new song from Wilco

“Love conquers all, but not when it’s used as a sedative, right? I worry that I’m often comfortable and placated by my ability to recognize and feel the love that already exists around me. What I see in myself and others is a struggle to summon sufficient outrage to act and then retreat into the delusion that the love that exists will eventually triumph. But it won’t! For love to triumph I believe we’re duty bound to create more of it, and for more people – people we don’t know, even people we don’t like! And that takes courage I don’t always have. The song is a reminder to myself to act with more love and courage and less outrage and anesthetized fear.” –Jeff Tweedy

quoted from NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast

quote from John F. Kennedy

“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth… In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.”John F. Kennedy, Oct. 26, 1963