Chanting on the Cheap

In an idling moment, we came across Vatican Television’s broadcast of the 2 Pope Canonization Duo, last Sunday. It certainly was impressive to see the millions filling and overflowing Vatican Square, the Via della Concordia and beyond.

Adding to the impressiveness was the fact that the “crowd” included the royal and the grand from the Catholic world

There is something arch-typical in seeing a monarch curtsy.

Not so impressive, however, was the gastric-moaning cum muzak-angelicus which, since Vatican II, now passes for Roman Chant. 

This week's canonization began with a "new-chant" litany which can be contrasted with the one from the Sixth Century given below.

Now,  it has to be said that all religious chant is, up to a point, monotonous; for, that is what chant is: a mono-tone.   This is the result of what the poet Valéry might call le son et le sens of liturgy.  To the extent that liturgy entails a litany — or mantra — its purpose is to repeat an idea and focus the mind into a concept.  Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison is the most paradigmatic, if short, example.

10th Century Gregorian Chant

"Let that beautiful custom of all the provinces of the East and of Italy be kept up, viz., that of singing with great effect and compunction the 'Kyrie Eleison' at Mass, Matins, and Vespers, because so sweet and pleasing a chant, even though continued day and night without interruption, could never produce disgust or weariness". (Council Vaison, 590 A.D.)

--

In this case, mono-phonic repetition underscores a singular ideonic repetition so that one’s “presence of mind” becomes infused with a focal constancy from without and from within. 

Sixth Century Roman Litany of Rogation
Often a "pure" litany like the Kyrie is used as a refrain in a sequence of petitions or invocations whether in prayer or procession.

This is, perhaps, the fundamental  premise of chanting.  It is a form of meditation or dedication (giving of one's self) to a mental object.

Mozarab "Sanctus" (12th cent. Spain)

But all things imply or call for their opposites.   So it is, that the "monotony" of chant is infused with dynamic modulations and inflections which supply variation even if it is might not be heard at first.   The training scores of old Gregorian Chant sometimes contained worm-like squiggles over the notes, which served to indicate the increase, fullness or declension of the breath in the sound.   Without such devices chant would quickly become unsustainable.

Arabic Byzantine (Greek) Orthodox (Syria)

This general (and certainly non-technical) description applies to and audibly connects other species of chant within a common genre, be it Muslim

Muslim Call to Prayer

or Buddhist or any of  myriad other religious chants.

Thai Buddhist

But mantras are not everything.  In other liturgical situations the purpose of sound is to underscore and assist a narrative be it a creed, a confession, a prayer or an adulation.

Greek Orthodox Prayer

Here, the music has to serve as a fulcrum between the dynamic of changing ideas and the desire to maintain a stasis or  constancy of a psychological posture.

Russian Prayer

The “narrative” is limited by its own internal logic. For example a confession, which has as its core idea “sorry” will proceed to list the ways, manners and circumstances of transgressions.  Similarly a hymn of praise might list the ways and manners in which the deity is beneficent of magnificent.  There is both constancy and change.

At times the "narrative" will shift between core ideas. This often happens in the psalms which might begin with themes of shame or sorrow and end with praise and gratitude.  Here, both the sounds and the sense have to closely collaborate so as to produce a seamlesness of progression from one idea to its unfolding other.   In Platonic terms, music provides the ergon (energy or work) to the abstract logos of the ideas.  On might call it “opera” without jolts and surprises.

 19th Cent. Anglican Chant (Psalm 149 [Atwood])

From the Roman and Orthodox perspectives, "chant" is the official sacred music of the liturgy.  The ergon of tonality is secondary but integral with the logos of the text.   Together they comprise what can perhaps be called expression within a prescriptive discipline.   All other music  -- including Hayden and Mozart masses -- was regarded as popular religious music, allowable as appropriate in the way painting, sculpture and architecture also serve as tangible expressions of faith.

As is well-known, both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, sought to make a greater accommodation for "popular" religious music.   In the Roman ambit, the radical result was the polyphony of Palestrina.

Puebla Cathedral

Even more radical was the polyphony of Gutierrez Padilla whose Spanish roots and Mexican circumstances led him to produce something which might be described as polyphonic counterpoint with Arab or Aztec syncopations.   Depending on how he is sung ("slow" or "fast") his liturgical music hearkens back to Palestrina or points forward to Bach.   But from the perspective of chant, Padilla is a kind of playful folkish baroque.

Although incorporating popular singing into the liturgy was a core project of the Protestant Reformation, it is something of a myth that Protestants were off singing like happy frogs while Catholics were mumbling into their rosaries.  Both branches had full and rich repertoires of “popular” liturgical music which included the sublime B-minor Mass or Missa Solemnis as well as what can frankly be called religious commonplace, otherwise known as "familiar hymns". 

Nevertheless, the stereotype of protestant croaking versus catholic mumbling cannot be stripped of all truth.  The ordinary low mass, which formed the great majority of daily roman rite services, was spoken and not sung.

This stereotypical distinction arose from a theological divergence concerning the significance of the Eucharist. For Protestants, the Eucharist was a commemorative, communal meal in which Christ was present “spiritually” (whatever that meant) whereas for Catholics it retained the character of an actual sacrifice in which Christ was really present corporeally (whatever that meant). 

This divergence was reflected liturgically in the fact that just as the Catholic low mass “forgot” the music, low Protestant denominations forgot the daily, weekly or even monthly Eucharist so that the ordinary service became a species of weekly lecture accompanied by communal singing. 

After the World War, rectifying reform proceeded in earnest in both camps.  Anglicans in particular re-emphasized the centrality of the Eucharist within a by now rich and eclectic musical tradition.   After Vatican II, the Church sought to re-involve the laity in liturgy, and this, primarily, meant singing.  The reformers' over-riding imperative became,  “Sing Everyone Sing!”

However, this move to “update” the Church presented serious theological difficulties which remain unresolved.   Simply put: if the mass is an actual sacrifice of a living God, it must at least be something of an awe-filled event.  Strumming guitars and smiling-on-your-brother does not work.

I recall that when Vatican II’s reforms were going into effect, the seminarians down the road -- no doubt bored with  chant in the Beatle's Era -- strummed, clapped and swayed to a "pre-communion"  tune called Sons of God

The problem with what I dubbed the Werewolf Song is that it made explicit what is best left as a "signified mystery,” the prototypical expression of which is found in Saint Mark's account,

"And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had blessed, he brake it, and gave to them, and said, ‘Take ye: this is my body.’  And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.’" (Gospel of Mark  14:22-24.)

 Earlier still is the reference to the Eucharist found in Corinthians, written around 50 A.D.,

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me"  In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.’ (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

Although both versions of the core account are similar and equally open to a metaphorical interpretation,  Saint Paul goes on to explain,

"So it is the Lord’s death that you are heralding, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, until he comes. And therefore, if anyone eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily, he will be held to account for the Lord’s body and blood. A man must examine himself first, and then eat of that bread and drink of that cup; he is eating and drinking damnation to himself if he eats and drinks unworthily, not recognizing the Lord’s body for what it is."  (Ibid 11:26-29.)

A hundred years later the doctrine of a transubstantial sacrifice is fully entrenched in Justin Martyr’s First Apology

"For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Saviour was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (First Apology 66:1–20 [AD 148]).

Thus, from the earliest New Testament accounts and received traditions, the Eucharistic core of the "Divine Service" was understood as something more than a meal-in-common, and certainly something more than a Mac Jesse Happy Meal.

There is nothing wrong with religious or commemorative communal meals, of which the Sabbath Seder is a prime example.  Its core idea -- the breaking off from work and the blessing and breaking of bread, wine and simple foods -- is versatile and portable, performable as much in hotel rooms as homes or temples.   One can add singing, dancing, discussing or jokes au gout. 

However, it is not clear that Christ was celebrating a typical seder at the Last Supper.  At all times, the religious core of the sabbath is to commemorate God's Creation, Israel's Redemption and to receive a "taste" of the Kingdom to Come.   With that context in mind, it emerges with fair clarity that, at the Last Supper, Jesus identified himself with those three concepts.   In other words, he was not merely "doing Passover" because (by the accounts given) he was changing the remembrance.

One need not celebrate the Eucharist weekly or daily, but to the extent that a Christian celebrates it, it is the commemoration of a solemn and existentially changing sacrifice, the nature of which, despite being disputed and explained, remains mysterious.  In the end, one is left with a forest of words around a central clearing.

What is also fairly clear, despite theological quibbles and evolving liturgical complexities, is that at all times, singing ended before communion with the Agnus Dei — the fifth and last “sung” part of the mass.

Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

How one received the Eucharist, what it meant to one's heart of hearts was left to the quiet and emptiness of silence.  Bellowing out what is, at bottom, a material (and digestive) representation of an  spiritual mystery is a travesty.  If one truly believes he is biting down on the actual flesh of a living god does he sing a kindergarden ditty while doing so?  What kind of imbecility is that?  If one sings a doggerel ditty such as the Werewolf Song can he believe that he is doing anything more than having “milk and cookies” on Sunday?

This was the central problem with the “updating” reforms of Vatican II.  The more the updaters and relevancers surrounded the altar with the sounds and clapping of all-together-now singing around the “communal meal,” the more the transcendental mystery of what was supposedly a solemn sacrifice got buried under a heap of popular and usually ill-conceived noise.  At best, Catholic services became a self-conscious imitation of mainline Protestantism.   At worst -- and all too commonly -- service descended into treakle, kitsch and outrage. 

One of the ways the Church tried to back away from such liturgical doggerel was to put “chant” back into the mass.  But it was felt that real chant was too subtle and too complicated for “the average person.”  Accordingly, “chant” got stripped of its subtle harmonics and inflections so that it could be so that be sung by Ordinary Man.  The liturgical reformers hoped to retain something called “chant” as the official or core sound sub-serving the sense of the prayers while at the same time heeding the prime directive to make sure everyone sang. 

Anglican Chant was a 19th century attempt to achieve a similar result, amenable to the sonic structure of English and singable with relative ease by the layman.  But whereas Anglican chant can be said to have succeeded,  the "simplification" of Roman Chant has produced nothing but mind-numbing, ear- tiring, sing-song monotony.   If the "subtleties" of tonal inflexions and dynamic emphasis were what gave the mono-tone of chant its life, taking those subtleties out left nothing but a sonic corpse.

Although the instrumentalisation was probably not part of the above Christmas Mass, (at least one hopes not),  it actually highlights what is deadly wrong about this updated chant which is indistinguishable from the sort of "stuff" one might hear during a sentimental Hollywood Bing Crosby  Christmas saga. 

The reformers’ premise was a notion ill-begotten of professional arrogance and condescension.  Any dolt can sing chant, if he is trained.  The beautifully complex “polyphonic-counterpoints” of Gutierrez Padilla were sung by and for recently converted Aztecs for whom the musical genre was entirely new.  What is required are information and intent.   

There are people in the West who have chosen to pursue their spiritual pilgrimage into foreign faiths. They do so by way of a commitment to learn and observe the discipline  and practices of a non-Christian religion.  Would be Muslims will learn Arabic which is required to fully appreciate the Koran. American Buddhists do not expect to “chant” country-western sutras or line dance the om mani padme hum.  Why should it be different for would-be Catholics?

The reformers confused updating with dumbing down and accessibility with a subtler form of passivity which masked laziness under the rubric of easy participation. 

It is probably indisputable that our present culture has become musically illiterate.  By this I do not mean  that in some mythical by-gone era of meisters every cobbler understood music theory.  While it  is certainly true that music was almost a vernacular in Germany, Italy, Southern France, Spain and New Spain, the more important fact was that people were not deluged by a barrage of commercialized noise.  The absence of all-pervading muzak (and worse) allowed people to hear beauty when they heard it and hearing it to mimic responses.  The ear of modern man, in contrast, is dulled by such constant sonic abuse that it cannot hear the difference beauty makes the way a punch drunk man no longer feels the pain.

© Woodchip Gazette, 2014
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Resurrection in Review

Chipster is reading Resurrection by  Leo Tolstoy.  It is not a particularly good novel because Tolstoy uses his characters as vehicles for didactic points rather than developing them of their own accord.  But although the character development is flat, the novel is carried along -- toward Siberia -- on its story line, salted with quick-sketches of human-types and social vignettes used to make psychological or sociological points.

In this latter respect, Tolstoy is also somewhat dated, reflecting in his views that late 19th century "forward looking" mind-set which -- building on 18th century rationalism -- advanced toward social scientism; of either the Darwinian or Positivist schools, although Tolstoy himself espouses the latter.

This is not to say that Tolstoy is necessarily wrong, but only to remark that Resurrection will not provoke sudden and novel insights.  The story rather falls into the category of "oft said, but ne'er so well expressed." (A. Pope.)

Nor is this to say that Tolstoy's little lectures are not gems in themselves.  I have in mind his "prequel" to the Banality of Evil, which states in two pages what the belaboring Hannah Arendt drags out -- like a long column heading for Siberia -- for an entire verbose and tedious book.

Speaking of the prisoners he sees being led to transports and of the two who died of exhaustion, the novel's protagonist, Prince Nekhlyudov asks himself who is guilty of their deaths?  The judge who signed the judgment?  The doctor who certified their health?  The inspector who was told to assemble the men? 

"No one is guilty, and yet the men have been murdered by these people who are not guilty of their death.

"All this comes," thought Nekhuludov, "from the fact that all these people -- governors, inspectors, police offices and policemen -- consider that there are circumstances when human relations are not necessary between human beings.  . . .  All these men .. . seeing a man growing weak, gasping fro breath, would have led him into the shade, would have given him water and let him rest .. But they did not do this… because they thought not of men and their duty toward them but only of the office they themselves filled and considered the obligations of that office to be above human relations.  That is the whole of the matter.

"…all those people…are for the great part kind people, cruel only because they serve.

"Perhaps these governors, inspectors, policemen are needed; but it is terrible to see men deprived of their chief human attribute: love and sympathy for one another.  … [T]hese people acknowledge as law what is not law and do not acknowledge as law at all the eternal immutable law written by God in the hearts of men.  That is why I feel so depressed when I am with these people.  I am simply afraid of them. And really they are terrible, more terrible than robbers.  A robber might, after all, feel pity, but they can feel no pity...  That is what makes them so terrible. …

"If a psychological problem were set to find means of making the men of our time  --- Christian, humane, simple, kind people -- perform the most horrible crimes without feeling guilty, only one solution could be devised: simply to go on doing what is being done now.  It is only necessary that these people …should be fully convinced that there is a kind of business, called Government service, which allows men to treat other men as things without having human brotherly relations with them; and that they should be so linked together by this Government service that the responsibility for the result of their deeds should not fall on anyone of them individually. …"  (Bk II, Ch. XL.)

In short, Billy Bud.

{Au suivre}

The Point of the Circle

     

Just as the circle is the perfect figure, so is Thanksgiving the perfect holiday.  It requires neither more nor less to be entirely satisfying. 

The heart of Thanksgiving and the all of it is simply feasting with friends.  This is the core of all religious commemoration, of all reconciliation, of all exultant howling around the carcass of the prey.

Thanksgiving entails none of the ego of birthdays or motherdays nor any of the impossible obbligatos of Christmas which more often than people will admit are simply a set-up for misery.

No.  Thanksgiving can be celebrated anywhere, with anyone with as little or as much as one has.  It is always good.

But the idea of giving thanks has always appalled me.  I can't count the number of times, while my host has rattled through a veritable laundry list of things he is thankful that God has vouchsafed to bestow on him, that i have wanted to add:

... and we thank you Lord, for the terrified animal whose pain and death has provided us with these succulent loins to savour; and that Thou, in Thy Gracious Mercy, have deigned not to number us among those starving children who are this night wandering streets and sniffing glue to stifle their hunger; and we thank You also, Oh Fount of Mercy and Love, that Thou has been so  very good to us, your unworthy but fortunate servants, that Thou has not let us fall among those despised and desolate, the truly blessed recipients of Your Grace....

The idea of giving thanks for accounted blessings has always struck me as an insufferable exercise of egotism wrapped in self-deluding and hypocritical humility, no different in spirit than the miser, gleefully counting his coins. Does anyone give thanks for suffering and going without? Saints perhaps.  

How is it possible to be grateful for having without necessarily being grateful for not not having? The catholic prayers a table which i dimly remember were always on the aesthetic side along the lines of:  "teach us to hunger after your spiritual blessings as you have given us food for our bodies..."  That at least was more of a cautionary reminder than an indulgent or indifferent reckoning.

Some may protest that life cannot always be so morose and i would heartily agree.  There are times to simply exult and be happy... and bringing in a harvest that yielded rather than not is one of those times too.  But being happy -- and limitlessly so -- is not the same as numbering one's acquisitions and successes.

What makes the circle perfect is that it points nowhere.

Aftermath - The Vulgarity of Empire.

        

The morning after Kennedy was buried, the country awoke to find a stranger in its bed.  The indefatigable vulgarity of Lyndon Baines Johnson made unfavourable comparison inevitable.  As I.F.Stone put it,

"He is a sharp drop from Kennedy.  He has hardly read a book in years; never reads when he can help it; prefers to get information by ear, but rarely listens.  He is one of the most long-winded men in Washington... with a remarkably small stock of basic ideas....

"Money and power have been the motivating passions of his life.  He was a New Dealer when that was the road to power; he became a conservative when that was the way to stay in.  ...  He is the perfect extrovert,  with no convictions and a passion for getting things done, anything.  ... [¶]... His vanity, his thin skin and his vindictiveness make even the mildest criticism ... dangerous.  ...

"Johnson is not a racist or a reactionary. ... As a shrewd politician, he knows he must move slightly leftward and make civil rights his number 1 issue... if he is [to become more] than a Southern politician with a basically stand-pat philosophy.  ... The hope is that men change and grow.  The sense of role, the maturing effect of responsibility, the consciousness of duty and love of country, the sense of humanity and history, all have their effect.  ... There may be surprises in Johnson and we wish the new President luck."  (Vol XI, No. 24 12/9/63; www.ifstone.org)

The sting of Stone's portrayal gives it a taste of truth and he was right in his prediction that the "level of literacy and civilization will fall again, as it did after F.D.R."

But it is a tad unfair to subject public figures to too much light.  Men do not accomplish anything without power and do not get into power by being poets. Politics is the art of the sordid.

If Kennedy was -- as his ghost writer once put it -- the author of his poetry, it was only because his father, Joe Sr.,  had authored all the sordid deals for him.  Jack was untouchable because he hadn't touched a damn thing.  Johnson, a true nobody from nowhere, had to claw his way in and clawing is never pretty.

Johnson was a figure cut from Shakespeare, at once the bumbling peasant and the despicable overseer promiscuously out of place in the Court of Savoir Faire that did not know how.

And so, in a curious and indirect way, the country also awoke to an awareness of the stricken hero's imperfections. The whispered coda on everyone's lips was: "but maybe now things can get done."  Johnson stood for the drudge work of a dream Kennedy could evoke but not accomplish. 

It was Johnson who pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even if, as he said, it would be the act that destroyed the Democratic Coalition, which it did and which more than anything else enabled Nixon and Reagan to come to power. 

It was Johnson who pushed through Medicare which is the one program that keeps senior Americans from literally dying in gutters including those who once chanted "Hey, Hey, LBJ - How many Kids Have you Killed Today."

It was Johnson who enacted a slew of small social and economic programs which in small but real ways made the difference for small but real people.

It is unfair to excoriate politicians for impurity of motive as if they should do good without the slightest hint of egotistical drive or satisfaction.  No one can pass such a test. It was Johnson's misfortune that, following upon the pseudo saintliness of Jack Kennedy, his ordinary vices and even his virtues appeared for the worse.

Beneath the vulgarity and ambition Johnson retained simple but humane instincts.  He really had wanted to bring rural electrification to Texas and he really did want to make the United States a more fair union. 

The tragedy of Lyndon -- and it was a tragedy --  was that he had embraced power with the notion of doing something good and found that Power had embraced him for her own ends. 

Johnson might fix and finagle things in what I.F. Stone called "the decayed underside" of the U.S. Senate.  What  Johnson could not fix was the decayed underside of Kennedy's lofty Inaugural Address.   Vietnam was the pustule of America's status as a world power.  The war was no more avoidable than America's chosen "manifest destiny."

The unending slew of homiletic pieties which passes for American rhetoric has convinced us that America is a basically good and decent land which from time to time makes atrocious mistakes.  Rubbish.

Ever since 1776, when the Colonists revolted against the Quebec Act which had forbidden westward expansion (and which Jefferson denounced as inciting the "merciless Indian Savages" against us), the country has been about expansion and empire.  The endeavour reached its culmination in 1945 when the United States stood astride a devastated world which it more than anyone else had blasted into rubble.  Americans are wont to think of themselves as liberators but such self-massaging is one thing that doesn't gratify beyond our shores.  Any European understands that the United States no more liberated Europe than Rome liberated Greece.

With the success achieved in 1945, U.S. policy became one of consolidation and extension.  The aim was to erect a cordon sanitaire around the Communist world (what Churchill, in a delirium tremens of deflected accusation, called the Iron Curtain) and then to foster what were called "zones of democratic freedom" in the no-man's land of the "third world."  The Cold War consisted in ongoing skirmishes over "push points" in the Congo, Cuba, Laos or Iran -- outposts, colonies and satrapies tied to one or the other of the blocs by "shared values" and trade.

Five decades later, all that really changed was the unvarnished candour with which the policy got stated.  The aim of Dick Cheney's doctrine of ongoing "power projection" operations was to "preserve and extend American preeminence" and "to secure and expand" “zones of democratic peace;” "in line with American principles and interests."

The unvarnish was inadvertent. It resulted from the fact that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was nothing left to contain and the U.S. could no longer cast itself in the shining armour of freedom's guardian.   Thus, the essential thrust of NeoCon doctrine was a colossal "Who Gives A-Fuck."  America was top dog and would stay top dog by kicking ass around the world. Containing Communism transmuted into Maintaining Preeminence. 

It is pointless to ask whether John Kennedy would have gone that far.  The answer is, no; but only because Kennedy was not president that far along on history's trajectory.  It is a different question altogether whether Kennedy would have seen the "need" to "contain and push" in Vietnam.  The answer is, yes.

It is worth remembering that it was Kennedy who first institutionalised the use of "full spectrum" forces and "special operations."  That was what the Green Berets were all about, even if they were decked out as some kind of uber-athletic bivouacking team, replete with their own best-selling, pre-Weider,  fitness manual. 

Vietnam was the first muddled test of the new strategy.  It began with black ops (an assassination) was carried on by "pacification" programs (the murdering and concentration of entire villages) and ended in all out aerial and chemical bombing short of nuclear war.
 
Vietnam was a "necessary" war because (as Kissinger would later say) it was necessary not to be perceived as weak -- in other words to be seen as ever-ready, ever-eager to project power.  That was the entire dynamic of the post-war construct.

The notion that Kennedy was back-tracking from engagement in Vietnam is too pretty for words. It was Kennedy who had loftily intoned that we would "pay any price, bear any burden, .... oppose any foe, in  order to assure .... the success of liberty."  His administration was already implementing the play-book Johnson would continue to use.  To think that Kennedy would call the whole thing off two years later, one has to believe that Kennedy would have ignored the very same cadre of cabinet officers and advisers who stayed on to advise Johnson.  It is possible but not probable.

Even to say as much erroneously presupposes that leaders exist independently of the forces that thrust them forward and sustain them.  They do not. As President of "the most powerful nation on earth" Johnson had to serve the cause of power once in power himself.  There was no way out from that  Faustian embrace and he was just as trapped as Kennedy would have been.

The difference between Johnson and Kennedy was that Saint Jack would have let loose a noble and inspiring War Whoop which would have had an entire generation marching off to war under fluttering flags instead of half of it being surreptitiously shipped off to slog around in rice paddies while the more privileged half sloshed around in mud-fields protesting and what-not.

At bottom, Kennedy was a jock.  Although he had the good sense to keep it within limits, he relished a good fight.  As he said in his Inaugural,

Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.

For all his physical presence, Johnson never spoiled for a fight.  Some said he was a physical coward.  He had lusted for power with the idea of improving the lot of poorer Americans.  Vainglorious as it might have been, he did want to go down in history as the Great Benefactor of a Great Society. 

Caught between the demands of power and the empowering of his dreams, Johnson pursued an ambivalent course.  The disaster of his "guns and butter" policy was that it succeeded at neither and drove a permanent wedge into the country between those who got the guns and those who got the butter.  That was something Kennedy would not have permitted.

But Kennedy's crusading spirit did not mean that the war would have ended sooner or bankrupted the country less.  The war was unwinable because it was the kind of war that cannot be won, even by Green Berets!  Only conventional wars have conventional endings.  The idea that you can "win" an unconventional war is an oxymoron because there is no one around to admit defeat.  The best one can do (as was said of Rome) is to "create a desert and call it peace."

It would take U.S. policy makers 40 years to realise that it did not matter if you won or lost because power projection was an end in itself.  But in 1964 U.S. policy makers were still tied to the tinsel of "democratic values," to the notion that nation building mattered and to the idea that "winning" (over what was not very clear) was a possible outcome.

Was it possible to alter the historical trajectory the nation had embarked upon in 1776?  No; and no one wanted to.  But Kennedy had led us to think that our undoubted preeminence could be used for good,

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts  If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.   ....  [T]he trumpet summons us again– to struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

It was stirring stuff. The Inaugural  beckoned to the idea of a beneficent empire.  It was America's Ara Pacis -- a New Rome uniting the Free World within New Frontiers of peace, progress and prosperity.  We thrilled to the challenge and thought it possible.

But despite the friezes and phrases, no empire is beneficent because the essence of empire is exploitation.  There is no such thing as "gentle power."  Empires are what they are and they exact their price from rulers and ruled alike.

Kennedy was the noble fraud, the way we wanted to see ourselves.  Johnson was the ugly truth and we hated in him what we did not want to acknowledge about us.  His tragedy will be ours.

©WCG, 2013

Saint Jack

Anyone over the age of seven, the world over, can tell you where he was on that day.  John Fitzgerald Kennedy had evoked the imagination of the world even among those who  considered him to be an inexperienced, preppy playboy, little different in political substance from Nixon or among those, like Kruschev, Castro or DeGaulle, who were not mired in sentimentalities about America or the forces that drove her. 

There was something about Jack that shone through the carefully cultivated propaganda as opposed to Ronnie who only shined because of it.  And what shone through was simply a reflection of the projected hopes of mankind.  Truly great statesmen are devoid of content; the greater their emptiness the more they can act as a transparent prism for the light that appears to emanate from them. 

We were curious about what I.F. Stone -- the great counter-journalist of the Fifties and Sixties -- had to say about that day.  We were struck by how, of all the blather that streamed over the coffin, Stone's remarks bear the balanced judgement of time.  

"There was a fairy tale quality about the inaugural and there was a fairy tale quality about the funeral rites.  One half expected  ... some winged godmother would wave her wand and restore the hero whole again in final triumph over the dark forces which had slain him. ...

"Of all the Presidents this was the first to be a Prince Charming. ... To watch the President at press conference ... was to be delighted by his wit, his intelligence, his capacity and his youth.  These made the terrible flash from Dallas incredible and painful. 

"But perhaps the truth is that in some ways John Fitzgerald Kennedy died just in time ... to be remembered as he would like to be remembered, as ever young, still victorious, struck down undefeated...

"For... in the tangled dramaturgy of events this sudden assassination was ... the only satisfactory way out. The Kennedy Administration was approaching an impasse ... from which there seemed no escape. 

"In congress the President was ... confronted with a shrewdly conceived and quietly staged sitdown strike by Southern committee chairmen determined to block civil rights even if it meant stopping the wheels of government altogether. ... Never before ... has the Southern oligarchy dared to go so far in demonstrating its power. ...

"In foreign policy the outlook was as uncompromising. It was proving difficult to move toward co-existence a country so long conditioned to cold war. The president recognized the dangers of an unlimited arms race... but was afraid ... to move at more than a snail's pace toward an agreement with Moscow. ... In Vietnam, the stepping up of the war by the rebels was deflating all the romantic Kennedy notions about counter-guerillas. ...

"Abroad, as at home, the problems were becoming too great for conventional leadership, and Kennedy, when the tinsel was stripped away, was a conventional leader, no more than an enlightened conservative... with a basic distrust of the  people...."

[ Stone went on to list the belligerent deeds undertaken by Kennedy the Cold Warrior from the assassination of Lumumba in the Congo to Diem in Vietnam, from the Bay of Pigs fiasco to the Cuban Missile Crisis,  before concluding:  ]

"Where the right to kill is so universally accepted, we should not be surprised if our young President was slain.  It is not just the ease in obtaining guns, it is the ease in obtaining excuses that fosters assassinations. ... When a whole people is in a state of mind where it is ready to risk extinction -- its own and everybody else's -- as a means of having its own way in an international dispute, the readiness for murder has become a way of life and a world menace.  ... It would be well to think it over carefully before canonizing Kennedy as an apostle of peace."  (Vol XI, No. 24 12/9/63 © www.ifstone.org)

It was all true enough and equally as depressing that so little has changed.  But that is not why Kennedy has been canonised.

Kennedy's clarity allowed us to see our better selves in him.  He was the man we wanted to be.  The husband we wanted to have.  The hero of our own ideals and the embodiment of what we expected from that cornucopia of hopes called "America." 

I stood on the tombstone of a long dead patriot atop the knoll that overlooked where the slain man was being laid to rest.  The air was crisp under a clear azure sky and the rays of the setting sun turned marble monuments a golden pink.  The bagpipes droned their plaintive dirge as the flags whipped into the wind.  I had never felt so sad, so proud to be an American. 

That was the last time.

©WCG, 2013.

Gleaming Death

 

We were reading in article in Der Spiegel about how the BRIC countries were overtaking the West in just about everything and about how no city in Europe was on the cutting edge of anything.

This news has been in the wings, as it were, for several years now and we have taken note of the sparkling space-age cities rising up in the vast flat-lands of Asia.  Next to those examples of futuristic modernity, U.S. cities appear hokey if not downright shabby.

 

It is important not to loose sight of what is really going on here.  It is somewhat off the mark to think of Brazil, Russia, India and China as solely national sources of a new vitality. Their prosperity is equally due to capital flows from the West.  European and U.S. companies are investing in these countries.

Bill's Bullshit was that by exporting the dirty jobs to backwater, cheap-labour places like China, India, Pakistan and Malaysia, the United States would be become the gleaming headquarters of the future, full of hi-tech, hi-skill,  hi-paperpushing jobs.  Instead all the gleam and clean fingernails followed the grime.  The paper titles may be parked here (USA) but not much else anymore.

But we are overcome by other, sadder thoughts, when we sit and stare at pictures of these Futurama Cities.  There are no trees.... no chirping birds... no tigers on the prowl... no elephants bathing in pools.  They are vast expanses of gleaming DEATH.

These are cities planned for millions, and for millions with hundred of thousands of cars, driving on grass-killing concrete.  The cities are fed, not by milk from cows grazing on a hill -- as in old backwater Europe or parts of Cascadia -- but from cows debased into milk producing things and "sources" of meat.
 

All the metal and gleam bespeak an exciting future full of artificial "growth" and the death of Creation as we know it.  Very few people are open to  the necessity  of mandated non-reproduction. The money makers and their beholden policy whores are downright against it.  Close to twenty years ago we sent letters to editors noting the need for a reduction in the number of humans on the planet.  Not one got printed.

What is actually anathema has become orthodoxy. The insane pursuit of endless market growth coupled with unrestrained population growth is an evolutionary derangement which obviously has no cure except its own self-destructive consummation.  Chipsters hope it comes sooner than later.  Humans are simply a blight on the world.   That is an objective fact whether your ego likes it or not.

Suffering Beauty

 

We had some thoughts about beauty when we read that,

“A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people.

The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?”

It was a stunning, if not altogether unknown, reflection of our civilisation and it made us think of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the 20th Century Catholic theologian who wrote.

"We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past — whether he admits it or not — can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love"

But this in turn stirred a question in my mind for Mr. Bell.  It is a near certainty that among those who disposed of his music by rushing past it were members of the very same bourgeoisie who would or had paid $100.00 a seat to hear the same piece in a proper setting.  Why would Mr. Bell want to play for them?  

Of course, we understand that Mr. Bell needs to make a living; we all do.  However, anyone who has worked at Bach comes to understand the intimate relationship between player and listener, between (as Bach would certainly put it) score and soul. Once again, von Balthasar,

"Seeing is the organ with which the world is possessed and dominated.  [Perception] denotes distance, separateness and subordination to our perspective.  Hearing is a wholly different, almost an opposite mode of the revelation of reality. ... The basic relationship between the one who hears and that which is heard is thus one of defencelessness on the one side and of communication on the other. The hearer belongs to the other and obeys him."

We cannot pass judgement on every concert goer; but we are confident that those who did not stop to listen were refusing to obey.  Were those same people in one hundred dollar seats hearing music or listening to the mask of technique.  If they were deaf in the Metro are they not also deaf at the Met?  Just how much are we going to surrender to the rationalisations of prioritising?

The surrender involved in listening to Bach seems to explain why the children alone were the only ones who were uncontrolled enough to stop and submit.

Were all these children moved by the sublime profundity of Bach?  Perhaps we ought not to make more of innocence than is wont.  Certainly the music arrested them which is more than it did for their parents.  Once arrested,were the children moved by the sounds or fascinated by box that emitted the sounds or entranced by the gesticulations and motions of the violinist?

In our view it does not make any difference because all these elements were of a piece.  It seems rather to miss the point to fuss over which component was prevalent in any child's awareness. Isn't the point that they were open, defenceless and trusting enough to suffer experience?  Which brought us back again to von Balthasar,

"Whenever the relationship between nature and grace is severed (as happens... where 'faith' and 'knowledge' are constructed as opposites), then the whole of worldly being falls under the dominion of 'knowledge', and the springs and forces of love immanent in the world are overpowered and finally suffocated by science, technology and cybernetics. The result is a world without women, without children, without reverence for love in poverty and humiliation — a world in which power and the profit-margin are the sole criteria, where the disinterested, the useless, the purposeless is despised, persecuted and in the end exterminated — a world in which art itself is forced to wear the mask and features of technique"

Mr. Bell is certainly a "technician" and the whole point of article was that the exquisite features of his technique were ignored by a stampede of humans except for the children whom, we have just said, might not have been all that attuned to his technique.  So was the beauty which Mr. Bell produced, in the end, wasted on all or was the beauty of the matter somewhere else?

Street musicians are a relatively new and still rare  phenomenon in the United States.  Our cities are without centres, have few useless spaces and have been handed over to the stampede of cars.  But there was a place and a time when we grew up where street musicians were commonplace.

Every other or third day, the organ grinder would come onto our street in the late afternoon just before dusk and start cranking out his flutey toones.  "Ayyyyy" the maids would cry as they ran to front windows to throw coins at the music maker.  Coins, i will add, taken from very meagre earnings.  But nothing got done -- for we all stopped whatever we were doing --  until everyone had got their fill of the music. 

And maybe once a month, a band of village peasants would amble onto our block with their cracked violins, battered horns and leaky tubas or patched drums. With an uneven, barely coordinated start they would then crank out their missed beat, out of tune, rasping, flubbering music which was beautiful in its sheer awfulness.  It was never clear that they were not paid to go away but their semblance of music did make us smile and isn't that too the point of music?

And then there was music which made one cry, made perhaps by a grizzled old violinist making a free gift of his rasping melody to the Blessed Virgin, at the foot of the altar.  If the image is paradigmatic it is because it was prevalent; and here i have to say, with no disrespect to Mr. Bell and certainly not to Bach, that there was more beauty in that poverty than in all the mask of technique in the world.

©WCG 2013