Catherine Drea: Make America groovy again

I went to see the film, 'A Complete Unknown', recently. 

It’s about America in the 1960’s told through the eyes of a young Bob Dylan. 

For anyone alive at that time, and I was just a child, it’s very moving to see an America that was once waking up to a gifted Dylan creating the poetry which would eventually win him a Nobel Prize for Literature.

The film brought me back to my teenage years when the music of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell finally reached me here in Ireland. 

So inspired by the film, I went to the attic and retrieved the original LPs and the old record player. 

The vinyls are scratchy and smell a bit mouldy but they have brought me back to how we loved the idea of America and held out these artists as inspiration.

OK, Van is from Belfast and Joni and Leonard are Canadian, but their music developed there and was the reason that I wrote on the front of my school spelling book, '1968 the year of revolution'. 

This revolution was a combination of the music, the flower power, the marches for equality, the charismatic characters and the poetry that made America appear to be at the forefront of a new kind of society.

Decades earlier, my Nanan, the eldest of 9, had waved goodbye to three sisters and a brother when they sailed for New York in the 1920s. 

When they returned in the 1960’s they brought much needed glamour to the midlands of their youth. 

They had also made their fortunes as was the promise of the American Dream for that generation. 

Maybe it was the fur coats and the fancy cars that made me want to go there. 

But I suspect it was more likely the poetry and the hope.

Eventually I got my J1 student visa to go and work in New York. 

This was a dream come true for myself and many of my contemporaries. 

It wasn’t just for the money, although in those days it was a given that everyone worked their way through college. 

It was for the vibe, the art, the history and the feeling that this would bring us into the beating heart of the grooviest place in the universe.

America! Some kind of fantasy world with big yellow taxis, hamburgers, gigs in meadows full of flowers and music. And yes it was all that. 

But even then in the midst of a multicultural student idyll there was a dark side. 

The time a man on the platform jumped in front of the A-train. The time a truck driver put thousands of dollars on the bar and invited me to go to California with him. 

The scary subway where a cop with a gun stood guard and how I always tried to sit close to him, chewing gum and trying to look tough.

But still, America, for a long hot summer, lived up to the fairy tale where young people played and sought adventure. 

Sadly there was a huge naivety to that too and the chickens have surely come home to roost now.

As the 1980s arrived, the concept of ‘Greed is good” took over and NY was cleaned up to be a glossier and more soulless place. 

The groovy kids turned out to be very unhealthy old people who couldn’t get rich quick enough.

Now they seem to have become totally disconnected, relishing the idea of supremacy, forgetting about their immigrant forebears and turning their backs on democracy.

Americans seem to have lost the plot.

These days I feel nothing but apprehension and fear when I see what they are at. 

My friends there are bereft and are starting to talk in code about their disillusionment. 

Every morning it becomes impossible to ignore the latest bulletin of madness. Cool and groovy it is not!

The least groovy and cool moment came today when Elon (pantomime tech genius) appeared at the Press Conference with the President (glowering, fake tanned, rich guy) and his young child, who is unfortunately called X, on his shoulders. 

I’m betting now that this chilling moment will live on as the iconic summary of these strange times. Truth is stranger than fiction for sure.

I saw Bob Dylan play a few times over the years; once in England during his white face phase, when he came to Tramore with Van and the Pogues, and in Nowlan Park in Kilkenny. 

He annoyed us all a bit with his coolness and distance. 

But now, since the film, I am back in the zone with Bob’s LPs. 

They are even better this time around.

Van the man gigged quite a bit in Ireland but for me, never fully lived up to his early 'Astral Weeks', album which I am now replaying with fresh ears. It is also brilliant.

Joni never got to play here but her 'Blue' album is still one of my favourites ever.

We all finally got to see Leonard Cohen in the last years of his life. 

Leonard did not disappoint. 

These gigs were precious and magical. Of all of them, Leonard somehow had managed to stay true to himself and to the groovy spirit of those days.

So….

Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen