Monday, March 10, 2003
"But the Rhode Island disaster, in which scores of the innocent were suddenly swept to their death by flames, brought out another, grimmer Keillor. He made his ballad into a moving and highly realistic commentary, locating the source of the fire in the psychology of music and show business.
He clearly fixed the blame, but not on the company that installed flammable soundproofing or the inspectors who missed it or the owners who didn't control what happened in their building. He blamed instead the ambitions of performers, with which he associated himself. The victims in Rhode Island may have been killed by men with long hair and rock 'n' roll dreams, but in a larger sense they were destroyed by vanity, ambition, memories of past glory and the blind carelessness that accompanies desperate yearning for success."
Oh Lord protect them, Protect them from you and me ....
(personal note to myself: this is one of those weird intersections I was talking about below -- once upon a time, I managed a place called Fireman's Hall that was torched by a young arsonist who worked among other places as a volunteer fireman at the fire station right next door ... and my husband when he was an abalone diver saved another diver after an attack by a great white shark. These are, unfortunately for our psyches and personal histories, true stories. You're free to make of them what you will, but as my husband says of his experience, "Yeah, it's too bad I didn't survive ...")
¶ 3/10/2003 11:16:00 AM
He clearly fixed the blame, but not on the company that installed flammable soundproofing or the inspectors who missed it or the owners who didn't control what happened in their building. He blamed instead the ambitions of performers, with which he associated himself. The victims in Rhode Island may have been killed by men with long hair and rock 'n' roll dreams, but in a larger sense they were destroyed by vanity, ambition, memories of past glory and the blind carelessness that accompanies desperate yearning for success."
Oh Lord protect them, Protect them from you and me ....
(personal note to myself: this is one of those weird intersections I was talking about below -- once upon a time, I managed a place called Fireman's Hall that was torched by a young arsonist who worked among other places as a volunteer fireman at the fire station right next door ... and my husband when he was an abalone diver saved another diver after an attack by a great white shark. These are, unfortunately for our psyches and personal histories, true stories. You're free to make of them what you will, but as my husband says of his experience, "Yeah, it's too bad I didn't survive ...")
¶ 3/10/2003 11:16:00 AM
