So Close and yet so Near

    

 After flipping through Holly Near's autobiography from 1990, I am impressed how boring her activist-singer life was. She mentioned early that no weed or drugs were allowed backstage and the worst calamity was a back injury she suffered when a youthful protest singer that was chronic her life. She was a lesbian that slept with men but the women she loved broke her heart; the first man that broke her heart, the one she found with another woman, not waiting for her to return, was the last man that broke her heart. The other men, and most of the women were simply love, as she would call it. 

     The best thing about Holly was the people she associated with and name dropped, the famous of which were Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Tom Hayden, Donald Sutherland, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Gilbert from the Weavers. Phil Ochs is mentioned a few times, as is Kenny Loggins, but there is not one mention of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, or other commercially famous folk singers. She complains how Elektra spent a million promoting Tracy Chapman's protest album but her independent Redwood Records could only afford to spend fifty thousand on hers. She chose to remain independent. 

     I admire her so much but I can't wrap my mind around her. She went to all the places the U.S. interfered with and spoke with the victims of U.S. wars all over; she didn't complain about China (though the book was published a year after Tiananmen Square) or the USSR and supported Communist Parties, almost half her concerts being fundraisers. She never mentions religion. She was endangered in her travels but was never injured or arrested. She was lucky. Not as to-the-point as John Lennon or Phil Ochs, her softer words for harsh realities saved her from CIA assassination. Holly Near is kind of like Nina Simone for me but Nina, because she sang other's popular songs as well as her own, and played the piano (Holly never mentions playing an instrument) is more accessible; even still it took me fifty years to discover Nina and Holly, and I'm just at the gate with Holly; I have none of her albums and have only listened to one of her songs. I do like her voice. Her albums are not cheap though, not on her website or even iTunes or eBay, and there are no compilations I can find.