High Flying Adored
Today, meaning this day when this story is being published, is a momentous day in America and I have been searching for a way to memorialize it in my writing in as meaningful a way as I can. It’s Wednesday, January 20th, Inauguration Day. I’m tempted to say that since today (the real today, January 18th) is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, that in two days we will be free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, we will be free at last. And today also looks to be the nicest day of the week with rain coming in the next few days. So, I decided to take a motorcycle ride up to the top of Mount Palomar, one of my and every local motorcyclists’ favorite rides. Along the way I was planning to listen to the Audible book by Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise, but I found that with my Calvary open-face helmet, the road noise made it too hard to hear the narrator, so I opted for one of my playlists of music instead. I’m not even sure which playlist I had on, but it was dominated in its random shuffling, by the Original Cast Album of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s amazing Evita, which was first released in 1976. While I loved the play, the movie and the music, being a storyteller, I am most drawn to the lyrics, written by Tim Rice, who ended up becoming a regular collaborator with Webber on a number of great musical theater productions. As I listened to the sequence of the twenty songs that make up the run of show, I drifted up the mountain, leaning into the sunny curves and listening to the familiar sequence detailing the life and times of Maria Eva Duarte from about 1934 (when she moved from the Pampas to Buenos Aires), through the early WWII years, until she met Colonel Juan Peron in 1944…and beyond.
You cannot listen to Evita without getting an education about the slide of Argentina into the authoritarian/military control of Juan Peron and his wife Eva, riding the pseudo-populist, post-WWII, union-sparked wave of the Descamisados (shirtless workers). While Juan rose through the ranks of the Junta that preceded his run for the Presidency, Eva was plying her trade as a B-movie actress and minor celebrity (sort of the Reality TV of its day). She went on to captivate the Argentine electorate (not so much the Junta generals) and the global elite who found her provincially charming. And despite her plundering of the Foundation Eva Peron and the government coffers, she garners the love of her people right up until her final and dramatic tactic of dying at the age of thirty three to the great and genuine remorse of her beloved Descamisados.
As I listened to the story in the form of the catchy ALW tunes and well-crafted Tim Rice lyrics, I was struck by the similarities with our current desperate situation in America. It is amazing how similar the situation of Donald Trump is to the combined reality of Juan and Eva Peron. In typical Trumpian fashion, he is not content to share the spotlight with anyone, even his wife (Melania seems as much a blank sheet of white, unlined paper as any person I have ever seen). He is an amalgam of both. Juan and Eva makes their mark in the “Big Apple” just as Trump did. Ivana must have been Augustin Magaldi, who brings him to prominence, out of Jamaica Estates and onto Fifth Avenue. Perhaps the part of Che Guevara is being played by Rudy Giuliani.
“Oh what a circus, oh what a show, [America] has gone to town…We’ve all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night…Falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right…Oh what an exit, that’s how to go…We’ve made the front page of all the world’s papers today…Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow? What kind of [god] has lived among us? How will we ever get by without [him]? The best show in town was the crowd outside the Casa [Blanco] crying “[Trump! Trump!]” But that’s all gone now, as soon as the smoke from the funeral clears, we’re all gonna see how [he] did nothing for years.”
I go crazy with the Tim Rice lyrics here and see Trump in every passage like when Eva is being warned by Che about the path she is setting out for herself with Peron and the Descamisados:
“[Donald], beware your ambition. It’s hungry and cold, can’t be controlled, will run wild. This in a man is a danger enough, but you are a [child], not even a [child], not very much more than a child.”
But there is no reasoning with the man-child:
“Fill me up with your heat, with your noise, with your dirt, overdo me. Let me dance to your beat, make it loud, let it hurt running through me. Don’t hold back, you are certain to impress. Tell the driver [and the Marine One Pilot] this is where I’m staying…All I want is a whole lot of excess. Oh, but it’s sad when a love affair dies, but when we were hot, we were hot. I know you’ll look back on the good times we shared.”
But Che sums it up best with:
“One always picks
The easy fight
One praises fools
One smothers light
One shifts left to right
It’s part of the art of the possible”
And the crowd chants:
“[Trump! Trump! Trump!]”
But in his heart he knows better:
“Dice are rolling, the knives are out
Would-be presidents are all around
I don’t say they mean harm
To see us six feet underground”
But they’d each give an arm
“There again we could be foolish not to quit while we’re ahead
For distance lends enchantment, and that is why all exiles are distinguished, more important, they’re not dead. I could find job satisfaction in Paraguay [or Moscow or just Mar-A-Lago]”
Only Che really gets it:
“How annoying that they have to fight elections for their cause
The inconvenience, having to get a majority.
There are other ways of establishing authority.”
If normal methods of persuasion fail to win them applause,
“High flying, adored
You were just a backstreet [guy]
Hustling and fighting
Scratching and biting
High flying, adored
Did you believe in your wildest moments
All this would be yours?
That you’d become the [leader] of them all?
Were there stars in your eyes
When you crawled in at night
From the bars, from the sidewalks
From the gutter theatrical?
Don’t look down
It’s a long long way to fall
High flying, adored
When the money keeps rolling in you don’t ask how.”
Donald says to no one in particular in the loneliness of his Oval Office:
“What happens now? Where do you go from here?
What happens now?”
Che has one last piece of advice as he submits his last $20k per diem bill:
“Don’t ask anymore.”
Requiem aeternum Donald, and I reach the summit of Mount Palomar and start back down to reality to solve real problems in serious ways with serious people
Beautifully said!