Re: Nikki Haley Forgot About Slavery & Joe Rogan Forgot About Facts (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2024 07:52:15 -0800 (PST)
 >
 > and analysis of Paul Simon song

My parents had this album (it also had "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover",
which is why I know those lyrics -- but, notably, never thought of it
possibly having Steve Gadd being the drummer on it), but I never analyzed
the lyrics and never really knew 'em.

I wonder if whatever species takes over from humans millions of years from
now will struggle with the same existential problems.

 >  > From: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar <http://www.substack.com/~kareem>
 >  > Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2024 14:08:45 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > View this post on the web at 
 >  > https://kareem.substack.com/p/nikki-haley-forgot-about-slavery
 >  > 
 >  > What I’m Discussing Today:
 >  > Kareem’s Daily Quote: Paul Simon warns us about the dangers of isolation 
 >  > and the challenges of aging.
 >  > Kareem’s Daily Quote
 >  > Still crazy after all these years.
 >  > Paul Simon, “Still Crazy After All These Years”
 >  > I know this line doesn’t seem like my usual pithy quotes from the likes of 
 >  > Yeats, Shakespeare, Toni Morrison, or Peanuts. But I find this line haunts 
 >  > just as much as the more classical bromides.
 >  > Here’s why the lyric gets me thinking: The song starts with the narrator 
 >  > meeting an old girlfriend and they have a few beers and laugh about old 
 >  > times. He says he’s “still crazy after all these years,” which is what 
 >  > people say when they desperately want to portray themselves as being 
 >  > atypical, unpredictable, spontaneous. No average Joe or Joanne here. Still 
 >  > youthful, still cool, still edgy. Sadly, they never are (or they wouldn’t 
 >  > need to say it).
 >  > In the second stanza, “still crazy after all these years” describes his 
 >  > life as a loner who doesn’t socialize. In the anza, he’s “
 >  > longing his life away.” In the fourth, he sits by a window watching cars, 
 >  > imagining doing some “damage” (to others or himself, we don’t know). 
 >  > Now, “still crazy after all these years” reveals his craziness is that 
 >  > he has wasted his life in isolation (similar to the narrator from Robert 
 >  > Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” which I discussed a few weeks ago). The 
 >  > line means something different each time he mentions it as it moves from the 
 >  > whimsical craziness of youthful shenanigans to the middle-aged craziness of 
 >  > cutting himself off socially, to the old age craziness of not changing his 
 >  > life even though it leads to despair.
 >  > Yet, for me, Simon’s line is cautionary but ultimately hopeful. On one 
 >  > level, “still crazy after all these years” reminds me that I’m never 
 >  > at the place of maturity and wisdom I want to be. I’m in my mid-seventies 
 >  > now and I still have petty thoughts, make stupid mistakes, contradict myself,
 >  >  don’t know things I wish I knew (and promised myself I’d learn), and I 
 >  > consistently don’t accomplish things on my to-do list. There is always 
 >  > that wrinkle of chaos in the fabric of my life that I can never iron smooth.
 >  > On another level, I realize I will probably never reach that comfortable 
 >  > pleather La-Z-Boy throne of satisfaction with myself. That’s good news, 
 >  > because then what would I do? The line “still crazy after all these years� >  > � makes me take stock to ensure that I am always trying to improve myself 
 >  > instead of staring out the window stewing at the damage I might do someday.
 >  > There’s another Paul Simon quote from “I Know What I Know” that I 
 >  > often think about to keep things in perspective when I get frustrated with 
 >  > the world and my inability to accomplish what I want or be the placid zen 
 >  > master I strive for.
 >  > We come and we go
 >  > That's a thing that I keep
 >  > In the back of my head
 >  > “We come and we go” says it all. I may strut and fret my hour upon the 
 >  > stage, but then it’s curtains. Do what you can and not what you can’t. 
 >  > Try to live so that when you leave a room—or even the world—people were 
 >  > happy that you dropped by. That’s a thing I keep in the back of my head.