No Country For the Old Young

O tempo de heroísmo dos caubóis acabou. Não foram apenas as mortes de Beto Carreiro e Heath Ledger que mostram que a maré não está boa para os homens de chapéu, botas e fivela prateada. O favoritismo para o Oscar deste ano de Onde os Fracos Não Têm Vez (No Country For Old Men), dos irmãos Cohen, é um sintoma de que o mundo de 2008 se enxerga em um velho-oeste em que os bandidos venceram.

Neil Young, (anti-)herói country, também deu um sinal de que os dias de hoje são ruins. Ele declarou a repórteres no Festival de Cinema de Berlim que "a música não pode salvar o mundo". Depois ele tentou se explicar melhor (a declaração completa dele está aí embaixo). Quando até o tio-hippie-cabeludo que escreveu "Rockin' in a free world" acha que a coisa está difícil, é porque a coisa está realmente difícil.

A Song Alone
By Neil Young

No one song can change the world. But that doesn’t mean its time to stop singing.
Somewhere on Earth a scientist is alone working. No one knows what he or she is thinking. The secret is just within reach. If I knew that answer I would be singing the song.

This is the Age of innovation. Hope matters. But not hope alone. In the age of innovation, the people’s fuel must be found. That is the biggest challenge. Who is up to the challenge? Who is searching today? All day. All night. Every hour that goes by. I know I am.

My friends write to me don’t give up. I am not giving up. I know this is the time for change. But I know that it’s not a song. Maybe it was. But it isn’t now. It’s an action, an accomplishment, a revelation, a new way. I am searching for the people’s fuel. Will I find it? Yes. I think so. I don’t know why I may have been chosen to help enable a discovery of this magnitude. I know I can only write a song about it when I find it. Until then I can write a song about the search or spend all my time looking. But a song alone will not change the world. Even so, I will keep on singing.

Neil Young, back to black