Soul to Souls...

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Funny how things cross over, seemingly at random: today, an email round from The Lads pointing out that it's fifty years since the release of Marvin Gaye's seminal album 'What's Going On', and a profile of Rod Steiger on the TV this evening. Two things strike from this unlikely confluence. The album was a landmark: dealing with unjustified war, race-hate and climate change: the early seventies was a time of greater enlightenment and awakening than the much-vaunted 'revolutionary' sixties - some of us were waking up to an awful lot of uncomfortable truths about the way the world was - and still is - being run. Steiger's part in the film 'In the Heat of the Night', starring alongside the incomparable Sidney Poitier - a tale of endemic racism and establishment corruption in the Deep South of the sixties - affected me deeply as a twelve-year-old watching the movie at the time of it's release.

The great sadness is that however earnest or prescient either 'What's Going On' or 'In the Heat of the Night' were (and so many more films, records and books; scientists, activists, documentary-makers and commentators of the time) is that so little progress was made for so long - half a bloody century - only now are we seeing some real traction on climate change and some movement on racism: but it's still too little, too late and world leaders have consistently failed to show any leadership (if any real interest at all) on these and many more fronts. I've been around long enough to hear the empty rhetoric and hollow words of the politician seeking re-election to high office, year after year and decade after decade. Progress is slowly being made, but only by real people, and despite the careerist politicos best efforts to the contrary. Peck, peck, peck; just like Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) in 'The Shawshank Redemption': one flake at a time towards freedom. Whether we have the luxury of time in abeyance is moot - some things are really getting urgent.

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