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Over the past weekend the radio played songs commemorating the Fourth of July.
Of course one song was Jimi Hendrix's famous Star Spangled Banner. As a teen I thought the song was cool. During my 'believer' years, I wasn't so sure; I thought perhaps the song was a mockery of the "greatest country on earth." (Which I now think is an arrogant statement; yet, I still love my country.)
This past weekend I thought the song was one of the most brilliant versions of the Star Spangled Banner I've ever heard.
Regardless of what musician plays or sings it, each time I hear the Star Spangled Banner, I picture the lawyer, Francis Scott Key, with the physician for whom Keys was sent to negotiate rescue. Both waiting and unable to help peering over the side from the boat in which they waited, harbored in the waters. I imagine both men in deep prayer, hoping with all their hearts that the country and people they love would make it through the night. I imagine them feeling a desperation to help, to treat the wounded, and wanting the incessant madness to cease. Yet they were anchored elsewhere, unable to reach their brothers and sisters. Thus a poem was born in Key's heart, with a burning vision that the tattered flag would stay anchored ashore.
Hendrixs' piece is one of the best pieces to portray that image: the tumultuous and overwhelming emotions, the sounds and lights of cannon fire and war echoing in the dark, laced with heartfelt inner cries of prayer - Key's poem of hope.
War is ugly. War is loud. War maims, destroys, chars, devours. As the saying goes, "there are no atheist in foxholes." (A saying of which I have read is a myth, not a literal. I have to wonder though, who really knows about those last few seconds?)
How can one ever define war and its repercussions? I think Hendrix's version brilliantly portrays that.
I don't know Hendrix's motive for his song; maybe he didn't either. Vietnam was very real at the time of his performance during Woodstock. I imagine his motive was a political statement of the times, regarding war, regarding war's disrespect for life, regarding dirty politics, regarding the controversy of the late 60's.
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note: I realize war also 'frees.' Yet the price is so high. (Just google ptsd and the soldier.) I hope for other ways to negotiate this human dilemma.
War is a Racket by Major General Smedley D. Butler
When PTSD Comes Marching Home by William Rivers Pitt via the radman
costofwar.com by National Priorities Project
Eventually by Carole King: Eventually lyrics
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