…with longing and wistful hopelessness, he parted from her reluctantly, out into the cold darkness. The bejeweled stars of Orion dipped headlong into the sea, and the night air made him shiver. Sometimes, the right song plays at the right moment, crystallizing a brief memory, forever remembered half-wrong and askew. But he remembers her smile.
And through the rest of his life he carried that memory with him in his heart, though he never saw her again, nor heard from her, not knowing if she had found that happiness she sought, or if she was even still alive. But that moment stayed with him….
"Falling Slowly" by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It’s time that you won
I haven’t made up my mind if I’m going to stay or if I’m going to go. The reasons for going are obvious. The reasons for staying are not so clear, but in brief moments, they are incredibly compelling.
How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?
Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.
It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.
This song by Wyclef Jean, Akon, Lil Wayne, and Niia seems pretty straight-forward: it’s about a girl who seemed to have it all together in high school: all the guys dug her, she was in sports, and did well in school. But she ends up having to become a prostitute, in order that she and her kid can survive.
"Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" by Wyclef Jean featuring Akon and Lil Wayne and introducing Niia
But the original video makes the matter more complicated. Set in a refugee camp (recalling Wyclef’s affiliation with the Fugees), it features a woman who is awaiting deportation to her home country. And it got me thinking about all those women who longed to escape the land of their birth because of patriarchal tyranny, or straight-up abuse. About all the women who got sold the American Dream. Who made it to these shores and found out the hard way that “cash rules everything around me.”
And how global capitalism has reduced everything into dollars and cents, even things like the value of human life, or the importance of family, or even pieces of irreplaceable culture.
More interesting, I can reinterpret the song as a cautionary tale. As the American economy slides head-long into the toilet, and as the vaunted “dollar, dollar bill” becomes more and more worthless, it becomes a metaphor for the devaluation of things that weren’t ever measured in dollars and cents. The refugee camps reminds me of the raging immigration debate, as xenophobes seek to shut the gates and wall off the borders, with the effect of further devaluing human life. The fact that it’s “cash” (and not, say, Visa or American Express) that rules everything makes me think of the rising pre-eminence of the underground economy, trafficking in drugs and sex. And it makes me wonder if this is the bleak future W and his cronies is leaving the new generations of Americans, where turning tricks becomes an economic necessity in order to survive.