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Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

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“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”<br />

importantly, you are not alone in feeling foolish for wanting things you had no<br />

real right to expect, but could not help but want anyway. The best popular music<br />

makes the world a bigger place, not simply by validating common feelings<br />

(though that inevitably is what attracts most listeners), but also by illuminating<br />

an unseen community and tapping the wellsprings of empathy.<br />

In short, Sinatra’s performance in “I’m a Fool to Want You” is a<br />

profoundly creative act, one that falls more into the realm of character than<br />

personality. He took the pain of an unrealized longing and shaped it not only<br />

into an experience that could be shared, but one whose beauty transcends the<br />

pain that inheres in it (in a manner not unlike Anne Bradstreet’s lament for a<br />

house that burned down, another experience of loss that was transformed into a<br />

work of art). Maybe it isn’t surprising that as Sinatra grew older, he seemed to<br />

become increasingly less interested in performing such productive work.<br />

Destroying things is sometimes an easier way to deal with frustration than<br />

making things.<br />

So we probably shouldn’t blame him for wielding that sledgehammer. It’s<br />

enough that some of the time, anyway, he gave us a love that’s there for others<br />

too.<br />

American History for Cynical Beginners<br />

34

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