Lightening Up by Gently Weeping

UPDATE: Please check this video, as George Harrison's has been taken down:

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I've thought about Michael's suggestion that I "lighten up" a little in my blogging.

Regular readers of American Power know that I've got a love for laughs, and I routinely deploy both light-hearted humor and bitter sarcasm in my posting.

Still, the point's well taken, and I thought a good way to break away from my work of rebutting the nihilist left is to periodically offer musical videos and related personal histories (as other blogging buddies have recommended).

Yet, you might find it counterintuitive that I'm beginning a series on "Lightening Up" with a George Harrison song that's deeply serious, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," but that's me - I often find release in the profound of sound:

The video's from the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. Here are the lyrics, in part:

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it need sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don't know why nobody told you
how to unfold you love
I don't know how someone controlled you
they bought and sold you

I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps....

I remember when Harrison passed away in 2001, one of the obituaries I read - I can't remember which one, probably in the Los Angeles Times - noted that as great as Harrison was, his achievements might have been overshadowed or underappreciated because he was surrounded by the towering musical achievements of his other bandmates in The Beatles.

That thought's always in my mind when I hear Harrison on the radio, because some of his songs are the deepest of the era.

Music, you see, for me - and no doubt many others - is more than about grooving, laughing, and listening, it's a way for me to go back in time when I was younger and indeed more carefree.

I've only told a couple of my blog buds that I have a hearing impairment, a result of a catastrophic skull fracture I sustained when I was twenty one. The temporal bones in my skull crushed the auditory nerves on both sides of my face, and for some time I couldn't hear.

I prayed, and I cursed - and I cried.

But some hearing returned to me, thank God. It's a miracle really, but I think that when something likes this happens, it's a life altering experience: One learns to never underappreciated God's gifts, of familiy, friends, health, opportunity, and, well, everyday joy - "With every mistake we must surely be learning."

One of my biggest joys when I was young was music. I was an active competitive skateboarder (here's my former friend and idol, Steve Olson), and I was into the Hollywood music scene for some time.

Music's always a way for me to cut loose, and be grateful.

In any case, I'll have more recollections later, but at least you can see how, actually, reminiscing about my old times in music, skateboarding, or reflections on The Beatles allows me to lighten up a bit. It allows me as well to share why it is that I'm a serious person when it comes cherishing our freedoms, and defending them as best I can, through my blogging and teaching, from the revolutionary forces who would indeed take away much of what we have.

Remind me, dear readers, to share my miscellaneous thoughts from time to time, will you?

That will be a good thing, a light thing.