listening to Benny Goodman’s smooth version of ”Tiger Rag”
composed at a time when tigers where not yet an endangered species
when soldiers were dying in World War I
and would die again soon after Benny first recorded it in the 1930s
I wonder how it is that music can be so divorced from death
maybe because, for the US, wars have always been fought elsewhere,
except for the Civil War - an issue that still occupies two research institutes
distance seems to create heroes more easily
even though they are not aware of it
music helps to maintain the division between here and there
only when the draped coffins are unloaded
those two worlds converge
and our sense of uninvolvement is exploded
Mar 25, 2017
Mar 25, 2017 at 7:10 PM UTC
listening to Benny Goodman’s smooth version of ”Tiger Rag”
composed at a time when tigers where not yet an endangered species
when soldiers were dying in World War I
and would die again soon after Benny first recorded it in the 1930s
I wonder how it is that music can be so divorced from death
maybe because, for the US, wars have always been fought elsewhere,
except for the Civil War - an issue that still occupies two research institutes
distance seems to create heroes more easily
even though they are not aware of it
music helps to maintain the division between here and there
only when the draped coffins are unloaded
those two worlds converge
and our sense of uninvolvement is exploded
