Although I am sympathetic, I have a small rebuttal.
Dear Neil
With respect to “Speaking Ill of the Dead”, you well know
that no one who knows me would ever place me in the camp of the first
generation of Deadheads. Yet, every endeavor
of any lasting repute must have some foundation, some basis, some work of merit,
that defines its reputation, no matter how thin that reputation grows over the
years. For the Grateful Dead that work of merit is “Truckin’”. Yes, it is just another song about a traveling band and drugs, albeit from a uniquely told point of view with a weary inevitability about it. But in the middle of the long mumbled rambling over the demise of Sweet Jane, the defining hook comes crashing in. Loud, high, and clear comes the chorus.
“Sometimes the light is all
shining on me;
Other times I can barely see.Lately it occurs to me,
What a long strange trip it’s been.”
You can view this as simply an expositional statement on the highs and
lows of drug abuse, which it is. But,
more importantly, it is a well-versed metaphor for life, with or without drugs,
life pure or impure, the wheel of fortune, not as your Grandma Jan understands
the Wheel of Fortune, but as the Greeks understood it, as Baby Face Nelson
understands it in “O Brother”, strapped helplessly to the inexorable rise and
fall of one’s own destiny. It is the
tide, daylight and darkness, the seasons, the joys and sorrows, the loves and
losses, the ups and the downs of daily life, of any life, on which all art, all
life, is tethered. The summation is no
less metaphysical. Step back from the
spinning, it says, and appreciate it, accepting that our journey from the past
to the future is wonderfully strange.
Or, as Seuss would have it, “From there to here, from here to there,
funny things are everywhere!”
There, I’ve said my peace. You can go back, now, to listening to The Decemberists.
Love,
Dad
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