the Secret Life Of Plants

This is a trippy Stevie Wonder video. Well, it's not really a video as videos were not videos in 1979. Meaning - there was no MTV so they were just little art films.

ANYWAY...

In 1973 these two dudes by the name of Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird wrote a book called The Secret Life Plants and it was all about the relationships between plants and man. I've never read it and all I truly know about it is what I've read on Wikipedia. I'm such a fake intellectual! Basically the book focuses on the "New Age" idea that plants are so much more than plants and have feelings and can be learned from...Oh. how 70's!

In 1979 there was a documentary made based on the book and Stevie Wonder wrote the soundtrack...

I'd always been a weird kid when it came to music and I bought The Secret Life of Plants the first day it came out. My household was full of music - mostly to drown out the sounds of dysfunction. That said, my one brother would be listening to avant guard jazz which many times sounded like the AFFLECK duck while my father would be playing his organ for hours at a time. I think he played at Fenway park as the sub organist - thus my unconscious was/is imprinted with Take Me Out To The Ball Game in all it's cheezy organ-gasmic glory. My other brother would listen to the Beatles and then take the record off the turntable (yes - it was that long ago) and replace it with Frank Sinatra while my sister listened to Fleetwood Mac. As I worshipped my sister I adopted her Fleetwood Mac obsession so by the early 80's I was perming my hair and cutting my skirts into shards in order to look like Stevie Nicks in the Stand Back video.

Little known fact : Prince played keyboards on that tune.

But back to the Secret Life Of Plants and this video - what I love about this song and this video is how beautiful and open Stevie Wonder is. It's one of the few times you see him without his sunglasses.

Growing up my Cousin Pam, was born blind,absolutely refused to wear sunglasses. That is not to say making the choice to wear sunglasses is bad but what I loved about Pam was she forced people to acknowledge she was blind. I'd love to say her blindness made her more intuitive and patient but actually it made her really angry. It motivated her - being that she got both law and education degrees. She travelled the world and absolutely refused to be pitied or condescended to. But at the same time she had no tolerance for people who didn't know how to deal with someone who was blind. She would floor someone in their ignorance and basically shame them and many times it was embarassing from my 13 year old perspective. That said it was what in the long run made me love and respect her that much more. She passed at much too young an age of breast cancer but before she left this earth she taught me that her complications, physical and emotional, made her beautifully human. She had to fight for everything and, no, she didn't appreciate it. She was fuckin mad about it. But she kept on keeping on and did the best she could and never, ever backed down.

I hope you dig this video. The soundtrack is on napster. Check it out!