In 1968 Nebraskans Denny Zager and Rick Evans, recorded In the Year 2525. Man, I used to listen to that when I was a wet behind the ears teenager and I knew all the words as if I wrote them myself. On the other side of the record was a song called Little Kids, about young love and mini skirts and puppy dog love.
The two songs could not be more different. One went on to warn of technological nightmares and the other was more of a dreamy love song. The record is as two sided as they come, one side dark and one side more light.
But the dark side won out in that record, Woodstock, Vietnam, a moon landing were all happening about then and it seemed like we might go on living a long time, in music and drugs and fantasy and medical technology, as long as we didn’t all die in war.
Sometimes I think we feel like the dark side is closing in on us today as well. This bias toward fear and trepidation seems to be with us for all time. I’m reading a lot about our founding fathers and the documents they wrote, specifically the Constituion. John Adams for instance seemed to think that we were unable to handle the new power that the people were about to be given, namely self government. “The people will have unbounded Power. And the People are extremely addicted to Corruption and Venality, as well as the Great.—I am not without Apprehensions from this Quarter.” Like most of us husbands, he shared this with his wife. She was a prime counselor and confident to him.
Here’s a little something she contributed to our founding philospohies. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
She might well have been the primary rabble rouser in that family. I am married to someone like Abigail I think, at least some of the time. They both held fears in their heart. That America would be a One Hit wonder, it wouldn’t last. They really lacked confidence in their own laws and principles set forth in that dynamic and lofty document, the Constitution.
Jefferson did not have much to do with the document, not being at the convention. His thoughts were in there of course, but not his handwriting. No, he reserved his one hit wonder for the Declaration of Independence written pretty much by himself. It was basically an explanation of complaints against the king and Jefferson put the world on notice that the 13 colonies were no longer part of the empire.
These very documents could have been written in many countries many centuries before the 1770s. And then again, history never did come together to form these documents in such a unique matter to the American continent. It’s not so much the paper or ink that is sacred, but the ideas therein. And the effort to bring them into the world. Most of the signers of these documents, especially the Declaration, expected to be hunted down and likely hung from the gallows. But they went ahead with their One Hit Wonders anyhow. Jefferson, I’m coming to realize, never really did write anything close to the work he did in the Declaration.
These documents are the best music they had to offer. Thereafter, they would march to the beat of their own making. And we have been druming along with it ever since. As is so often the case, new band members come along and replace the old ones that have died off. They have to learn the old songs, in this case, Freedom, Justice, Virtue and Happeniess.
Are you in the band? You probably are because these are similar values for you as well. We are all making music it seems. I want more than a one hit wonder though and I hope you do too. I want more gold and platinum records for sometime to come, the year 2525 awaits us, even if we lose the mini squirts and puppy dog innocense.