A nervous and dangerous time: How to sustain optimism in a dark world
WHEN he wrote ‘An American Tune’ in 1973, Paul Simon reflected the world he lived in. The optimism of the 1960s was fading. Richard Nixon, as yet the only American president to resign, still clung to office. It would be another year before he quit over Watergate. Huge numbers of British workers were on a three-day week; power was rationed. That January, Ireland, Denmark, and Britain became seventh, eighth and ninth members of the EEC. Five British soldiers died in an IRA bomb in Omagh. Later that year, three IRA terrorists escaped from Mountjoy in a hijacked helicopter.
There was a lot to be glum about but, as there always are, there were moments of optimism. Offering a glimpse of today, of how opportunity was to be democratised, the first Open University graduates were conferred. Those moments allowed Simon to leaven his song with the hope that sustains us through our dark moments, but could he do that today?
