Dichroic Reflections

Y is for Peter Yarrow

I am brazenly, if pusillanimously, skipping the letter X. The obvious selection for Y is Yeats, of course, and I do like Yeats. But most of the pieces I know and love best are the ones everyone knows, the going to Innisfree and the strange beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Also, anything I could say has probably been said better at one time or another by our resident virtual-neighborhood Yeatsoholic, the erudite Natalie. Instead, I'm going to combine this series with something that has become a tradition of mine in the years I've had this blog.

is for Peter Yarrow.

Every year at Chanukah, I've posted the lyrics to my favorite Chanukah song, "Light One Candle", by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary. Every year it's seemed more topical, and 2005 is no exception:

Light One Candle

Light one candle for the Maccabee Children
With thanks that their light didn't die.
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied.
Light on candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand.
Light one candle for the wisdom to know
When the peace maker's time is at hand.

Don't let the light go out
It's lasted for so many years
Don't let the light go out
Let it shine through our love and our tears.

Light one candle for the strength that we need
To never became our own foe.
Light one candle for those who are suffering
The pain we learned so long ago.
Light one candle for all we believe in
that anger won't tear us apart.
And light one candle to bring us together
With peace as the song in our hearts;.

Don't let the light go out,
It's lasted for so many years.
Don't let the light go out,
Let it shine through our love and our fears.

What is the memory that's valued so highly
That we keep it alive in that flame?
What's the commitment for those who have died,
When we cry out they have not died in vain?
We have come this far always believing
That justice would somehow prevail.
This is the burden, this is the promise,
THIS is why we will not fail.

Don't let the light go out,
It's lasted for so many years.
Don't let the light go out,
Let it shine through our love and our fears.

Don't let the light go out!
Don't let the light go out!
Don't let the light go out!

Maybe because they've sung "Puff the Magic Dragon" (another song written by Yarrow) a few too many times around the campfire, some people don't take Peter, Paul and Mary seriously. But you have to respect people who have written songs that literally almost everyone knows, who have worked to foster younger songwriters coming up in their tracks, and most of all who have spoken, sung, and worked for what they believe in for some forty years now without wavering. The group marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and marched and sang against the Vietnam War, but unlike so many others, their activism didn't end with the 1960s. Yarrow specifically, since this entry is about him, was a founding member of the Newport Folk Festival, launched the New Folks concert at the Kerrville Folk Fest, is an advocate for the hospice movement, founded the “Save One Child” Fund at Beth Israel Hospital’s to provide free neurosurgery to save the lives of children from all over the world whose families could not afford the surgery, has worked with the Guggenheim Museum’s "Learning Through Art" program, and has launched Operation Respect: “Don’t Laugh At Me,” to build a climate of respect in schools. In other words, this is not just a happy little man who sings his little songs on PBS at pledge time. The Miami Jewish Federation summed it up when they gave him their Tikkun Olam award - "Tikkun Olam" is a Jewish idea that can be translated as "repairing the world".

None of that makes him a poet, of course. But try this: forget all those camp fires and just look at the lyrics of Puff the Magic Dragon with new eyes. It's a coming of age song, told from the imaginary friend's perspective. There's a reason it gets sung so much:

Puff, the Magic Dragon

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalei,
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,
and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. Oh

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalei,
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalei,

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail,
Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flag when Puff roared out his name. Oh!

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave,
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave. Oh!

A lot of Yarrow's (and everyone else's) songs in the 1960s were about entering adulthood (or rejecting traditional models of adulthood) or about rebellion and individuality:

If I Had Wings

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, no one asks why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I'll fly free then.

Yesterday's eyes see their colors fading away
They see their sun turning to grey
You can't share in a dream, that you don't believe in
If you say that you see and pretend to be me
You won't be then.

How can you ask if I'm happy goin' my way?
You might as well ask a child at play!
There's no need to discuss or understand me
I won't ask of myself to become something else
I'll just be me!

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, and no one asks her why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I'll fly free then.

But they didn't stop there. PPM kept singing, and all three kept writing, and their songs grew past youthful rebellion. Yarrow wrote about surviving, about seeing idealists turn to cynics and about what it takes to keep singing:

from Sweet Survivor

You remember when you felt each person mattered
When we all had to care or all was lost
But now you see believers turn to cynics
And you wonder was the struggle worth the cost
Then you see someone too young to know the difference
And a veil of isolation in their eyes
And inside you know you've got to leave them something
Or the hope for something better slowly dies.

Carry on my sweet survivor, carry on my lonely friend
Don't give up on the dream, and don't you let it end.
Carry on my sweet survivor, you've carried it so long
So it may come again, carry on
Carry on, carry on.

from With Your Face to the Wind

Sometimes it takes the dark to let us see the light
You can't have that victory unless you've fought the fight
Sometimes it takes a winding road to lead us home
While you're windin' 'round my friend just don't go windin' 'round alone

Though it was Stookey who wrote about being Old Enough to be on the cover of Modern Maturity, and still singing. It's difficult to write only about Yarrow's work, because Peter, Paul and Mary have sung songs written by by each of the three, and some of their most famous songs are by other songwriters. But Yarrow is responsible for some of the trio's best songs, and like the other two, he doesn't seem to have slowed down much, or damped his fires with age:

from With Your Face to the Wind

I'm not saying the party's over I just wanted to tell you how,
very good it has been up 'til now
How very good it has been up 'til now
Isn't it so funny how time flies.

Remember when we used to laugh at old father time
All in all the joke's on him and he don't even mind
Sigh, and put your arms around me,
sway and look into my eyes
Isn't it so funny how time flies.

Posted by dichroic at December 12, 2005 02:52 PM