Any way the wind blows.

In the comments on the post about the smelliness of a particular city in Iowa, stever writes: "I lived in Pampa,TX for awhile in the late 70s. There was a paint plant on one end of town and a rendering plant on the other. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, you only needed a nose to know which way the wind blows."

So Bob Dylan wrote, wrote "You don't need a weather man/To know which way the wind blows," which is about understanding what's happening. It brought a similar phrase to mind — "Any way the wind blows" — which means just about the opposite, more unknowing than knowing. It is closer to another famous Dylan phrase "no direction home." If you go any way the wind blows, you go wherever outside forces take you; you're an aimless wanderer. So it's not surprising the phrase comes up again and again in songs — most notably in Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."



And thanks to Queen for putting that video up on their official YouTube feed and with no ad. That shows some nice respect for their fans, and I hope I'm returning the favor by embedding them here and inviting all the love possible for this overflowingly generous band.

Now, I can't wear on your patience long enough to point out how many different songs have the title "Any Way the Wind Blows"...



But look at Doris Day — so wholesome, but kind of dirty:



And here's a different song with the same title. It's the one that's stuck in my personal memory bank — in 2 really different versions. You've got the Mothers of Invention of "Freak Out"...



... and the insanely, delightfully slowed down rendition by the Mothers in the form of Ruben and the Jets...



But maybe you like this kind of thing, slick country rock from the 1980s. Same title, but again, a completely different song:

"I said, 'Be careful that old man is really a commie...'"

Said SteveR in the comments to yesterday's post about the very effective Bernie Sanders ad that uses the brilliant Simon & Garfunkel song "America." The ad only uses the first verse:

Let us be lovers,
We'll marry our fortunes together.
I've got some real estate
Here in my bag.

It's funny, because you can't have real estate in your bag, so the speaker is either a huckster — not a good image for a politician — or, most likely, a poor guy comically conveying the fact that he's got nothing, so his offer to "marry fortunes" is, we realize, early on, nothing but the proposed love. The lyrics have to stop there because the next line is "So we bought a pack of cigarettes," and no one's going to be smoking in a political ad. But if we were to keep going, we learn that the man is on the bus with his girlfriend, Kathy, and to pass the time they are "playing games with the faces"...

She said the man in the gabardine suit
Was a spy.
I said, "Be careful,
His bow tie is really a camera."

Hence SteveR's "I said, 'Be careful that old man is really a commie...'"

If we go on with the song we get to the most evocative lines:

"Kathy, I'm lost", I said,
Though I knew she was sleeping.
"I'm empty and aching and
I don't know why."

In the comments, Meade quotes that and adds:

Then Kathy woke up and looked out the window.
Alarmed when she realized where we were.
"Art" she said,
Though she knew my name is Simon.
"We're somewhere near Greece!
Why didn't you wake me up?
We should never have made that left turn back there.
We need to make America great again!"

Mrs Whatsit drew attention to the same "Kathy, I'm lost" passage:

That song is an awful choice for a political campaign. It's not about hope and promise. It's about looking for America and not finding it.

The lovers hop on the bus hopefully enough, but by the end they're out of cigarettes and out of things to talk about, and she's flipping through a magazine rather than looking out the window at the country rolling by. Last verse:

Cathy, I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and I'm aching and I don't know why
Countin' the cars on the New Jersey turnpike
They've all come to look for America, all come to look for America

A sad, superannuated song for a sad, superannuated candidate.

Ah, but that's why I like it. There's this deep feeling we have about America. It makes sense to speak of looking for it, longing for it. Obviously, we are right here in America, so what's to look for? But that obviousness is obtuse. We understand the idea of looking for America, finding the real, more essential, more beautiful America, the America that fulfills our dreams and lives up to our ideals. Donald Trump says "Make America great again," as if there's one America and sometimes it's good and it can go bad and it can become great again. But another, more poetic way to put that would be "Make America America again" or "We'll find our way back to America."  I don't recommend that as a slogan for Trump. Too easy to call him reactionary and racist. But you see my point: Americans understand the idea of searching for America: We've all come to look for America.

Now, bagoh20 said, referring to the point in the ad when we see lots of faces in tiny squares:

Oh man, the dinosaurs are swooning. Lets all do a little more Baby Boomer damage before we go. If you want socialism, you specifically, and adamantly don't want America, but there are many places to go join the Borg - the huge cube of faces, all equally too small to see, drab, helpless and dependent. Please leave us individuals a home on this planet not ruined by guilt, fear, and sloth.

I said, Be careful that old man is really a commie....