Fiddle and Drum

Lori and I were high school kids in the late ’60s during the Vietnam War. We were musicians (we met in the high school band), and I played just enough guitar to attempt an occasional coffee house gig.

One of the songs of those times has been ringing in my ears lately. It was sung simply, without any accompaniment (which meant I didn’t have to lean on my primitive guitar skills), and I think I remember more clearly what it felt like to sing it than I can remember the feelings left by any other song. I felt then the helplessness that I sometimes feel now: people suffer at war, everybody wants it to quit, but, relentlessly, it lumbers on – as if opposing us all.

Perhaps it was a part of why I came to see myself as a follower of Jesus Christ (though somewhat at odds with what many term “a Christian”), and later, a pastor.

Joni Mitchell wrote The Fiddle and the Drum.

And so once again –
My dear Johnny my dear friend –
And so once again you are fighting us all.
And when I ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry, and I fall.