May 8th: In My Ears and In My Eyes
These days walking down the socially-distanced street is an odd experience. It is true that we are isolated behind our masks as we veer away from each other to maintain proper separation; yet because we are consciously doing this together, there remains a wisp of a bond among us, and we may nod as we pass by in recognition of our common situation. In this sense the street during the coronavirus is actually preferable to the normal state of affairs, in which we pass each other "blankly," meaning that we unconsciously conspire to avoid each other's eyes, to deny that there is any connection between us at all.
Yet in periods of rising social movements, the street may suddenly become a true Commons as people burst past their mutual fear toward one another, celebrating the community and hopeful direction of the movement itself. At such moments, a new sense of "we" emerges from our prior separation, as was true on many city streets at the height of the 60s when the Beatles--so deeply influenced in their development by that moment's pervasive sense of openheartedness--wrote "Penny Lane," their loving ballad to a street of their collective childhood. As I wrote of it in DMR in my discussion of overcoming "fear of the other" on the street and in the wider world, "In 'Penny Lane' the liberatory transformation of the street itself is captured by the very joy and compassion with which a Liverpool street scene from the Beatles' childhood is re-experienced through the present moment in the late 60s, in which the hidden longing and beauty of 'the lane' has become visible in later life." (DMR p. 60).
In this week's Friday music, we hear the loving impulse of childhood recalled to life by the emergent openheartedness elevating the moment in which the song was written.