| Neil: ‘Sing a song for Freedom Sing a song for Love’ From the Editor | by Tim Miejan "A little love and affection In everything you do Will make the world a better place With or without you" -- Neil Young in "Falling From Above" On his latest recording, Greendale, Neil Young shares with us the lives of the Green family -- Edith and Earl, and their daughter Sun Green, Sun's cousin, Jed, and Grandma and Grandpa, as well as others who live in and around this fictional town on the Pacific shoreline. We learn about Earl's passion to paint and his visit with the devil, Jed's poor decisions that lead to him shoot Officer Carmichael to death, and Grandpa's wisdom, and his fatal heart attack when news reporters swarm the family home to get his response to Jed's violent act. Sun Green, the daughter of a Vietnam veteran, creates crop art opposing war and begins "speakin' out against anything unjust or packed with lies." Released during this nation's second war in the Middle East -- as freedom fighters continue to die -- Greendale contains more potent statements against the war machine, corporate greed and dishonesty than Young's Freedom album did just before the start of Operation Desert Storm more than a decade ago. Young, as he has throughout his decades of recording, consistently stays true to his inner voice, politically correct or not. Open our eyes Called "sometimes visionary and sometimes flaky" by media critics, Neil Young is a storyteller and a song maker. He's been one for nearly 40 years, for almost as long as I have been alive. Practically as long as he has been alive. He can pick up his guitar and instantly wake us from our dream, or send us into one. Singing songs in his shaky voice, Neil has urged us to open up our tired eyes and see things for how they really are. I remember at the age of 12, listing to a turquoise radio plugged in next to my bedside, hearing "Heart of Gold" for the first time. It called to me from the depths where wisdom spoke my name and sat me down and kept me spellbound. I didn't know it at the time, but that high voice singing, "I want to live, I want to give, I've been a miner for a heart of gold," changed me. It was like a laser beam from someplace far away, reminding me of why I was alive. It would be another five years before I would return to that indescribable place that only Neil Young could take me. I began to listen to his music with reckless abandon, learning quickly that his songs were cosmic snapshots of what it meant to be human. He sang of dreams and silver space ships and Cadillacs and palominos and going to the country, and foggy trips and barstools and friends who died a thousand deaths, and broken arrows and men from Mars, Cortez the killer and Captain Kennedy, his cinnamon girl and cowgirls in the sand. He sang of spooked horses and white boats comin' up the river, of the needle and the damage done, of Mother Earth, Pocohontas and hawks and doves and a town in north Ontario with "big birds flying across the sky, throwing shadows on our eyes." Neil has strummed his guitar, sounded oh so lonesome on his harmonica, pounded angry keys on the piano and haunting tunes on the pipe organ. He's used electronic synthesizer to alter his voice, sang R&B, turned rockabilly and unleashed some of the heaviest metal in recorded history. Known equally as Mr. Soul and the Godfather of Grunge, Neil has confounded critics and fans alike, switching horses on the run and riding out his vision of whatever needed to be expressed before the sun went down. And all the while, he has kept his recorder running, capturing the energy and the dream, an off-key note at the end of a sad song. His primal energy is rooted in the earth where we live and die, and what he does seems more real than anything I can think of. Achieve your dream I bring up Mr. Young and his work in the name of freedom, for he is freedom. It's about following where your spirit moves you, about not being daunted when others tell you that you can't do something, that you're not good enough, that you don't have what it takes to achieve your dream. It's about creating for the sole purpose of creation. It's about doing something because you have to, because it's in your nature. It's about bringing something deep inside of you out into the light of day. The freedom to do that is guaranteed us all, however the ability to embody that freedom requires courage and responsibility. The challenge is how to be free while at the same time not impinging anyone else's freedom. I bring up a musical artist, but it's not about music. It's about life. It's about being who you really are, despite what your family or friends or other people think. It's about honesty, and the willingness to tell it like it is without censoring it. It's about not taking the easy way out by using deception to get what you want. Eventually, when each of us, one by one, passes from this reality to the next, we will have to confront ourselves and our ability to handle the freedom of creating what we intended to create when we came here. We will have to confront our honesty and our deception. We will have to take responsibility for the choices we made and the effect our choices had on those around us. We may be walking around today feeling pretty smug, but as Neil sang in the song "Walk On," "...Sooner or later it all gets real." If we can all try to be as real as it gets -- to others and ourselves -- we might be amazed at how simple life is, at how few problems there really are once we stop getting in our way. We got to wake up We got to keep goin' If they follow us There's no way of knowin' We got a job to do We got to save Mother Earth Be the ocean when it meets the sky You can make a difference. If you really try. Be the magic in the Northern lights Six days... Six nights. Be the river as it rolls along It has three-eyed fish. And it's smellin' strong. Be the rain you remember fallin' Be the rain. Be the rain. -- Neil Young in "Be the Rain" Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at (651) 578-8969 or e-mail editor@edgenews.com Copyright © 2003 Tim Miejan |
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