Turn, turn, turn
A year or so ago, really about five years ago, but the pandemic seems to get skipped when I look back, my friend Joan and I saw Crosby, Stills and Nash at Monmouth University in Long Branch, New Jersey, birthplace of the poet, Robert Pinsky. Joan and I went to college together. Decades later we sometimes go to hear what I fondly call Geezer Rock. We saw Dion, for example, give a fantastic performance. While Mickey Dolenz, eww, cringey.
In the soundtrack of my life, the Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) album, Déjà Vu, provides much of the background for my freshman year in college. Unfortunately , for me, the guys whose room was directly above mine were Black Sabbath fans intent on volume. While someone across the quad really seemed to like both the Who’s, Who’s Next, and keeping the windows open with the record player blasting. They’re all in my head somewhere, marked 1971, along with some Dylan, Cat Stevens, Fairport Convention, just brings me back. And I can’t stop myself from mentioning how much I still dislike Neil Young’s whiny voice.
What interested me in 2017 or 2018, however, was not the battle of the bands, but the passage of time. How as we listened to the performance, Steve Stills continued to demonstrate guitar virtuosity. While David Crosby’s vocal chops were amazing, enough so that I kept talking about it for quite a while. And they were playing new songs, new music and talking about craft, and, while not selling millions of records, producing lots of solid work.
When Crosby died this week I did my Spotify thing starting with the Byrds. I’ve linked a Turn, Turn, Turn YouTube video, because I love it, and because all my favorite Dylan songs are covers by other people (You can hate me.) and because the speaker in Ecclesiastes is a cranky old guy who keeps going around and around and concludes that life should be enjoyed. There seems to me to be a connection. I listened to hours of music.
What I am left with two days after Crosby’s passing is simply that the work matters. Doing the work matters regardless of who listens or if no one is listening. We write for ourselves. We sing for ourselves. We clean the house for ourselves. Whatever we are able to do we do for ourselves and should just do it. As we age, the work can be its own source of joy.