Too much caffeine yesterday, I slept little last night.  Today is another day.  Like everyone else, a creature of habit, I begin my day with a cup of coffee.  I know better, but here I am at Starbucks.

Happened to hear this song playing on the radio:  The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix.  Hendrix was a master artist, poet, and a guitar “god.”  Like all of us “he knew more than he could say.”  Layers of meaning are beneath the surface of the chord structure and the lyrics.  The song is an incantation.  It is an ode to the eternal return of history: The more things change, the more they remain the same.  What appears to be progress is in fact, recurrence.  I cannot prove this.  My deeper instinct, the a-rational part of me declares this is so.

The wine country of California continues to burn, the proximate cause, a extreme dry season, in turn caused by global warming.  Military maneuvers of the air forces of the United States, South Korea, and Japan were held along the Korean peninsula.  Could this be precursor to war?  Yes.  And the wind cries Mary……..

My thoughts about the lyrics are simply that the poetry penned in 1967 has a universal meaning, and thus a  contemporary application.

“Jacks in boxes and clowns all gone to bed” are the endlessly bloviating media pundits, one click away or just a swipe away on everyone’s cell phone news feed.  Just noise heard above “happiness staggering on down the street.” Happiness staggering on down the street, the demise of well being –is real.

Broken pieces of yesterdays life, swept up……  A king and a queen who have lost each other, and by extension their role as responsible caretaker of a society and a people.  These lines are easy.  There’s no one of presidential stature and gravitas in the White House.  We wistfully look back with nostalgia at the last president and his predecessors.

“Traffic lights turning blue” a surreal world in which reality no longer makes sense.   “The tiny island sags down stream; Cause the life that lived is, is dead…”    Puerto Rico.

The last verse pronounces the judgment of old age, a geriatric society in slo-mo decrepitude.

Yet a recurring note of hope arises in all of this melancholy.  It is the name, Mary, which the wind continues to bring to the poet.  Mary was the name of Hendrix’ girlfriend.  Hendrix holds on to the palpable link with one person who truly cares for him.  He certainly cares for her.  Is not what is real anchored by those who are most immediate, and who undoubtedly care for us?

Here is Jimi Hendrix.

 

“The Wind Cries Mary”

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street footprints dressed in red

And the wind whispers Mary

A broom is drearily sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterdays life
Somewhere a queen is weeping
Somewhere a king has no wife

And the wind, it cries Mary

The traffic lights, they turn, uh, blue tomorrow
And shine their emptiness down on my bed
The tiny island sags down stream
Cause the life that lived is, is dead

And the wind screams Mary

Uh-will the wind ever remember the names it has blow in the past?
And with this crutch, its old age
And its wisdom it whispers, “No, this will be the last”

And the wind cries Mary