“In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.”

—Phil Ochs

The C-of-C-C Newsletter Protest-Song-Of-The-Day is:

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MARTHA, MY DEAR (Instrumental) 

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*CHAOS COORDINATION*

 ***THROUGH MELODY***

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“As our retirement and senescence expert Justin Aldmann likes to say about our selections:

“We’re not old, we’re Mid-Century Modern.”

There are days when even lyrics feel like too much. When the world is overfull with speech, statement, and static—and then comes melody. No arguments. No hashtags. Just the ordered grace of notes placed just so, like sunlight through a patterned curtain.

This instrumental version of Martha, My Dear—pared down, softened, and unhurried—carries that rarest quality in modern life: tact. It offers no demands. It simply arrives, behaves beautifully, and leaves you slightly better than it found you.

It’s Paul McCartney at his most architectural, which is to say: deceptively simple, quietly ingenious. A melody that curls inward like a tendril, unfolding memory you didn’t know you stored.

We chose it because it matches the tempo of small joys: a crossword finished in pencil, a highball sweating beside a mid-century ashtray, the quiet of a dog who’s finally found the right patch of sun.

To quote myself:

“Beauty doesn’t protest like a riot. It just refuses to get ugly.” 

But I’m confident I could even make a riot be an orderly chordal progression. McCartney managed this in song to his dog.

So tonight, make space for beauty. Solve something. Fold something. Let something soften. And let this song do what words can’t.

—Rey Pierre-DeWitt, C-of-C-C Chaos Coordinator