war story M*A*S*H acted as a critique of America in Vietnam, and Catch-22 is about the madness of any war, not just World War Two).