Rock and Roll — and Life

Kevin Fennell: Rock Critic, Singer, Aesthetic Realism Associate

One Person and All People: “Dancing in the Street”

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Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

In May 1970, Eli Siegel, the founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, said that we had reached a crucial point in history where economics based on exploiting people for profit had finally failed and would never recover because of the deep objection in people to the ill will on which it is based. He said:

This is the greatest victory of good will in history. So far in the history of the world, the question has been, how long, O Lord, how long? There has been an answer this month. If people knew it, they would be dancing in the street.

I believe we are closer to the day when people will know it. And when that time comes, I think it’s safe to say that this will be heard, frequently and LOUD:

This great 1964 Motown recording by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, written and produced by William “Mickey” Stevenson, Ivy Jo Hunter and Marvin Gaye, thrills us when we hear it and makes us want to get up and move because of the way it puts together opposites – wildness and precision, concentration and expansion, and the exhilaration of one person happily joining with many. “All beauty” Eli Siegel stated in the central principle of Aesthetic Realism, “is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

Right at the beginning, the drums (played wonderfully by Marvin Gaye) launch us into the song with tremendous insistence—one clean, loud beat followed by a roll of three–that is so bold, immediate and abrupt that it wakes us up and tosses us out in the middle of the street where the dancing has already begun and the party is underway. Already, the band is churning out that irresistible rhythm; with drums hitting heavy on the second and fourth beats of each measure. As guitars alternate back and forth between two closely related chords, you get the feeling of people dancing, shifting their bodies’ weight from one foot to the other and back again. And the bass guitar (played by the great James Jamerson), insisting on that heavy tonic note, also seems to dance, because of the double and triple-plucking he does on the first and third beats.

And then, in between each beat (on the “upswing’ as you might call it) there is a strange sound which I learned is a tap on the head of a tambourine played through an echo effect which gives the whole driving rhythm a feeling of lift. Meanwhile, the baritone sax plays that low, buzzy, sliding-up-from-below sound at the outset of every other measure that also lifts you off your feet, while the horns play a celebratory flourish that sounds like a glorious announcement; five short notes followed by one long note: ba ba, ba-da-la daaaaaaaaa. Taken all together, we have heaviness and lightness at once—also something very concentrated and immediate, together with sounds that expand and reach out.  All of what I just said is in the first 8 seconds. Think you can hear it and be satisfied just sitting in a chair? Don’t lie!

Now Martha Reeves enters with that voice which is at once so concentrated, so individual, well-honed, and at the same time goes out across space, very much in keeping with her first words,

Callin’ out around the world,
Are you ready for a brand new beat?
Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street!

Then lead and backup singers are heard together: “They’re dancing in Chic-aaaa-go-o” [“Dancin’ in the street”], “Down in New Orleans [“Dancin’ in the street”], “In New York City” [“Dancin’ in the street”]—and we get a sense of one person encouraging many people while many people support one person.

Then the music widens out with the first new chord change as Reeves joyfully proclaims, “All we need is music…” and the backup singers answer again with staccato phrases “Sweet, sweet. Sweet, sweet music! Sweet music! Everywhere!” And then suddenly they spread out wide on that wonderful, luxurious, harmonized “Ooo, ooo, oooooooh….” All the ways this song has something that thumps or crashes, together with something that glides and spreads out, says something, I believe, about the relation of a single self and wide reality; one person and all persons.

I have no documents to prove it, but I believe this song and recording arose from a deep instinct (however unconscious) in its creators to feel that good will among people is possible. I think that is what is meant by “Are you ready for a brand new beat?” It is much more than just a fun party song. One sign that this is so is that from the moment Reeves begins to sing, a mighty, new percussion sound is heard on the second and fourth beats of each measure. In an interview, Martha Reeves explained that the sound was made by a percussionist hitting a heavy steel chain with a hammer. That rhythmic crash heard throughout brings a sense of terrific conviction, urgency. It says, “We mean this with all of ourselves!” It’s in keeping with Aesthetic Realism’s showing that good will is tough. It’s not just a saying, “Let’s all make nice and come out and dance together.” There’s something ferocious here. They felt a drum by itself wasn’t strong enough.

This was 1964 and later that summer, race riots took place in cities across America. Today in 2020, racism and economic injustice still afflict our nation, but it’s very hopeful to see many people standing up against these injustices with a new level of conviction and tenacity. I believe the education of Aesthetic Realism is crucial and necessary because it can have people see that good will is the greatest personal achievement—not the contempt we thought would take care of us. When Martha Reeves sings, “All we need is music,” it’s against the acquisitive, competitive tendencies of people; it seems to say, “The world can be enjoyed by all of us together.” It illustrates these sentences by Eli Siegel from Self and World:

In the same way as 10,000 persons can be listening to an exciting composition of music, each feeling that he is listening to it, while others are listening—so each person can see the wonder and delicacy and largeness of the universe as his, while knowing that other selves are apprehending pleasantly this universe.

The chorus and band now broaden out even more in a series of majestic, expanding chord changes, as Reeves sings: “Ohhhhh! It doesn’t matter what you wear, just as long as you are there!” She doesn’t say it doesn’t matter what neighborhood you’re from, how much money is in your pocket, or what is the color of your skin; but something like that is felt anyway.

There can never be enough words to express how grateful I am to Aesthetic Realism for changing my lonely feeling that I was an isolated stick figure passing through an alien landscape. I learned in my earliest consultations—to my amazement—that I was much more like other people, for example, my father, than different.  My consultants gave me an assignment; to write “25 Things I Have in Common with Christopher Fennell,” whom I had had a great stake in seeing as only different from me. I felt at first that this was quite a tall order. They said,

For example, do you think you might both enjoy a plate of lasagna?
Me: Yes!
Consultants: And do you think, too, that both of you are trying every day to make sense of how you’re sure of yourselves and also unsure?

I was very surprised but saw right away this was so. And I learned, too, that I am much more like all other people than different. All of us are trying to put opposites together, including sureness and unsureness, humility and pride, individuality and relation.  And the wonderful thing about it is that in giving up my false, unworkable idea of individuality, where I was trying to see myself as separate from and superior to others, I got the pleasure of joining the human race and feeling that, in seeing my relation to the world and people, I was coming into my real individuality. What I learned made possible real love in my life and a happy marriage to my dear wife, Carol McCluer, for which I am immensely grateful!

As the song goes on, Martha Reeves continues an “invitation across the nation, a chance for folks to meet” which includes Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC, and then “Can’t forget the Motor City!”—referring of course to the great city of Detroit, where this recording was made, and which has suffered so greatly from the failure of profit economics in these decades. But the joy of this recording is undiminished, and what it stands for I believe is still to be.

The return of that glorious, “It doesn’t matter what you wear…” section is even more beautiful, fervent and convincing the second time through. If rock and roll were to have an “Ode to Joy,” I would nominate this piece.  In the very last words of the song, Martha Reeves goes once more beyond America’s shores: “Across the ocean blue, me and you. We’re dancing in the street.”  And as the song fades, we get a sense of it going on indefinitely, across land and oceans into the vast distance, taking in the whole world.

The biggest reason, I believe, people will be  dancing in the street is when they see that Aesthetic Realism is true and explains the world, music,  and our lives!  To celebrate that, here is the second half of this great recording.

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org

Homage to Little Richard

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Little Richard
Little Richard

The great, the one-and-only Little Richard has died, but the beauty of what he did for rock and roll lives on forever, and I join millions of people worldwide in expressing my love for him.

I believe the reason Little Richard is so loved is that, as artist, he did what we are longing to do in our lives: have big, powerful, authentic feeling and show it in a way that is unfettered, unfiltered, uncompromised, and yet has accuracy and style.

Like everything I write here, what I’m saying is based on this great principle of Aesthetic Realism, stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

Little Richard is the giant, the hero of rock and roll that he is because of the way—in his greatest recordings and performances—he put opposites together; such opposites as wildness and exactitude, logic and emotion, inner feeling and outward blare.

When we hear him almost turn himself inside-out on such classics as Long Tall Sally, Lucille, or Good Golly Miss Molly (just to name a glorious few), there is something so staggeringly entire, so ALL OUT in his singing, that it thrills us to our core. It sounds like pain, but it feels like joy! That, my friends, is rock and roll.

In an Aesthetic Realism lesson he gave in 1969, Eli Siegel said of rock and roll, “If you listen to it there seems to be the utmost pain and the utmost assertion.” He called it “the blare of agony.” And he asked the man having the lesson (who was a rock musician), “Do you believe that there’s a desire for a person to unburden himself as if he were an earthquake?” That is such a description of Little Richard!

Continuing, Mr. Siegel said, “There is a desire to take one’s private life and to have a train caller give it.” Isn’t this why we love Little Richard? Don’t we want to take the turmoil, pain, confusion, frustration we have inside and find some way to let it out—not in a sloppy, ugly way, but in an honest way? When we hear Little Richard sing at his most high-voltage intensity, we also feel a sincerity that makes it feel right, well-formed; it satisfies our ears and minds at once.

I think he would be very proud to know that beyond the “flamboyance,” beyond all the frivolity and high-flying fun of his music, there is a deep encouragement for every human being, a means for us to be better people. The knowledge of Aesthetic Realism is what makes that clear, and I’m grateful to know it. I see Little Richard as a man of great courage. He got in front of that piano and microphone and wanted to hold nothing back—and he succeeded to very large degree. In fact, I think there is no person—even after all these decades of rock and roll—who has ever surpassed or even equaled him in that regard.

So, dear Little Richard, I salute you and thank you with all my heart.
We’re forever in your debt.
Rock in peace.

Here’s a link to my paper, Wildness and Precision – Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly”

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org

“Please Mr. Postman” Delivers the Goods

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Dear friends,

I’m very happy to publish here a new video of my presentation of “Stop & Go, Pleasure & Pain in the Marvelettes’ Please Mr. Postman.”

Please watch, listen and enjoy!

Intensity and Ease in Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking out Loud”

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Ed Sheeran

Like millions of people, I am very taken by Ed Sheeran’s giant hit record of 2014-15, Thinking Out Loud, and I believe the reason for its tremendously popularity is the way it puts opposites together—specifically, casualness and passion, intensity and ease, large feeling presented within a careful framework. We respond to this because deeply it represents what we want in our own lives, in keeping with this great principle of Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by the American poet and philosopher Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

Thinking Out Loud doesn’t have the typical pop arrangement of verse/verse/chorus/verse, etc. Instead, it consists mainly of two large sections, each of which contains four short mini-sections that are melodically different from each other, but that build upon each other quite naturally to deliver the passionate import of the song. So, with all the emotional stir of Sheeran’s delivery, we’re also deeply pleased by a satisfying structure—including how the second half exactly parallels the melodic outline of the first.

The song begins very quietly with just a touch on the strings of a guitar chord; and Ed Sheeran’s voice is almost conversational, like a man speaking to a woman over a café table, as very spare and quiet guitar chords continue to play underneath his words. Listen:

Here, the melody rises and falls very modestly — yet there is wonder and yearning together with warm confidence in the way each line rises from the third up to the sixth, and then settles down to the tonic. So while the melody has an easy, casual way about it, there’s already a growing fervency.

Piano, drums and bass are now added to the mix as the momentum gathers. In the lines of the next mini-section, there is a pattern of notes that eagerly strive upward, settle down to something more anchored, and then rise again. There’s a pleasing relation of rushing forward and pause, as his passion continues to build.

We just heard the transitional phrase: “And I’m thinking ‘bout how…” which will lead us into the next mini-section. The melody is again different, with each line beginning with a tightly struggling, high-pitched phrase that then resolves.

And here the song hits what I — and I imagine a lot of other people — feel is its most beautiful moment. It’s on the transitional phrase “So, honey, now.” The way Ed Sheeran sings that word “now” — it seems to just flow out of him so naturally, you could almost say easily, and yet it is so passionately sung; like he’s singing it with every atom of his being:

Following this wonderful outburst is a last mini-section which I guess could rightly be called the chorus. It continues the large, excited feeling that has been reached. In the words there is a relation of intimacy and width:

Take me into your loving arms
Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars
Place your head on my beating heart
I’m thinking out loud
Maybe we found love right where we are.

In the cascading melody of each line there is a sound of struggle and gratitude, pain and triumph at once. Yet somehow, with all the feeling exploding forth, the song never loses its easy-going quality that has been there from the beginning. One reason I think is, again, those long pauses between the lines, as well as the spareness of the instrumental accompaniment. There’s a sound of casually luxuriating in one’s large emotion:

I love Aesthetic Realism for showing that we all want to put opposites together every moment of our lives. We want, as we’re taking it easy, to feel it is on behalf of vivid, lively respect for the world and people. And we want to feel, too, that we are capable of large emotion, and then, when we do have large feeling, that we can be truly at ease, not uncomfortable and looking for a chance to smooth things out.

I’m so fortunate to have heard criticism of the contempt that caused me to divide these opposites of ease and excitement and to go back and forth painfully between them. And I want to change more. In one class, Ellen Reiss, the Aesthetic Realism Chairman of Education, said to me very kindly:

The thing in you that wants to be passionate about the truth and beauty in this world is you.  The other thing is an imposter.

I count myself one of the lucky people living on this earth to know that having big emotion about the world outside of me is the same as true comfort for my own dear self. And I aim to feel this more and more as my life goes on.

The title of this song, “Thinking Out Loud,” itself puts together the opposites of quietude and outburst that I’ve been writing about, while also illustrating what Eli Siegel has shown are the opposites central in rock and roll: private, secret, inner feeling made into a public announcement.

Then there’s what the song is actually saying. In the first part, he tells a woman that when she grows old he’ll still love her; and in the second part, he says that when he grows old, he believes she’ll still love him. And each part culminates in his saying, “So now, take me into your loving arms” and the rest of that passionate chorus, concluding with, “I’m thinking out loud, maybe we found love right where we are.” So, like the qualities we find in the music itself, there is in the words passionate feeling together with a kind of rock-solid confidence and ease. I’ve thought about that last line and the phrase, “right where we are.” It seems to say that love can be found in the world as we find it here and now — not in some other time or place of our imagination.

I’m immensely grateful that because of what I’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism, I’m more in love now with my dear wife Carol McCluer than at any time in our marriage. That is because we’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism that our care for each other needs to be based on care for the world itself.

As you’ll hear, the second large section exactly parallels the structure of the first section that I described — both melodically and with the repeat of certain rhymes and phrases in the words, making for a satisfying relation of sameness and difference. As the song goes on, more and more is added to the accompaniment, causing the feeling to build: the piano gets busier and stronger for example, and backup singers quietly join the lead singer, sometimes harmonizing with him, other times backing him up with rich harmonies on the syllable “Oooh.” Then there’s a guitar solo. It, too, has that relation of fervency and measure that is in the song as a whole. And it leads to the concluding chorus, where Sheeran is joined even more strongly by the backup singers, whom I like to see as standing for the outside world ratifying his emotion.

I respect the singing of Ed Sheeran. I feel he is unafraid to have and show large feeling, and I love his style. I don’t know whether it would be right to call this recording great. Maybe not, but — like millions of people — I know that I like it very much. It shows that ease and large feeling can be beautifully together. And as such, it stands for what we all most deeply want. Here is the remainder:

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org

Farewell to Aretha

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Aretha Franklin

The great Aretha Franklin has died, but the powerful, soul-stirring effect that her singing has on us will live on for all time.

I believe Aretha’s singing thrills us so deeply because, at her best, she puts together opposites that we are hoping to make sense of in our lives. What I’m saying is based on this principle of Aesthetic Realism, stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

When, for example, we hear one of Aretha’s high-energy rockers (such as Chain of Fools, Since You’ve Been Gone, or Respect) or some of her more meditative pieces (like I Say a Little Prayer or Natural Woman), we hear a beautiful togetherness of power and grace, straight-line simplicity and tremendous richness of meaning, a single self and the wide universe. And we want this: We want to feel powerful and graceful at once; to feel that our most intimate feelings are connected with the unlimited world.

In Aretha’s best singing, there seems to be no separation between her own feeling and the sound that meets our ears. She reaches us from the depth of her very self. She tells the truth in sound.

I believe we love her singing because it has us feel maybe we can break out of our own self-containment and get to a large, passionate feeling about something or someone, and through doing so, feel more truly ourselves.

God bless you, Aretha Franklin. And thank you for the beautiful honesty you bring to the art of song.

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org

Little Stevie Wonder’s Early Rocket Still Soars

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This summer marks 55 years since the amazing live recording of Stevie Wonder performing Fingertips, Part 2 (at age 12) first mesmerized our nation.

To commemorate that auspicious beginning in 1963 and to celebrate the love for Stevie Wonder felt by people worldwide, I’m proud to post a video of a paper on Fingertips, Part 2 that I gave as part of a presentation, “What Music Says about Our Lives—A Celebration!” at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York.

Hope you enjoy it!

Moody Blues in the Hall—of Course!

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I’m amazed it took until this year for the great British rock band The Moody Blues to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But they’re in now, and they surely do belong!

In 1967 they did that daring thing: they created a rock album Days of Future Passed with an orchestra consisting mainly of classical instruments, calling itself the London Festival Orchestra. And it wasn’t just that this combination was new; it was done with such beauty, such grandeur, and with such authenticity—a certain rightness in the combination—that it made this record a landmark in the history of music.

After the lush orchestral overture (The Day Begins), the band comes radiating forth with Dawn Is a Feeling that has in it the expanding, energetic inevitability of the rising Sun. And by the time we hit Peak Hour, the full force of the Moody Blues as a bona fide rock band reaches high noon. Onward through the buoyant joy of Tuesday Afternoon and the poignant yearning of Nights in White Satin, orchestra and band keep intermingling, effectively heightening each other and making for an album like no other. And in all of their subsequent albums, that sense of sweeping largeness joined with the urgent immediacy of rock and roll, flourished and took many new forms.

I think the greatest thing about the Moody Blues is the overall sense their songs frequently give us that we are in a world that has goodness, beauty and meaning—a world that is on our side. This comes through not only in the message of the songs, but in the deeply convincing music that delivers that message.

As you, my readers, know, my writing on this site is based on this principle of Aesthetic Realism stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” Again and again in their best music, the Moody Blues make a beautiful one of gentleness and ferocity, continuity and rhythmic punch, high and low, yearning and joy, definite and indefinite, a single self and the wide universe. This is why we respond to their music with such pleasure: it does what we are deeply hoping to do.

Aesthetic Realism shows that all art is a presentation of reality as worthy of our honest respect and love; and as such, it points the way for how we hope to see all the time.

Today I celebrate the Moody Blues and thank them for providing an abundance of material for doing just that.

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org

“Spoonful of Lovin'” Hits the Spot!

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As a lifelong head-over-heels fan of the truly GREAT American band The Lovin’ Spoonful, I recently had, with wife and friends, a wonderful experience at a show called “A Spoonful of Lovin'” performed by a swell band at New York City’s excellent performance space, The Cutting Room.

At first, I hesitated going. I thought, “It’s not the real Lovin’ Spoonful, so how good could it be?” The answer was “Damn good!”

A Spoonful of Lovin’

Organized and led by Mr. Tom Clark on guitar, autoharp, harmonica and vocals–and including Sal Maida, Andy Riedel, Dennis Diken, C.P. Roth and Craig Chesler, filling out the band and also contributing many vocals–these guys brought the real magic, the real heart of The Lovin’ Spoonful through their performances of many of that unforgettable band’s great songs.

Was there fidelity to the original recordings?– most definitely. But at the same time you felt the individual artistry and authentic emotion of each of the performers. The opposites that are so often made one in the music of  The Lovin’ Spoonful–high energy brashness together with good-natured sweetness–were alive throughout. This was clearly a labor of love, and I thank them for a wonderful night.

They only perform this show a couple times a year, folks, so I’m telling you now: If you ever get the opportunity, “Just go and listen, it’ll start with a smile you won’t wipe off your face no matter how hard you try!”

Aesthetic Realism and the Art of the Flute

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In this groundbreaking interview, the very fine flutist Barbara Allen tells what she has learned from Aesthetic Realism about the profound relation between a person’s way of seeing the world and her ability to play her instrument with depth and honest beauty. She is interviewed by composer Dr. Edward Green.

Listen and you’ll be amazed at the logic of what she explains; and you also will hear great evidence of her success in the beautiful passages she plays by Mozart, Bach and Gluck.

While this site is principally devoted to rock and roll, when something this big happens in the world of music as a whole, I feel I owe it to you, my readers, to let you know.

Click below and enjoy!

Chuck Berry and What America Is Looking For

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I see the following great principle of Aesthetic Realism, stated by its founder Eli Siegel, as true about every good rock song and about every individual person: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” And at the same time, this principle is true about our nation as a whole. With all her turmoil and confusion, America is trying, even now, to be beautiful, to put opposites together.

In this post I will look at Chuck Berry’s lovable recording “Back in the USA” and ask: What can it tell us about what America is looking for at this time? Here’s how it begins:

1. Freedom and Exactitude

At the very outset, Chuck’s guitar intro breaks forth out of nowhere with terrific eagerness, freedom, impetuous joy. Yet it’s all very exact; all those excited notes — many of them played in pairs (that is, on two strings at once) — keep a very strict beat even as they ring out with such excitement. And then there is that satisfying sense of curtailment as he plays a series of cascading notes sliding downward and ending neatly, squarely upon the whack of that drumbeat which is right on the downbeat and which propels us into the beginning of the song — and we’re off to the races!

It’s important to see that wherever freedom is really beautiful, it is always together with — is always the same as — fairness, measure, exactitude. Isn’t that what we want? Don’t we want to feel entirely free at the very same time feel that we’re being fair? The two mistakes I’ve often made have been to either cut loose and be “free” without much regard for what people or things deserved from me — or to strap myself down and be dutiful and rigidly “organized” while seeing life and existence itself as miserably dull. Art makes neither mistake.

And America, our dear country, wants its very freedom to be the same as justice to its own people and to the rest of the world—not to deny liberty to some for the purpose of giving free reign to a favored few.

In an issue of the journal The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known editor Ellen Reiss writes:

Freedom is beautiful, necessary, a right—when it is at one with justice. But a notion of freedom which is not the same as accuracy and justice, is the beginning of all the evil of the world…The American Civil War occurred because persons of the South wanted to be “free” to own other human beings, to sell them, to do whatever they pleased with them… And there was the “freedom” to have child labor. Employers saw…any attempt to curtail child labor as an impingement of their—the employers’—freedom.
I could certainly give other examples of the ugliness of severing “freedom” from justice and accuracy. But for now the point is: our dear America is looking for the oneness of freedom and justice. Mr. Siegel wrote, for example, in 1968: “Perhaps then we should change a well-known term to Free-and-Accurate Enterprise; or, perhaps, Free-and-Just Enterprise; or, even, Free-and-Beautiful Enterprise.”

2. Sameness and Difference

One of the delights of “Back in the USA” is the richness of diversity in its technique—its interplay of sameness and difference in sound. After the intro, drums, bass and guitar launch into a lively rock and roll stride as Johnny Johnson’s piano swarms up and down the keyboard. They contradict one another and get along delightfully. And I love how the backup singers come in on top of all this with that ragged, syncopated, alternating “Uh-uh-huh! Oh! Yeah! — Uh-uh-huh! Oh! Yeah!” Their voices, high and low, do not comprise what you would offhand call a lovely or graceful interval, but instead emit something kind of sour, sort of off, somehow wrong and yet so right at once. I love it. What diversity! What contradiction! And what a beautiful stew! And you’ll notice as the song goes along, with each new verse these backup singers keep changing it up — using different syllables and rhythms as they go. Meanwhile that driving beat holds it all together.

As Berry enters singing about the joy of “touching ground” on a flight returning from overseas, we can almost feel the landing gear descending and see the runway fleeting by below his window. He is embracing all that diversity, all that contradiction, and he doesn’t seem to mind a bit. Listen:

How much do we need difference — what is different from ourselves — just to be? The answer is, we need it very much. If all we ever met was just what we see as the same as ourselves, we’d go crazy the first day. We need the alphabet, food, metal, mountains, music, other people, and so much else. And I believe that America longs to be in a state where each of us not only “accepts” or “tolerates” people we see as different from ourselves — racially, economically, culturally — but where we honestly feel that we need people different from ourselves — and in fact need them to be different in order to fully be ourselves. This can seem so other than America as we have it now, but I believe it is what the people of America most deeply want.

Ellen Reiss writes in the issue of TRO I quoted from earlier:

All racism arises from seeing a person who seems different from oneself as only different. It is urgent now to try to have these opposites, so deep in America’s makeup, be one in how her people think about each other. Is a person different from me only different? How much is he or she like me too?…
When you see that another person has feelings as real as yours, you cannot be cruel to him. You cannot (for instance) exploit him economically. You cannot feel it’s all right for him to be poor

3. Self and Earth, Person and Nation

Getting back to the song, the sweeping poetry of the American landscape gets into the second verse with a listing of US cities, including the rhythmic line, “De-troit, Chi-ca-go, Chattanooga, Ba-ton-Rouge,” and culminating with Berry’s beloved hometown of “old Saint Lou.” Johnny Johnson’s piano now excitedly sails forth and ranges over the ivory continent, in a musical reflection of what the words are telling. Then Berry pays homage to the earthy physiognomy of America — its vertical and horizontal heights and breadth: “Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway/ from the coast of California to the shores of the Delaware Bay? You can bet your life I did till I got back in the USA!”

His gratitude upon returning home from overseas he celebrates now with a joyous guitar solo. He is celebrating his connection, his belonging to the earth — not just any earth; the earth of the USA. But is the love being expressed just chauvinistic superiority: “My country is better than all those other countries”? I don’t think so. I think it’s in keeping with the profound emotion expressed in the famous lines of Walter Scott:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand?

That guitar solo takes ecstatic flight but never loses connection with the ground from which it springs: the basic rock and roll chord progression. And upon reaching the culminating tonic chord, it returns to solid ground.

4. Whose America Is It, Anyhow?

In the commentary I’m quoting from, Ms. Reiss asks:

Is it un-American to have one child be crippled from birth by conditions of poverty that she did nothing to create, while another is surrounded from birth with more luxuries than she can ever use? These questions are American questions. They are about the oneness of opposites—self and world, a person and a land. And inseparable from them is the question Eli Siegel said was the most important for humanity: “What does a person deserve by being a person?”

“Anything you want, they got it right here in the USA!” Chuck Berry exclaims in the song. He knew as well as anybody that not everyone in the USA is equally equipped financially to get those things. But there is such an easy confidence in the way, in the last verse, he describes enjoying the good things of this world that America has to offer, that he makes you believe it; he makes you feel: that’s right, this should be everyone’s birthright, of course! We all should be able to afford sustenance for our bodies as well as the sustenance for our souls that are represented in last verse in the form of food and art: the hamburger that “sizzles on an open grill” and a “jukebox jumpin’ with records.”

I’m saying that America is insisting now — and will continue to insist — upon putting together the opposites I have been writing about: freedom and exactitude, sameness and difference, self and Earth. The closer we get to seeing what this would mean—and Aesthetic Realism stands ready to teach us—the better we’ll all be able to honestly feel what Chuck Berry proclaims in this song: “I’m so glad I’m living in the USA!”

Here is the exuberant last verse:

 

Rock on, my friends!

 Learn more: AestheticRealism.org