Friday, August 13, 2010

Country Music

I was driving home last night and listening to a country music station. Oldie songs were intermixed with the current country favorites.

Listening to the words of the old ones in juxtaposition to the new ones I was convinced America is on the right track because little has changed in the song stories of American life from the past to the present.

Little has changed despite the current political turmoil of contention between democrats and the republicans, between the conservatives and the liberals, between the dogmatic religious and the agnostic wonderers, between those who fear and those who don't, between the young dreamers and the aging wisdom, between eastern stuffy and western calm and northern frugality and southern hospitality.

Country music, whether you like it or not or listen to it or not is a harbinger, in the good sense, of the feelings of most Americans. Love coming and love lost. Heartache and heart's hope. Throw in babies, Love and loving words, sadness, moms, dads, trucks and trains and you've got a microcosm of American thought.

Patsy Cline in the 1950's sang of "Your Cheatin' Heart" and it's still going on today in all strata of life.

Reba MaEntire sings today of separation and breaking up.

Nothing's changed. America is what it was and what it will always be. A multi-mind mixed mishmash of hopes, wishes, desire, patriotism, connections and endings and the phenomenal opportunity that only freedom engenders.

When our country songs start singing only of worry, pain, discontent and dissonance then we might want to rethink our collective thoughts. Thoughts are powerful, both the collective kind and the ones we create individually. There is much truth to the admonition: change your mind, change your life.

Be well buckeroos! Laugh more, love more, be more that you even though possible, because it is.



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