My Corona Diary (Take XXXV): It's 2022 Already. Feel Any Different Yet?

 

<"Here's Looking At You, Kid..."/

The Reckoner>

<i.>

Here's a rhetorical question that sums up New Year's Day perfectly for me. One of my Facebook friends asked, "Why do we celebrate merely making it from one end of the calendar to another?" It's a fitting one, especially when you consider how rough the last couple years have been -- from the onset of COVID-19, to the inevitable economic convulsions that accompanied it, and the twilight of the Trump era, as its Dear Leader plotted to hang onto the power that he saw slipping from his grasp (even though 84 million people told him so last November).

The Squawker and I kicked off 2022 in low-key fashion. Amid ominous rumblings of a heavy snowstorm gripping the Midwest, with four to eight inches expected for our area, we ordered an extra large pizza (delivered), and watch the usual barrage of special programs targeted at unwilling shut ins like ourselves. 

Hence, we opted for gentler, quirkier fare during the day, like a marathon of "Crikey! It's The Irwins." Seeing Australia's first family of animal rescue in the cavernously hollow space of their massive zoo was truly surreal, as Steve Irwin's widow, Terri, recounted the challenges of struggling to feed 1,200 animals when the COVID-19 bomb dropped. "Definitely not an experience for the faint-hearted," I told myself.

Our choices got progressively quirkier and darker as the night wore on. I caught the first half of a "Columbo" howcatchem I've seen before, I think -- "Publish Or Perish," featuring Jack Cassidy one of the oiliest, most slippery villains ever to grace the show. 

More commonly identified these days as David Cassidy's/Keith Partirdge's late father, Jack really got around '70s TV, typically playing a heel who's there to get his comeuppance -- but few people played those roles with such zest and relish. (Or, as his Wikipedia bio describes it: "His frequent professional persona was an urbane, witty, confident egotist with a dramatic flair." That's a fair description, I think.)

I wrapped up the night with "Disappeared: Finding Andrea," a four-part look at the disappearance of Andrea Knabel, a single mother of two who -- wait for it -- often volunteered to look for missing persons. "How surreal is that?" I asked Squawker. "How safe can anybody feel, when the finder of missing persons goes missing?"

The Squawker let out a short, sharp sigh, and leaned forward on the couch, where an art project needed closer attention. "I can't believe we're starting three years of this." I didn't have to guess what that last word meant. "I'm waiting till spring, and then, I'm living my life. I can't deal take anymore of this."

It's 2022 already. Feel any different yet? I thought so.

<Setting Sons/The Jam:
Front Cover (1979)*

Meet me on the wastelands - later this day

We'll sit and talk and hold hands maybe

For there's not much else 

to do in this drab and colorless place...

We'll sit amongst the rubber tires

Amongst the discarded bric-a-brac

People have no use for - 

amongst the smoldering embers of yesterday...

<"Wasteland">

<ii.>

It's been awhile since I've referenced a song here from Paul Weller, or the Jam, that band that cast him as a "spokesman for a generation," or something along those lines (not that he encouraged that label, which he publicly disdained). But I find his lyrics as relevant as ever, and "Wasteland" certainly qualifies, even if it's not as mentioned as often as the "biggies" in their back catalog (like "Away From The Numbers," "In The City," "Start!," or "That's Entertainment," for example).

"Wasteland" itself has led something of a checkered existence, closing out side one of the UK edition of Setting Sons (Polydor Records: 1979), the album on which it appeared, but then, shifted to the closing position on side two for the Canadian and US versions. That strikes me as a better idea than the UK version ending with a cover of Martha & The Vandellas' "Heatwave." 

I have no issues with "Heatwave," per se. However, closing on such a bouncy, upbeat note seems a little jarring, especially after the listener has absorbed songs about enforced unemployment ("Smithers-Jones," bassist Bruce Foxton's brilliant songwriting cameo), social apathy ("Burning Sky"), the breakup of friendships ("Thick As Thieves"), the loneliness of suburbia ("Private Hell"), and the tolls of classism ("The Eton Rifles") and war ("Little Boy Soldiers"). So 

Setting Sons marked the Jam's fourth album, one that cemented its position as critical and commercial favorites -- entering the UK charts at #4 on its November 1979 release. "Making that album was an intense business, as we concentrated a lot more on the sound and the arrangements of the songs, and we seemed to do many more takes than we were used to," drummer Rick Buckler observes in his memoir, That's Entertainment: My Life In The Jam (2015). "By the end of the recordings, there were boxes of tapes around the wall of the control room."

"Wasteland" certainly reflects that brief, one that I'd call "the sound of ambitious maturity," perhaps. Start with the title, which reminds me of T.S. Eliot's 434-line epic poem, "The Waste Land." I doubt that Weller intended it that way, since he didn't express enthusiasm for Eliot's work in interviews (unlike, say, George Orwell). 

But the association is hard to escape, anyway, and the theme certainly fits -- of "the decline of the old certainties that had previously held Western society together," according to enotes.com. "This has caused society to break up, and there's to be no going back. All that's left to do is to salvage broken cultural fragments from a vanished past."

That dark and doleful mood dogs the nameless protagonists, "The ones overshadowed by the monolith monstrosities called council homes," who are  caught in some dramatic social catastrophe that's not their fault, and not of their own making, but one they feel powerless to change ("For to be caught smiling is to acknowledge life/A brave but useless show of compassion/And that is forbidden in this drab and colorless world").

It's 2022. Feel any different yet? I thought so.

Meet me later but we'll have to hold hands
Tumble and fall (tumble and falling)
Like our lives (like our lives)
Exactly like our lives

<"Wasteland": Closing lines>

<iii.>

In the end, all that's left for the narrator is to invite his companion -- friend, loved one, or co-conspirator, who knows? -- to somehow look beyond the bleakness of their surroundings ("The holy Coca-Cola tins, the punctured footballs"), and hark back to better times long, long gone, as the song suggests, though there are no guarantees, even of seizing that moment ("We'll sit and probably hold hands"). 

The dominant impression is one of sodden resignation, reinforced by a recorder that floats above the band's signature Who-like power trio thunder. It's an unusual choice, but a great choice, one that manages to make "Wasteland" feel lilting and menacing at the same time. It's a suitable counterpoint to the dour observations that Weller's dishing out, such as: "We'll smile, but only for seconds."

Sounds like what we're going through now, doesn't it? No matter where you cast your eye around the landscape, the fog of uncertainty feels hard to shake -- such as our local hospital, where some two dozen nurses walked off the job last month, or so I heard. Our local church services have abruptly gone back to online-only, after several congregants tested positive for COVID, and forced them into quarantine at home.

I myself dodged a bullet of sorts a couple weeks ago, when I was invited to cover a fair dealing with small cities' infrastructure problems. Long story short, I didn't end up going. I later found out, through the grapevine, that one of the organizers tested came down with COVID.

That news, in turn, forced several people I knew to get themselves tested. Fortunately, nobody reported any ill effects, but the whole business left me redoubling my vows to keep my public distance, both figuratively, and literally.

The big picture news doesn't feel any better. Last month, if you don't already know, Congress approved the final version of our national defense budget. As usual, they did it late at night, when fewer people would pay attention (presumably). As usual, only 51 Democrats, mostly pro-peace progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, voted against it. 

As usual, the final figure ($777.7 billion) wound up way above the initial estimate ($752 billion) that President Biden proposed. (In contrast, Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, spent $740 billion.) "Meanwhile," as progressive Senate candidate Erica Smith notes, "a bill that would dramatically upgrade our climate change response, expand our healthcare system, and build more than one million affordable housing units, is left for dead in the Senate."

Why? Well, essentially, because reactionary greed creeps like Senator Joe Manchin ("D"-WV) don't like it. They'll think you, oh, I don't know. Hoover it up your nose, or something, the same place where they stick that COVID testing swab. 

That's doubtful, but the absurdity of such a premise tempts me to joke: "Look at the bright side, folks. At least they've let us know where we really stand, in the greater scheme of things."

It's 2022 already. Feeling any different yet? Me neither, but I'm ready to pull "Wasteland" back out again, for another few spins. It's at the end of a cassette tape, but you know what? Something tells me, I'd better make the effort. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,
Before The Wasteland Gets Dark):

Al Jazeera: Biden Signs
Enormous US Military Budget Into Law:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/27/biden-signs-enormous-us-military-budget-into-law

Down WIth Tyranny: Guest Post:
Erica Smith: Re-Evaluating Defense:
https://www.downwithtyranny.com/post/do-you-want-congress-to-re-direct-funds-towards-domestic-priorities-instead-of-war-vote-for-that

The Jam: Wasteland (Lyric Video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRvXfVEKgdw

Vox.com: Why The US 
Is Paying More For The Military...:
https://www.vox.com/22840615/us-defense-spending-increase-afghanistan-withdrawal

One Last Blast Of Jam Trivia...

(*Setting Sons's front cover is an Andrew Douglas photo of Benajmin Clemens' 1919 bronze sculpture, The St. Johns Ambulance Bearers, which the band found in keeping with the themes they were exploring, according to Buckler. Yet that choice came with a slight hitch, as he notes: "Sadly, that bronze sculpture has been in long-term storage for many years, so nobody has been able to see it for a long time." Guess that fits the current mood, too, doesn't it?)