Waiting for Yellow Ribbons

Searching for the Man

The state of internet search these days is such that it can be hard to find things that — while you don’t know they’re there — you know must be there.

It’s as if the search engines give up after a bit and just show more links to the same videos. Or lyrics sites, in this case. I found myself at the Wikipedia page for answer songs, and idly scrolled through it. Mainly I wondered what they’d say about ‘Here Comes Your Man’, by the Pixies. If you’ve swum in the same pools of the indie/punk/post-punk floodwaters as me, you’ll have long realised that Black Francis must have written that song, in part at least, as an answer to The Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’. (Note the formulation of the title from the first album; many people and versions characterise it as ‘Waiting for My Man’, since that’s what the lyrics say.)

There was no reference to the song on the page. Slightly odd, I thought. I looked at the song’s own page. No reference there to the Velvets or Lou Reed.

If you doubt the connection, just listen to the two songs. There’s the riff on the Pixies song, plus all the references to ‘waiting’ in it, as well as the obviousness of the title. Sure, it’s not only that, or even, really, about ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ in any sense. But it’s unthinkable that the one didn’t inspire the other. Let’s not forget Black Francis wrote, in another song, ‘I wanna be a singer like Lou Reed/I like Lou Reed.’

Others must have written about this, I thought, and started googling around. Well, I use DuckDuckGo, but you know. And I even tried switching to Google. Nothing came up, except for the odd little Reddit post saying, ‘Hey, this song’s a bit like that song.’ Yet you’ve got to imagine — it’s hard not to imagine – people will have written about it. Music journalists, bloggers… hell, I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned it before now.

But nothing turned up. I’m sure those pages are out there, lost for now in the deep pools of the web. But the search engines just don’t want to go there anymore.

Tying Ribbons

I was looking into answer songs because I’d been reading the page on ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree’, and it mentioned there being an answer song.

I was looking at that page because we were talking about the origin of people tying yellow ribbons when they’re waiting for someone to come home. I thought it might have originated with the song. It was certainly the first time most of us here in the UK heard the expression. When Americans festooned buildings with yellow ribbons during the Iran hostage crisis, it seemed like a reference to the song.

But the page suggested the origin is much older, possibly going back to the US civil war. So much for that.

We were talking about yellow ribbons because people are displaying them again: waiting for the remaining hostages in Gaza to be freed.

Israel’s government is doubtless guilty of war crimes, probably crimes against humanity. And October the 7th was a crime against humanity. I’m all for freeing Palestine, but free the hostages too, and if you can get rid of Hamas too while you’re doing it, so much the better.

Free Palestine from Hamas.

Maybe You Can Post Your Way Through Fascism

There was a post about how ‘You can’t post your way out of fascism’ that did the rounds a few weeks ago. I have a feeling it might have done some harm.

I didn’t read it in detail. Saw the headline, skimmed it, got the gist. Resistance to Trump/Muskism and the other right-wing authoritarian risings around the world: it needs more than tweets, toots, blog posts.

Fair enough.

But not everyone can do more, or give more. And even those who can, or could or should: for some of us, writing is not just what we do, it’s what we are. We need to write. And I know I’ve felt some discouragement a few times lately, when I might have written about Trump, or Musk’s nazi salute, or the general horror of things. I’ve thought, ‘Yeah, but “You can’t post your way…"’

I wouldn’t go so far as to say my memory, my knowledge of the existence of that post has stopped me posting. Other things, or a combination of things, have done that. But it’s in there, like a spectre at the writing table, saying, ‘No, this isn’t enough, so you shouldn’t do it.’

That is almost certainly not what the writer intended. But I think it’s unhelpful at best, and may be harmful to some people at worst.

Posting won’t be enough to get us out of fascism, but it might help some people to get through it.

So please, everyone, don’t be discouraged; and don’t stop posting.

Trumpeting

I was shocked, but not exactly surprised, by the US election result. Or no: I was surprised. I think I had somehow internalised that idea that Kamala Harris would win. It seemed unthinkable that Americans would elect Trump again.

But then, it seemed unthinkable that they would elect him the first time.1

We shouldn’t be too surprised though. Among the presidents in my lifetime, we’ve had Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and W Bush. All of them considered to be dangerous warmongering borderline fascists at the time. And/or comical and incompetent choices, to consider Reagan and W Bush, specifically.

Yet America elected all of them (notwithstanding that the popular vote nearly always favoured their Democratic opponent).

Trump, of course, rolls the ills of all of them up into one great ugly package, and adds narcissism on top. And the times could hardly be worse for women in America in particular, with reproductive healthcare under attack with the overturning of Roe v Wade.

What can you do, though? Life goes on. We’ll get through it, except for those of us who don’t.

  1. For some reason I couldn’t find that post when I wrote this, so I said, ‘I’d link to my post from back then, but apparently I didn’t make one. Only a couple before the election and this general one in early 2017. Sometimes it’s all too much to write about.’ But I did write about it, and used the same title as on this post! Oh dear. ↩︎

To the Polls!

And don’t forget your photo ID.

It feels like 97, but I have a niggling fear that we’ve been played and it could still go all 92 on us. Articles like this one: Tories concede defeat with 24 hours until general election polls open, from The Independent yesterday, feel like tactics, more than news.

The intent being, of course, to reduce the anti-Tory turnout (and the overall turnout).

So go and vote. Please. Don’t let these fuckers do any more harm to our country.

One More Week to Hang On

I seem to have largely stopped blogging. Certainly, as a general election approaches, I’ve written nothing publicly about politics.

Consider: in just over a week we could be rid of this appalling Tory government. The Labour one we get in its place (or, just possibly, a coalition) will probably not be much to write home about, but even if its policies are far from perfect, its plans to tax the rich and invest in the country’s infrastructure far weaker than I’d like: things can hardly be worse.

Indeed, they can only get better, right?

I saw Keir Starmer speak at the Fabian Society a few years back. 2020, surprisingly, but January, before the pandemic really got going. He came across there as a thoroughly good and decent, left-wing, progressive guy. I can’t remember anything he said specifically, but it was positive, you know?

Now, he’s generally seen as timid, scared of appearing to be too left-wing, that sort of thing, or worse. While at the same time seemingly fierce at purging the left of the party. And poor on women’s rights, to say nothing of his dealings with women MPs and candidates.

Still, after the shitshow of the last few years, I’ll accept competence, as long as it’s not right-wing competence.

This Scottish MP who’s been ousted by the people for breaking Covid rules: I think this is the first time we’ve had a recall in the UK.

Now, what we need is to have the policy extended to the whole of parliament. Could we get 10% of the electorate to vote to recall the current parliament? Yes. Yes, we could.