Tag: Neil Young

je pense

Have you ever looked back at those goals you had set right out of college?

Marriage? Career? Health?

Then and Now. Perhaps they still remain the same or in reverse order.

No one set out with a goal of multiple marriages.

Or multiple careers.

Yet it has happened, taken most of us by surprise. On a macro scale, the same speed of change has occurred,  right after a State Visit of Chinese Leaders to a Texas range ( Deng wearing a cowboy hat), then the Soviet Leader advertised for Pizza Hut, sitting in the back of a limousine.

Bang! No more Cold War. Only hot food.

Berlin Walls down. Firewalls up.  Mainframe on Main Street, albeit smaller and smarter.

Our expectations have gone through multiple adjustments: fast food and fast divorce, financing and financial rescue (individual and institutional level; fiscal cliff?)

Nuclear families melt down, just as nuclear reactors did (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima).

Neil Young now grows old (Old Man Looks at my Life…) but Bob Seger is Still The Same.

Yoko Ono exhibits  John Lennon’s Art Works, instead of hers.

So we adapted. Bob Dylan said we always reinvented the past, because the Present and Future are both unknown.

Shirley Maclaine would vehemently disagree. She went all the way, claiming to have married with the Roman Emperor himself, albeit in his  reincarnated version as a Swedish prime minister.

What do I make of all these forward/backward worldviews? I have been told to keep my head down (slurping my cup-a-noodle?). Don’t think much. Then I heard the music “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”.

Then I start being futuristic: electric vehicles, solar energy and stem cells.

Those unknowns are fascinating. They bring new designs to auto and home building industries. They bring new jobs.

New hope.

America in the late 50’s had its mojo.

For those who are not afraid to set high goals, beyond just marriage, career and health, the future belongs to them.

Stay hungry, stay foolish. Think different. Je pense. Rodin’s statue of the Thinker could use some imagination ( sitting on a newly designed toilet seat, for instance)

Bill Gates is trying to do just that. Now, he starts to pick up from his friend Steve Jobs, some diversion thinking. The future belongs to those who are not completely satisfied with what now exists. Contentment or progress? Keep your head down or look up to the stars? Busy with Moon walk (Michael Jackson) or Mars Rover?

Your choice. I was just thinking out loud. It would be nice to have you join us. Imagine. And the world will be one.

First, learn respect!

After transitioning from a French elementary school to a Vietnamese middle-school, on my first day of school,  I saw “First learn respect, then learn literature”.

My brother’s generation at the same school had been from the same mold (his classmates are still staying in touch).

No wonder they showed up at my Mom’s funeral in a cold winter day in Virginia , out of respect.

To see the sight of my brother’s classmates, my upperclassmen (most of whom accomplished MD’s and Pharmacists)  bowing with incense in hand, stirred something up in me .

Inside those “tough” shells were hearts of gold.

It is repeating today with my classmates.

A “party” (memorial) fund for our dear musician friend who had just passed away.

Since he was cremated in a private ceremony, we rally to chip in for his kids, to turn grieving into giving.

Coordination takes place across the Pacific, with the free help of technology (yahoo group).

First, learn respect.

I don’t know how much we will eventually collect, but I know my friend’s kids will grow up knowing that daddy’s friends care.

I know Long’s kids will take on some of his musical legacy.

Someday, if I survive to hear one of them perform, I will once again be reminded that there is no such a thing as “the day the music dies”.

(John Lennon’s kid is now playing, George Harrison‘s kid, the same).

I remember listening to “Your Song” during siesta long ago.

But it’s just a radio.

Now, it’s Spotify.

You can take away the stereo, the juke box and the boombox, but you can’t take away music in man’s heart.

The going might get rough, but then, there is music to soothe the soul (ole time Rock and Roll).

I know my friend would be smiling, displaying his square jaws, when I blog this.

He would have joined in if he could.

Testing, and one, and two.

Every other form of learning is preceded by Respect.

It’s hard to find, as a line by Neil Young “I’ve been to Redwood, I’ve been to Hollywood…looking for a heart of gold, and I’m getting old”.

Hold on to it when you have it.

Have it when you see it.

I wouldn’t think of this blog had I not seen it in action, at my Mom’s funeral, and heard it today from my yahoo group.

I love them dearly, but first, respect.

My 70’s

Needless to say, my hair was long, my pants were bell-bottom and my shirt shiny.

I spent half of that decade in Vietnam, the other half in America.

But the youth culture helped bridge the cultural gap: we had already listened to James Talor, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Elton John before I jumped on to Year of the Cat and If by Bread (in the US).

In between the two worlds, I got stranded one whole summer in Wake Island,

listening to armed force radio station (Loving you, Theme from Mahogany, Band on the Run).  “Where are you going to, do you know?”

Towards the end of the decade, we watched a bunch of movies whose statures haven’t been surpassed since: Midnight Cowboys, Taxi, Deer Hunter.

The disco craze was well underway, with John Travolta and the Abba.

Dancing Queen.

American couldn’t stand the look of anything that reminded them of Vietnam (negative pair-association).

Cat Stevens was still OK then. George Harrison still had some staying power with “Here comes the sun”.

I was into media (post-Watergate hip major).

Journalism was cool, while computer science was a new field (my friend Al T. was quite nerdy and he belonged more to Bill Gates clan ).

America came across as weak after Watergate, Vietnam and the Iranian hostage crisis. Reagan landslide election was the reincarnation of John Wayne‘s shoot from the hip style (he himself got assasinated by Hinckley in 1981, but reemerged stronger for the line “tear down that wall”).

As of this edit, people are still protesting about sectioning it to build upscale high rises in E Berlin.

Meanwhile, Vietnam in the early 70’s lived life on the fast lane with the last PX supplies, napalm. Plenty of Agent Orange.

A large percentage of US enlisted men was into drugs (facts on file).

A repeated theme from “Last Men Out” was “how can this be”.

But this was how. We breathed our last breaths. Band on the Run.

Celebrating my last Tet (1975) here, I knew we were on oxygen mask. I shaved my head, trying to hit the books instead of  the night clubs. But still, the rumor and rumble or war had gotten near.

It’s like the Angel of Death was breathing down our necks.

You could feel your back hair stand up.

That’s how tense life was in my early 70’s.  Even today, many people are still living in denial, albeit with flashbacks. I forgot to mention  the Carpenters somehow managed to sneak into our consciousness even though by all measures, they look like a bunch of Mormons (unlike the Mamas and the Papas).

But we knew then that “We’ve only just begun”. Their cut of “SuperStar” still engages me today (but it’s just the radio….)

When you had a bunch of young people wearing tight jeans and tight shirts, on campus,

and all they wanted was to wait for Saturday Night to come (Fever), you know it’s peace time. The disco ball was our cross, and the DJ, our priest.

Today’s version of nightclub is version 3.0, with synthesized techno music, and a few easy refrains (suicidal…). In the 70’s you sat and watched the “Soul Train” with black folks doing the dancing, and the Huxtables doing the laughing.

Welcome to America. Now could you help push the car (Oil crisis).

Man who whistles

While waiting for my next appointment, I heard a man whistle.

He carried a tune while being oblivious to outsiders. Maybe he just try to pass the time in between classes.

Maybe we should whistle too. We are all passing the time.

Some of us are doing time.

Stephen Hawking wishes he could hear his own voice.

The world-renown scientist himself needs help from technology.

We invented musical instruments: flute, drum, vuvuzela etc… to carry the sound, and use microphones to amplify it.

An I-Pad screen can now be used as a karaoke screen.

Music stand should now be reshaped to mount I-pads. It would then be called the I-stand.

I stand and sing from an I-stand.

Neil Young got inspired by looking at an old man on the farm “Old man looks at my life…”

The old farmer was just content going about his farming business (perspiration) while Young found inspiration.

Now, it’s Neil’s turn to grow old.

“I have been to Redwood, I have been to Hollywood…looking for a heart of gold and I am growing old” (at 66, he just released a new album).

So it is Christmas, what have you done?

We “use” artists when we need them: late at night, at year-end celebration and in-between classes.

Then we junk the 8-tracks, cassettes, CD‘s, or give them to Goodwill.

Then we move on to YouTube.

I will thank them on all of our behalf then.

Where would we be if not for the Abba who put “Happy New Year” on the musical map!

Music itself evolves with time. Just ask our faculty man who whistles the lonely tune.

By hearing his own tune, he perhaps feels less lonely, because the environment sends feedback with analog precision.

Man and music: both need each other to be complete. No wonder Tina Turner does it differently every time she sings her signature “Proud Mary“. Audience participation does make a difference: their feedback (while on their feet dancing) helps spin her interpretation of the song.

I know during that school break, with me there waiting for my appointment, the man who whistles was probably aware there were more than one person in that lounge. His energy certainly was boosted because his lonely sound impacted beyond the lonely walls of his own soul. Happy is he who wakes up to the sound of music.

Starting a joke

50 years ago,  you would have been chased out of the pub had you painted these scenarios: the US can’t wait to open off-shored manufacturing centers, Gaga as a mermaid on wheelchair, and 90% of the population will shop at Wal-Mart, stocked with 99% Made-in-China merchandise. Dude, in the 60’s, we were living the American Dream.

No one would imagine just in 5 decades that we have debt ceiling; congress woman, shot, survived and stood up to cast her vote; (BL) got taken down while a Nordic Crusader took down people for their opposing view.

Not groovy man, you would say.

Like Austin Powers, you wake up, assuming gas stations still have full-serve (yes, but it’s the homeless man). Don’t you miss the bell and the man in clean Esso overall?

You could start a joke, but the joke was on you.

It doesn’t  take long for someone to ring the alarm bell (Putin called the US consumers “parasites”).

It’s like a line in Neil Young‘s album “I have been to Redwood, I have been to Hollywood…

in search for a heart of gold and I am getting old”.

It takes that long for a generation to process the stages of grief: imperial status right after WWII, to upheavals at home and abroad (assassination of the Kennedy’s brothers and the Diem’s brothers), to Cold War unraveling and Gulf War overstretched. Now, the hard cold reality of a dried credit market (consumer spending registered near zero growth) stands erect like a new Berlin Wall (East where 99 percent of us are living, and West, the other 1%). In Admiral Mullen’s words, “Debt is our greatest security threat.”

You could tell the 60’s Ivy League‘s kids were well-off e.g. bell-bottom pants and Indian-shirts, and all hair. At least, there was a middle class.

On some YouTube clips, you could still detect that the audience “tenue de soiree” to attend Francoise Hardy‘s concerts.(Tous les garcons et les filles): turtle-neck and leather jackets.

Most could afford a trip to Woodstock (which turned out to be free anyway).  And many if not all would take part in binge drinking before, during and after the football games. Senior panic was meant for landing a mate, not a job (now, it’s the opposite).

The future back then was in “plastic” (the Graduate). It was supposed to give rise to companies like 3M , but also, VISA and Master Card (both plastic).

Now, we have Tencent, and Facebook.

Apple’s war chest is larger than the US treasury.

What a joke. Who started it? Dr Evil calls a meeting: “Let’s hold the world hostage, for 2 Million”.

No wonder President Obama had to emphasize that the savings from the newly imposed 54-mile-per- gallon vehicles, would be in the range of 2 Trillion dollars, “with a T.”

50 years is not a long time, but it allows for many changes, exponentially. Don’t blame it on China (or Moore’s Law).

They didn’t even get started until 1979.

It’s a confluence of factors, mostly caused by the rise of the Rest intersecting the decline of the West. The best could happen to our Austin Powers is to step back into the time-machine, hoping for a better reentry point in the multipolar future.

Dylan’s time a changin!

Years ago, I rode in the back , my friend and his wife in front, and I popped “The Essential Bob Dylan” on “to knock, knock ….on heaven’s door” all the way to a Vietnam beach. On April 10th, the singer will be there in person, finally.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31749_162-20043290-10391698.html

American celebrities with conscience have fascinated with Vietnam e.g. “Mr & Mrs Smiths“, De Niro, J Fonda and now Bob Dylan.

Lady, lady, lay….A lot of teach-in and sit-in to culminate in his only appearance in the land which has sparked so much division and protest (take Wisconsin and multiply by 1000).

A legend in his own right, Dylan carried his guitar to NYC, played at clubs

and became a prophet of sort to his generation. During the 80’s, Dylan and  Springsteen flirted with God and Country, in that order. “You got to serve somebody” if you are “Born in the USA“.

Now, after a gig in Vegas, his promoter booked him for modern-day Mecca: China and Taipei. Vietnam will be something of a side tour, for catharsis.

Dylan, like other musicians of his time – Neil Young for instance – nurtures a love-hate arm-length relationship with the “System”. Damn if you do, damn if you don’t,  “in, but not of it”.

The WSJ pulled a quick punch when the man was almost down (saying he couldn’t keep up the beat during his Vegas’ gig).

At 60, you are glad to stay alive (his early date died just recently).

Keep knocking on heaven’s door.

One of these days, it will open up for those who are persistent.

Meanwhile, we live on, never stop questioning while the answers remain elusive, as if  “blowing in the wind”.

I can’t help noticing a stark contrast between two iconic photos: the Woodstock’s couple wrapped in a blanket, and the lone Japanese-quake woman among the rubbles. The former had a choice to be outdoor and enjoyed a 3-day of Peace, Love and Music. The later was forced to be victim of a 8.9 earthquake.  To celebrate or lament our existence, we need artists to point us to a more transcended reality (Dylan showed up at the concert by G Harrison for victims of Bangladesh flood).  In Dylan, it’s the combination of poetic justice, lyrical poignancy and one-of-the-kind eccentricity that set him apart from other revolving-door names (Ricky who?).

Dylan and Vietnam seem to be a match made in heaven, without all the knocking. Both seemed to survive myriads of controversies and contradictions.

Both remain mystique, alluding our attempt to put people and places in a box.