Before I reveal my pick for a “song that reminds me of someone,” let me say a little bit about the someone in advance. My “someone” is not just one of the best best friends in the whole wild world, not just any grossly-underappreciated poet and philosopher, not just any garden variety wunderkind, not just any old holy-ish-that-guy-is-freakishly-special sort of guy, but a very special sort of all of the above.
For the record, I’m talking about the one and only Ammon (Ra) Allred, aka, “Ideas Man, Phd.” author of the one and only blog that I’ve ever cried real tears over the demise of and submitted heartfelt petitions for the resurrection of, “The Mostly Moribund Sylings of Ideas Man, PhD.” Ammon is the only living writer who I wish I had the luxury of interacting with every day, which I do, but can you wish to have more than what is reasonably permitted for a non-spouse?
For anyone who does not know him, because those who do know him will no doubt take this as an axiom, Ammon is nothing short of a genius. Insert all the 19th and 20thC critiques of the cult of genius here, sign me up for all of them, and then register my exception for Ammon. Q.E.D.
When you are lucky enough to know someone like Ammon, and when you’re given a #30DayChallenge prompt like today’s, here’s the quandary: how does one capture in song the genius of a genius?
I suspect one can only ever do so metaphorically, as I am confident Ammon would concede. So, my pick for today is (what I suspect is a song that Ammon would neither appreciate nor like) Don McLean’s “Vincent.” Here it is:
Let me just go ahead and say for the record that the Ammon that I know is not in the least bit the sort of tragic, suicidal, van-Gogh-ish artist, whose story is told (in this song, anyway) as a tragically and perhaps suicidal-for-the-rest-of-us-who-do-not-appreciate-his-genius artist.
Portraits hung in empty halls, frameless heads on empty walls, with eyes that see the world and dan’t forget.
I am not Ammon and will never be the incomparably, consummate aesthete he is, but this line in this song has always made me feel something like the injustice that is committed by those of us who don’t fully appreciate art. And as much as I’d like to to deny it, I am one of those people.
But this song is and has always been (for me) a peaon to genius. I don’t know how many genuises the average, everyday person knows, but I know one, and his name is Ammon Allred. Quite simply, I do not personally know any other human being who has so intimately attuned himself to the complex nuances and iterations of both physis and polis, the subtleties and nnuances of their IRL effects and dangers, with what has only every appeared to me as a kind of supernatural attunement that Ammon.Allred has always had.
If we ever get around to instituting something like an effective International Court of Justice, let me be the first to nominate Ammon Allred as Chief Justice. Also, he’s my firt nomination for the United States’ (as yet instituted) Minister of Culture.
Click here to return to the “anchor page” for #30DaySongChallenge2016 with the full list of this year’s picks