When the NY/NJ lock-down went into effect back in mid-March, I began an evening ritual inspired by the videos I’d seen of home-bound Italians singing together from their windows and balconies. I have long loved the Woody Guthrie song THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, and decided to make it my nightly anthem. So every evening at about 7:30PM, I go out with my Bluetooth speaker and play THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND a couple of times, walking up and down my suburban block.
What a pointless gesture, right? Who even notices, much less cares? A couple of neighbors have mentioned that they hear my music in the evenings, and occasionally a dog-walker gives me a fist-pump as s/he passes by, but what is really the point?
I suppose it’s mostly for ME. I never tire of this wholesomely subversive song, which always gives me hope in the dark hours of our public life. I also hope that while my neighbors may not tune in consciously, they are hearing and responding on a subatomic level. When all this is over, Woody’s lyrics may touch them in a newly profound way. They may not even know why — though I fantasize that perhaps a vague memory will surface, associating this song with the coronavirus lock-down, and maybe with a new hope that was born, as hopes often are, during dark days.
I don’t understand patriotism — how can you take pride in a mere accident of fate? — so I am not celebrating my country with my nightly broadcast. If anything, I’m shaming it, just as Woody was, demanding that it become the ideal aspired to by its founders. So although I’m not patriotic, Woody’s plain, rugged Anglo-Saxon words still thrill me — his roaming and rambling, his waving wheat fields, rolling dust clouds and chanting voices. Hear these words and you are no longer alone in your house with your nervous little family. Rather, you’re at the side of an optimistic, questing troubadour. I may go on playing THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND every evening for the rest of my life!
Linnetontheleaf 
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