Lately, I've been slightly annoyed by all of the Rolling Stone 40th anniversary issues. Do we really need to live in the past? Flower power and revolution were all the rage, but that's no longer the case, and most of the people who were calling for social change in the 1960s are now very happy with the money they're making on their Halliburton stock.
My cynicism just added to my surprise when I opened the cover of the latest Rolling Stone. I found interviews that don't predict the past, but that challenge our conceptions of the future. What's really interesting is that they don't just challenge the future of music (although there are a few exciting sections on the future of music), they challenge politics, the environment, globalism and international economic structure, the feasibility of peace, medicine, technology, religion, and art. Among the interviewed are political commentators/comedians Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, Professor of Religion and hip-hop artist Cornell West, Jane Goodall, William Gibson, Bono, Eddie Vedder, and Mr. Gore. I personally think Neil Gaiman was short-changed, but I was very happy that Cornell West was included. I recently saw him speak at a Black History celebration. He's a powerful orator and an articulate and educated man. His grasp of language is really quite beautiful with a certain cadence similar to music. Here's an excerpt from the Rolling Stone interview:
"RS: So you're optimistic about the future?
Cornell West: The categories of optimism and pessimism don't exist for me. I'm a blues man. A blues man is a prisoner of hope, and hope is a qualitatively different category than optimism. Optimism is a secular construct, a calculation of probability. Black folk in America have never been optimistic about the future - what have we had to be optimistic about? But we are people of hope. Hope wrestles with despair, but it doesn't generate optimism. It just generates this energy to be courageous, to bear witness, to see what the end is going to be. No guarantee, unfinished, open-ended. I'm a prisoner of hope. I'm going to die full of hope..."
If you get a chance, then you should check out these articles. They make me feel a little better about the future.
1 comment:
I absolutely love the Cornell West quote. You're spot on about the articulate educated part.
If only more of us were "prisoners of hope..."
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