People say we monkee around

One of the mysteries about words and music is that you can listen to a song for 58 years and, one day, hear something you hadn’t heard before.

Wandering around the house one morning, I inexplicably began singing “Theme from ‘The Monkees’” to myself — you know, “Here we come, walking down the street, we get the funniest looks from everyone we meet …”

That song has been around since the fall of 1966, but this time a line in the chorus gave me a nudge, sinking in with a smile:

“We’re too busy singing to put anybody down.”

Isn’t that just the way it is with music? You can be mad as hell and ready to blow if you see one more political ad for that crazy person, but put on some music, and you’re too busy singing to put anybody down.

Music is a unifying force. Every so often you’ll hear an irate musician demand that someone stop playing his or her songs at their political rallies, missing the obvious — that the songs reached across the aisle and made a connection. Instead of cutting that connection, there’s an opportunity for understanding — “Tell me what a person like you, who stands for stuff that I can’t, heard in that song, and maybe we can find a way to coexist in something more like peace.”

It’s a cliche to make fun of the cliche of people sitting around the campfire singing “Kumbaya,” but it’s a basic fact that when you’re singing “Kumbaya” or any other song, you’re too busy singing to put anybody down.

And hey, hey, that’s a good thing.