and Words
I follow the Moskva and down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change
The world is closing in and did you ever think
That we could be so close like brothers?
The future’s in the air can feel it everywhere
I’m blowing with the wind of change
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
On an otherwise forgettable afternoon or evening in the 1980’s, I channel surf to find a movie. The movie Gotcha! comes on one of the premium channels; it’s a movie about a young American tourist who travels to Europe. While I did enjoy the film, I would encourage you to watch it. It’s worth it even if only to see Anthony Edwards as a naïve, though cocky college student. I won’t give away the plot save for one thing; he eventually lands in East Berlin. What?!
Many of you are not old enough to remember that the city of Berlin, and even Germany, was split into two halves, the East and the West. It now all sounds like a bad joke; it’s reminiscent of King Solomon ordering the baby to be split in half… Except that they did. Germany split into two halves, and they erected a literal wall that separated the East and West sides of Berlin. That was the reality in which I grew up; much like we think of North and South Korea.
That movie was released four years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, but it’ll give you the feel of how differently things were before that pivotal event in November of 1989. I remember watching those events on my television in awe; triumphantly joyous Germans celebrated as they started to dismantle that which separated them. They’re no longer East or West Germans; they’re only Germans.
Years later, pieces of the Berlin Wall have been broken into many pieces and moved to many corners of the Earth. This is symbolic in two instrumental ways. First, it is a physical token of the past; you can deny man landed on the moon or that the Earth is a globe, but here’s a tangible chunk of it that you can’t deny or unsee. Germany was divided and then abruptly it wasn’t anymore. Second, it’s symbolic in a Humpy-Dumpty way; we scattered the pieces to the wind, such that you can’t put it back together again. That monster that was division and conflict was slain. We conquered division; unity won.
Finally, I graduate from the University of Miami as an engineer and start work as a programmer at Microsoft. Eventually, one of those pieces of the wall ends up in one of the cafeterias. Sadly, I have yet to make a point of seeing it. I’m no longer an employee, though I can easily get an old peep to let me in to see it. I’ll put it on my bucket list.
This is how we celebrate our dark history; we can overcome it and still remember. We can do the same with monuments of The Confederacy. Imagine lopping off the head of the General Robert E. Lee statue and put it on display, though not like a ‘head on a spike’ (that would be tacky). It’s not about forgetting our dark history; it never was. It’s about not celebrating it. It’s about removing them from a position of reverence or honor.
We can remember The Holocaust and weep instead of celebrating it by wearing shirts with “Six million wasn’t enough”. They both remember, but only one despicably celebrates it. There’s a difference.
As I listen to this song, it reminds me of the need for change. I remember reading a blurb about this tune and it was certainly set in Russia, even includes references to Gorky Park and balalaika. Though for many of my generation, this will be inextricably tied to the Fall of the Berlin Wall; it doesn’t hurt that the Scorpions are a German band. I recall those video clips of dismantling that wall and I feel the optimism of the “magic of the moment on a glory night”. I’m overcome by the hope of “the children of tomorrow sharing their dreams”. The Scorpions released this album (‘Crazy World’) just one year after that pivotal event.
Though in it is not simply recalling of one event. It’s the gentle reminder to stop anchoring on the past. Let’s reflect upon words like ‘learning’, ‘improving’, and ‘growing’. They are all positive and all imply change. I won’t necessarily say that any change is good, but I will assert that change is not implicitly bad.
As I left for college, my mom warned that she “didn’t want to see me with an earring.” I resisted; it was my ear. I pierced my ear months later, but to the letter of her stipulation, I wore a bandage on my ear when I came home. The bandaged ear amused her, but she didn’t object too strongly to the earring.
I waited on tables up until college graduation, I let my hair grow as long as I could until my boss would instruct me to cut it. I allowed my hair to grow past my shoulders and wore it in ponytail. Only upon returning home and my mom asserting to “cut your hair, you look like a woman” did I finally cut my hair.
The standards have changed; we no longer bat an eye at a waiter (or programmer) with long hair and a ponytail. Has this fractured your life? Is this the decline of civilization? Those are easy, we have already grown accustomed to them.
I cringed with unspeakable disappointment when a friend voiced distain upon seeing a woman working in construction, “Why don’t they know their place?” Her place is wherever she chooses to be; her working out there in the Seattle rain does not adversely impact your life. Let’s stop objecting to change simply because it feels unfamiliar.
And with all that, I’ll leave you with one last verse:
Where the children of tomorrow dream away in the wind of change
Let’s commit to dreaming together. That involves embracing change instead of resisting it, because we’re not perfect.