Show me the ruins

I’m not sure why, but for the past week or so “There But for Fortune” has been rattling around my head. The song was written by Phil Ochs in 1963, but is probably best known for Joan Baez’s cover from a year later.

Perhaps it’s because we live in such unstable times—60 years ago people in the first world might have thought that at least their trajectory was secure, even with wars in former colonies across two continents. But now I think we all know at some level that nothing is vouchsafed to us: not clean drinking water, not education, not uncontaminated food, not protection from hostile attacks, not shelter. Those of us who are honest must also admit that much of the insecurity is self-inflicted.

So Ochs connecting the listener to the prisoner, the unhoused, the addict, the invaded nation seems perhaps even more on point now than it was in the 60s.

Here’s Baez singing it back in the day.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu