Wednesday, November 5, 2008

It's a new day, it's a new dawn, it's a new world, and I'm feeling good.



Nina Simone--Feeling Good
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10 comments:

ToffeeBoy said...

@ steenbeck - thanks for posting this. We just listened to the whole 17 minutes and feel quite inspired. He really is a very good orator - makes you despair even more about our own dear Gordon...

November 5, 2008 at 10:36 PM
goneforeign said...

Steen: Me too. Best day of my life here, it's a new day. My favorite image was of all those ecstatic faces at Grant Park, thousands of black, white, male, female, old, young, hispanic, everybody was there going nuts, wish I could have been with 'em.

November 5, 2008 at 11:06 PM
nilpferd said...

Transatlantic terrorist fistbumps heading your way, Steenbeck.
(I heard the news from a taxi driver this morning on the way to the building site, the way you do with historic elections.)
EJay- sorry to inform you that Mitt Romney has already been offered the post of secretary of lookin` good. You might yet squeak in as presidential advisor on matters funky, though.

November 5, 2008 at 11:09 PM
nilpferd said...

And of course time delayed, transcontinental high fives for you too, Goneforeign.

November 5, 2008 at 11:10 PM
Anonymous said...

That speech brought me to tears. I even feel that he can achieve what he seems to promise. A great day.

November 6, 2008 at 12:13 AM
May1366 said...

This really was fantastic and I'm glad I kept up till stupid o'clock to watch it as it happened last night. There's an inevitable need to protect against raising false hopes at a time like this, but there's nothing false about the brilliance of the oratory nor about the symbolism of the moment. Never mind the 40 years since MLK's assassination, never mind knowing that when I was born, African Americans had never lived through a Presidential election with full, unrestricted voting rights, how long has it been since Hurricane Katrina? And now this.
Here's a quiz question (off the top of my head I can't come up with an answer), but does Obama's African lineage make him unique as an American President whose direct ancestry can be traced back to anywhere other than Northern Europe? In so many more ways than the most obvious, massive, scarcely believable, historic one, this is an election result of unprecedented maturity and redemption.

Over here, as gordonimmel mentions on ToffeeBoy's thread, we're reminded of May 1997 and the apparent falseness of that dawn. But I'm in Old Labour country and don't remember too many people celebrating because Blair was in: we were celebrating because at long frigging last, the other lot were out. And we've got that today as well with perhaps more finality - can the Neo-Cons and rampant monetarists ever regain the status they've held throughout the last 30 years? I think today is closer in spirit to the 1945 election, with people actually making the decision to select a government that's about us, not them doing stuff for us. And however it pans out (and what a scorched earth he's been left with), however much or little an Obama presidency might do for the world, it's what the world might now be able to do with an Obama presidency that gives me genuine hope.

November 6, 2008 at 2:34 AM
Anonymous said...

Is this what was broadcast on Absolute Classic Rock yesterday morning at about 9.30 am? I'd really like to get a copy of that one!

November 7, 2008 at 8:14 PM
steenbeck said...

I don't know what Absolute Classic Rock is. I have the song on the album NIna Simone the 60s vol. 1. (Or try clicking right here on the name of the song). I was talking to my mother about the song (she's a professor of music) and about how there's a frisson between the heavy baseline and the floaty hopeful lyrics, and she said, ah, that's the tetrachord of lament (the bassline). And it's in minor. Anyway, I just love it, and I think it does express the cautiously, soberly, hopeful mood I'm in.

November 7, 2008 at 10:16 PM
May1366 said...

The Tetrachord Of Lament! I bags that name for my next band. Or when I open a restaurant. Or release a collection of poetry. Or publish a memoir. Or discover a constellation. Or have another child. Or have to name anything again ever. Mama Steenbeck - you have my eternal respect. My mum would never utter a phrase that poetic. She'd just make a disparaging comment about the faces Nina Simone pulls when she's singing.

November 8, 2008 at 12:22 AM
glasshalfempty said...

I am really pleased for you Steen, but fear you are right to be cautiously hopeful. And those bullet proof screens are never gonna be needed more than now.

Maddy is plotting an RR theme at inauguration time.

A couple that are on my mind right now are:
Allen Toussaint - 'Yes we can can'
and after the hanging chads,
Leonard Cohen - 'Democracy' - extract of lyrics below:
It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

November 8, 2008 at 10:12 PM

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