#4 Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life (1976)

Imagine if you will, this 50-year old white broad embarking on this earnest project of listening to the #100BestAlbums. I decide my process is to read each album’s lyrics as I’m listening the first time through because for me, words are where the magic lies, it’s how our world is painted for me. 

Well, white broad, welcome to funk. This album has permanently changed my process and if you are thinking “Well, duh”, we are in agreement. I’ve had more than one evening happily grooving to this album and chuckling at myself.

I cannot overstate how truly ignorant I am about music in general, which is why this project has been so rewarding. Stevie mixes funk, soul, rock, and R&B; and he sings about the joys and troubles of life, civil rights, Black history, parenthood, nostalgia for childhood, and his faith. Expert reviewers can tell you all about Stevie’s genius and that this album is considered his “Magnum Opus”. I’m more concerned with exploring how opening yourself up to our fellow humans’ abilities to mark our world with beauty and life-changing art can change your OWN life as well.

“There are a lot of things happening that show us that this, right now, is a time to love.” 

-Stevie Wonder 

One of the things that this album triggered was a deep-dive into how traditional Rock ‘n’ roll of the 50s and 60s, eventually morphed into Rock music, largely with the arrival of the Beatles. I didn’t even know there was a difference between Rock music and Rock ‘n’ roll music. WHAT? 

The Beatles of course altered history dramatically. They wrote their own songs, they played their own instruments, and they didn’t have one single singer, instead sharing the lead among multiple band members. This was unique and became a new norm among white rock groups. 

"If my flow is goin', I keep on until I peak." 

-Stevie Wonder

The Beatles then became interested in folk music and musicians like Bob Dylan. Suddenly white pop music changed to focus on lyrics, including an antagonism toward mainstream adults and their derided middle-class values. The hippie aesthetic is born – Rock ‘n’ roll sound with lyrics that have objectives and attitudes. This is considered such a huge change in music that an entire change of genre occurs, not just an evolution. Rock is born.

Meanwhile, while most white Boomers are singing about freedom, love, and the power of psychedelics, most Black Boomers are gravitating to Soul. Soul came out of gospel music and was more inclined to celebrate Black culture as it was. Made popular by such greats as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Aretha Franklin, “Soul” eventually became a catch-all term for all kinds of R&B-based styles. Soul music of the 70s was more likely to have a brass section, keyboards, and more backup singers than Rock music.

And of course, the Rock and Soul crossovers have been where a lot of our great music comes from, including this momentous album. Another example: Prince deliberately changed his music to incorporate more of a rock/pop sound for 1999 and Purple Rain, creating an earth-shattering new sound. 

Anyway, music and its history is rich and complicated and nuanced in ways that the above description surely does not appreciate as well as an expert would, but I’m delighted to have just learned a taste of such a consequential historical era. Here’s hoping you find something that delights you today and every day. 

“We all have hearts… If you have a heart, love somebody. If you have enough heart, love everybody.” 

-Stevie Wonder

#2 Casablanca (1942)

There is something really magical about this project I’m embarking on. Who hasn’t seen Casablanca? It’s one of those movies you think you know. Humphrey Bogart. Rick’s Café. Here’s looking at you, kid. Watching this movie now, at this age, and at this time, blew my mind a bit. The goal of The Retirement Project is to take in the art and beauty and sheer joy of these mediums and something about going into it with that goal changes your perspective a bit.

Only a few weeks ago, I read a great novel about the French Resistance so it was on my mind how hard those citizens worked to resist the Nazis. Watching Casablanca this time around, it was like I had never seen the movie before or didn’t remember the most important parts about it. When something is so iconic, bits of it seep into your subconscious without you knowing how much is your lived experience and how much is just cultural references. I’ve always thought of it as a love story and, of course, it is. But that’s not what I took away from it this time. That’s a story line that is of no more weight than the rest of it. The immorality of complicity. And the desperation of citizens trapped in a war-torn world. Maybe that’s what makes the film so incredible – that they can marry these multiple story lines so seamlessly. After all, isn’t that what real life is like? Massive events happen globally or nationally (such as, say, a pandemic) but we are still living our individual lives, navigating this journey with our little cares and worries, love stories, family heartaches, that are in no way little to us.

When everyone in the bar broke into the French National Anthem, La Marseillaise, to drown out the singing Nazis, I got a little weepy with them. More tears at the end of the song when the Rick-obsessed drunk lady yells “Vive la democratie!” I played that part twice and just reveled in it with a loud, happy cry. I read afterwards that a lot of the supporting cast and the extras were themselves refugees and boy, you can feel all those emotions in that scene.

I’ve always especially liked historical fiction. Great works in this genre always get me googling for more information and to understand what that time was like, how people were living through it. What I surely knew at some point, but have since forgotten, is that when Roosevelt made his famous “live in infamy” speech, he only asked congress to declare war on Japan. That’s it. And Hitler, in narcissistic fashion, declared war on us.

The end of the movie is again, so iconic, as Ilsa/Bergman leaves Casablanca on the plane with Victor Laszlo. But the part I forgot is when Laszlo looks at Rick admiringly and says, “Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win.” Imagine that for a moment. When Americans and people all over the world saw this film, that was only a hope and certainly not a guarantee. Goosebumps.

We paid an awfully big price to defeat Nazism in WWII. Let's make sure, as it rises again, we stomp it out before it gets far enough to result in such a price again.

American WWII Cemetery, Normandy

 

#3 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

 

In the #100BestNovels category, I finally finished my first book! I’m using Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list for this category. They rank Ulysses by James Joyce as the best novel of all time, but quite frankly, it’s intimidating as hell and Portrait is #3 on their list so I swapped them. 

Portrait is described as Joyce’s “most approachable” work. Set in Ireland in the 1890s, it follows the life of Stephen Dedalus from childhood through university as he decides what kind of human he wants to be and how much of his family, religious, and national inherited baggage he wants to schlepp into adulthood.

James Joyce’s massive literary influence is in part because of his use of interior monologue, a narrative style that is a stream of consciousness from his main characters’ thoughts. This makes for a difficult but occasionally soothing read. For the first half of the book or so, I would sometimes read it out loud and let the gauzy prose wash over me. I had moments of really enjoying it. This style of writing is very effective in showing Stephen’s age progression and what he was concerned with as he grew up.

The second half of the book felt like page after page of Catholicism hell and damnation as Joyce’s main character struggles with his own religious beliefs. It was seriously slow-going for me and I’m glad it’s over.

The point of this project is not to share my profound insights on artists or their works that people much more qualified than me have been doing for over a hundred years, but to notice what this submersion in art inspires in the real world. In that respect, this was a huge success.

First, I spent hours learning about the Irish quest for independence and the home rule movement. It’s astounding how long things take, how hard activists work to push their vision forward, how flawed some of those visionaries are, so flawed that they hurt the very movement they are trying to help. The history of Ireland is so rich, tortured, and unique, it’s hard to put down once you start learning about it.

You really have to experience it first hand, so…. We’re planning a trip to Ireland! I’m so excited! Husband Rog is a huge soccer fan so we are going to try to wrap in a quick visit to England so he can watch his team play live for the first time. This is my favorite “real world consequence” of The Retirement Project so far.  

Enjoy this cute 11-minute history of Ireland. Let's get flutered!