DailyJim: Make America Love Again and the heart of Stevie Wonder

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024. Today I want to talk about Make America Love Again and The Heart of Stevie Wonder.

So today I went to see Stevie Wonder perform a concert in Detroit.

And I had seen him before but today was part of a tour that he's doing I think it's called Sing Your Song something about like how do we heal the broken heart of the nation I think it's a much more concise title but something along those lines and ironically Obama was speaking just down the road in Detroit, maybe one mile away.

And, you know, I was like, oh, man, I wish I could have gone the Obama thing before the Stevie Wonder thing, but there's just something about Stevie Wonder. This man is so full of love.

And so to give an example, during the show, I think it was the second song that he performed, something happened with the speakers where they sounded like they blew out the speakers.

And they had to turn off the music.

And he basically said, you know, shit happens. And he said, please don't go home, you know, like just kind of hang around. He was trying to turn the monitor speakers around so he could play for people and talk to them. And it was just super playful. And maybe after five minutes, they figured out the speakers. And then they started to play again, and it was fine.

And everything was going, I think, well. And then he took like an intermission and he comes back. There's some people, the choir performed here when he came back and they played another song and the speakers were... And then they waited a few minutes and they fixed it and they played the song again.

And so he went to play it the third time and I can't remember when he said this, but he said something like, you know, the sound engineers are probably really messed up right now.

And then at some point, he did a little playful thing. He said, you know, like, so he said, repeat after me. He says, you know, like, stuff happens, stuff happens. You know, we love you, Stevie. We forgive you, Stevie.

And I don't know, that whole, you know, the sound engineers might be feeling really messed up right now. He's just so compassionate.

This man has been performing live music since he was 11, and now he's 74. I think so, 63 years of performing. I mean, he was signed to a label at 11, so maybe he'd been performing even longer.

And there was a specific political bend to this, and it wasn't even so political. It was cultural.

And what he said at the end, okay, it was quite political, but he said, it's not about making America great again. What if it were about making America love again? Even saying that right now i feel tears come to my eyes making america love again care about each other care deeply about each other and ourselves our communities our neighbors, our quote-unquote enemies just realizing that we're all in this together and.

I just don't hear politicians talking like that.

I hear it a little bit, but it doesn't have the same feeling. It doesn't feel so genuine.

I mean, Stevie preaches love a lot. If you listen to his music, it's love, love, love, love, love. But I saw him go through conflict on stage, and he was still very loving towards the people who were probably feeling really bad in that moment for making mistakes.

And I don't know if you've ever gone to a Stevie Wonder concert or if you will ever have the absolute blessed opportunity to go.

But I remember last time I saw him, I went with my dad, and me and my dad, two white guys sitting next to him. I think it was a black woman and her maybe teenage son or something, and Stevie played music and he was DJing for a little bit and he played music where, everyone in the audience sang along because he played songs from Detroit because he grew up in Detroit so he played songs that were old school Motown songs and he put even Eminem on and he put all these songs and everybody in the crowd is singing along and I looked at my dad, big smile on his face I looked at the black woman with her teenage son big smiles on their faces And I was just, and that's how it was tonight. I looked around, so many people, so many people were filled with joy. And it brings tears to my eyes because how often does this happen where people are just filled with joy and filled with love and look around and they're just...

Grateful to be where they are, and don't care about the differences, but just so, so enmeshed in the similarities and the commonality, the shared joy that we have listening to this, virtuoso, not just sing, but invite us to participate in his, I would say talent, but it's not even the talent, it's his energy to like welcome us into his joy, into his playfulness.

And man, how I wish politicians would do this more. I just wish we would do it more as a society. And maybe you're listening to this and being like, ha, you're not very playful right now. Look at you preaching playfulness and you're on the edge of tears. I don't know if my goal or my role is to always bring people into playfulness. I think it is to bring people into this, this realness and just this, this depth of feeling.

Love is not just playful. Love is not just joy. Love can be sadness. Love can be warmth.

Love can be worry. Love can be fear. Love can be anger. Your love can be all of the emotions.

So make America love again. Make America feel again.

Yeah. So I just feel so fortunate, so blessed and so lucky to be able to have seen him twice in my life. He's got a song.

It's going to make me tear up. For once in my life, for once in my life. I'm not going to sing. I just sing it on a podcast. But he, He explained tonight that the song was actually about falling in love with this girl when he was 14 and then writing the song, I think, when he was 18.

But, yeah. I just think sometimes we want to be great, but we don't want to be loving.

And what is greater than loving?

I mean this brings up a lot for me i think we have this attitude of let's try to be cool that we celebrate coldness and indifference and even me i look at some people in my life i'm like oh that guy's so cool i'm not that cool like this app clubhouse came out back in the day i was like i'm not cool enough to be on clubhouse i'm not cool enough to get the girl but i'm super warm, can we celebrate the warmth again? Make America warm again. I'm afraid to say that because it's a bit climate change oriented. Um, but yeah, just make America love again. Make humanity love again.

So, on that note, as Stevie said, you know, I don't have to know your name to care about you or to care about your children or your children's children or all of your children. I don't have to know their names. I'm going to say the same thing to you. I don't have to know your name. I don't have to know your face. I don't have to know your life story to know that I care about you and that I love you and I wish you well no matter what happens.

And I just want you to know that there are strangers out there like me who wish that for you, and what a world we'd have if more of us had the courage to say that because I know many of us believe it but just what if we had the courage to say it.

So on that note I'm going to go to sleep because that man constantly drained me Steve Wonder dances hey he's got fast music the music is like he's got some serious funky beats so i was jamming to almost every single song man has hits across 60 across six decades the top i think top male solo artist in terms of grammy awards 25 or something yeah imagine i think it said he released three albums across four years, and he won the best album of the year for all three of those albums. Just like, man, just rocked. I think early to mid-70s, just rocked it. Anyways, thank you, Stevie. If you ever listened to this, thank you so much. And yeah, let's have fun and make America love again. Talk to you tomorrow.