Father
It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.
I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.
Son
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
It's always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.
Father
It's not time to make a change,
Just sit down, take it slowly.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to go through.
Find a girl, settle down,
if you want, you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.
Son
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it.
If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them they know not me.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.
September 27, 2004
He Had to Go Away
The Expulsion of Cat Stevens
By GARY LEUPP
"With respect to Cat Stevens ... our Homeland Security Department and
intelligence agencies found some information concerning his activities that
they felt under our law required him to be placed on a watch list and
therefore deny him entry into the United States. In this instance,
information was obtained that suggested he should be placed on the watch
list and that's why he was denied entry into the country."
Colin Powell, September 14, 2004
Cat Stevens in 1978 announced that he had converted to Islam, becoming
Yusuf Islam. This itself wouldn't have been a big issue to fan like me.
After all, there were Muslim pop singers like Jimmy Cliff, and singers into
all kinds of religion. But he simultaneously gave up singing, finding his
own work sinful and embarrassing, and even asked his record companies to
stop circulating his material. So it seemed like Islam, his version of it
anyway, had stolen Cat Stevens from us.
But Stevens was my favorite singer-songwriter in high school, and loving
his work, admiring his versatility (doing the artwork for his own album-
covers), and knowing that he'd had a difficult life, I always wished him
well. If religion brought him peace, I thought he deserved it. During the
controversies that followed, including his sympathetic remarks about
Khomeini in Iran, and about the Salman Rushdie fatwa affair, I thought he
was trying to convey the feelings of Muslims to the western world. (As the
London-born son of a Greek Cypriot and Swede, his roots are all over that
world.) I didn't and don't agree with a lot of what he's said, but I do
think his work reveals a sensitive, decent person. I think the Yusuf of
2004 is still fundamentally the Cat of 1970.
My favorite Cat Stevens song is one of his most popular: "Father and Son,"
written for Revolussia, his never-produced musical/film which I take it was
set during the Russian Revolution, in which a father gently tells his
(Bolshevik?) son:
It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know.
I wondered at the time this came out (1970) about the line "that's your
fault" since of course it's no young person's responsibility that he or she
is young. But I checked a dictionary and discovered that "fault" can mean
"weakness." The father here is, through Cat's mellow voice, saying, "The
problem is you're just too young to understand the world." Go out, settle
down, marry, be like me. You'll be happy.
In that so familiar song, the son responds indignantly, in a contrastingly
angry, bitter, but equally confident tone, not directly to the father but
to the world he wants to change:
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
It's always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
When I first heard this I was doing what the National Forensics League
called "dramatic interpretation," in which the student takes a scene from a
drama and through voice variation and facial angles represents dialogue
between two or more actors. I didn't know this was written as part of a
musical which would involve a duet, but was impressed by Cat Stevens
performing both roles in this song.
The father repeats the same refrain, with the son interrupting his wise
words at the
end:
Away Away Away, I know I have to
Make this decision alone---no
The son inveighs against his father and the world, explaining how all the
things he's come to know inside are hard to face, but harder to ignore. As
he repeats at the end "I know I have to go," the father in the background
asks "Why must you go and make this decision alone?" That's the
inconclusive end. It leaves you moved by generational and historical change
and the whole complicated human condition. It's not the work of a narrow
mind or potential threat to peace-loving people.
Yet here you have the creator of this piece, and so many brilliant other
ones, a man associated with charitable work and the establishment of
mosques, boarding a plane with his daughter from London to the U.S., after
the normal security checks, planning to do some recording in Nashville.
He's apprehended as a possible terror suspect after the plane was diverted
from its flight path to Bangor Maine by U.S. authorities, causing lots of
inconvenience to lots of people, and sent back to Heathrow Airport. You
have British Foreign Minister Jack Straw protesting to Colin Powell,
probably saying "Don't you think you're getting a bit paranoid here, and
don't you think this will be seen as ridiculous in the world?" and that
very sad figure Powell publicly justifying the action. The inquiring mind
turns to the internet to find some rationale, and learns that in 2000 Yusuf
Islam was denied admission to Israel, accused of donating funds to Hamas in
1998. He denied any knowing contribution to Hamas.
Yusuf Islam has sponsored orphanages in Hebron. Israeli authorities say
such funds have been diverted to Hamas' violent actions. I have no idea
who's right here. Muslims have to contribute to charities, if able; this is
one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Just like Mormons have to tithe. And if
somebody uses somebody's donation for other than the intended purpose (as
happens, all the time, in contributions to respectable mainstream
institutions in the U.S.) some government can say the donor supported that
unintended purpose---and so should be on a watch list, or list of
inadmissible persons. It can just smear people it wants to keep out.
The broad message of the Cat Stevens Incident is: even a '70s rock star
with millions of dollars and millions of fans, and no possible connection
to 9-11, or any likely desire to ever inflict any harm on this country,
can't enter Ashcroft's America if he's Muslim, has been accused (rightly or
wrongly) of ties to Palestinians (rightly or wrongly) accused of violence
against non-Americans in a distant foreign country, and has spoken out
against war on Iraq. This is to protect the USA from people who "hate our
freedoms."
.
|
