Thoughts From the Recycling Bin

I am continually surprised by the number of people who contact our office asking for the old Medema music. By "old", I mean the music I wrote and produced in the seventies. Often, when they order this music, either in recording or in printed form, they tell us a story about how this or that song meant something to them at a certain period in their lives. Or they rhapsodize on and on about how this particular Bible story set to music helped them find a new direction.

I suppose I have been, for many years, inordinately impatient with this interest in the old music because I want folk to hear the new music. I want them to experience the new rhythms and textures that I find so intriguing and life giving.

This constant preoccupation with the new reminds me that I am a child of my culture, a culture that always seems obsessed with the newest thing, the newest gadget, the newest music. I am now having to rethink that obsession with the new, and my friends and listeners are helping me to realize there is value in the old, and there are lessons to be learned in re-examining who we have been in other times.

I reckon this is true not only for individuals but also for communities and for whole societies. Who we were in years gone by, what we did then, what we thought then, how we saw the world then, these things can all have a great beneficial effect on the way we view the new.

My reading tastes have always gravitated toward recent books, especially those that deal with the future or comment on the present. I am discovering, slowly, the value of tradition. When you have read Augustine, your perspective on contemporary theology seems somehow more balanced. When you know Bach and Brahms, you tend to evaluate rock-and-roll and jazz with better-informed and more sensitized ears.

I regret my impatience with the past. I have a lot of catching up to do. I hope to be able to find in all those yesterdays some meaningful lessons for today and tomorrow.

KPM/March, 2001