QUESTION: What has been your biggest disappointment?
How little money really changes things. It buys doctors but not health, clothes but not taste, makeup but not beauty. When I was young and didn’t have anything, I imagined money had more power…
— Interview with songwriter Suzanne Vega, in The Guardian, September 2017.
Like Suzanne Vega, I was young once, and didn’t have anything.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
On a personal level, I mean. The rest of the world was having their own good times or bad times, regardless of my individual joys and sorrows, and probably, back then, “best of times” and “worst of times” didn’t apply to most folks.
They may have thought I was being overly dramatic.
Also, most of the world was older, when I was younger. And possibly wiser, although you wouldn’t know it from reading the news. But thinking back to those days, even the older people around me imagined that money had more power than it actually has.
I wouldn’t want to suggest, however, that money is utterly powerless, and neither would Suzanne Vega. After all, it does buy doctors, clothes, and makeup. (Not necessarily in that order.) And also, an iced latte, if that’s your thing.
But money can’t buy us love.
The Beatles tried to warn us. Were we listening?
Money can, however, buy electric guitars, and guitar amplifiers, which can be used by popular (and wealthy) musicians to remind us that money can’t buy us love. That’s a certain kind of power.
I took some banjo lessons when I was younger, during one of those “worst of times” periods. My dad had an old banjo collecting dust in the attic, and it didn’t require an amplifier. I actually learned how to play “Can’t Buy Me Love” — after a fashion — thinking that I would be able to impress some girls.
It turned out that banjo music also can’t buy you love. Sort of the opposite, in fact. As I said, this was during the “worst of times”.
Pagosa Springs went through one of those “best of times; worst of times” periods during the COVID crisis. (Or maybe, we’re still going through it?) The tourist industry got pretty much slammed by record crowds… visitors trying to escape from the COVID mess in Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Tulsa, Denver… bringing their money and contagious viruses to our little mountain community.
One of the results was a feeling of being overrun. Hour-long waits to get a table at a restaurant, for example. More potholes in the gravel roads. Skyrocketing housing costs. Evictions.
Money has a certain kind of power, to change a small, quiet town into something less comfortable.
Where are those banjos, when we really need them?