Flaoting Down the Canyon Through the Rapids

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I’m an old man but not utterly clueless and as I hear music come out of the ceiling, I hear rap and hip-hop become monosyllabic, a string of shouts and macho mumbles with machinelike percussion, a sort of anti-music, and then along comes a young woman who sings actual stories in whole sentences to a real melody and you have Taylor Swift and she takes over the music business and becomes the most famous person on earth, bigger than Vladimir Putin. When Putin fills a stadium, you know it was at gunpoint. Mister Marlago fills small plazas but it’s all the same people, mostly retirees with time on their hands who love hearing that same speech over and over. Taylor draws huge paying crowds who are overjoyed from start to finish and also buy the merch and go home happy.

I accept the fact that I am a back issue, a relic, and that younger people have taken over. Eight years ago I played the Hollywood Bowl; a few weeks ago I played a 200-seater in Menomonie, Wisconsin. It was fun. People in the seats talked back to me. We hung out in the lobby afterward. I caught influenza from one of them. Do Taylor’s fans get to share their germs with her? I doubt it very much.

I accept change, even some changes that pain me. I grew up reading newspapers and now they’re dying by the hundreds and the reason is simple: most of them tend to be solemn, pretentious, humorless, and so people prefer social media — the Comments can be wildly feisty and sarcastic. I admire George F. Will’s column and I also enjoy the hundreds of lefties throwing spitballs at him. You don’t find much irreverence in newspapers anymore. They’re rather sedate, like nursing homes.

I accept ageism. Joe Biden is, in fact, 81 and so am I. We can put on a glove but we’re not likely to turn a double play. Our ballet careers are long past. We need help with computers. Too bad. I see young women tapping out texts on their cellphones at 40 words per minute — with their thumbs!!! I hunt and peck at 5 wpm with my index finger and I mak los f speling rrors.

As an old man, I repent of visiting my generation’s sins on the grandkids. I like the idea of the young starting out more or less fresh and in the clear. Conservatives make a powerful case against my generation providing generous benefits for itself and passing on the check to our grandkids. I like to think of America as looking forward to the morning and the next new opportunity, not dragging the chains of the past.

I belong to a privileged class, now almost vanished, of Americans who could pay for their college education working part-time minimum-wage jobs. That was the beautiful idea of the land-grant university: you didn’t have to ask Dad’s help or pay attention to his plans for you. When I was 18, my father told me loud and clear that he wouldn’t foot the bill for the U and I took that as the privilege of independence. Now a year at the University of Minnesota costs upward of twenty-two grand and it’s hard to earn that at $10/hour and still get your sleep and write your term paper on Moby-Dick.

It’s a tragedy to cheat the kids of an education and run them through the maze and badger them into grinding out the assignments, and they line up in caps and gowns without ever finding the light switch. It’s your first chance to find out what your soul might make of your life. Jefferson believed that enlightenment is the foundation of freedom and that learning is happiness and happiness is at the heart of democracy.

So let’s take a cue from Miss Swift and turn away from dread and dismay and other ill-informed opinions and put on some glitter and allow exuberance to have its way with us. Let’s tell stories in whole sentences. Let’s talk about love. Let the cranks and killjoys camp in the saloon and soak in their own sour juices and let’s go to the dance, my dears. Baseball season is coming. Let’s give the umps a hard time and cheer for the home boys and have a beer and a brat with mustard. Let’s live life and not grouse about it. By the way, I love it when you smile. You look good.

Garrison Keillor © 02.26.24