"Burdens & Losses" a Hook original for JazzFest

[Ted]

I'd love to install some cameras in your car and do a documentary about a day in your life. Drive. Pull over. Program the drums. Drive. Pull over. Record the uke. Drive. Pull over. Record the bass. Drive. Pull over. Etc.

The vocal effect – an auto harmonizer? Built into the BR80? That adds a tension to this that elevates this song beyond the sum of its parts – and its parts are pretty great.

The lyrics remind me of an insight I recently gleaned from the book I've been slowly reading for months:

In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.

From this one may see that there is no reason to pity the old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that: Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past – the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized – and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.

(This is at least the second time I've mentioned the book on this site. I'm not bragging about having read just one book in the last year. Which is close to the correct number.)

Blackout Bump - week of 12 March, 2016