This has been a difficult week. I lost both a favorite aunt and a favorite Supreme Court Justice. (No, I'm not RBG's nephew; I'm talking about two different people.)
I suppose I should be grateful. Grief made me momentarily forget that we are still in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, that the west coast of our country is on fire while the east coast is flooded, and that our president thinks he knows more than all the epidemiologists and climatologists in the world because he has a big "a-brain" that can retain five random words for more than ten minutes. (Big deal. Loretta and I do that all the time when we go to the grocery store. For more than five items, we might need a list.)
Our country—if not our planet—has become apocalyptic, and for me there is no better escape from an actual apocalypse than a fictional one. Some of my favorite works of apocalyptic fiction are: Stephen King's The Stand, Robert McCammon's Swan Song, Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore's The Walking Dead, and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend.
There have been three film versions of I Am Legend, and this week I watched two of them back-to-back: the 1971 version with Charlton Heston (Omega Man), and the 2007 version with Will Smith. Both were pretty good, but neither was as good as the book. I suppose I would give a slight edge to the 2007 version. It had better special effects, and a forty-year-old Will Smith makes a much better action hero than a fifty-year-old Charlton Heston. Also, it has Bob Marley.
When he isn't fighting off monsters or trying to cure them, Smith's character, Dr. Robert Neville, is listening to Bob Marley. As he tells another survivor:
He had this idea. It was kind of a virologist idea. He believed that you could cure racism and hate—literally cure it—by injecting music and love into people's lives. When he was scheduled to perform at a peace rally, a gunman came to his house and shot him down. Two days later he walked out on that stage and sang. When they asked him why, he said, "The people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can I? Light up the darkness."
That quote stuck with me, and I've been listening to Bob Marley this morning. I like Get Up Stand Up, and I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have appreciated it, too:
Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights
Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights
Rise up this mornin'
Smiled with the risin' sun
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true
Sayin' (this is my message to you)Singin' don't worry 'bout a thing
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright
Singin' don't worry 'bout a thing
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright
