Category / music

by thewalkahead.com

Rosh HaShana: Are we just “Dust in the Wind”?

http://www.kansasband.com

After midnight somewhere on the New Jersey turnpike driving back from a wedding, I was jolted back to my angsty teens when the haunting soulful lyrics and minor key melody of a song that traveled with me for years, pierced the night.

“I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone, All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity.…”

If you are of a certain age or just musically grounded in progressive rock music of the 1970s, you know what comes next. In fact, you are probably already humming the line….

“Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.”

The simplicity of the message resonated with me back then and curiously, dove-tailed with my deepening attachment to my Jewish tradition, a journey which had begun a few years prior and was steam rolling along through high school. It was not surprising, therefore, that “Dust in the Wind” evoked biblical themes I was already familiar with. The Book of Genesis, using the Hebrew word ‘afar,’ describes God forming man from the dust like covering of the earth: “God formed man, soil from the earth”(2:7). And a chapter later, Genesis continues using the same word, “From dust you were taken and from dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19).

I knew from dust, you could say. And apparently, so did Kerry Livgren, a founding member and guitarist for the band Kansas and the composer of Dust in the Wind.

But the biblical references to dust as a metaphor for ephemeral life did not end in Genesis. Really, they were just beginning and the word and theme continues throughout the books of the Bible including famously in the Book of Ecclesiastes:

“And the dust returns to the ground as it was, and the lifebreath returns to God who gave it” (12:17). This line is followed immediately by “Futility of futilities, said Koheleth, all is futile”. And a few sentences later the entire book of Ecclesiastes concludes with the warning that God will be calling all creatures to account.

And so, to hear Dust in the Wind for the first time in years, in the depths of the night and a week before the Jewish High Holy Days when we believe we are being called by God to account, was a jarring moment for me. And I have been thinking about Dust in the Wind since, even as I am thinking about the upcoming high holy days. Are we all just “dust in the wind”?

To be more precise, the first stanza of the song states “they are all dust in the wind”, referring to our dreams, just mentioned the line before and to “all we do” which follows shortly thereafter. Our actions are dust in the wind. But the second stanza sharpens the point and clearly states “Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind“. We are, after all, an accumulation of our actions and if our actions are fleeting then perhaps we, our lives, are too. As a teenager and later young adult in college these ideas seemed at least plausible, worthy of consideration, depressing as that was. We are from dust after all, according to the Torah. And we return to dust according to the book of Ecclesiastes. Kansas however, offered a solution of sorts to our temporality:

“Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky“…our lives may be dust in the wind, but we leave the physical world to carry on in our place even though we can not change that since “all your money won’t another minute buy,” the lyric continues.

The song seemed very Jewish to me, especially since it even includes a lengthy violin solo that could be mistaken for a Klezmer tune.

Whether Kansas’ message was truly a Jewish one or not was even more confounding since the theme of “from dust you came and to dust you return” (Genesis 3:19), shows up in one of the central prayers of both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, toward the end of the stirring prayer “Unetanah Tokef”. That citation is than followed immediately by the following passage:

“We are like broken shards, like dry grass, and like a withered flower, like a passing shadow and vanishing cloud, like a breeze that passes, like dust that scatters, like a fleeting dream”

Pretty somber.

Fortunately for me, while I have been humming and re-listening to Dust in the Wind in these days leading to the high holy days, I have also been humming and re listening to pop Israeli recordings of various Selichot, mostly from the Sephardic tradition. The high holy days are preceded by the daily recitation of a series of special prayers of introspection and supplication called Selichot. Some of these prayers have been popularized in Hebrew song and are now easy to listen to on music streaming platforms. And these soulful recordings while presenting themes of our fallibilities as humans, have served as a counterpoint to the themes of hopelessness presented by Kansas way back in 1978 in Dust in the Wind.

The tune I keep coming back to which has been recorded by many Israeli artists is titled simply, “Ben Adam” (literally, son of man).

“Ben Adam, why are you sleeping? Arise and offer words of petition. Pour out your soul in conversation with and seek forgiveness from the Master of the Universe…but, do not tarry, for the days will soon pass…”

The Selichot, and I believe, Judaism overall, acknowledge Man’s temporality but soundly rejects the idea that our lives are meaningless simply because life is ephemeral. We are in fact called to make a difference with the time we have, limited though it is. Judaism calls on us to connect to our four thousand year old history and in so doing, to transcend our own temporality. And while we are here we are called upon to do our best. And when our efforts fall short, we must seek forgiveness and begin anew.

The song “Dust in the Wind” has rattled around in my head for a long, long time. It will not easily go away. But I am ready to slowly let it return, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

Howard E. Friedman

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Dust in the Wind, by Kansas
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind

(Now) don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy.

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind.
by thewalkahead.com

What the 1812 Overture can us teach about Coronavirus

I cued up ‘Classical Essentials’ on Spotify to help while away an hour exercising indoors during another day of the Corona Virus Pandemic of 2020 Great Lockdown. The complete 15 minute Overture of 1812 resonated as it led me musically through a dark period of history over two centuries old.

The piece by Tchaikovsky starts slowly and humbly enough, almost dirge like, evoking the tortuous pain of forgotten soldiers dead and dying on a battlefield of long ago. What was the Franco-Russian War of 1812 (this overture is not about an American-British war which also occurred in 1812)? I struggled to remember even the most salient facts about a war so popularized in our cannon of classical music, yet so forgotten among the many other calamities that waft over our history like smoke from smoldering embers.

Two minutes into the Overture, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky picks up the meter of the piece and adds in brass and louder wood winds to take us back in time to the battlefield before all went to hell. You can almost feel the soldiers running for position, taking aim and firing, but within less than two minutes the dirge tone returns albeit briefly before it gives way to one of the popular themes you will instantly recognize. The gaiety of the light motif is almost jarring; it mocks the death and destruction of war itself.

The triumphal theme plays over and over again. If we hear it enough perhaps we will believe it.

Tchaikovsky was commissioned to write the Overture of 1812 in 1880, years after the Battle of Borodino, Napolean’s campaign against the Russians to capture Moscow.  While the French troops succeeded in reaching the treasured Russian city, they ultimately could not hold it and retreated to devastating consequences. The battle resulted in over 70,000 casualties by many estimates and included direct wounds of war as well as slow death from infection, starvation and cold exposure.

Tchaikovsky captures the urgency and adrenaline of war and at six minutes cymbals clang over the recurring theme now played by the horns. At seven minutes you might begin to think all is well at what sounds like a Sunday picnic, mellifluous strings playing long whole notes in wavy measures and than in a slow reduction, only the tone of a single reed instrument is left until it fades away.

The pace quickens at 12 minutes and begins a steady march toward a stunning conclusion. At 13 minutes a series of arpeggios begins and than repeats again and again for almost 40 seconds until the cymbals and bells break through in ever increasingly ebullient tones. In the final seconds of the Overture, a full on explosion of sound breaks out with triumphant horns and percussion leading to the final trumpet blasts that end the piece.

Ironically, the war of Borodino was a disaster for both Napoleon’s soldiers and the Russians. Tens of thousands of young men lost their lives, were wounded or maimed and the arcs of so many lives were thrown asunder, plans delayed or never resurrected, dreams of men shattered.

Yet time does march on. That is one irrefutable fact of our fragile lives. And time will march straight through the Great Pandemic of 2020 which unfortunately will leave some lives broken and some lives lost. But like the Battle of Borodino retold through the Overture of 1812, our resolve as individuals, families, communities, towns, cities and countries will be recorded in the annals of history yet to be written. Hopefully our epic battle will not only be successful but remembered with jubilation and ultimately come to illuminate the best of what humanity can achieve when we come together to care about each other.

Howard E. Friedman

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