The vulnerability of demagogues
I watched Questlove’s 50 years of SNL music history on Monday night at a friend’s house. I was 15 years old when the first episode aired. I realize it was radical television but hadn’t understood the groundbreaking thinking and eclectic music it introduced me to over the years.
Songs of freedom, songs of resistance, songs of transformation. Prince was not Prince when he sang PartyUp on SNL then stormed off stage singing: You’re gonna have to fight your own damn war / ‘Cause we don’t wanna fight no more. He was singing the same battle cry of Bob Marley’s War – War in the east, war in the west / war up north, war down south / war, war, rumours of war and Edwin Starr’s War – War, huh, yeah / What is it good for? / Absolutely nothing, uhh.
War then and now was not the answer.
I want to go back in my thoughts and see if this was groundbreaking when I watched it, see if I felt the energy of a revolution on TV, when I think back, I can recreate the feeling of excitement but I didn’t see it back then as transformative, as counter culture, as risky and new thinking.
It seems new only in hindsight.
When I was a young girl and the world was on fire all around me, I did not fully understand what was happening and what might happen next. There was the threat of a nuclear missile from Russia, there was the horror of the Vietnam War, there was Cambodia, Watergate – so much blowing up all around. Today, I’m a woman, the world is on fire again – demagogues running countries and resistance rising as the only true part of our shared history.
A half century after SNL launched, I have lived many lives through many relationships, through different cities, through too many demagogues and the only peace I have known is the one I have cultivated inside me. If there is a trend to point to, the nearer we get to the turnstile of change, things fall apart and happen at a clip, and you cannot fight the change that is coming, but rest assured, you will be part of the good things that are created.
