There's No Place Like...

Dislocation.

During the Covid years, a store opened on Route 9 in the building where one of our girls underwent violin lessons and where both took a brief stab at Tae Kwan Do. It’s a cruddy little shop that hawks flags and right-leaning patriotic-type merch like a lawn sign that says “I miss the America I grew up in.” Because, at the time, the George Floyd protests were in full swing, it was through the lens of racial injustice that I interpreted the sign: I miss segregation. No one I cared about wanted to rewind the American clock to the time we grew up in, except for one of the janitors at my school, who constantly complains about the kids these days. Sure, 2020 was tough with a sociopath at the helm of our country and a raging pandemic that would cull a million fellow citizens, but at least Jim Crow was gone. Racial and social justice was better than it ever had been when considered across the arc of history, despite the occasional Derek Chauvin bad cop reminding us that we haven’t yet reached the promised land. At least now when incidents of racial violence go public, thanks to technology that allows a film crew inside each of our pockets and an international distribution network that costs nothing but our privacy, they are universally decried. Although that lawn sign seemed particularly out of tune to my family and friends, a neighbor bought one and put it up. I know this because a daughter of mine snatched it with a friend one night, brought it home, repainted it black, and gave it new words, a new message: “Black Lives Matter.” As political theater goes, I thought it was pretty good.

I’ve been putting together Spotify playlists these last few years to buttress myself and hopefully my friends and family for the coming year, to try to articulate the themes I’m feeling and anticipating. Last year, sensing disruption and the potential for dark days, I called the list: “C the Light, B the Light.” It helped me keep my head up during some pretty bleak days.

This year it’s taken me six or seven weeks to know what I’m feeling but if I had to name one word, it would be dislocation. Too much is changing too fast and it’s exceedingly hard to process, especially for us ADHD types. This flirtation with American Oligarchy. Shifting geopolitics. AI. Last week while booking a plane ticket I was compelled to ask the online travel agent whether or not she was human. (She said she was.) This didn’t used to happen. I know you see it too. I don’t need to tell you that norms are out the door in our politics. What’s down is up. Our country dutifully elected a felon. What the f? Pardon my f. Our country dutifully elected an elon. Whatever.

So I’m feeling dislocated and all of a sudden I’m the guy needing the “I miss the America I grew up in” sign. I mean, I spend a good month each year telling my fifth graders about the Continental Congress, the wisdom of the framers, and the three-branched system of checks and balances that they cooked up. I teach the way our government was designed to function. But at the moment we’re experiencing a spineless Republican Congress that doesn’t appear to give a hoot about their institution. Come on, fight for your branch! They answer instead to a higher god: fear. And the courts at this moment don’t seem all that above-it-all either. While Trump and Elon are priming America to serve their personal interests, believing themselves to be the heroes of Atlas Shrugged and we the plebes who are lucky to have them, I realize that in many ways I’ve become a conservative, eager to protect the Constitution and defend the traditions and norms that have engendered a pretty great country. Our allies, our network of institutions: nice to have around. I guess you can be conservative about some things and progressive about others.

Anyway, this playlist is about bucking up and dealing with this crap political moment. We’re going to get through it. We have to. I dedicate it to Rachel Maddow, a voice in the wilderness who is consistently able to discern, through a lot of noise, what is going on here. By the way, I worry about her mental health, and her safety. She’s too smart. But I’m grateful she’s on the air 5 nights a week again, making sense of the nonsensical.

It’s made up of five movements and I’m sorry that it’s mostly songs from the sweet spot of my musical upbringing – not exactly “current.” (I almost added a Wicked song – “Popular” – but couldn’t commit.) I’d recommend listening at top volume while doing something active and mindless.

1. Wicked

The first three songs relate to Wicked, since it’s in our ethos at the moment. From the original Wizard of Oz, the “cowardly” lion sings about wanting to be a lion, not a mou-esse. I think we’re all going to need a shot of courage in the coming year. The second song, which I first heard in Martin Scorcese’s weird and awesome After Hours, which echoes the Wizard of Oz story, but is set in NYC, reminds us that the things that scare us the most are in our own minds. Once we face them, well, they lose their power. We move on. On January 20th, the sky didn’t literally fall out of the sky. But all the predictions about an existential threat to our democracy, they weren’t realized on that day. It was a Y2K situation. (I’m not saying things aren’t and won’t become more dire, just that there is time to recalibrate). Finally, “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News” is from the Broadway show The Wiz, which I’ve loved since about 1979. The Wiz herself sings it. I find myself singing it too whenever I open the news or the social medias. Like the great John Lennon line, “Nothing’s gonna change my world,” this song reminds me that it’s okay to live in your bubble sometimes. Screw you, bad news.

2. Tornado

Here comes the dislocation part, the midwest tornado. The Mekons begin this movement with “I’m Not Here (1967)” which is about God knows what. A terrible cocktail party? But the anger, the disdain? Wonderful. When Jon Langford sings, “All of Nixon has arrived with Hitler as his very special guest,” voice dripping with loathing, I picture our co-presidents with the rich one doing his weird Nazi salute. Then Chrissy Hynde does her thing. I listened to her memoir last year, read by Patricia Arquette (from After Hours, by the way). It’s worthwhile. I didn’t realize she was at Kent State during Kent State, and there are a whole lot more surprises as she morphed from hippy chick to punk rock icon. But back to the song. What happened to standing up for Democracy, standing with our allies? What about the separation of church and state? Conflicts of interest? Nepotism? I went back to Ohio but… Then REM covers Wire to set the general mood. I put two songs from the Document album on this playlist, and one of them isn’t even the perfectly appropriate “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” with its actual Trump namecheck. I just couldn’t.

3. King

I imagine the Beach Boys singing to MAGA voters and one-time personal sycophants like Michael Cohen or Bill Barr. “All the dreams you shared with him, you might as well forget…” Welcome to the royal kingdom section of the playlist! Yesterday Trump trolled liberal America with “long live the king” on social media after screwing with NYC’s new congestion pricing tax. Classic bully behavior, pretending it’s a joke when pressed for explanation. “Straight to Hell” speaks for itself. Well, it seems more about the Vietnam War but I’ve appropriated it. “There ain’t no asylum here…” Then Elvis C’s “Brilliant Mistake,” written forty years ahead of its time. Then beautiful Sinead with her ditty from the same era about the freaking emperor. The darn wizard behind the darn curtain. I especially love the tasty drum fills in the mesmerizing outro. I wish it would go ten more minutes. Or four more years. The last song of this section, “Exhuming McCarthy,” should have been the TrumpVanceMusk campaign theme song. Have you no sense of decency…? 

4. Wicked Pissed

Then Lennon does his thing. No one communicates total antipathy for the dolts in charge better than that guy. And it’s so relevant. This week The New York Times reported Volodymyr Zelenksy as saying, “I would like to have more truth with the Trump team” and that Trump himself lives in a “web of disinformation.” Meanwhile, Marco Rubio negotiates with the Russians in Saudi Arabia while Trump has begun blatantly lying about Ukraine having started this war. Had to get a Dylan song on here too and why shouldn’t it be “Maggie’s Farm” to commemorate the great movie that came out this year and for the reminder that sometimes you just have to say “this sucks” and quit. I don’t think about quitting my teaching job but I have quit trying to be unbiased in the way I communicate with students. I’m so sick of the right-wingers complaining about public educators indoctrinating children. How else am I supposed to talk about slavery as anything but a monstrous economic system? I’ve never told my students how I lean politically but maybe I should. Then more “we’re not going to take it anymore” with “Runaway,” the pop song version of Thelma and Louise. I don’t condone the violence but “everybody’s got a breaking point, and baby, there you are.” And to round out the pissed-off corner, one of my favorite Jam songs: “Funeral Pyre.” You get another fab drum performance but also what an apt description of the mob at a book burning: Shed your fears and lose your guilt, tonight we burn responsibility in the fire… For all the good and faithful public servants fired over the last two weeks. Mob mentality. Mass delusion:

We feast on flesh and drink on blood

Live by fear and despise love in a crisis

(What with today's high prices)

Bring some paper and bring some wood

Bring what's left of all your love for the fire

We'll watch the flames grow higher

But if you get too burnt, you can't come back home

Although the next four songs are still wicked pissed, they’re also about personal empowerment, about carving out a space for yourself, for seeing the terrain clearly and saying screw it: your crazy don’t affect me. Bray and bleet all you want maga sheep, you can’t touch me. It’s a feel-good section. I know you’ve deceived me now here’s a surprise… I’m going underground… so get off my island! Roar!!!

5. Together, Home

Starting with “People Have the Power,” we round the corner to three songs that consider our collective soul and power. Reminders that as inconsequential we may feel, we are part of something huge. Even if our individual voices don’t get heard or amplified, if we’re being open and honest, we’re tapping into something timeless, consequential, palpable. We have to pick our battles and our boycotts, but dammit, underestimate us at your peril. Our so-called leaders speak, with words they try to jail you, they subjugate the meek, but it’s the rhetoric of failure… We have way more standing than the “lock her up” crowd cuz our side wants to help people, play by the rules, and pull together. Remember that. When they go low…

The last three songs are meant to be a reset. Go in peace to love and to serve the world, as they say at the end of the catholic mass. Be yourself, hold onto your values, and it’s okay if you miss certain aspects of the America you grew up in. Get on home, and go with your baby.

The Wizard of Oz is a story about perspective. Kansas doesn’t get any nicer while Dorothy is away. But in her knocked out, emerald fever dream, normality grows in stature. With its absence in Oz, the sepia drab of Kansas, home, suddenly appeals and the declarative “there’s no place like home” becomes imperative. Kansas hasn’t changed, but Dorothy has. 

So yes, I’m feeling dislocation at the moment, but I expect to find my footing. I hope you do too. I’m going to stay strong with running and yoga (I love that I’m learning the ancient Hindu practice of yoga from a Muslim woman at my local Young Men’s Christian Association. How American is that?). I’m going to unplug from a lot of social media outlets and protect my mental health, but I’ll push back. I’ll stand with anyone resisting this most corrupt and self-serving government. 

There’s no place like hope.

Spotify playlist: No Place Like Home (2025)