Marigolds and Jimi Hendrix
by rebecca ~ May 12th, 2005. Filed under: Ordinary Muse, Space is the Place.This week, I rented a documentary film about the 1969 Woodstock Festival. I couldn’t imagine being there with 500,000 people on a pig farm, as I am not a fan of mud, porta-potties, or of large crowds, ever since I was made permanently clausterphobic when Tracy Earl sat on top of me in a tree house stuffed with twelve fifteen-year-old girls and no one heeded to my screams for freedom.
Well, okay, if I were to have been there I imagine I would have had to secure a nice little circle of green grass on a hill, with a ring of marigolds around me, and I would have made a sign stating “The Nation of Solitude,” just so I could keep some breathing space. For food, I could eat some of the marigolds. They have a lovely smell to me. I think people would have let me be, as they all seemed happy and at peace with each other’s idiosyncracies.
Anyway, on to the main point! While I listened to Jimi Hendrix play the national anthem I felt so sad. The way he played it was so deeply sorrowful, as if he is (and all of us are) being betrayed by the reality of what America is.
His music reminded me of that poem by Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again.”
I found it here.
I, too, doubt if America was ever what it says it was and is, but like Hughes, I always hope it will someday be true to its ideals. Amen and out.