Salisbury High School - Pillar Yearbook (Salisbury, CT)

Page 15 text:

Ye Sarum Booke I3 What all this change signifies I am unable to guess. Per- haps it might mean that we are returning, in a way, to the state of the savage when we thrill at the drum breaks of Chick Webb, perhaps our harmonic sense of music has hit a new low when we rave about the squeaks of Benny's clarinet, or almost feel the shrill blasts of Bunny Berigan's trumpet. After all what is the supreme criterion of music? Does it not seem rational to assume that everyone might have a different one, and if this is true why should not this generation have a different one from the last? Even if we are retrogressing in the estimate of some people, is it our own estimate? As we grow older we probably will be- gin to love the great classics more and more, but at our stage of development I think it is better to love swing than no music at all. The love of a thing lies in the appreciation of it, there- fore if a drum break and some hot licks on a clarinet are appreci- ated by us as much as a Wagnerian crisis, by someone else, the love for each may be equal. Are we returning to the native's rhythmic madness? What- ever is happening, all swing fiends love it .... and after all, since the present generation is ephemeral in its universal value, why should it not enjoy an ephemeral madness? .i.1....T SATISFACTION WHENEVER the word satisfaction is mentioned, depressing images arise in my mind. I think of small towns with their numerous citizens all deep in the groove of self satisfaction. I think of blighted ambitions, of greatness which might have been. Images of men in their forties rocking back and forth in contentment as they sit on the wide porches, and of women who are satisfied with life and who bitterly denounce all who are not contented, also come to mind. I see a state of inertia, of sure- ness that one's self is perfection, and that progress is a thing of the past. There is no retrogression. When men are satisfied they are in a state of suspended animation. They live and love in one frame of mind. Advancing years do not show a corresponding evolution in mental ability, or material position. They are perfectly happy in keeping their same job without ever desiring

Page 14 text:

I2 Ye S arum Booke larity. We love to make others suffer and to make fools of them. The argument will probably be that it is human nature to do all the things mentionedg but I ask when is human nature going to learn that wars are only destructive menaces to the world and accomplish nothing? When is human nature going to learn that power is only a very minor thing in this World? When is human nature going to learn to stop being greedy for money? These are the eternal rhetorical questionsg but only by asking them and searching earnestly for the answers will man have any chance to advance. SWING FEVER HE FIRST question that must be answered is whether Swing can be classed as an editorial topic or not. It Seems to me that it should be so esteemed since it occupies a prevalent position in the eye of youth. And with the present youth being the future America, it seems logical to assume that swing will have some effect on this country. Therefore with a temporal significance it reaches out into the future. When jazz came into being, our grandmothers and grand- fathers were horrified. They simply could not understand how their children could appreciate such noise. The same has happened today with our younger generation, except that the change has been from jazz to swing , instead of light classics to j azz . It seems that the happy medium between the classics and swing is rather hard to find, for I remembervone time when I took a music lover to Benny Goodman's, and he did the most amazing thing. After we were seated, all he said was, My God, What a noise! and before I knew quite what was happening, he had taken the insides out of a roll and stuffed them in his ears. Of course when the quartet started we left. Of course that is the blacker side to swing and cannot be understood by this generation. The other viewpoint can be felt when hundreds of couples stare open-mouthecl at Gene Krupa's drumming and far prefer to get a table next to the trumpet section than dance .... or go to the Onyx to sit and listen to Stuff Smith and the boys. Something has happened to popular music in this past yearg it has taken on some kind of a frenzied tempo that has made us more than ever music conscious.

Page 16 text:

I4 Ye Sarum Booke an increase in pay or position. They only ask to be left alone. Such people are the satisfied. Satisfaction is happiness. It is not the full happiness, however. Full happiness demands that one be constantly active, one cannot stop and gaze fondly on what one has ac- complished and be really happy. There is something lacking when one is merely satisfied. This state of satisfaction is to be found most predominately in small towns. It is hardly as noticeable in a city, at least. People are content to drift and live the same routine. They are perfectly happy in what they are doing. No one wants any more. It is too much of an effort to exert oneself for the sake of a bigger house or better education for one's children. The happiness they have is not worth the breaking up. Satisfaction is a type of defense. It is an excuse for not being daring enough to attempt the future. It is an excuse for a brilliant man's settling down to drudgery as a clerk when he could be the head of the company. Laziness is strongly an alloy of satisfaction. There are causes for this in small towns. In the first place it is traditional. Always, since the early settlement days, the town has been slow and easy going. The town founders were so, progress has not speeded life up a great deal. Many people shrug their shoulders and say why should we do something our fathers never did? Then, since life is so easy going, it casts a spell of indolence over the individual. It makes him feel that life is good as it is. Why change? Happiness is worth more than striving mightily in the uncertain hope of greatness and maybe bitter unhappiness. The life of contentment is the true life-for the mentally stultilied. The third reason is, that to the average small town citizens there is not much of a goal to strive for anyway. At least it is not tangible. Higher education is not the most important thing in the world-when one has to sweat and suffer in at- taining it. People seem just as happy without that, too, so why bother-that is their way of reasoning. Now satisfaction perhaps is all right for the masses. But in a small town it is practically universal. The weight of it is so heavy that it wears down anyone who professes his desire to be great. Shocked matrons do the rest. Anyone who is dis- contented is unorthodox. It so dominates men's minds that they are unable to under- stand why young so-and-so wants to go away to school. The