Nova Ahead 13

Jim Henson’s Muppets are perhaps one of the greatest achievements of love and art that the world has ever seen. Is there another example of something so completely perfect? There are a handful of weird lines in some of the songs, echoes of a blind sexism that has so pervaded our society that some are only now awakening to the heavy toll that it is still exacting upon the citizenry. At this point the original Muppet Show is a period piece, so you watch with a bit more emotional and historical knowledge than the folks who made it had access to. As you watch, you might notice the whole production can look a little ramshackle, even ratty at times. It’s all, especially in the beginning, held together by a handful of stoners with a lot of duct tape and string; the entire premise feels pretty impossible. But within the handmade and goofy aesthetic, there is perhaps some of the most potent and heartfelt sincerity that I have ever encountered. As you know from past entries in this strange episodic diary of mine, I am a football fan, and so it would therefore make sense that the Super Bowl is my, well Super Bowl. This year it’s a little different, so rather than a collective beer tour and potluck, I had to tune up in a little more of a boutique way. My daughter really wanted to make cookies that were in the shape of footballs, so as we got to baking, I turned to an old classic: John Coltrane’s Kulu Se Mama, a towering entry in an already monolithic catalogue. At a certain point though, the kiddo asked to put on a record, and her choice was The Muppet Movie: Original Soundtrack Recording, one of the best emotional rollercoasters disguised as children’s music that I know of. “Rainbow Connection” kicks it off with a lump in your throat, with the other sad one being the Gonzo tune on side b; rounding out the album are a couple of great Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem jams and some instrumental versions, and a Rowlf the Dog gem. Dancing around with your kid baking cookies and listening to the Muppets is an integral part of the America that I subscribe to. It is significant to have something that can always cut right into you: we each have a well within us, filled with pain and wonder and memory, though we each also have our own methods of avoiding or sidestepping the processing of these feelings. We may go down the basement stairs to grab a particular thing, but we race back up and close the door, with our hearts beating fast. Hearing Jim Henson, singing through Kermit, so wistfully and actively examine love and light on a grand scale, and the existential puzzle of that purity as it interfaces with our often harsh reality, feels so simple, but judging from the length of this sentence, surely is much more complex. How can we know something deep inside of ourselves, something true and almost holy, that whether because of timing or geography, can’t quite ring the way we want it to? How do we navigate these seas of dissonance when we can see the shore so clearly in the distance? 

I don’t have answers to these questions, but the Muppets make sense to me, and even the voluminous wealth of emotional knowledge that their existence suggests, and the seemingly contradictory nature of goodness in the face of uncertainty, seem to almost harmonize alongside one another. And the more that I think about this sort of ineffable quality, this quiet understanding, it reminds me of Coltrane too; wordless music that says so much, communication happening on another level, interdimensional connectivity. In poetry too, there is a way that a writer can use language in a more impressionistic way, seemingly blurring the message, but actually making it all the more clear by tapping into that current that we are all within, connecting us across time and place. Things are going to work out, don’t you worry. 

So have a good cry to a sad Muppets song, crank up some free form music and let it take you away, and join us for a live streamed poetry reading with Pauline Michelle and Zachary Zalman Green this Friday at 830pm. The writers are donating to the Rural Youth Union’s Free Store, you can donate to the Nova Programming Fund, and also buy books and broadsides from the poets.

This has been Eric Gagne for Nova, signing off until next week.