A friend shared an old video featuring the brilliant novelist Kurt Vonnegut as he speaks to an audience late in life.
“When you get to be my age, you start asking your kids what life is all about. And I asked my son Mark Vonnegut, so named in honor of Mark Twain, what life was all about. He’s a pediatrician, and he gave what I think is a very good answer. He said, “We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is,” so I tell you that. I want to say, too, that no matter how corrupt our government and corporations and Wall Street and news media may yet become, the music will still be perfectly wonderful. And if I ever die, God forbid, I want this for my epitaph: ‘The only proof he ever needed of the existence of God was music.’”
I love what Mark Vonnegut said. We are, indeed, here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.
And in the years since Kurt Vonnegut made his remarks — I’m not sure when that was, but he died in 2007 — our government and corporations and Wall Street and the news media have, indeed, grown even more corrupt than anyone could have imagined at the time. (And if you think your side of the political aisle or your big corporation or your news source isn’t corrupt, you have not been paying attention at all.)
Still, he leaves room for hope, because he believes in a good and loving God. We hear the proof every day in the music.
I was blessed to grow up in a family that valued music. My dad cranked up his big band records every Saturday morning. Especially in our teenage years, there were plenty of LPs under the Christmas tree every year. All three boys had our own stereo systems in addition to the one in the living room.
The only genre that didn’t get respect was opera, and not that we didn’t try. It’s just that whenever they heard an earnest tenor or a sincere soprano, my father and mother would burst into hysterical laughter. They just had a hard time taking it seriously.
But I even grew to enjoy some of that music, thanks to a life partner who loved the Three Tenors. Depending on the mood, I can sink my ears into bluegrass, pop, classical, country, soul, blues, big band (of course) and all the other ways that the notes are combined.
I resist writing about government and corporations and Wall Street and news media in this space, and when I yield to the impulse, I often pay for it in the comments from people I respect, who otherwise seemed to respect me, full of disappointment or condescension or downright hate. We live in a world that doesn’t have much use for love, tolerance or understanding in certain arenas.
One thing is constant, though: No matter how nasty it all gets, the music will still be wonderful. And so, I thank God.
