God, That Big Apple
Listening to local alt-country group Lucero before work today:
I'm just another Southern boy/ who dreams of nights in NYC. / Still I sing along ... sing along.
My tears don't matter much, / Don't matter much.
Maybe it's the spare punk drive under this, along with the rasp-twisted vocals, and the rootsiness, but I linger over this line.
Right off the bat, we know it's banal to be a Southern boy who dreams of nights in NYC; so many Southern boys do it. It's where what's happening is, a huge magnet for artists and shakers of all stripes. That is until you've been there and become Midnight Cowboy, say, or found it's too expensive in contrast to the salaries down here, gone financially strained or belly up and returned. Both of these sides of the coin already exist in the Southern imagination.
Still, it's so very Southern and rural to look beyond your own county line and dream of getting out. In the age of TV and movies, though, we can put celluloid names and images to what lies beyond: The big city.
(Nichols, Lucero lead singer, said that NYC reviewers trash them while NYC crowds receive them quite well.)
For the person who is aware of his inflated and uninformed image of NYC, the myth is fractured. The verses of the song are mildly personal tributes to fellow Memphis musicians in the same genre of music as Lucero. Why not look to that under your nose and cultivate that? Still they sings along. Why?
Because the idea of the city is what propels them forward -- even if here in Memphis --, because the singing in fellow company is what adds reverance and a sense of community to that growth.
--
Because of recent discussion on sunsmogseahorse's journal, I've been thinking about the evolutions, the nuances, of different belief systems.
It occurs to me that -- as I understand it -- Cornel West's Christian concept of God functions in a very similar way that the Big Apple does for the singing fellows in the Lucero song.
For West, God is not a personality or conventional deity as much as he is the idea that a socially just society can exist. This is the source of hope -- without which we'd never have the courage to work towards that social end.
Where Lucero and other local alt-country groups dream of NYC and so are able to make their music, West's brand of Christian is able to think of a god that they know is mythologized and inflated -- in actuality unreal -- so that they are able to work for a more socially just world.
Though I am able to achieve similar in different ways -- and do --, I think this is fascinating.
And I have to say that I think social fantasy is important.
So I sing along.
--
Again, Lucero: Not much worse than the rest, / Just that much farther West.
I'm just another Southern boy/ who dreams of nights in NYC. / Still I sing along ... sing along.
My tears don't matter much, / Don't matter much.
Maybe it's the spare punk drive under this, along with the rasp-twisted vocals, and the rootsiness, but I linger over this line.
Right off the bat, we know it's banal to be a Southern boy who dreams of nights in NYC; so many Southern boys do it. It's where what's happening is, a huge magnet for artists and shakers of all stripes. That is until you've been there and become Midnight Cowboy, say, or found it's too expensive in contrast to the salaries down here, gone financially strained or belly up and returned. Both of these sides of the coin already exist in the Southern imagination.
Still, it's so very Southern and rural to look beyond your own county line and dream of getting out. In the age of TV and movies, though, we can put celluloid names and images to what lies beyond: The big city.
(Nichols, Lucero lead singer, said that NYC reviewers trash them while NYC crowds receive them quite well.)
For the person who is aware of his inflated and uninformed image of NYC, the myth is fractured. The verses of the song are mildly personal tributes to fellow Memphis musicians in the same genre of music as Lucero. Why not look to that under your nose and cultivate that? Still they sings along. Why?
Because the idea of the city is what propels them forward -- even if here in Memphis --, because the singing in fellow company is what adds reverance and a sense of community to that growth.
--
Because of recent discussion on sunsmogseahorse's journal, I've been thinking about the evolutions, the nuances, of different belief systems.
It occurs to me that -- as I understand it -- Cornel West's Christian concept of God functions in a very similar way that the Big Apple does for the singing fellows in the Lucero song.
For West, God is not a personality or conventional deity as much as he is the idea that a socially just society can exist. This is the source of hope -- without which we'd never have the courage to work towards that social end.
Where Lucero and other local alt-country groups dream of NYC and so are able to make their music, West's brand of Christian is able to think of a god that they know is mythologized and inflated -- in actuality unreal -- so that they are able to work for a more socially just world.
Though I am able to achieve similar in different ways -- and do --, I think this is fascinating.
And I have to say that I think social fantasy is important.
So I sing along.
--
Again, Lucero: Not much worse than the rest, / Just that much farther West.