Your writing is breathtaking. Your words carve out a niche in both heart and mind then fill those spaces with . . .something. And yet (probably because of this), I have to prepare myself, steel myself, to read what you write. You knock me off center, Sarah. You pull up blinds, clean the glass. Provide meaning and context and change the way I look at life in the country I was born into 69 years ago. I do not find you easy to read, but I am grateful for every word.
i find it refreshing to read - so few write/speak the truth if reality. i have to go back and reread - several statements so telling of current times. i feel less lonely when i see others in the comments relating too
Well said my friend. Sarah is a valuable treasure and we are quite fortunate to have the privilege of reading, contemplating and supporting her labor of love. Be well .
Your attitude and writing, it seems to me, sums up life in the US of A. You hold on to the ideals and aspirations (that have rarely been realized) while navigating through the everyday apathy and casual cruelty of the place. It's amazing how you've formed such a level headed view of the country while living within it. I only achieved clarity after observing it from without when I left during the Reagan years. A friend summed it up once when he reacted to someone calling the US a melting pot; he said "more like a pressure cooker". Oh, and the 60s weren't really that sunny to those of us who lived through them. I was one of those you refer to as " hippies", a term we would never have used, and despite exuberance and hope that things were changing, our reality was assassination of MLK and RFK, brutally suppressed ghetto revolts, pollution, and hanging over it all was the senseless war in Vietnam. Thank you for continuing to call out the Mafia state for what it is.
I was six-years-old when Ode to Billy Joe charted. What a haunting song. Yes, the 60s and the Summer of Love were in part a time of exuberance, a generation finding ways to shake off the oppressive conformity of the 50s, but they were also a time of protest and taking risks calling out the status quo. That energy and courage was absorbed by the mid 70s, and the potential for this country to reach its ideals was lost. I write here on climate change and overshoot, forces far greater than human ambitions fated to be destroyed by both, and despise the passivity and ignorance I see in Americans today. It's alienating, perhaps similar to the alienation Bobbie Gentry felt. Thanks for the thoughtful essay, as usual.
My god, Sarah, you are finding your voice ever more clearly, month by month, year by year. Hacking a path through the brambles choking the way out of the miasma of our own swamp, a fetid swamp passing as 'respectability'. That song got turned up every time it made the radio playlist of the day, and it just soaked in. But then I had the great gift of an irremediable tragedy in my own story; I know some things not commonly known as a result. So, it seems, do you. Your voice is challenging and strengthening mine, for what i don't yet know.
"...every day is the 3rd of June", and in shades of having the tragedy of every chapter of Wendell Berry's "Hannah Coulter" find me, I am rent to tears over the ever-rolling tragedy of us, now. Think I'll drop in to my neighborhood vintage record store. I'll bet he's got a copy of Bobby Gentry in the bins. And to you, thanks. Hold fast.
Daring to notice comes with such a heavy cost! But we must bear that cost, and not only continue daring to notice, but calling others in relentlessly to notice, too. Maybe then the burden on each of us noticers will grow a little lighter, and maybe the horror itself will begin to fade. Let us share the noticing together NOW, as a collective determined to lean toward and amplify love and compassion for all going forward.
I have been called pessimistic and cynical which are descriptors I reject in terms of my self. If anything I am a realist which is why I like Sarah’s columns and books so much. She tells us ALL of what she sees.
I like your comment about love and compassion. I have gotten to the point where I can even see Donald Trump with compassion. Reading about his childhood tells me everything I need to know about him as an adult. Even so I am certainly not in favour of such a person being in a position of responsibility and power. He belongs somewhere where he cannot harm others with the cruelty that has overtaken his beingness.
Rather than complaining and grousing about him, it would be way more useful for us ask how a person like this happens. Is there a flaw in our culture, our economic, social, and political systems? We keep looking “out there” for answers. Maybe “in here” is a better place to start. Indigenous people tell us that we need “healing” rather than “fixing”. I agree. None of us raised in WesternThink are psychologically healthy.
The beautiful thing about lasting art it can mean something different in the moment. From a "victims" standpoint, love, empathy, hopes, dreams are being tossed over in despair. From an "abusers" standpoint, freedom, privacy, human dignity, inalienable rights are being tossed over for their sick demented self-worth. Meanwhile good people are just trying to get by on a few biscuit crumbs and not let indifferent crush their spirit.
Memories ... "The times they are a changin' " sang Dylan - but have they, really? So many good lyricists with an uncanny sense of timing and even, dare I say it, prophesy or perhaps just insight.
Music and lyrics have enhanced my life, bringing me pleasure but also painful realisation of circumstance, tragedy, manipulation, inequity, contrivance and more. They've taught me much.
Was Bobby Gentry "out of time", as the Jagger sang or out of place - a south cursed with bigotry and hatred ... now being replicated by a jackass in the White house ...
Who will be the Bobby Gentry or Dylan or Jagger to write the lyrics that record these times and awaken the consciences and urge for justice, truth, peace and community that has somehow got lost along the way?
can't think offhand of any popular songwriters dealing with today's issues, and there's nobody looking forward to the dystopian future. seems like popular music is mired in nostalgia and other forms of looking backward, and the orange maniac senses advantage in blasting people like springsteen, who wrote his most enduring songs 45 years ago.
The moment when Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs sang her "Fast Car" together at the Grammy's broke the ice on my heart, and then broke my heart, that long moment of could-have-been. https://youtu.be/pLfH9HSUyf4?si=eQrSyAqdIiWuh229
I've tried .... but, the end result is probably too angry, harsh and specific for anyone to listen to for enjoyment or escape. I ain't giving up though ...
Few current artists risk sticking their necks out for fear of losing their revenue stream. Add to that the wave of hate and vitriol that quickly builds and there aren't many that can withstand that sort of pressure.
Is singing, writing poems, creating art going to ever change us? I think these things may illuminate our times, but historically it seems to change very little. The problems seem to go on in one form or another. Historically we don’t seem to be any farther down the road to peace, happiness, health, serenity, acceptance of one another than we were in the Middle Ages. We’ve made technolgical “progress”, yet something certainly seems to be missing still. it must be something else we need to focus on in order to really shift us from the trail we keep going down to one that is healthier. Common wisdom still thinks we can fix systems that will never be fixable. Time to take a radical leap into a different perspective.
First a word of thanks for another outstanding essay on a subject that is integrally linked to both our past and present in America. How we grieve when grief is ignored and/or unacceptable and how women are to be controlled not encouraged or celebrated.
I loved Bobbie Gentry's music as a young man still in Jr. High and High School and was baffled when she disappeared from the scene. Having lived long before search engines and internet I know how all we often knew about people and especially celebrities was what got reported in print and tv/radio. I recall watching her with Glen Campbell and hearing her songs on AM radio and records but didn't think much about her after she chose to disappear except when Ode To Billy Joe or Fancy came on the radio. Then in 2009 Jill Sobule put out a song called Where is Bobbie Gentry and I used the now ubiquitous Google and learned some of how and why she decided to drop out so to speak. Sadly Sobule recently died in a house fire but I'm sure she went through a lot of the same BS Gentry did and could relate. I'm sure we could both think of a far too long list of female performers who got treated the same way (Taylor Swift anyone? Beuller? Bueller?) and continue to be every day.
Anyway, great writing and great thinking and sharing Sarah. And don't doubt that I fully realize you get the same B.S. treatment as Bobbie.
Thank you! I just read how Sobule died — that is AWFUL. I wrote this article months ago, before Sobule died, waiting for June 3 to publish, and I’m kind of freaked out by one of the metaphorical lines I wrote early in this piece. What a tragedy. RIP to Jill Sobule.
OMG! I was listening to Stephanie Miller a few weeks ago and she was so emotional over the recent loss of her friend, Jill Sobule. I was not familiar with her. I was 10 when “Ode to Billie Joe” came out and always loved Bobbie Gentry, “one of the first female artists in the US to compose and produce her own material.” Yet another female #TrailBlazer who was never properly recognized. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Sad!
Taylor Swift’s music was banned by a Philly radio station until after the Super Bowl. They apparently felt betrayed, “ she turned her back on us.” Why? Because she’s in a relationship with a Kansas City Chiefs player. It wasn’t enough that she came from PA and supported the Eagles. Punishment and humiliation for a successful woman and her fans. Ask me if the station manager answered my blistering email…
Wow, bringing back some memories,. I was 13 and I remember listening to her song over and over. The comparisons and how they relate to present times is both mind blowing and depressing. Still hoping for peace. 👩🏻🦳🌈
Then make yourself at home." -- R. Frost, "Directive"
And sometimes, two fiercely independent artists find each other at the height of a lost country, their inspired work grading (not fading) generously into each other's. :)
Thank you again, Sarah, for putting up the Closed sign only after inviting us into the welcoming home of your imagination.
Anytime anyone asks me, when’s your birthday, I always reply “it was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty, delta day” even though I was born in the damp, mossy PNW. I was thirteen when it came out and I claimed it as my own. Thank you for this beautiful b-day present!
I somehow lost the comment I was writing to you, so I’ll just say this: thank you Sarah, for reminding us that we have not collectively grieved. Instead, we have moved in to passivity and apathy, as politicians tell us to move on. This touches my heart in a way I cannot express, and I believe it to be true. Whenever I let myself grieve our horrible KKK past, it’s almost debilitating. During George Floyd, I thought we could get caught up on our wrongs to blacks as a nation. Tried to have conversations. No one I was friends with wanted to talk to me. I felt alone, and eventually went on “living.”
Beautiful writing Sarah, an ode for today. I'll never forget this song – the ever-deepening grooves in my vinyl 45 at the time etched grooves in my heart that remain today. Thank you for writing this!
Your writing is breathtaking. Your words carve out a niche in both heart and mind then fill those spaces with . . .something. And yet (probably because of this), I have to prepare myself, steel myself, to read what you write. You knock me off center, Sarah. You pull up blinds, clean the glass. Provide meaning and context and change the way I look at life in the country I was born into 69 years ago. I do not find you easy to read, but I am grateful for every word.
Thank you very much!
I feel the same way. So hard to read. But I am hungry for this truth at the same time. Sometimes I don’t have the courage. Keep writing.
i find it refreshing to read - so few write/speak the truth if reality. i have to go back and reread - several statements so telling of current times. i feel less lonely when i see others in the comments relating too
Well said my friend. Sarah is a valuable treasure and we are quite fortunate to have the privilege of reading, contemplating and supporting her labor of love. Be well .
Yes. Sarah, your writing exposes me to my hypocrisy and my ignorance, and exposes the willfulness of my ignorance.
The stunning thing about you is your fidelity to morality and human kindness. *Everyone* is cutting corners on those, except you.
Thank you.
Thank you
Your attitude and writing, it seems to me, sums up life in the US of A. You hold on to the ideals and aspirations (that have rarely been realized) while navigating through the everyday apathy and casual cruelty of the place. It's amazing how you've formed such a level headed view of the country while living within it. I only achieved clarity after observing it from without when I left during the Reagan years. A friend summed it up once when he reacted to someone calling the US a melting pot; he said "more like a pressure cooker". Oh, and the 60s weren't really that sunny to those of us who lived through them. I was one of those you refer to as " hippies", a term we would never have used, and despite exuberance and hope that things were changing, our reality was assassination of MLK and RFK, brutally suppressed ghetto revolts, pollution, and hanging over it all was the senseless war in Vietnam. Thank you for continuing to call out the Mafia state for what it is.
Thank you, and that pressure cooker analogy is right on
Great observation.
A pressure cooker with an often defective relief valve also unfortunately.
I was six-years-old when Ode to Billy Joe charted. What a haunting song. Yes, the 60s and the Summer of Love were in part a time of exuberance, a generation finding ways to shake off the oppressive conformity of the 50s, but they were also a time of protest and taking risks calling out the status quo. That energy and courage was absorbed by the mid 70s, and the potential for this country to reach its ideals was lost. I write here on climate change and overshoot, forces far greater than human ambitions fated to be destroyed by both, and despise the passivity and ignorance I see in Americans today. It's alienating, perhaps similar to the alienation Bobbie Gentry felt. Thanks for the thoughtful essay, as usual.
Thank you for reading! It's incredible how the song not only holds up now but probably will for my children's generation too, and their children.
it's stephen foster-level great
"In America, every day is the 3rd of June."
My god, Sarah, you are finding your voice ever more clearly, month by month, year by year. Hacking a path through the brambles choking the way out of the miasma of our own swamp, a fetid swamp passing as 'respectability'. That song got turned up every time it made the radio playlist of the day, and it just soaked in. But then I had the great gift of an irremediable tragedy in my own story; I know some things not commonly known as a result. So, it seems, do you. Your voice is challenging and strengthening mine, for what i don't yet know.
"...every day is the 3rd of June", and in shades of having the tragedy of every chapter of Wendell Berry's "Hannah Coulter" find me, I am rent to tears over the ever-rolling tragedy of us, now. Think I'll drop in to my neighborhood vintage record store. I'll bet he's got a copy of Bobby Gentry in the bins. And to you, thanks. Hold fast.
Thank you. I'm trying! 💔
Thank you, as always.
Daring to notice comes with such a heavy cost! But we must bear that cost, and not only continue daring to notice, but calling others in relentlessly to notice, too. Maybe then the burden on each of us noticers will grow a little lighter, and maybe the horror itself will begin to fade. Let us share the noticing together NOW, as a collective determined to lean toward and amplify love and compassion for all going forward.
That's my dream, anyway.
Agree!
Elizabeth,
I have been called pessimistic and cynical which are descriptors I reject in terms of my self. If anything I am a realist which is why I like Sarah’s columns and books so much. She tells us ALL of what she sees.
I like your comment about love and compassion. I have gotten to the point where I can even see Donald Trump with compassion. Reading about his childhood tells me everything I need to know about him as an adult. Even so I am certainly not in favour of such a person being in a position of responsibility and power. He belongs somewhere where he cannot harm others with the cruelty that has overtaken his beingness.
Rather than complaining and grousing about him, it would be way more useful for us ask how a person like this happens. Is there a flaw in our culture, our economic, social, and political systems? We keep looking “out there” for answers. Maybe “in here” is a better place to start. Indigenous people tell us that we need “healing” rather than “fixing”. I agree. None of us raised in WesternThink are psychologically healthy.
I loved that song as a kid — probably because of the film. Thanks for this meticulously researched history. Bobbie Gentry is an inspiration.
I always assumed that it was a fetus that was thrown off the bridge, don’t know why.
The beautiful thing about lasting art it can mean something different in the moment. From a "victims" standpoint, love, empathy, hopes, dreams are being tossed over in despair. From an "abusers" standpoint, freedom, privacy, human dignity, inalienable rights are being tossed over for their sick demented self-worth. Meanwhile good people are just trying to get by on a few biscuit crumbs and not let indifferent crush their spirit.
Memories ... "The times they are a changin' " sang Dylan - but have they, really? So many good lyricists with an uncanny sense of timing and even, dare I say it, prophesy or perhaps just insight.
Music and lyrics have enhanced my life, bringing me pleasure but also painful realisation of circumstance, tragedy, manipulation, inequity, contrivance and more. They've taught me much.
Was Bobby Gentry "out of time", as the Jagger sang or out of place - a south cursed with bigotry and hatred ... now being replicated by a jackass in the White house ...
Who will be the Bobby Gentry or Dylan or Jagger to write the lyrics that record these times and awaken the consciences and urge for justice, truth, peace and community that has somehow got lost along the way?
can't think offhand of any popular songwriters dealing with today's issues, and there's nobody looking forward to the dystopian future. seems like popular music is mired in nostalgia and other forms of looking backward, and the orange maniac senses advantage in blasting people like springsteen, who wrote his most enduring songs 45 years ago.
The moment when Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs sang her "Fast Car" together at the Grammy's broke the ice on my heart, and then broke my heart, that long moment of could-have-been. https://youtu.be/pLfH9HSUyf4?si=eQrSyAqdIiWuh229
Check out Jesse Welles, a young topical songwriter.
I've tried .... but, the end result is probably too angry, harsh and specific for anyone to listen to for enjoyment or escape. I ain't giving up though ...
Few current artists risk sticking their necks out for fear of losing their revenue stream. Add to that the wave of hate and vitriol that quickly builds and there aren't many that can withstand that sort of pressure.
Roger,
Is singing, writing poems, creating art going to ever change us? I think these things may illuminate our times, but historically it seems to change very little. The problems seem to go on in one form or another. Historically we don’t seem to be any farther down the road to peace, happiness, health, serenity, acceptance of one another than we were in the Middle Ages. We’ve made technolgical “progress”, yet something certainly seems to be missing still. it must be something else we need to focus on in order to really shift us from the trail we keep going down to one that is healthier. Common wisdom still thinks we can fix systems that will never be fixable. Time to take a radical leap into a different perspective.
One of your best, thanks.
Thank you! I get nervous writing about someone I admire. It’s easier to write about the many folks I dislike ;) Glad you liked it!
First a word of thanks for another outstanding essay on a subject that is integrally linked to both our past and present in America. How we grieve when grief is ignored and/or unacceptable and how women are to be controlled not encouraged or celebrated.
I loved Bobbie Gentry's music as a young man still in Jr. High and High School and was baffled when she disappeared from the scene. Having lived long before search engines and internet I know how all we often knew about people and especially celebrities was what got reported in print and tv/radio. I recall watching her with Glen Campbell and hearing her songs on AM radio and records but didn't think much about her after she chose to disappear except when Ode To Billy Joe or Fancy came on the radio. Then in 2009 Jill Sobule put out a song called Where is Bobbie Gentry and I used the now ubiquitous Google and learned some of how and why she decided to drop out so to speak. Sadly Sobule recently died in a house fire but I'm sure she went through a lot of the same BS Gentry did and could relate. I'm sure we could both think of a far too long list of female performers who got treated the same way (Taylor Swift anyone? Beuller? Bueller?) and continue to be every day.
Anyway, great writing and great thinking and sharing Sarah. And don't doubt that I fully realize you get the same B.S. treatment as Bobbie.
Thank you! I just read how Sobule died — that is AWFUL. I wrote this article months ago, before Sobule died, waiting for June 3 to publish, and I’m kind of freaked out by one of the metaphorical lines I wrote early in this piece. What a tragedy. RIP to Jill Sobule.
OMG! I was listening to Stephanie Miller a few weeks ago and she was so emotional over the recent loss of her friend, Jill Sobule. I was not familiar with her. I was 10 when “Ode to Billie Joe” came out and always loved Bobbie Gentry, “one of the first female artists in the US to compose and produce her own material.” Yet another female #TrailBlazer who was never properly recognized. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Sad!
Taylor Swift’s music was banned by a Philly radio station until after the Super Bowl. They apparently felt betrayed, “ she turned her back on us.” Why? Because she’s in a relationship with a Kansas City Chiefs player. It wasn’t enough that she came from PA and supported the Eagles. Punishment and humiliation for a successful woman and her fans. Ask me if the station manager answered my blistering email…
Wow, bringing back some memories,. I was 13 and I remember listening to her song over and over. The comparisons and how they relate to present times is both mind blowing and depressing. Still hoping for peace. 👩🏻🦳🌈
Brilliant commentary/reflection...and because we are all proper people, we just move on. Thank you.
I think we just move on because the next cruel outrage is not just likely, it's assured. It has us eternally teetering between grief and girding.
we've seen this movie before.
"The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home." -- R. Frost, "Directive"
And sometimes, two fiercely independent artists find each other at the height of a lost country, their inspired work grading (not fading) generously into each other's. :)
Thank you again, Sarah, for putting up the Closed sign only after inviting us into the welcoming home of your imagination.
https://www.robertfrost.org/directive.jsp
Anytime anyone asks me, when’s your birthday, I always reply “it was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty, delta day” even though I was born in the damp, mossy PNW. I was thirteen when it came out and I claimed it as my own. Thank you for this beautiful b-day present!
Haha — I love that! And happy birthday!
I somehow lost the comment I was writing to you, so I’ll just say this: thank you Sarah, for reminding us that we have not collectively grieved. Instead, we have moved in to passivity and apathy, as politicians tell us to move on. This touches my heart in a way I cannot express, and I believe it to be true. Whenever I let myself grieve our horrible KKK past, it’s almost debilitating. During George Floyd, I thought we could get caught up on our wrongs to blacks as a nation. Tried to have conversations. No one I was friends with wanted to talk to me. I felt alone, and eventually went on “living.”
Love you, Sarah 💕
Beautiful writing Sarah, an ode for today. I'll never forget this song – the ever-deepening grooves in my vinyl 45 at the time etched grooves in my heart that remain today. Thank you for writing this!