Optimism, A Wondrous Sound Indeed
Today, robins will sing.
That’s not a prediction. Rather, it’s the title and hook from one of the best songs on “Conversation Peace,” a new Stevie Wonder album due for release today, the first day of spring.
And while I hesitate to read too much into what is, after all, just a pop album, I have to tell you there’s something quietly revolutionary about this thing, something that comes into the bitter chill of this American winter like a balmy, flowerscented breeze.
The winter in question is not the one on the calendar, but the one Gil Scott-Heron, poet and singer, referred to in his 1970s song “Winter in America,” which bespoke a time of pessimism and malaise, much like the one the nation has been in for the last few years.
It is a season when leadership is as barren as the boughs of leafless trees and hope lies as dead as a snow-covered lawn. “Winter in America” - an apt description for a season of kill-or-be-killed children marauding through cities that decay like untended corpses, a season of triumphant greed and intolerance that fly high and proud like a flag, a season of progress stalled, justice denied and dreams deferred. A bitter cold season you wouldn’t wish on a dog.
And into that comes this new work of music, Stevie Wonder’s first album in four years. He generally is credited with bringing spacy, eclectic new sounds to the pop music mainstream through his pioneering use of a device called the Moog synthesizer back in the ‘70s. But his new album incorporates a sound that’s really radical.
Optimism.
Optimism - as in a sense that things will get better. Think about it: When’s the last time anybody told you that? Optimism is a rare conceit in these chilly times. Who still believes in tomorrow? Who even believes in today?
So many of our hit movies (“Bad Company,” “Natural Born Killers,” “Menace II Society”) are unremittingly grim, our hit TV shows (“NYPD Blue,” “New York Undercover,” “Law and Order”) unreservedly bleak, our hit recording stars (Ice-T, Pantera, Henry Rollins) unrelentingly harsh. Meantime, our leaders seem more interested in finding scapegoats than solutions, our children have lost their childhood and criminal violence assaults our sense of decency everyday …
And today, robins will sing?
In the words of another song, it sounds like what a fool believes.
Except that there is something warming in the sentiment, something needed on a wintry day when so many of us have given up on making a better future.
“Conversation Peace” stopped me. Rhythmic, infectious and self-assured, the recording meanders over a wide terrain but keeps returning to themes of intolerance, violence, hunger and everyday pain. Such as in “Tomorrow Robins Will Sing,” with its limber reggae beat and sunny soul. “Take the Time Out” is a breezy anthem of volunteerism and involvement. The title song is a meditation on the need for cross-barrier dialogue. Each song is suffused with the expectation that we can change what’s wrong, fix what ails us, if only our love and will and faith don’t fail.
Maybe that just marks Stevie Wonder as another starry-eyed relic, an innocent holdover from a sweeter day in another America. All I know is that I couldn’t stop listening to his album. Nor could my children.
It’s a mark of how numb we are, how inured we’ve become to our own lowered expectations, that optimism seems such a … wondrous sound. Stevie Wonder’s music reminded me of things I had forgotten - soft, sacred things about the resilience of the spirit and the toughness of the soul.
And it made me believe, with no evidence firmer than faith, that even here in the depths of the new American winter, perhaps the seeds of regeneration are taking root.
To my way of thinking, you have to feel that way. Otherwise, why keep slogging along? Each season is a cycle, and winter is no exception. For a time, it reigns unchallenged, cloaking the Earth with ice and leaving it cold and dead.
But sooner or later, the same thing always happens.
The ice breaks.
The dead things flower.
And spring comes.
xxxx