| Am I Alone in This? Bill Bottrell in the January 2001 New Settler |
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supposed to be. And I believe we came up with the waiter because Jean-Paul Sartre talks about a waiter in one of his essays in this context. The idea of being versus role-playing. And then it gets a little convoluted. He goes slowly mad and doesn't really know what he is. And the way I've taken it into cabaret is that I can modify it for any occasion. And once people got to know the song, I could come out on the Fourth of July and read the Declaration of Independence, or on Labor Day and read the Communist Manifesto, and it's just great fun. Every now and then in the song you turn and shout: "Am I alone in this?" So wickedly. Not at all the subservient: the one in charge. And the crowd roars back, NO!, in that instant of refrain, also taking charge. . . Alone in what? What are you not unalone in? |
BILL: What I'm asking if I'm alone in, is this crazy feeling - and it is of this character I'm playing, who doesn't know reality from the roles he's been
taught, or the images he's been designed with.The gulf created by the winnowing away of a middle class, a legitimate bourgeoisie.You have a song that takes it back. Credits Mendocino marijuana. Talk to me about the evolution of that song about here that happens elsewhere, down in San Jose. BILL: It's a duality. It takes place down in San Jose and on the ridges of Mendocino County. When I came here |