The Invisible Flag

the wheels on the bike go round and round

[clefenmain]

insane that it's been half a decade that his song led me to listening to Stan Rogers for the first time

probably the longest time a artist has been such a lasting mainstay of my music taste since Linkin Park in the aughts

[inrng]

[clefenmain]

Got around to putting the winter tires on my commuter bike. That means the "bad weather means bad road conditions" excuse won't work anymore, right? Surely now I'll take the bike to work on Monday.

Or I'll go with ol' reliable: can't see shit cuz it's dark out.

[kosher-martian]

Tolkien's works have this undercurrent (and at other times overcurrent) of "modernity only corrupts the natural beauty of G-d's Creation" about them. He really puts that extra emphasis on "dark, satanic mills".

I bring this up because I was listening to sea shanties (and more generalized maritime/nautical music) and came upon a Stan Rogers song I haven't heard before: Free in the Harbour

The song is beautiful and haunting. The collapse of maritime communities by the encroachment of modernity but also The Market™, which forces people to abandon their traditional ways of life to search for work elsewhere. But in the rupture of these poor folks' community is the continuity of nature (in the form of whales) going in to clean up the wound left by man.

The chorus is to me the most haunting and beautiful part (emphasis mine):

Free in the harbour; the blackfish are sporting again

Free in the harbour; untroubled by comings and goings of men

Who once did persue them as oil from the sea,

Hauling away! Hauling away!

Now they’re Calgary roughnecks from Hermitage Bay,

Where the whales make free in the harbour.

And that's all humanity was to the whales: A problem. There's just something so profoundly sad in that. It's very Tolkien. That sort of self-admission of man's failure. We were given the world and told to be good stewards and all we did is take the beauty of the world and throw it away. Paved over paradise to put in a parking lot. And to look at it a slightly different way, the men aren't gone, they've just moved on to the next place they'll ruin. The problem isn't gone. It's just moved down the road to pave the next parking lot.

[clefenmain]

Ofc the men aren't gone. Mans struggle to persist in the face of adversity is a mainstay of Rogers writing (Idiot, Mary Ellen Carter, Field Behind the Plow, California). Rogers doesn't romanticise a "traditional" way of life as much as he historicises it in a positive outlook "life goes on" kind of way

With lop-side grins, they waggle their chins and they brag of the wage they'll be earning.

Now there might be some misplaced optimism in this setting out younger generation, but moving on from, essentially, subsistence fishing, will bear no greater risks than heading to sea:

[clefenmain]

Around the World in 80 Days is such a fun little story, but damn if that twist wasn't so predictable.

Must have been such a banger in the 1870s tho, yeah they traveled 80 days but it's only been 79 in Greenwich time, wowzers. Who could have ever dreamt that up.

[clefenmain]

actually remember'd that I made this blog to post these family photos somewhere at least

[rosesareredandtheskyisthelimit]

15. Todestag von Nelly Arcan, 24.09.2009

[luvconkersall]

had the worst experience just now when i mistakenly typed 'steve rogers' instead of stan rogers into the youtube searchbar. disappointing results

[clefenmain]

Auch für einen Deutschen gibt es freie Stätten Denn die sind in unserm Sklavendasein unersetzlich Unersetzlich. Wenn wir eine Wohnung hätten wäre diese Wohnung unverletzlich Unverletzlich.