I once read a passage like this:
A person should be like a team, recruiting against his own mind and heart, not discouraged, calling, and loving freedom.
What kind of person can take up this passage, a person is like a team? Having read Diamonds and Rust, I can say, people like Joan Baez.
I'm not a fan of music, I know very little about folk songs, and I didn't know Joan Baez, the queen of folk songs, until I read the book. I've heard of Bob Dylan, I've heard of Martin Luther King, I've heard of Steve Jobs. But I don't know that Baez and Dylan are friends and mentors; I don't know that when Dr. King published his famous "I Have a Dream" at lincoln memorial in Washington, D.C., Joan Baez, as King's friend, was standing by his side holding a guitar and leading hundreds of thousands of people "marching for work and freedom" to sing the hymn "We Will Triumph" sung by the Black Church in the South; I did not know that Jobs worshipped Joan Baez as his goddess.
However, Joan Baez is not defined by these familiar celebrities. She was independent and free, and she was different from them.
"I (Joan Baez) think I can change something, but he (Bob Dylan) doesn't think anybody can change anything."
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan
In an interview with the media, Joan Baez spoke of her differences from King, arguing that social injustices are perpetuated and have nothing to do with skin color or occupation. As a teenager, Baez once wrote in his diary, "What kind of person a person is, depends on what kind of person he molds himself into"!
In this regard, Thomas Sawwell, a prominent African-American intellectual of contemporary America, held a similar position with Joan Baez that the way out for blacks was through black self-reliance, not policy inclination.
Joan Baez's views may have come from her intuition, but they coincided with the theoretical scholar Thomas Sowell.
Joan Baez has a good singing voice, and at the beginning of her autobiography, Diamonds and Rust, she says, "I was born with talent. When it comes to talent, I am almost modest, but extremely grateful. ”
Book excerpt | Diamonds and Rust Preface
At the same time, she wrote in the afterword to her autobiography: "Just making music is not enough for me. If my life is not about action and music going hand in hand, then those sounds, no matter how beautiful, have nothing to do with the only real problem of the century. ”
Her life has been part of the folk, part of the times, the well-deserved queen of the folk, the social activist. At the same time, these are only part of her life, a certain chapter of her gorgeous life, a certain note.
She held the guitar,
Stand there.
Free-form songs,
The sound seemed to come from heaven.
She's sad,
She rejoiced,
She felt the sadness and joy of the world.
No need to hug front and back,
Standing there,
One person is a team.
#半亩方塘 #