{"id":30664,"date":"2016-12-30T15:06:23","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T20:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=30664"},"modified":"2017-01-08T22:37:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T03:37:39","slug":"magnificent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=30664","title":{"rendered":"Magnificent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elbow&#8217;s video for their single &#8220;Magnificent (She Says)&#8221; makes me think of Gandalf&#8217;s final line in <i>The Lord of the Rings<\/i>: &#8220;I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are evil.&#8221;  (Page 1007 in my single-volume hardcover edition.)  The song itself is gorgeous, and I have listened to it many times since its debut earlier in the month.  The video created for the song, offering a look at life in Myanmar, with all of its mystery and wonder, as seen through the eyes of a little girl, I find poignant and quite moving.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XQl5KYiiFDI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I am not unaware of the political and human rights issues in Myanmar; the country is one of the world&#8217;s most repressive regimes, embroiled in civil wars for much of the last fifty years, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-38470232\">the ongoing suppression of the country&#8217;s Rohingya minority<\/a> is a human right calamity.  I admit, that makes me a little uncomfortable to share the song&#8217;s video because I know, just beyond the innocence of the narrative, there are darker and intractable issues afoot in the country.  Yet, the video fills me with a sense of hope.  I don&#8217;t overlook the darkness, but I can see the possibility of a better, <i>kinder<\/i> future.<\/p>\n<p>The new Elbow album, <i>Little Fictions<\/i>, is out in February.  I&#8217;m looking forward to it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elbow&#8217;s video for their single &#8220;Magnificent (She Says)&#8221; makes me think of Gandalf&#8217;s final line in The Lord of the Rings: &#8220;I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are evil.&#8221; (Page 1007 in my single-volume hardcover edition.) The song itself is gorgeous, and I have listened to it many times since<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=30664\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Magnificent&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4117,4542],"class_list":["post-30664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-elbow","tag-myanmar","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}