Tommy disliked his own face. He felt it was too pudgy, and growing up as he was in an age when the Mattering of Lives was a function of Color, and in which the crowds would judge a man not by the content of his character but by the color of his skin, and when all moral discernment was reduced to identification of whether a person was punching up (courageous!) or punching down (oppressor!), and when all of us were categorized and understood purely on the basis of superficialities, and when moral agency was equated with systematic violence because each of us was was Born This Way, young Tommy understood a person’s looks to be everything. If his face was too pudgy, then his corresponding worth as a human being was written, sealed, and irrevocable.
The COVID crisis helped Tommy in his fatalism, because the masks have covered us, helped us, guarded us, accepted us unto It, spared us, supported us, and brought us to this hour. Fortunately, happenstance brought Tommy to “Cosmic” Jack Willis. It also brought him into contact with the unlikeliest of saviors: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if the kids these days are ever going to stand up for themselves, the thing they need most might just be rock n’ roll…
Continue reading “The Redemption of Rock n’ Roll” →