Chop your wood and carry water: Ben Sidran on the election

Just like we did after the 2016 and 2020 elections, I spoke with my dad this week about the latest presidential election.

Photo by JB Millot

When everything you thought you knew turns out to be mistaken, when your compatriots let you down, when your neighborhood is on fire and your friends are drowning, when even Quincy Jones decides he’s checking out, it helps to have someone to talk to, to help make sense of it all. 

For me, it’s my dad Ben. Our talks don’t really begin or end, they simply continue. This podcast has given me the chance to document some of those conversations, often around his birthday or a major project. But also sometimes when a significant event takes place, like the loss of a beloved friend when we bear witness to something significant together.

Today is one of those. Just as we talked after the 2016 and 2020 elections, we spoke this week about the latest presidential election. 

True to form, it is a conversation that appears to be about one thing but is in fact about many things. What begins as a somber acknowledgement of the election results turns quickly to a sprawling discussion of everything from  Will and Ariel Durant’s massive 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization, Seinfeld, The First Council of Nicaea, Irving Berlin, Jack Kerouac, what separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom, bottle service, the importance of beauty, and what it means to “chop your wood and carry water.”

Eventually, as it generally does, the conversation turns to the “jazz experience”, revisits Ben’s classic bebop treatise “A Good Travel Agent” which outlines the three most important “constituent parts about jazz in America” and considers “The American Century” before ending with a spontaneous performance of of Bud Powell’s composition “Time Waits” which he plays for me over the phone. 

It’s another in a long line of beautiful talks with Ben.

“If all we get out of this moment is a way out of the anger trap, it will be huge.”

Talking to my dad, November 2024.