"HAPPY" VETERANS' DAY

Chemical change like a laser beam
You've shattered the warning amber light
Make me warm
Let me see you moving everything over
Smiling in my room
You know you'll be inside of my mind soon.

There are so many of you.
White shirt and tie, white shirt and tie,
White shirt and tie, wedding ring, wedding ring.

Mulligan stew for Bloom,
The only Jew in the room
Saxon's sick on the holy dregs
And their constant getting throw up on his leg.

Molly's gone to blazes,
Boylan's crotch amazes
Any woman whose husband sleeps with his head
All buried down at the foot of his bed.

I've got his arm
I've got his arm
I've had it for weeks
I've got his arm
Steven won't give his arm
To no gold star mother's farm;
War's good business so give your son
And I'd rather have my country die for me.

Sell your mother for a Hershey bar
Grow up looking like a car
There are;
All you want to do is live,
All you want to do is give but
Somehow it all falls apart

The above lyrics to Jefferson Airplane's "Rejoyce" refer mainly to James Joyce's ULYSSES, and are part of possibly their most drug-addled,  yet confident album (AFTER BATHING AT BAXTERS/1967).  This song is certainly one of Grace Slick's most heartfelt performances,  fusing both the personal and the political into a passionate,  poetic polemic. It is mostly about an otherness that often,  in some minds at least,  is reason for fear and blind allegiance to a "cause" (in this case the Vietnam war,  and by proxy the interests of  multi-national corporations).  Sounds familiar doesn't it?  Given that our nation is currently so pro-military (as opposed to pro-soldier) and that everything is  commodified,  the rituals of today seem hollow at best. We are merely anesthetized,  our IPhones set to "entertain",  not inform.  The mono-culture broke down during the late Sixties, but is back in full force today.  Happy Veterans' Day!