“Don't
let the uncertainty turn you around
(The
world keeps turning around and around)
Go
on and make a joyful sound.”—American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, “For a
Dancer,” from his Late for the Sky LP (1974)
For
me—and, I suspect, many other late-stage Baby Boomers—“For a Dancer” helped
shape my musical tastes. Astonishingly, Jackson Browne wrote this
meditation on mortality—a rare topic in the early years of rock ‘n’ roll—while
still only in his mid-twenties.
But
Browne became an adult in the convulsive 1960s, a period of protest and
wide-ranging defiance that did not fade until Richard Nixon’s removal from
office—an event still by no means certain when this singer-songwriter recorded Late
for the Sky.
In
considering the meaning of an individual life, then, Browne could not help but
set it against a larger social framework. But even that more concrete,
earth-bound perspective was rife with ambivalence: “Perhaps a better world is
drawing near/Just as easily, it could all disappear,” he sang plaintively.
What
to do, then? Don’t be paralyzed by lack of faith into inaction or failing to
live in the moment, he advised: “Go on and make a joyful sound.”
Browne’s
lyric resonated even more powerfully recently when I was listening to his 2005 Solo Acoustic Vol. 1 CD than it had when I first heard it as a teen. I am in
the midst of a career transition, at a point when COVID-19 renders this—and even
life itself—as uncertain as I’ve ever known it.
Browne’s
lyric reminded me that I could, like W.H. Auden in his poem on the world on the
brink of WWII, “September 1, 1939,” “Show an affirming flame.” One’s beliefs
and actions matter to others, even when there may be no immediate evidence of
it:
And
somewhere between the time you arrive
And
the time you go
May
lie a reason you were alive
That
you'll never know.
(The
attached photo of Jackson Browne in concert was taken in March 2008 by Craig O’Neal.)
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