Sing-a-long with First Aid Kit

The soundtrack for 1968 doesn't have an equal that comes easily to mind.  I, whose adventures seem to have been always inadvertent rather than intentional, spent a part of that iconic year in Washington, D.C., a volunteer typist for what they called then "the New Left" and, additionally, employed by the Washington Post.  I did find and sign on for the underground press gig.  Adventure would describe it.  I wish, though, that I could claim a fearless nature and pioneering spirit, both growing stronger with age.  Alas, it is not so.  I did not go off to search for America but find, especially as sung by the sisters of First Aid kit, the song brings me to tears.  Whether it is the tsunami of memories from that year, my roommate and I driving to find the rural crossing where we watched the train carrying Bobby Kennedy's body back to D.C. or the National Guard camped at the end of Church Street after Dr. King's assassination, or the immediate wondering, so many decades later, if today's 22 or 23-year-olds feel the song as I and my contemporaries still do.

"America" is from Simon and Garfunkle's album, BOOKENDS.  Even though we listened to the same music in each others' apartments or funky row house co-op, everyone with a record player owned the same albums.  My life was too transient for that, yet radio was what we thought radio would always be, nothing but our favorite music.  Otis Redding, "Scarborough Fair," Dylan and more Dylan and the Doors.  I think I've officially become part of a dwindling generation that knows its own ghost-filled past better than it knows the present.  There is a place for us in those long-ago rooms.  It is not nostalgia but another reality.  First Aid Kit sings it as though they'd been there, too.

Sights and sounds

There are images that I see with my heart which, I hope, is not quite as corny as it sounds.  The second illustration below feels like a boot to the chest, yet in a good way, which may seem unlikely.  Or maybe more precisely, some things grab me by the throat.  The sights and sounds here today fall into that not-entirely-rare category.  I am swept away by the imaginations of others, humbled and agog at the sweet morsels my species find to pull from the soup of eternity in which we all paddle.

Original art by Quint Buchholz, shared by Alice Vegrova on FB. If the work interests you - it fascinates me - do a Google Image search and see how many other bloggers have fallen under his spell.

For the sounds portion of our program, I took cues from Brain Pickings' Literary Jukebox which introduced me to First Aid Kit and the sisters' "Wills of the River."