Speaker 1: I'm an old man, but not utterly clueless. And as
I hear music come out of the ceiling, I hear
rap and hip hop become monosyllabic, a string of shouts
and macho mumbles with machine like percussion, a sort of
anti music. And then along comes a young woman who
sings actual stories in whole sentences to a real melody,
and you have Taylor Swift, and she takes over the
music business and becomes the most famous person on earth,
bigger than Vladimir Putin. When Putin fills the stadium, you
know it was at gunpoint. Mister Trump fills small plauzas.
But it's all the same people, mostly retirees with time
on their hands, who love hearing that same speech over
and over. Taylor Swift draws huge, paying crowds who are
overjoyed from start to finish and also by the merch
and go home happy. I accept the fact that I
am a back issue, I'm a relic, and that younger
people have taken over eight years ago, I played the
Hollywood Bowl. A few weeks ago, I played a two
hundred seater in Monominy, Wisconsin. It was fun. People in
the seats talked back to me. We hung out in
the lobby afterward. I caught influenza from one of them.
Do Taylor's fans get to share their germs with her?
I doubt it very much. I accept change, even some
changes that cause me pain. I grew up reading newspapers,
and now they're dying by the hundreds. And the reason
is simple. Most of them tend to be solemn, pretentious, humorless,
and so people prefer social media. The comments in social
media can be wild and feisty and sarcastic. I admire
George F. Will's columns, and I also enjoy the hundreds
of lefties throwing spitballs at him. You don't find much
irreverence in newspapers anymore. They're rather sedate, like nursing home.
I accept agism. Joe Biden is, in fact eighty one,
so am I. We can put on a glove, but
we're not likely to turn a double play. Our ballet
careers are long past. We need help with computers too bad.
I see young women tapping out texts on their cell
phones at forty words permitted, using only their thumbs. I
hunt and peck at five words permitted with my index finger,
and I make lots of spelling hers. As an old man,
I repent of visiting my generation's sins on the grand kids.
I like the idea of the young starting out more
or less fresh and in the clear. Conservatives make a
powerful case against my generation providing generous benefits for itself
and passing on the check to our grand kits. I
liked to think of America as looking forward to the
morning and the next new opportunity, not dragging the chains
of the past. I belonged to a privileged class, now
almost vanished, of Americans who could pay for their college
education working part time minimum wage jobs. That was the
beautiful idea of the land grant university. You didn't have
to ask dad's help or pay attention to his plans
for you. When I was eighteen, my father told me
loud and clear that he wouldn't foot the bill for
the university, and I took that as the privilege of independence. Now,
a year at the University of Minnesota costs upward of
twenty two grand and it's hard to earn that at
ten dollars an hour and still get your sleep and
writes your urn paper on Moby Dick it's a tragedy
to cheat the kids of an education and run them
through the maize and badger them into grinding out the assignments,
and they line up in caps and gowns without ever
finding the light switch. It's your first chance to find
out what your soul might make of your life. Jefferson
believed that enlightenment is the foundation of freedom, and that
learning is happiness, and happiness is at the heart of democracy.
So let's take a cue from Taylor Swift and turn
away from dread and dismay and other ill informed opinions
and put on some glitter and allow exuberance to have
its way with us. Let's tell stories in whole sentences.
Let's talk about love. Let the cranks and kill joys
camp in the saloon and soak in their own sour juices.
And let's go to the dance. Let's go to the dance.
Baseball season is coming. Let's give the umps a hard
time and cheer for the home team and have a
beer and are brought with mustard. Let's live life and
not grouse about it. And by the way, I love
it when you smile. You look good when you smile.
Brisk Verse Garrison Keiller's new book of poems. Some whimsical,
some funny, may be mischievous, may be thought provoking. In
any case, an irresistible read and a great gift brisk Verse.
Check it out at Garrison Keiller dot com. If you
enjoy Garrison's writings, you'll find a bonanza in his newsletter,
Garrison Keiller and Friends. There's humor, advice, thoughts on ordinary life,
and lots more. Subscribe at Garrison Keiller dot substack dot
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