Tribe by Sebastian Junger -- The Ancient Roots of Many Problems of the Modern World

In October, I went a conference on Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism.  The first and featured speaker was Sebastian Junger, author of seven books that, in part, describe the lives of modern tribes in America including soldiers, commercial fishermen, and others who risk their lives in their work.  Junger said, "The real and ancient meaning of tribe is the community that you live in, that you share resources with, that you would risk your life to defend."

He is also the co-director with Tim Hetherington of the documentary Restrepo, the record of a year with soldiers on one of the most dangerous outposts in Afghanistan. The soldiers of Battle Company, 2nd of the 503rd Infantry Regiment 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team are the definition of a tribe.

Humans as a species are tribal.  Forming tribes and living as tribes describes most of human history. In the book, Junger shows that people who live without tribes, without the community and deep connections tribes afford, are adrift and often unhappy without knowing why.  

Junger said it was a commonplace in frontier America that people who went from civilization to Native American tribal life did not come back.  Whatever civilization could offer, those who left would not return. 

As I read the book, I felt I was learning the secret code of my life--the yearning for a tribe.  I grew up in a Boston suburb in the 1950s and 60s, not connected to extended family or religion or even a sports team.  I joined the military shortly after high school graduation in 1971 and loved being part of a group with a mission. I got out after being blinded in a missile explosion, but healed completely and re-enlisted within a year.  

After three years as a tank commander on the East-West border, I got out, went to college, got a professional job, then a quarter-century later re-enlisted and deployed to Iraq for a year.  That deployment ended 15 years ago this month.   

In an odd twist, I saw Restrepo right after it was released in late June 2010 in an NYC theater, a few months after I returned from deployment.  I walked out of the theater and wanted to go to Afghanistan.  

Belonging to a tribe has been normal for we humans in all of recorded history and before.  The cosmopolitan drive in us allows great learning, great invention, modern medicine and all the wonders of the modern world, but it does satisfy our need for deep human connection.  Tribes do that. Tribe, the book, explains the history and present reality of the tribal impulse in our lives.

The French Roots of Sinatra's "I Did It My Way"

In November 1968, Frank Sinatra told his friend and collaborator Paul Anka that he was tired and ready to give up show business. Sinatra had asked Anka several times to write a song for him, but Anka had been intimidated.  He saw himself writing teen songs.  During dinner Sinatra said, "You never wrote me that song."

Still reeling over the news at 1 a.m. in his apartment, he found himself toying with lyrics to a melody he had heard in France. “I thought, ‘What would Frank do with this melody, if he were a writer?’” Anka says. “And all of a sudden, it just came to me: ‘And now the end is near. I face the final curtain.’”

Anka knew the melody for these words.  A few months before,  Anka was in the  south of France and heard a song called Comme d'habitude which can be translated "as per usual."  More loosely "same old shit." The melody was written by Jaques Revaux with lyrics by Claude Francois and Gilles Thibault.  The sad song was about a man in his mid 30s who was left (dumped) by his much younger (teenage) lover.  Anka wrote a completely different lyruc on the same melody.

Anka gave the song to Sinatra who recorded it before the end of the year.  In  1969, I Did It My Way was an instant hit around the world and became a signature song for Sinatra for the rest of his life.  

Sinatra did not quit show business.  

In the 1960s most pop music traveled from from the United States and England to the rest of the world. I was fascinated to learn the story of a hit song in France that became a very different song in America.