This morning I participated in the Fort Wayne’s Women’s Bureau Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event.  This was the fourth consecutive year that I have done so (walking in three inch heels is no more difficult than standing in three inch heels…unfortunately, standing in three inch heels is quite painful).

Just before the Walk began, there was a singing of the Star Spangled Banner.  I believe this has been done every year, but I do not have an actual memory of it.  This is probably because previous years were done just like this years.  A local singer performed the anthem and the rest of us stood and respectfully listened.  I admit to the possibility that this was the first year they had the anthem sung due to the next day being 9/11.

The singer this year did a fine job of it, but it seemed to me that she sang it even higher than it usually is sung and she threw in enough flourishes that it would have been difficult to follow along.  And no one followed along.  Except for what happened later in the day and the fact that I am blogging this, I doubt I would have any memory of her performance next year (as I have no memory of previous years performances if there were any).

This evening, Debby and I attended the 2011-12 opening night of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.   The lights went down and the conductor came out, took his place, raised his baton and the music commenced.  Unexpectedly, it was the Star Spangled Banner.  There was a chorus singing.   Sounded good!  I was looking around to see where was the chorus?  Then I realized that there was no chorus, the fine singing I was hearing was the audience.  I joined in (arguably diminishing the quality of the singing, but enhancing the quality of the event).  The orchestra played a fairly standard rendition and people sang when they could and did not sing when they could not.

It sounded great.  And we were all (ok, most of us) actively involved in affirming our shared love of our country.  The contrast with the morning performance is stark.

Complaints about America’s national anthem are commonplace.   Somewhere along the line, probably in high school, I joined the chorus.  “The national anthem is terrible and should be changed.”  Then my mind was changed.*

It was in the nineteen eighties, I believe.  There was an article in The New Republic in defense of the national anthem.  The principle argument was that the song is unsingable by one person.  The more people singing the song, the better it sounds.  This makes it a perfect stand in for democracy.

I was convinced.

The problem with the national anthem is that “we” do not sing it anymore.  Instead of an activity to which we can all contribute, it has become a spectator event.  Yes, sometimes the performance by this or that celebrity is spectacular.  But often it is not so good.  Sometimes bordering on, if not outright, disrespectful and insulting.

Yesterday, The New Republic published a blog entry on The Star Spangled Banner with links to a couple of articles on why it should not be the national anthem.  I guess the author did not search far enough back into the archives to find the article that changed my mind.  Also to be found at the website of The New Republic is a video slideshow of good and bad performances and attempted performances of The Star Spangled Banner.

The ninth video in that slideshow is of Steven Tyler singing the anthem at the Indy 500 in 2001. The caption reads:

Unable to remember “the home of the brave,” Tyler replaced it with “the home of the Indianapolis 500.

But watching the video, I don’t believe for a moment that Tyler forgot the last word of the song.  He intentionally substituted the lyrics and paused for dramatic effect.

*What do you know?  I guess I’m not so close minded as I thought.