Morning in America, don’t?
I really wasn’t planning to blog about 2pac on this momentous day, but I’m finding an iressistable synchronicity in my drafts folder.
Tupac’s “Changes” is one of those evergreen tracks, like it or not, that still gets regular play on urban radio (in our case, here in Boston, that’s JAM’N 94.5).
I’ve never been a huge ‘Pac fan, and as his oeuvre goes “Changes” would not be near the top of my list. Not only is it cloyingly sweet (and sour), it’s one of those deeply contradictory songs that Tupac built the latter part of his career on. He’s the king of cynical schmaltz. For the longest time, I’ve heard the chorus itself as oddly contradictory:
That’s just the way it is
Things’ll never be the same
That couplet always gets me. Are things settled or not? Do we count on stasis or change? Given that the allusions to Bruce Hornsby’s “Just the Way It Is” are unmissable, I’ve always been led into a kind of intense cognitive dissonance as musical memory recalls the original’s more commonsensical chorus:
That’s just the way it is
Some things’ll never change
Hornsby’s song is a pretty straightforward sentimentalizing of working-class suffering and (notably, cross-racial) solidarity. The resigned, colloquial chorus makes sense in that context, especially when he closes it with “But don’t you believe them.” Which is a funny (and ultimately, I think, ineffective) way to invert the very lines you just drilled into listeners’ heads.
It occurred to me last week while hearing “Changes” on the radio — and it takes on a special sort of poignancy, a funny kind of resonance today (we ARE ready to see a black president?!) — that despite what sounded like a huge difference between Hornsby’s & Shakur’s choruses, they’re in fact saying the same thing: what never changes is change. Change is constant. Don’t believe them that it’s not. Things’ll never be the same. Know hope.
That, my friends, is a song to which I can sing along.
shouts to my boy heraclitus, wut wut…
but before we get carried over the rainbow on environmentally-friendly hydrogen-powered hope-clouds, a real progressive might remind him or herself that for hope to be worth anything it has to be hope FOR something, and then that this object to which we have oriented our hopes is only limitedly knowable insofar as it’s not (for the moment) actually realizable, something by definition always deferred to; i.e. not really all so knowable…
to “know” Hope leads only the empty rhetoric of self-congratulation, meaningless contentment and willing self-castration.
That’s just the way it is
Some things’ll never change
geez. couldn’t we at least wait until tomorrow to start kvetching? how bout just one day for some congratulation and contentment. we’ve got to wait until january for The Hope to take office anyhow.
look, i’m as concerned with where we actually go with this leftward momentum as any other self-proclaimed “real progressive,” but that doesn’t diminish the important (psychological and cultural) work that something as abstract as ‘hope’ does.
i’ve been downright depressed — if in a low-grade, non-clinical sorta way — for much of the last 8 years. against that context, there’s something really important about the ambience, if you will, of feeling hopeful, feeling confident in our leaders and our neighbors and ourselves. as the O-man said himself last night, this amazing election is not the change we seek, but the chance to make that change. the real work begins in january — or maybe, as you imply, right now, as we concretize what it is we’re hoping and working towards.
i’m not too hopeful, actually, that obama’s actually gonna socialize and de-colonize this place like i wish he would. he’s too pragmatic for that. and i’m too pragmatic to lose sight of the importance of electing a president as intelligent and reasonable and awesome as obama is. when’s the last time there was a ‘real’ ‘real progressive’ ticket on the ballot? (kucinich doesn’t count, nor does mckinney, sorry to say. nader neither. for real.)
…but things changed / thats the way it is!
damn. ya know, changes is the song people most often asked me to translate for them in Senegal.
oh man, rachel. why does that not surprise? too bad the lyrics are kinda wack.
as for bringing skepticism back into the conversation, it’s full on. i’m feeling fairly reigned in by the cautious/righteous criticism of the likes of Howard Zinn and Mike Davis. i guess one night of romance is all we get? =(
Your change ruminations have me thinking of Earth-Seed the mystical religion from Octavia Butlers amazing Parable series (wiki says a third was left unfinished)
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God
is Change.
_____
A gift of God
May sear unready fingers.
_____
We do not worship God.
We percieve and attend God.
We learn from God.
In the end, we yield to God.
We adapt and endure,
For we are Earthseed,
And God is Change.
thx for that, tally.
you remind me of a modified motto that i’ve been fond of for a while, now more relevant than ever: “love it or leave it” always seemed stupid to me; i far prefer to “love it and change it.”
here’s hoping…
Tupac’s song “Changes” really captures the emotions of the time. The song was written in the early 90’s and we’re now here at this monumental time in history more than 12 years later. There have been changes, but we have to recognize the fact that Obama is a self-identified African American although he is biologically biracial and was raised by white grandparents and was elected after (and perhaps because) GWBush ruined the country. So are we, as a voting public, really over all of our prejudices? No. Absolutely not. This is one giant leap towards erasing the discrimination all minorities feel, but we’re still very far off the goal.
I have to admit, in my ideological/intellectual self, the one that believes that discrimination in all forms is wrong, there was a bittersweet air the next day after Prop 8 (define marriage as man/woman) in California passed (and many other results that didn’t go my way.) The ironic thing that many of the folks of color who came out to voice their desire to be true equals in this country voted in favor of a proposition that discriminates against their neighbors. I have a thought that most folks who voted yes didn’t really understood what they were doing.
But still, perhaps like some of you, I really feel like the complete psychological state of possibility for myself in this country has changed. For me, hope was that what happened on Tuesday would be possible. Hope now, is the self-reflection that will allow me to believe that the craziest things in my head might actually have a chance to happen. Perhaps before I didn’t ever really have hope on the level that was delivered this week. I have feelings that I can’t describe. I know I’m young, but I really wonder if some of the party spoilers can understand that.