A Country That Can’t Sing

I found this among some notes that I had written in 2010. Sadly, they are more true today in 2020 than then.

“The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word ‘free’ to a note so high nobody can reach it.”  From Tony Kushner’s, Angels in America.

I heard this on XM radio today and it struck me that, more and more, and at a seemingly  exponential rate of growth, this country is losing its ability to sing harmony. Forget hitting the high notes, we don’t even reach for them. This is so true that when someone does sing the original notes, they sound queer and even off key.  Rather than a land of the” free and the home of the brave” we are rapidly devolving into a nation of religious intolerance led by cowards who hide behind the rights garnered and protected by brave men and women who understood both the words and the spirit of the score.

As a friend of the family said after church last Sunday, “Some musicians play the notes, others play the music.”