Consider “Over the Rainbow.”
Light, fragile, wistful, brimming with yearning and hope, young Dorothy sings about what she knows: Birds, trees, lemon drops and rainbows.
Listeners know the same from our own fragmented memories. Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz heart is full of hope, and we watch her on TV and hear that girlish voice dream her future, and what had once been our own.
It’s the perfect song for children unblemished by life’s rough trade. “Over the Rainbow” is hope captured in a dream, faith never tested, muted joy at life’s great and mysterious miracles that float in the nearby distance.
We listen to these nostalgic sentiments and perhaps watch through lightly moistened eyes as we recall lost dreams that could never have come true. We wince that little Judy, alone on a black-and-white screen, doesn’t know what we know about dreams.
But it could not last. We went ahead and got old, and now it’s our own fault we know too much.
By chance I recently saw an old black-and-white film of a much older Judy Garland singing her most famous song sitting on the edge of a stage, feet dangling, wearing an old raincoat and man’s hat.
At age 55 Judy Garland also knew too much.
From a wizened, weary perspective “Over the Rainbow” remains time-tested: bent, bowed, faded, weathered and torn. Our lives have had happy moments along with bitter memories and the slow realization the lemon drops were props, the chimney a cardboard replica, the dreams a mockery.
And we’ve all had more than a few tragedies. No one has sung us a lullaby in a long, long time. Quite the opposite.
How many soured relationships, how long the parade of brain-splitting hangovers, how many small triumphs, how many lonely nights? How much troubled sleep?
And Over the Rainbow sounds exactly as it should, its bleak soundtrack as strained and honest as ever. Maybe more so. It’s all stale memories and the weary realization that the song’s promises were hollow from the start.
The film clip ends and Judy Garland stands and walks back across the darkened stage and slips through curtains. I don’t remember if there was applause. It would have been nice had there been appreciative clapping, and altogether fitting if there were none.
I can think of no other song that can do what Over the Rainbow does. Rarely does a bright shiny message allow itself to be realigned and delivered as a bleak, heartbreaking lesson in life.
How To Not Get Old
Many of my younger readers (those below age 55) are disturbed at seeing elders around Ukiah staggering from the pharmacy to the doctor’s office to the Senior Center, confused, dressed in peculiar outfits, and wonder how in the world they themselves can avoid the curse of growing old.
Good question, and one that every generation confronts.
TWK has a few tips on how to not become one of those sad, smelly fellas who can’t button his shirt and can’t find the car keys because the kids sold his ’97 Oldsmobile eight years ago.
Any of the following will keep you from getting old:
1) Spectacular motorcycle wreck at age 20.
2) Single Payer health insurance. By the time you get to the front of the line you’ll already be dead.
3) Take a job with the Hells Angels.
4) Take a job with the Hells Angels as an undercover FBI informant.
5) Develop an interest in illicit street drugs, beginning with the single-dose Fentanyl starter kit.
Ozone Alert!
Recently in North Carolina I’ve had a dozen or more “Severe Weather Alert” warning messages on my phone. To quote:
“…Ground level Ozone concentrations within the region may approach or exceed unhealthy standards. For additional information…”
Well good on us! Nonstop media reports in the 1980s and ‘90s (and never updated) told us we were burning holes in the Ozone Layer all over the globe. Once the ozone layer was gone there’d be no replenishing it.
We were all going to roast and die because ultraviolet light and other solar-based death rays would quickly fry us. But now there’s too much ozone? Ozone is now a health problem?
Whee! Let’s party!
And remember: Of the past seven planetary catastrophes, leftwing “scientists” have predicted 683.
you besmirch science. Shows how ignorant you are.
Over the rainbow was a miserable song, actually depicting how sad and empty the singer’s life really was, needing to wallow in fantasy of a better like.
Enjoy what you have now for soon it and you will be gone.
Ozone at ground level is a pollutant. As a thin layer in the upper atmosphere, it provides a protective shield. Unfiltered solar radiation can be lethal. Note the UV readings of late are often in the danger zone. That’s not a prediction.