“Wendell Berry is the Sargeant York charging unnatural odds across our no-man’s-land of ecology. Conveying the same limber innocence of young Gary Cooper, Wendell advances on the current crop of Krauts armed with naught but his pen and his mythic ridgerunner righteousness. One after the other he picks them off, from the flying bridges of their pleasure boats as they roar through his native Kentucky rivers, from beneath the hard hats in the Hazard county strip mines, from the swivel chairs in the Pentagon where they weigh the various ways to wage war on all forms of enemy life beyond the end of their own friendly chin. He’s a crackshot essayist and, for those given to capture, a genial and captivating poet. He boasts a formidable arsenal of novels, speeches, articles, stories and poems from his outpost in one of the world’s most ravaged battlefields where he writes the good fight and tends his family and his honeybees. Consider him an ally.”

The thing is, Kesey said this in 1971.

That was nearly forty years ago. And I realized, after reading another Berry essay collection a couple of weeks ago (in this case, The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays), that Berry has been pounding away at the same themes for at least that long. And nothing that he has expressed concerns, not to mention deep dismay, about—the increasing power of agribusiness, our increased disconnection from the land, the abandonment of local economies and communities, our collective disregard of the concept of stewardship—has gotten better. In fact, one could argue that everything of concern to Berry has gotten worse. And this is tragic, because current trends, particularly in agriculture, but also in the relentless suburbanization of American life, where no one actually really knows how to do anything, are probably unsustainable. The result will be, well, who knows what, but it might not be pleasant. And who will have the kind of wisdom and local knowledge that is central to Berry’s worldview then?

Berry is fond of throwing out nuggets like the following:

Nobody has a right to destroy anything, and everybody has an obligation to defend as much as he or she possibly can. But sooner or later you’ll have to choose. You can’t defend everything, even though everybody has an obligation to be as aware as possible, and as effective as possible, in preserving the things that need to be preserved everywhere. But I’ve argued over and over again that the fullest responsibility has to be exercised at home, where you have some chance to come to a competent and just understanding of what’s involved, and where you have some chance of being really effective.

And:

Rome destroyed itself by undervaluing the country people, too.

And:

My approach to education would be like my approach to everything else. I’d change the standard. I would make the standard that of community health rather than the career of the student. You see, if you make the standard the health of the community, that would change everything. Once you begin to ask what would be the best thing for our community, what’s the best thing that we can do here for our community, you can’t rule out any kind of knowledge. You need to know everything you possibly can know. So, once you raise that standard of the health of the community, all the departmental walls fall down, because you can no longer feel that it’s safe not to know something. And then you begin to see that these supposedly discreet and separate disciplines, these “specializations,” aren’t separate at all, but are connected. And of course our mistakes, over and over again, show us what the connections are, or show us that connections exist.

And:

There is no time in history, since white occupation began in America, that any sane and thoughtful person would want to go back to, because that history so far has been unsatisfactory. It has been unsatisfactory for the simple reason that we haven’t produced stable communities well adapted to their places.

What I’m talking about in my work is the hope that it might be possible to produce stable, locally adapted communities in America, even though we haven’t done it. The idea of a healthy community is an indispensable measure, just as the idea of a healthy child, if you’re a parent, is an indispensable measure. You can’t operate without it.

Berry is the philosopher of the local and what, specifically, being local entails. America has inflicted a number of wounds on itself the past several decades in the name of “free markets,” still clinging to the myth that there is actually such a thing. Berry isn’t much of a fan of these, actually. What he is a fan of is the dignity of work (remember that?), and the notion that we should take care of ourselves, particularly how we care for the land that supports us. And that we should have local knowledge–about the land, of course, but also about how to do the things we need to do to occupy the land–how to maintain and sustain it in particular. Well, at a time when externalities are catching up with us rapidly in any number of areas (global warming being the most obvious), we really need to pay more attention to what Berry is saying. And that means a return to the local. Berry has a number of mantras—the most recent is “Eat responsibly.” And by this means not just know what your food is, and whether it’s good for you or not—but where it comes from, how it was produced, under what conditions, and subsidized by whom? Sounds easy, but in modern America, and increasingly here in the UK, this is getting harder and harder to do.

I’ve been reading Berry for decades now, and his place in modern American thought is still a bit of a mystery. He’s written one of the best American novels of the century (A Place on Earth) and a number of volumes of pretty good poetry (particularly Farming: A Hand Book). He honed his craft at the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University, where he hung out with Kesey, Robert Stone, and Larry McMurtry. Most importantly, he has produced a series of essays over the years that stand as a testament to sound judgment. In many ways, conservative judgment as well—because Berry wants to conserve things.

This has led to many fun and enlightening exchanges within the conservative and libertarian blogging community. When did Berry, the arch-Luddite opponent of modern agribusiness, militarism and word processors, become a crunchy-conservative icon? Pretty recently, judging by some of the commentary I see occasionally on blogs like the ones cited above. And hardly a week goes by over at Front Porch Republic that someone doesn’t make a specific reference to Berry. I think this is great.

And where are the liberals on Berry? Generally, not to be found, which is a pity. Have liberals become so entwined on the wrong side of the globalization debate that they’ve lost all perspective? I’m way over-generalizing here, of course, but still, I seldom see anyone on the Democratic side speaking up for localism. Instead, we get Larry Summers and Bob Rubin, and Obama, for all his many virtues, still behaving like a farm state senator. But if liberals really want to pursue a more just society, the place to do it as at the local level. The far right understands this better than the left—hence the attacks on ACORN, which is essentially local political action. Look, you want better schools? Run for the school board. You want better food? Get on the planning board and make sure that the last local farmland isn’t being ploughed under for yet another housing development. You want better communities? Run for the city council, or whatever it is you’ve got. That Think Globally, Act Locally bumper sticker that we seldom see any more had it about right.

As Bill Kauffman has noted, “Among the tragedies of contemporary politics is that Wendell Berry, as a man of place, has no place in a national political discussion that is framed by Gannett and Clear Channel.” This may be changing. For one thing, Berry is still writing, and more and more people keep reading. I don’t think there’s a single book in his back catalogue that has ever gone out of print—pretty impressive for a writing career than spans over four decades. For another, Berry, bless his heart, just won’t shut up. Here’s Berry and long time co-author Wes Jackson in The New York Times earlier this year:

Agriculture has too often involved an insupportable abuse and waste of soil, ever since the first farmers took away the soil-saving cover and roots of perennial plants. Civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland. This irremediable loss, never enough noticed, has been made worse by the huge monocultures and continuous soil-exposure of the agriculture we now practice.

To the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has added pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. Some of this toxicity is associated with the widely acclaimed method of minimum tillage. We should not poison our soils to save them.

Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological “solutions” for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.

Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities.

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

And then the kicker—we don’t get a bunch of starry-eyed idealism, but a bunch of necessary, practical and achievable measures to take to redress these problems:

Any restorations will require, above all else, a substantial increase in the acreages of perennial plants. The most immediately practicable way of doing this is to go back to crop rotations that include hay, pasture and grazing animals.

But a more radical response is necessary if we are to keep eating and preserve our land at the same time. In fact, research in Canada, Australia, China and the United States over the last 30 years suggests that perennialization of the major grain crops like wheat, rice, sorghum and sunflowers can be developed in the foreseeable future. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can better protect the soil and substantially reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution.

Carbon sequestration would increase, and the husbandry of water and soil nutrients would become much more efficient. And with an increase in the use of perennial plants and grazing animals would come more employment opportunities in agriculture — provided, of course, that farmers would be paid justly for their work and their goods.

Thoughtful farmers and consumers everywhere are already making many necessary changes in the production and marketing of food. But we also need a national agricultural policy that is based upon ecological principles. We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.

No wonder most Reagan conservatives can’t stand the guy. A 50-year farm bill? But that may be how long it takes to re-capture the kind of localism that will provide us with a sustainable agricultural system. But Russell Kirk would probably take a look around at the mess we’ve made, and agree.

Did I mention Berry is a poet as well? The Mad Farmer poems in particular are worth a look. Let’s close with “The Farmer and the Sea” (initially published in Farming: A Hand Book):

The sea always arriving,
hissing in pebbles, is breaking
its edge where the landsman
squats on his rock. The dark
of the earth is familiar to him,
close mystery of his source
and end, always flowering
in the light and always
fading. But the dark of the sea
is perfect and strange, the absence of any place, immensity on the loose.
Still, he sees it as another
keeper of he land, caretaker
shaking the earth, breaking it, clicking the pieces, but somewhere
holding deep fields yet to rise,
shedding its richness on them
silently as snow, keeper and maker
of places wholly dark. And in him
Something dark applauds.

To learn more, this is a pretty good place to start.

if legitimate news only gives you the blues
and to cogitate causes distress
if crazed peroration fills you with elation
and bile never fails to impress

if your pupils dilate during civil debate
as you long for a rushian screed
and the times and the post and the bleeding heart host
are far too much trouble to read

no need to be glum, simply wriggle your thumb
as you point at the idiot box
let the clicking device transport you in a trice
to the magical land of the fox

where a mad hatter shrewd comes adroitly unglued
(though he’s trapped in falafel fixation)
while a sweaty white rabbit of opioid habit
weeps loud at the fate of the nation

where a grin and good hair keep a cat on the air
long after his claws have worn thin
where evangelic glee plus a jesus degree
will soothe your election chagrin

ah, that land of ideals where the women wear heels
and no one that you know is gay
and the problems you face disappear without trace
if to the right godhead you pray

so be of good cheer, have a (domestic) beer
as polemic lulls worry away
for the evil and lazy and thriftless and crazy
must be kept well in hand and at bay

your job may be shaky, your pulse a bit quaky
your child to the left might still stray
but if you take care to sound like papa bear
you are not one of them.

for today.

Yeah, there’s a book called Zombie Haiku, and it’s exactly what you think it is—and I bought it anyway.

Zombies have overridden some nameless city, and a hapless poet falls victim to the plague. As he transforms into the undead, the poet recounts his experience using haiku, three-line poems with five, seven, and five syllables:

Blood is really warm.
It’s like drinking hot chocolate
but with more screaming.

When dealing with zombies, one has to suspend disbelief to begin with, but Zombie Haiku takes that suspension to a whole new level. The basic conceit of the book—that a rampaging zombie can somehow write haiku as he’s rampaging—is a tough conceit to accept, even for readers eager and willing to embrace the humor the book offers.

But once a reader gets past that, the book is loads of fun.

The book replicates the poet’s journal, which he’d been using to chronicle “the earthly beauty which can be so overwhelming that I sometimes feel like I’m going to burst open.” The journal contains the kind of ridiculously sappy haiku one would expect from a single, middle-aged man who was probably teased mercilessly and called “Nature Boy” when he was in high school:

The bird flew away
with more than just my bread crumbs.
He took my sorrow.

Fortunately, the schlock doesn’t last. Instead of being a collection of bad nature poems, the haiku begin to recount the unusual events of the poet’s day, when radio stations stop playing music and 911 offers a busy signal. He eventually gets trapped by zombies and bitten, and he turns into a shambling nightmare—and the haiku continue to provide play-by-play.

Go along with the concept for a moment and forget that zombies can’t write or think. Seeing the world from a zombie-eyed view is darkly funny.

Getting trampled on
used to eventually kill you.
Now it just annoys.

The book never gets into details about why there are zombies or how big the plague is or anything like that. Ultimately, story doesn’t matter one single lick. It’s all about

brains, BRAINS, Brains, brains, BRAINS.
BraiNs, brains, Brains, BRAINS, Brains, brains, BRAINS.
BRAINS, Brains, brains, BRAINS, brains.

The book is designed to look like the poet’s battered, blood-stained journal. Snazzy-looking Polaroids of shambling undead are taped to pages throughout. While professionally done, with excellent make-up and shredded costumes, the pictures still have the feel of a beer-infused weekend when author Ryan Mecum got together with a bunch of his buddies to take pictures for his zombie haiku book. Someone, right now, is looking at those pictures and saying, “It seemed like a good idea at the time….”

The haiku, the photos, the slick design work—it generally all holds up as a really good gag, which can be hard to do with a book-length work. The zombie haiku are of uneven quality, although most of the jokes are good and, on the whole, pretty amusing.

You might kick yourself for even buying something called Zombie Haiku—but if you nonetheless find yourself irresistibly drawn to the book the way a zombie is drawn to brains, then it’s likely you’ll find this a fun little feast.

The good reverend has had a long and storied career, with a recent highlight being his poetic excoriation of the Bush administration with President George W. Bush himself sitting behind Lowery as he spoke at Coretta Scott King’s memorial service in 2006.

What will the loquacious Lowery say at his Freedom Medal acceptance speech?

I can imagine it’ll go something like this:

Thank you all for coming today / to hear what this old bird’s got to say…

What a thrill it is to receive this honor / along with Bishop Tutu, Ted Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor…

Harvey Milk, Sidney Poitier and many other notables / but first let me talk a little bit about potables…

It’s two thousand and nine but you coulda fooled me / ‘Cause discrimination remains, like in Cambridge, you see…

Where a black man, a professor, an honorable soul / gets profiled, another brother in a never-ending toll…

Cuffed in his house by a white cop he was / for raising his voice, no real probable cause…

Obama was mad but made nice, so I hear / and invited them both to the White House for beer…

The distinguished professor preferred a Red Stripe / while the chief exec wanted Bud Light (that’s allright!)…

When it came to the cop, whose power he flaunted / I took a step back when I heard what he wanted…

Bad enough Gates was nabbed by this goon / but making it worse, his choice was BLUE MOON!

For Coors, millions more / thanks to this boor PR whore…

With so many choices, tasty and fine / he coulda drank oatmeal stout, ale, barleywine…

He coulda had a Rogue or a Stone IPA / Dogfish Head, Red Hook or a Guinness, I say…

Colorado gems from Left Hand or Dry Dock / maybe something from Europe like a top Doppelbock…

Man, he coulda picked Pabst or, more aptly, Pig’s Eye / and how come he ain’t given Sam Adams a try?

Made right in his neighborhood, in Boston no less / but it sounds like he don’t get around, I guess…

Instead he drank something like lemony pee / that my aunties wouldn’t touch, it might just be me…

But it’s all good in the end, I don’t want to insult / especially in times that are so difficult…

Economy’s weak, jobs flushed down the can / still got our soldiers out in Afghanistan…

Education a shambles, environment’s trash / bankers keep taking what’s left of the cash…

Corruption gets deeper, health care a mess / and the poor have to live with somehow even less…

The birthers, the racists, the haters, Fox News / all giving Obama the Oval Office blues…

But one thing’s for sho’, they can’t take away / no matter how they lie, how they rant every day…

How much they deny, how hard they attack / the plain truth is the ole White House is Black.

Crossposted from JAZZ from HELL

The last two weeks of April are a trying time for me. It’s when I typically introduce my middle school students to poetry, real poetry. For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve waded past Shel Silverstein and into the murky metaphoric waters beyond. It’s also when I am inevitably tricked into reading large tracts of adolescent poetry written about old boyfriends or girlfriends or others “who have done me wrong.”

My poetry unit always follows a predictable pattern. I start with a work that is sure to get their attention, and this year that was “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford. In that poem, the narrator has come upon a deer that has been hit by a car on a narrow road, and his civic responsibility is to push the carcass into the ravine, so other motorists won’t be endangered. Simple enough, until he realizes the dead deer has an fawn inside that is still alive. After a brief but intense internal struggle, the narrator pushes the deer off the road and into the abyss.

“Are you gonna test us on this?” asked Jake. “Cause I think I could pass a test on this poem.”

“But wait,” asked Heather. “Why did he push it off the road? What about the baby deer?”

“What about the baby deer?” I asked back.

“The baby deer was still alive,” she yelled. “He pushed it off a cliff before it could be born. Why?”

“What else could he have done?” I asked.

“Stop answering my questions with questions!” she demanded. “That baby deer isn’t ever going to be born and you don’t care, you just don’t care! This is why I hate poetry! It’s all about death and dying and poor little baby deers.”

“Shut up, Heather, he said he wasn’t going to test us on this,” said Jake.

“Baby deer,” I corrected her. “It’s spelled the same in its singular and plural form. And I didn’t say anything of the kind, Jake. But back to the work. He didn’t like doing what he did, but he had no choice. And neither will you.”

“I’m never going to run down and kill baby deer in my car,” she exclaimed.

“Neither did he,” I replied. “He came upon the deer after somebody else had hit it. But then he had a duty to his fellow citizens to remove the dead creature.”

“He could have cut the baby deer out,” she said. Heather had begin to tremble, and I was worried about her. “I would cut the baby deer out and take it home and raise it like a pet.”

“I don’t think I’d want a dead, bloody baby deer in my car,” said Jake.

“It wouldn’t be dead you idiot moron,” shouted Heather.

“Heather, use another word,” I corrected. “You’re not an idiot, Jake.”

“Thanks, Mr. H.”

The poem had done its work. I managed to explain to Heather and her classmates that part of driving cars was the unfortunate and one-sided encounters we will have with small furry critters that scamper in front of us as we drive. When that happens, sometimes the best thing we can do is feel badly that it happened. But I wasn’t ready to stop driving just so I could avoid ever hitting animals in my car.

“The power of this poem,” I said at the end of class, “is that it takes us all to an unpleasant place where we all will have to go. It makes us think about something that isn’t pleasant, but that is probably unavoidable. Poetry isn’t all about love and hearts and old boyfriends. It’s about the million little things that we all deal with everyday.”

“Speaking of old boyfriends, would you like to read some of my poetry?” asked Heather. “I brought volumes 1 through 27 to school today. I‘d feel a lot better if you could give me a real critique.”

That night, my eyes began to bleed around volume 9. I went to the kitchen to get some water and surprised a mouse who had discovered the joys of whole grain cereal. He scurried his way into a little used cabinet, and when I opened the door, I was shocked at the amount of mouse waste I found.

“Honey,” I screamed. “We have mice.”

“Are you sure?” said Nancy. “I’ve never seen any mice in this house.”

“One just went into the cabinet here,” I said. “And look. That is one nasty mouse bathroom, that is. Worse than a West Virginia rest stop.”

“You’ll have to buy some traps,” she said.

“I can’t do that. I had a bad experience with a mouse trap once.”

“What was that?”

“It worked,” I said. “I’ll never get over the sight.”

“Well, you can’t put out poison,” she said. “Not with Joey and his friends in the house. What about that special mouse tape? I saw some downstairs that the previous tenant left. That doesn’t look too painful.”

“Mouse tape! Yes! I like the sound of that. No chemicals, no mouse parts to clean up. I wonder if it works?”

The next morning, I stumbled downstairs for some caffeine, and decided to check the mouse tape. I opened the cabinet door, looked inside, closed the door and stood for a few moments. Then I put my glasses on, opened the door again and looked. Nancy entered.

“Did the tape work?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Did we catch a mouse?”

“A mouse?” I asked. “No, not a mouse. We caught six mice.”

“You’re kidding,” she said. “Can I see?”

“You probably shouldn’t,” I said. “One of them is looking up with a particularly sad and confused face. I think maybe the other mice coached him to throw the most effective expression at the first human who opened the door. It’s a good one. I kind of like him.”

“Let me see,” said Nancy. “Oh, he’s so sweet! Poor little thing. How could you put something as horrible as mouse tape in this cabinet! Aren‘t you ashamed?”

I know now that there are worse things in life than getting rid of dead mice. Much, much worse. Later, as I drove to school, I wondered if I should tell my students the tale of the sad mouse and his companions and the tape that left them mercilessly alive. Probably not. If I was a poet, I could write about it. But I’m not a poet. I’ll have to use volumes 10 through 27 of Heather’s poetry to burn the memory away, and I pray Jake’s prayer that I never get tested on my actions on that terrible, April morning.

______________

Gravity: Summer Solstice, 1992

Go tell it to the sea,
how he should let go
his moonstruck,

his shameless high tides –
climbing each day, each night
kissing at her cloudless
indifference.

Perhaps he’d answer
that it’s all cyclical – hope
driving him up the beach and the brooding
low tides.

Even so, most of his time is chasing
fish into nets, lobbing
bodysurfers towards shore,

and coming to grips with a notion –

there is nothing new under the sun,
and
what goes up must come down.

Crabs have always scuttled among the rocks.
Sharks are still enforcing Darwinism.
And late this summer hurricanes will once again
rage up the Atlantic coast.

But only one moon, fair as pearl dust,
trails her sable skirts across the night
sky, and what is the ocean
besides his faith in gravity? –

dreaming the day wanderchild falls,
when fire makes peace with earth
and sky with restless sea.

The first thing to acquire would be a rhyming dictionary. I use one bought in 1950, published by Permabooks. Its slick yellow covers have long since fallen off, but the rhymes are still there. Then you will need an anthology of love poems to see what the competition has done. You don’t want to palm off lines like “Come live with me and be my love” or “Go, lovely rose” as if they were your own, in case your loved one was an English major. Then equip yourself with a supply of heavy tinted stock–nobody likes to receive a love poem written on notebook paper with a row of torn holes along the margin. Dusty-rose or dove-gray are notoriously aphrodisiacal tints.

As you sit to write, try to be sincere and particular but not overly so. Love is a synthesizing emotion, an emotional union with the chemical madness that compels species to propagate, so don’t feel obliged to particularize every birthmark on your beloved’s backside or include her middle name if it’s a long one. On the other hand, don’t make the poem so general that she thinks this could be a generic poem you use on everybody. It has to be her and should divide its energy equally between her attributes and your longing for them. You need only her, remember. Go easy on the irony and classical allusions, in the high-seventeenth-century manner; those poets were functioning in a culture more print-literate and dualistic than ours. Our brains are becoming more and more like computers, and you don’t press two keys at once. Actually, you do, but don’t try it in a love poem.

Before you plunge into that rhyming dictionary, in fact, you might consider whether your love object might be turned off by a poem and find the image of you hunkered at your worktable with a box of dusty-rose stationery ridiculous. Maybe a brief fax would do, if she’s a career woman. Or a bulletin on the Internet, if she’s a subscriber.

And from Edward Lear – The Owl and the Pussycat

I

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

II

Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Winter Morning Light

“In field or mountain

Nothing stirs

On this snowy morning”

Chiyo-Ni

Chiyo-Ni was regarded as one of the greatest female haiku poets of the Edo period. She was a disciple of the haiku Master Matsuo Basho.

S&R, on the other hand, writes about music. About literature and poetry. About art. Education. Sports. Culture and popular culture. The Ramsey case and what it tells us about the state of media. And now that the election is over, S&R is writing about politics less than ever.

So really, what is S&R?

One response might argue that tout est politique. I’ve never been terribly comfortable with totalizing positions like this, though, because they tend to trivialize – if everything is politics, then nothing is. However, there’s no denying the fundamental truth that many things we don’t commonly associate with politics are powerfully political in their implications.

Take popular music, for instance. It’s impossible to consider the sweeping cultural and political upheavals of the 1960s without the soundtrack – Dylan, The Beatles, Woodstock…the list goes on and on. Some of those artists were quite explicitly agitating for political reform while others wove themselves into the social tapestry in less obvious ways, but the sum total of the music of that decade was inherently political.

Contrast that with the music of the Bush administration. Where was the protest, the outcry? Who was the Dylan of the 2000s? What record will we be comparing, come 2024, with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?

The absence of such a voice was not an accident. Part of the grand conservative plan, the blitzkrieg that was launched upon Reagan’s inauguration, was the neutering of music’s political possibility. When Ronnie’s FCC hacks, Fowler and Brenner, decreed that “the public interest is what the public is interested in,” it did so in order to subvert, once and for all, the power of the creative social mind to the will of corporate logic. It dismantled radio ownership limits that assured a massive diversity of options for artists and audiences alike, and found its ultimate expression in Clear Channel’s pro-war, pro-Bush rallies and the banishment of those who chose to give voice to their dissent (the most notable case being the attempted silencing of The Dixie Chicks).

So when our generation needed to be marching in the streets and demanding an end to the outrage in Iraq, where was the soundtrack? Who ultimately benefited from those policies way back in the early ’80s? We’re fighting an unjust invasion and occupation and the rallies in the streets are for the war?! Corporate-sponsored pro-war rallies?!

When I’m writing a TunesDay piece on some band or another, providing a video link or encouraging you to check it out at eMusic, part of what’s going on is purely and simply about the music as art. But it’s also about the bigger picture, about the need for our culture to build a strong platform whereby artists can be heard. If they use this platform to sing silly love songs, that’s fine, so long as the platform is there when they need to sing about injustice. I recently did a piece promoting The Well Wishers, Maximo Park and The Dandy Warhols, and none of these bands may ever contribute a note to the cause of world peace. On the other hand, if I flash back to 1997 and Green Day’s Nimrod, I’m not sure I could have predicted American Idiot, a manifesto so powerful that not even the soul-deadening corporate might of Clear Channel could contain it.

What political blogs do is important, especially in a society where the legacy press has largely abdicated its responsibility to watchdog our institutions of power. Who Obama selects to run the State Department matters. His choices for Treasury and Defense and our various intelligence and military leadership posts matter tremendously.

But empires rarely rise and fall as a result of a couple close-in political knife fights. In my view, a great deal of what even the best poliblogs do is tactical, street-level and near-term. This isn’t true across the board, of course. There are outstanding thinkers and writers who are looking at the big picture and the long term. And this is where I think S&R has done and will continue to do its best work. Not in the political battle, but the culture war.

We may debate some of the nuances and specifics amongst ourselves, but in general it’s safe to say that those of us here at Scholars & Rogues have a shared vision of a more progressive society. I don’t use that word in any sort of conventional, partisan sense. By “progressive” I mean more enlightened; better educated; more appreciative of the cultural arts; better informed about the forces shaping our world; more productively spiritual (and less dogmatically sectarian) in our approach to life; more generous and charitable; more tolerant and more willing to understand the value of diversity; more committed to community and the common good; more literate; more intellectually curious and prone to critical thought; more responsive to the well-reasoned than to the passionately felt; and above all, more insistent that those we choose to represent us, to lead us and to govern us be the best America has to offer, not the worst.

Some of the solutions that get us to our destination may be “liberal” by our current reckoning, some “conservative.” The best ideas may be “idealistic” or they may be “pragmatic.” But in the end, I think most of us believe that a society that reads – in an environment uncluttered by censorship, either active or passive, governmental or cultural or corporate – is in better shape than one that doesn’t read or won’t. A society whose citizens not only have knowledge in their heads, but who have been trained to use it in innovative ways is more likely to solve more problems faster and more effectively. A country that thinks and thinks relentlessly is nearly immune to the machinations of despotism. A nation whose mythologies make clear that war is the last resort, not the first, is more likely to achieve greatness both at home and abroad. A nation whose media structures are designed to foster the best that is thought and created is one whose streets are less likely to flow with the blood of aggrieved citizens. A culture where competition aims to help people up the ladder instead of keeping them in their place is one that maximizes its collective genius. A political economy where genuine opportunity arises from a level playing field is certainly more likely to produce spectacular successes than one where the reality is that of a rigged game played beneath a banner of cynical egalitarian rhetoric.

And the most actualized of all possible societies is one where happiness and satisfaction have nothing at all to do with purchasing power.

This is what I think Scholars & Rogues is. We’ve covered a lot of ground since we launched less than two years ago, and at that point I deliberately chose not to compose a mission statement. Our philosophy was simple: invite the smartest people we could find to share their thoughts and trust the power of that intellect to start great conversations, attract more great minds and build the foundation of a thriving community. With that in place, I wanted to learn what we were rather than dictating what we would be.

Some of what we write may look trivial at first, and the occasional item may even prove trivial in the final analysis. But I think we now have a good sense of what we are and why our readers keep stopping by. We hope our political writings are worthy in the coming months and (if we’re lucky) years, and we expect that our audience will grasp the deeper political mission embedded in our far-flung musings.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to work toward a better culture, and in doing so will trust that if you enlighten the people and establish social structures that exalt the best they have to offer, the merely political will take care of itself.

The fusion juice contusion
slams it together in song and inclusion
we join our hands in stark confusion

Reusing the poverty-stricken vows of
howitzers and butterflies
freebasing the verse reverse
like bass guitars with wings
(the bassist is racist? What the hell does that mean?)
flinging and singing all the while
the collider insiders divide and conquer the
End of the World® -
a wholly owned subsidiary of MemeCo

So I said to Miss Teen Communications
such as, as such, might I infuse your tool box
with a hammer or two?
Oh no, for in the marketplace of ideation
there can be no destructuration
only instructuration
what whimsy that, I said, and
waved Adweek in her face
for emphasis

[breathe]
Keep looping it back to fusion, where the splice is nice
and all are politely textured in the marketeria of ideas
I see clearly, in my leftist of brains
where splice equals fusion free of confusion
where ads meets marketing
where message explodes
in a tiny white light of awareness
a laser calling the way to action
to response
to reaction
to preaction
where the broadest of concepts pincushions

the science of the audience
as if Sun-Tzu had composed The Art of More
Deconstruct then reconstruct
beconstruct the nexus of postmodernism and existentialism
– that’s funny – Nextistentialism
or maybe Nexustentialism

This is when all the synapses flared all at once
where Old Ethan crossed over
Advertising is Poetry
Marketing is Architecture – ah yes, Divine Marketecture
Public Relations the most intimate of relations
a reproduction of preproduction of me-reduction
a repo-suction of creativity through the skull of accountability
we measure because we have to
we treasure because have to
we pleasure because the infusion of insight
sets aright that which had been
sacrileged on the
altar of Commerce

All markets are One
Namaste – I worship the segmentation in all things
we are divinities in the bazaar of thinkforward
I sell therefore I am
sweet commodity of human oddity
sacred remix
when I am empty I reach out and retouch you

And we are published
our love the more perfecting for its salability
the transaction gains traction
in the marketplace of romantic love
that most clever of human innovations – the de-mestication of animal heat
my creative faculty is on fire for you
as would be any faculty charged with the transmission of intuition

Where have you been, little Flame?
All these lonely months I called to you
called your name as I would a song
I have been stripped of context
now a simple creature of mercantilism
trading on my record of
driving value for the collective customercantile
exchange of surface pleasantry

Where have you been, Little Flame?
the arc-well of my nameless soul
the light too bright to watch directly
my flight from the smallest room in the
deepest basement of my darkest hopes and dreams
where are you now, Little Flame?
Are you truly alive in the phoenix of my stained, twisted fingers,
alive in the generative sense, burning new pathways from the
hiding seat of invention to the dead machine on the desk before me?
Have you found freedom, impassioned freedom in the strict madness
the tight folds of our prescription deception
the reception of inception of conception of abnegation

Have you flown the coop, Little Flame?
Or are those invoices wings
that once danced like ice on the pond behind our house
are we divided against myself
our art begging at the door of charity
its bolts and steel bands as stern as the face of
Our Broken Lady of the Ladle

I must envision an end to my assignation
must return, like a sacred hoop to the divine headwater
integrate with the v2.4 before me
must iterate, ingenerate, deconsecrate
some ignition for the science of awareness

She is a siren on the rocks
She will pay me

“I’m interested in what motivates you, and how you understand the world.” He glanced sideways at her. “Rausch tells me you’ve written about music.”

“Sixties garage bands. I started writing about them when I was still in the Curfew.”"Were they an inspiration?”

She was watching a fourteen-inch display on the Maybach’s dash, the red cursor that was the car proceeding along the green line that was Sunset. She looked up at him. “Not in any linear way, musically. They were my favorite bands. Are,” she corrected herself.

He nodded.

- William Gibson, Spook Country

I’ve always been intrigued by the curious dynamic of influence. This passage from Gibson’s latest finds the protagonist, a journalist who was formerly part of a short-lived band (of precisely the sort you’d expect to fascinate Gibson – not a huge commercial success, but possessing an intellectual depth that would assure riveted cult status for a generation or more) talking with her new employer (again, a typically Gibsonian character, intrigued by the potential to bridge the critically obscure with the commercially popular). In the exchange, we understand that Hollis (the protag) was influenced, but not in a linear (read, discernable) fashion, by music of a completely different genre than what she was producing.

I was thinking about this as I listened to Midnight Matinee, the new release from The Lost Patrol, a band that made my Best of list last year for their outstanding Launch and Landing CD. When you visit their MySpace page and scroll down to “Influences,” you get the damnedest list: Ennio Morricone, John Barry, Johnny Cash, The Cramps, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Ventures, The Stranglers, Phil Spector, Julee Cruise, Cocteau Twins, Jesus and Mary Chain, Gary Numan, The Church, The Damned, The Chameleons, Dusty Springfield, The Cure, V.A.S.T., The Nightblooms, The Cult, The Beach Boys, Jerry Murad’s Harmonicats, A Flock of Seagulls, Dead Can Dance, Smashing Pumpkins, Sisters of Mercy, The Shadows, Al Caiola, Jack Nitzsche, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, The Verve, Jean Michel Jarre, Duane Eddy, Andy Williams, Angelo Badalamenti, Allison Krause & Union Station, Mazzy Star, Tarnation, The Catherine Wheel, The Sundays, Sigur Rós, Echo and The Bunnymen, Medieval Baebes, Aimee Mann, Miranda Sex Garden, The Shaggs, Joanna Newsom, Goldfrapp, X, Kate Bush, Lovespirals, Abby Travis and Curve.

Now, a lot of this makes sense when you listen to them. But then you get some more influences: films by David Lynch, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, Wes Andersen, Sergio Leone and John Waters.

Again, a lot of this makes sense when you consider the way in which The Lost Patrol’s music connotes landscape – wide, empty, frontier spaces at dusk, burnt oranges fading to blackest, solitary blue.

Once upon a time I thought of influence in that linear form that Hollis references – poets inspired by poets in ways that were evident upon reading. Musicians whose lineage could be tracked in quirks of phrasing. Painters whose technique never quite escaped the gravitational well of the masters they copied in their adolescence. And so on. As I learned and developed in my own right, though, I came to understand the non-linearity of influence: how one musical style could inform something new and apparently different; how certain types of influence can hide in the woodwork, only revealing themselves to those who study the hardest; and how influence can work across genres – music on poetry, painting on film, dance on sculpture, etc.

Those who have read my poetry have noted the straight-line artistic heritage: Eliot, Yeats, Thomas, Charles Wright. (Not that I’m worthy of those comparisons at all – it’s just that whatever I have done has aspired in the direction of these epic artists.) But I also like to note how important my early exposure to ancient masters like John Donne shaped my perspective – I doubt that’s as evident to most readers.

Earlier in my “career” I played with rock music influences, as well, sometimes going so far as to riff on Springsteen and Mellencamp and U2, and today my poems are frequently indebted to all kinds of musical insurgencies.

But there’s more. My writing has always been pretty impressionist. I’ve never worried about the hard narrative edges of the “stories” being told, but have instead focused on the imagistic, on the colors and vague shapes and details that were deliberately misremembered. There’s a lot of Monet and Degas in my poetry, in other words.

I was once called a “Jungian pagan” by a friend (who’s probably reading this and can identify himself if he wants to), and while I’m not 100% sure I’ve figured out what that means, there’s no denying that my writing trades heavily in the iconic, the totemic, the deeply symbolic. Jung? Sure, but also Yeats doubles back in here, and I can’t disregard the importance of Tarot in helping me think about what lies at the core of certain people, events, relationships, etc.

And what about the guy quoted at the top, William Gibson? The world I write about is frequently technological and urban, concerning itself with how my culture and my generation are being, have been, colonized by autonomous technology – that is, technology that appears to operate with its own agenda. Gibson is a core part of that, as is Bruce Sterling, and in depicting these moments I also draw on visual imagery from films like Blade Runner and the oeuvre-wide vision of directors like Tim Burton.

There’s nothing terribly profound in all this. Essentially it boils down to “influence is a highly asymmetrical, nonlinear process.” But since a novel and CD got me to thinking about my poetry, it seemed a worthy subject for a Sunday blog.

In that piece, I looked at the song version of “Hegemony,” which I penned for Fiction 8’s most recent CD, Project Phoenix. “Hegemony” was adapted for music from an existing poem, which I wrote for my most recent book, Chained to the Gates of Heaven (a book that is in search of a publisher, by the way – so if you know somebody….)

In this installment, I want to walk through the poem version, and in doing so, I can hopefully illustrate the distinctions between the two forms – both in terms of the writing process and the finished product.

Part 2: Examining “Hegemony,” the Poem

First, here’s the poem. Forgive the inelegant font treatment, but by using preformat tagging I can preserve the spacing and line breaks.

Hegemony

His face
a tattoo of stars:
Mr. Black Sky is in the house.
Pump the blue lights, sister. 

Scarecrow, stovepipe
diamonds in his teeth,
pocketfuls of insurgency... 

	there’s music behind the moon, children,
	and rhythm in those cobalt suns

	touch me, touch me now
says Aphrodite, her divine instrumental,
her junta of House,

	her Olympus of lasers like
	a drill through the ears...

Call us partisans, I guess,
scene of the seen
cell of our selves
too self-conscious by half
slamming in prisons of syntax

	touch me, she said,
	Apollo will be home soon...

Then René said
Ma vie est une emplacement-spécifique non-documenté
art d’exécution – ummm, how you say,
performance art?
			And we all laughed:
René
	works at Gap
	reads Derrida
	takes courses at Phoenix
	dances all night at exCathedra

dangles between abyss and verge,
his culture a curvature,
an apotheosis of grind.

Professor Metropolitaine says I’m losing the battle of signification:

	you have a universe of vocabularies to
	flush from your head

But my therapist says it’s okay to embrace my rage
so now I can’t decide between 

	cleanse and purge
	evaluate and judge
	strobe or coruscate
	lover or confessor
	destiny or fate or
	syzygy

Deus in machina:
this is our jungle, our Monet
painting a bridge through
cataracts – 

this is the bargain we’ve struck with the world.
One tribe, one throb, a
frequency of dust.

Quickly, she says:
the Sun King ripens in me.

This version of the same core work is obviously quite different from the lyric. Structurally there’s none of the symmetry demanded by the musical form, which means longer lines, stunted breaks, a more relaxed pacing (or pacing that accelerates and decelerates according to its own logic), and so on. As a writer, what this means is that the words are marching to my beat, whereas in a lyric (or, for that matter, in formal poetry styles) I’m less free to unwind.

There’s another source of variation at work, as well. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in a poem the writer is encouraged to be more “literary” – duh – and cliché is the kiss of death. Poetry is one of the least “popular” of art forms – that is, it cares the least about connecting with a wider audience, even less than the most obscure forms of literary fiction – which means it’s driven by precisely the opposite dynamics of popular music. While they don’t expect to be in the Top 40 anytime soon, I imagine Mike and Mardi would love it if Project Phoenix sold a few copies, so there’s a pronounced desire to connect with an audience. For this reason, I can’t really indulge the full-blown literary impetus – I have to engage the listener and don’t have a lot of time to do it.

This doesn’t mean I approach the lyric looking to embrace any and all clichés, but when dealing with a popular (vs. academic or high/elite) audience, some shortcutting is not only necessarily, it’s often desirable.

So let’s dive into the actual text.

His face
a tattoo of stars:
Mr. Black Sky is in the house.
Pump the blue lights, sister.

The open is largely the same as the song, although without the regular meter. The last line here – the call to party time, which borders on religious invocation given that the speaker is Baron Samedi – didn’t find a home in the song because the form didn’t really accommodate it the way I wanted. I like the energy it infuses, but with the song, the music was already establishing the energy for me.

Since a lot of my poetry plays with popular tropes in some way or another, I frequently find myself employing tactics that help signal the context that words can’t fully replicate. You see an example in the next section, with the indented fourth and fifth lines. Here I inject some meter in order to make it sound more musical. Ironically, the lines had to be altered so that they would actually work with the real music in the Fiction 8 tune.

Scarecrow, stovepipe
diamonds in his teeth,
pocketfuls of insurgency... 

	there’s music behind the moon, children,
	and rhythm in those cobalt suns

	touch me, touch me now
says Aphrodite, her divine instrumental,
her junta of House,

	her Olympus of lasers like
	a drill through the ears...

A lot of the images in this passage occur in the song, although they’re more spread out there. In the poetic iteration Samedi/Mr. Black Sky appears in closer proximity to the drug imagery, the political undertone, and Aphrodite herself – who is named much sooner here than in the song. The result is that the players, their relationships and the context are established more quickly and overtly than in the song. Put another way, the formal demands of the song altered the story by forcing some of the core elements apart – there simply not being enough room for them within the confines of the first verse – so early on we begin to see that the poem and the song are leading the reader/listener in different directions.

One specific example: the male protagonist who appears throughout the song really doesn’t exist in the poem. He was developed as for continuity, and also as a projection of Mike Smith, the singer who’d be performing the song. In the original, Samedi assumes more of the subject role instead of being more of a background character.

Call us partisans, I guess,
scene of the seen
cell of our selves
too self-conscious by half
slamming in prisons of syntax

The nature of the song – the form and the audience consideration taken together – forced the exclusion of this last line, which I actually like a lot because of all that’s going on. “Slamming” is both a dance and a spoken word signifier, and “prisons of syntax” is, I fear, a slightly self-conscious foreshadowing of what’s going to happen when I start adapting this for music (the poem came first in this case, although I write the other way around on occasion, as well). In any case, language is a restricting force for those in the culture here, and you’re free to decide for yourself whether the problem is the inherent limitations of language (and form) or instead has to do with a particular inarticulateness on the part of the players.

	touch me, she said,
	Apollo will be home soon...

My poetry tends to be a little unruly at times, to the point where it drives some readers (and at least one former committee chair) crazy. While I may be worse than most on this score, I suspect the same would be true for our great lyricists were they to abandon the lucrative world of rock stardom in favor of the slightly less glamorous life of a poet. Open forms invite all kinds of exploration, and without the structural demands of the song they might find their own writing and thinking wandering.

The opposite happens when you move from poetry to lyric: I feel like the form of the song version compels some order on my thinking and expression, and we see a snippet of why here. There are multiple voices throughout, and like one of my heroes, TS Eliot, I don’t feel any real compulsion toward linearity. In the original poetry, you have voices entering and exiting, banging into each other blindly, and so on, but in the song they’re more coherently arrayed – mainly because I felt like they had to be.

Next, we meet a character who doesn’t appear at all in the song.

Then René said
Ma vie est une emplacement-spécifique non-documenté
art d’exécution – ummm, how you say,
performance art?
			And we all laughed:
René
	works at Gap
	reads Derrida
	takes courses at Phoenix
	dances all night at exCathedra

dangles between abyss and verge,
his culture a curvature,
an apotheosis of grind.

René – the would-be intellectual working a dead-end job and attending an online college that isn’t likely to help him attain any sort of credible degree toward a social theory career – offers up an all-too-familiar does of ironic, double-reverse Gen Xer self-deprecation. He sees the futility of his path, hides behind sarcasm and embraces the nihilism of the never-ending nightlife because it seems at least as valid as anything else within his grasp.

René’s frustrations are echoed by the collective – the Chorus – in the song, but the open form of the poem allows him to appear and make his own case in ways that wouldn’t quite have worked in the song form. For starters, it would be a trick to take these words and bend them to the meter and rhyme scheme. Additionally, it’s hard to imagine making René’s story interesting for a rock song audience, even an intelligent one that shares some of his challenges (which is certainly true of Fiction 8’s audience).

Then we meet yet another character who doesn’t appear in the song.

Professor Metropolitaine says I’m losing the battle of signification:

	you have a universe of vocabularies to
	flush from your head

But my therapist says it’s okay to embrace my rage
so now I can’t decide between 

	cleanse and purge
	evaluate and judge
	strobe or coruscate
	lover or confessor
	destiny or fate or
	syzygy

This character, based on a woman I once, ummm, crossed paths with, has found some sort of bizarre liberation in the decontextualized words of a very Eliotean scholar character. She’s clearly confused – his words have, in her mind, provided her with justification for an incoherent, unfocused rage, but that perceived validation hasn’t led her to any kind of resolution.

Look at the language, though, then go back and find the words that also appear in the lyric. In both cases we see an ill-fated attempt to find something that works – anything that works – but in the open form I was able to let the madness run free. In the lyric we wind up with something neater, more cleanly articulated. The woman here is enraged, while the woman in the song is more deliberate.

Put directly, not only are the voices tonally different, these are different characters entirely.

Deus in machina:
this is our jungle, our Monet
painting a bridge through
cataracts – 

this is the bargain we’ve struck with the world.
One tribe, one throb, a
frequency of dust.

The Chorus works through an iterative series of potential resolutions in the lyric, and the reason was pretty transparent: the song needed a chorus, and that demanded a measure of repetition. So I pulled the concluding sequence here and parsed it out for the song, but in doing so, added and built in a progression.

Of course, this fundamentally changes the piece. Here, we have the degenerative “frequency of dust,” and are never taunted by the ascending variations that occur in the song.

Quickly, she says:
the Sun King ripens in me.

The song ends with something that may feel like an anthemic exaltation – the “frequency of free” – although the invocation of hegemony (especially in its neo-Marxian sense) undercuts it.

Here, though, my natural tendency as a poet kicks in. Instead of tying things up neatly, I conclude the poem by kicking the doors open. The final gasp of “Hegemony,” the poem, is an indefinite, open-ended sequence where Aphrodite embraces her divine infidelity, intertwining the decadent and the generative: she’s pregnant with the pagan Sun King and who knows who the father might be?

This conclusion, of course, has damned near nothing to do with what transpires in the song.

In Conclusion…

Obviously I can’t speak to the writing process employed by The Matrix (although listening to their songs makes me suspect they don’t over-intellectualize quite as badly as I do). As such, I’d never assert that what I describe above and in the earlier post is somehow representative of other writers.

Ultimately, it’s hard to say of what value this analysis will be to you. Not everyone who writes lyrics is a poet or vice versa, and nothing I say is going to deter people from statements like “Dylan was one of the greatest poets of his generation.” All I can do is note how the two things are, well, two things. Writing lyrics is not writing poetry, and as a guy who does both I can speak with at least a little authority on the subject.

More specifically, “Hegemony” lets me illustrate my case in a unique way, and that perhaps will cause some of my readers (all eight of you) to revisit the songs they’ve always thought of as poetry.

In the end, I hope you listen to more music and read more poetry. They’re different art forms, but they’re wonderful art forms, and these days we take our inspiration where we find  it….

Last night we watched the Final Cut of Blade Runner again, and if you don’t have this package I can’t recommend it highly enough. 25 years on, Ridley Scott was able to finally re-craft the film as he wanted it originally, and the result is a stunning achievement. Scott has been one of our greatest directors for a very long time, but this may be his finest moment to date.

This viewing (probably my 35th or 40th – I lost count a long time ago) got me to thinking, all over again, about how little the film was acknowledged at the time of its release. While it was nominated for two technical Oscars (Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Effects, Visual Effects), it’s hard to look back and argue that it got anything like the critical acclaim it deserved (a point underscored by how well respected the film is today). In addition, it didn’t do very well at the box office (it drew a little over $6M that opening weekend, and the theater I saw it in was 90% empty).

Now, though, history has reassessed Blade Runner. Roger Ebert added it to his list of greatest films after seeing the Final Cut, and our friends at Wikipedia catalog the rest:

• In 2007, the American Film Institute listed it as the 97th greatest film of all time, making it new to the list, having been left off the 1997 version. In 2008, Blade Runner was voted the sixth best science fiction film ever made as part of the AFI’s 10 Top 10.[72]
• Blade Runner is currently ranked the third best film of all time by The Screen Directory.[73]
• One of Time’s 100 All-Time best movies.[74]
• British movie magazine Empire voted it the “Best Science Fiction Film Ever” in 2007.
• In 2002, Blade Runner was voted the 8th greatest film of all time in Channel 4’s 100 Greatest Films poll.

All of which brings me back around to a favorite topic of mine: art whose greatness was not realized in its time. “In its time” is a malleable phrase, of course. With film it might mean anything from “opening weekend” to 25 years or beyond, and with other, older forms of art we could be talking about decades. For purposes of today’s ArtSunday, I’ll let you, the reader, make you own calls about this.

From where I stand, Blade Runner is the greatest example in film of a work that critics and audiences whiffed on at the time of release. It was largely ignored or panned, over time evolved into “cult status,” and was eventually validated both critically and commercially well after the fact. No other film I can think of surpasses Blade Runner in this respect.

Other genres have their own examples of greatness discovered late (or even too late), of course. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, now regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Victorian Era, was never published in his lifetime, for instance.

Today, then, we invite our readers to offer their favorite examples of “the Blade Runner Effect” – that is, the condition of “late greatness” by art that was not duly acclaimed in its time.

That done, I’m certain a store near you is selling the 25th anniversary box of Ridley Scott’s classic. Go grab it, and while you’re out, stop by one of your finer bookstores and pick up a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the superb Philip K. Dick novel on which it was based.

Oh, yeah – Philip K. Dick. Speaking of artists who never really got their full due….

Reach out and touch me now
Aphrodite said
You aren’t the only one
with armies in your head

We’re fond of calling our great rock stars poets. Dylan is a poet. Springsteen is a poet. John Lennon was a poet. Jim Morrison (*gag*) was a poet. And so on. Certainly the first three (have) produced some marvelous words, but as a poet – forgive me if I call myself a “real” poet here – I’ve never quite been willing to accord their work the status of poetry. This isn’t necessarily a slam – their work isn’t architecture, either.

Of all the great songwriters I’ve encountered, precious few wrote songs that work as poetry – that is, they work as words on their own. Most great rock poetry sounds pretty silly once you take away the music. Mark Knopfler had a couple moments early on, and Fish is probably the best at crafting lyrics that stand in their own right.

None of this means that what your favorite rock poet is doing isn’t wonderful. It’s just something else, and needs to be evaluated on its own terms.

So why I am I carping on this subject? In a recent TunesDay I offered a strong recommendation for the new Fiction 8 CD, Project Phoenix. In that piece I noted that my favorite track was cut 10, “Hegemony,” and I promised to explain why I’m so partial to it in an upcoming WordsDay. This is that WordsDay, and the reason I like “Hegemony” is because I co-wrote it. Specifically, I did the lyrics (frequent S&R commenter Mike Smith, aka fikshun, wrote the music). Hey, I never promised you that my reason would be noble.

The reason I’m writing about “Hegemony” is because it exists in two different forms. It’s a song lyric, and it’s also a poem although these are two different versions. The poem simply would not have worked as a lyric, and the lyric can’t stand on its own as poetry. This isn’t the only time where I’ve had a poem become a lyric or vice versa, either, and the release of this CD has had me thinking on the relationship between the two versions and how the very different demands of poetry and songcraft can lead us from a common starting point to a very different destination.

I thought, then, that I’d take this opportunity to do something that writers are best off avoiding. I’d like to analyze my own work – not for the sake of the work itself, but to illustrate something I think is instructive about the difference between lyrics and poetry.

So first, here are the lyrics to the song version, and you can listen along if you like. In fact, that’s probably the best way to do it, because lyrics are inherently bounded and contextualized by the music.

Part 1: Examining “Hegemony,” the Song Lyric

Hegemony

v1
Tattoo of stars
skull underneath
he’s got his scarecrow on
and diamonds in his teeth

He’s partisan
scene of the seen
he packs a pocketful
of rocket trampoline

Reach out and touch me now
I’m feeling your abuse
I smell him on your breath
Mr. Black Sky’s in the house

CHORUS 1
One tribe, one throb, one voice
a frequency of rust,
there’s only dust

v2
Quickly she said
embrace your rage
Apollo’s coming home
Must disengage

Cell of our selves
insurgency
We’ve got our blue lights on
but the red lights disagree

There’s music in the moon
and rhythm in the suns
Our cult of curvature
our digital beyond

CHORUS 2
One tribe, one throb, one voice
a frequency of mud,
there’s always blood

v3
You like to preach
about destiny
Say love is doom and fate
and sacred syzygy

I’ve heard enough
of your poetry
about kings and queens and knights
and social theory

Reach out and touch me now
Aphrodite said
You aren’t the only one
with armies in your head

CHORUS 3
One tribe, one throb, one voice
the frequency of free,
hegemony

Hegemony….

I know that all the good critics since the onset of the Modern era tell us that things means whatever the audience think they mean, and that’s certainly going to be the case here. The imagery is bound to conjure all kinds of interpretations, especially in conjunction with the music, which I think communicates pretty strongly in and of itself. For the sake of argument, though, let’s be old school and pretend that the author had some thoughts of his own as he was developing these words. What I meant to say doesn’t dismiss the validity of what you hear any more than your interpretations dismiss my artistic impulses. Think of it not as an either/or, but as a both/and.

This said, here’s a brief blow-by-blow of what was intended by these lyrics. This matters, because what I say and how I say it will change when we get to the poem version in section two.

Tattoo of stars
skull underneath
he’s got his scarecrow on
and diamonds in his teeth

He’s partisan
scene of the seen
he packs a pocketful
of rocket trampoline

With luck, the listener recognizes a stylized description of Baron Samedi, the Voudoun Loa of Graveyards who, in addition to death, also signifies sex. I don’t quote Wikipedia often, but this isn’t bad:

Baron Samedi stands at the crossroads, where the souls of dead humans pass on their way to Guinee. As well as being the all-knowing loa of death, he is a sexual loa, frequently represented by phallic symbols and noted for disruption, obscenity, debauchery, and having a particular fondness for tobacco and rum. Additionally, he is the loa of sex and resurrection, and in the latter capacity he is often called upon for healing by those near or approaching death, as it is only Baron who can accept an individual into the realm of the dead. He is considered a wise judge, and a powerful magician.

So in him is intertwined both death and the generative force – a powerful contradiction bound up in one handy party-’til-we-die kind of signifier, huh? Of course, the sex here is not bounded by love, but by club life – the “scene of the seen” – and if you perceive the “rocket in his pocket/trampoline” image as being on the degenerate and juvenile side, then give yourself a bonus point.

I wanted to establish the bacchanalia in the song early on, because what I’m trying to do is depict a condition – those who know me won’t be the least bit surprised to hear that I’m writing about Gen X here – and all the ways we try and make our peace with it. So in Samedi destruction looms, but he also embodies some of the things we use to attempt our escape. Since “my generation” is a construct, there’s an inherent element of mythologizing in the story I’m going to tell. I acknowledge this and use it as best I can by building much of the “narrative” around supernatural and mythological characters throughout.

Reach out and touch me now
I’m feeling your abuse
I smell him on your breath
Mr. Black Sky’s in the house

Here there’s a voice change, and the new speaker is consumed by angst and hopelessness. At best he takes twisted pleasure in betrayal by his lover, and at worst he takes the cuckolding because he really doesn’t see much choice. Mr. Black Sky is Samedi.

One tribe, one throb, one voice
a frequency of rust,
there’s only dust

Here’s though, the chorus (or The Chorus, if you prefer) chimes in with the first of three possible outcomes. Line one asserts the myth of the collective experience, and the fate of the collective is entropy – rusting away to dust.

Verse two begins with another sexual vignette.

Quickly she said
embrace your rage
Apollo’s coming home
Must disengage

Again, it’s a scene of infidelity, and again, the context is explicitly mythical.

Cell of our selves
insurgency

Very briefly, these lines note the insularity of the culture and its battle footing with respect to the world at large. The use of “cell” connotes the structures by which terrorist networks organize themselves, and I imagine “insurgency” doesn’t need a lot of explanation. In the next lines we have an expression of the artificial red vs. blue political divide that divides us against ourselves. As bad as this internecine warfare is for the culture as a whole, it’s hellishly bad for a small generation that has little sense of itself as a whole to start with.

We’ve got our blue lights on
but the red lights disagree

In the next four lines we get another snapshot of the escapist impulse.

There’s music in the moon
and rhythm in the suns
Our cult of curvature
our digital beyond

The first two lines are drug references: ecstasy pills come in a lot of designs, including sun and moon. Overlay this with the mystical symbolism sun and moon can represent and you have sort of a deification of pharmacalogical withdrawal from reality. (Yes, this one is pretty obscure, and no, I didn’t expect most people to get the reference. I’m impressed if you did, though.)

The next two lines come from something Mike got from a poem I write a few years ago. I had a reference to “digital belles,” which he interpreted in audio technological terms – the curvature of sounds in their digital representations. So curvature, in this sense, fuses music with the surrounding club culture, and in the process hopefully intimates something about the soft, malleable edges of the compartments in which some of us segregate our lives.

One tribe, one throb, one voice
a frequency of mud,
there’s always blood

In the second iteration of the chorus, the images of decay are replaced by mud and blood. Blood, on the one hand, is life, although it here emerges from mud – which signifies a lack of clarity, an amalgamation of elements. This can be read a couple of ways, of course – the intermixture of elements can be a source of tremendous energy and vitality. In any case, the dryness of rust and dust has been infused with moisture, and in that sense we’re moving in the direction of life, not death.

Verse three stages the confrontation that’s been building since the beginning. The voice from the “Mr. Black Sky” and sun/moon sequences above is back, and this time he’s fed up with all of his lover’s strategies for rationalizing the collective condition.

You like to preach
about destiny
Say love is doom and fate
and sacred syzygyI’ve heard enough
of your poetry
about kings and queens and knights
and social theory

Religion (preach/sacred), superstition (destiny/doom/fate), metaphysics (syzygy), art (poetry), mythology (kings/queens/knights), and of course, intellectualism (social theory), are all implicated and rejected. She has dabbled with each (meaning he’s been in close proximity to the systemic denial behind it all) and he desperately wants an honest showdown with the possibilities that actually exist for him in life.

At this point the female voice from the illicit tryst above reappears, and we now realize that it’s Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, who’s cheating on Apollo (appropriately enough, the god of music and poetry).

Reach out and touch me now
Aphrodite said
You aren’t the only one
with armies in your head

Aphrodite seems to have stepped well beyond her domain – physical perfection – and into the realm of wisdom, as she consoles her backdoor consort with the knowledge that he isn’t alone. Whatever the rules may be, she intimates, there’s comfort in human contact – especially contact with the divinity inherent in love.

The final appearance of the Chorus sets the stage for the resolution – is there really redemption or only betrayal?

One tribe, one throb, one voice
the frequency of free,
hegemonyHegemony….

For those who don’t know the word “hegemony,” it has a couple of relevant meanings for this song. The common definition, from Merriam-Webster:

1 : preponderant influence or authority over others : domination
2 : the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group

It’s use in Marxist social theory is more useful, though. Rather than focusing on the condition of pure domination, Gramsci employs it to describe the process by which the subjugated come to accept and legitimize their own subjugation.

Gramsci used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others (e.g. bourgeois hegemony). This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as ‘common sense’ and ‘natural’. Commentators stress that this involves willing and active consent. Common sense, suggests Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, is ‘the way a subordinate class lives its subordination’ (cited in Alvarado & Boyd-Barrett 1992: 51).

In the end, then, the tribe/throb/voice tunes into the frequency of “free,” a freedom that we hopefully, by this point, can see for the sham it is. Instead of actual freedom, it’s an imitation freedom-like product that’s the ideological equivalent of Cheez-Whiz. We’ve come to an understanding whereby we all decide to agree that we’re free, despite manifest evidence to the contrary. We do so because the alternative is more than we could bear.

In this collective social, economic and political reality – and yes, I know that “reality” is a construct here – this group of people turns inward and seeks validation through personal intimacy (or the fleeting approximation thereof), drugs, trance, and in the worst cases, self-indulgent angst and alienation.

If you’re thinking that the guy who write the lyrics imagines a lot more going on in “Hegemony” than you did, that’s fine. The form of the song, especially one as symmetrically composed as this one, I believe leads us to assume a certain boundedness – how much deep meaning can you really cram into 4:51, after all? The form of the poem, on the other hand, suggests more open-endedness (especially if it’s free verse than avoids visual formality on the page).

Check back for part two, where I’ll walk through the poem version of “Hegemony” and illustrate some of the ways in which the process of writing a poem differs from the craft of lyric writing. With luck, we’ll all come away with a better understanding of the two genres.

The painting at the head of the page is “Temenos #8: The Poet,” by Gregory Eanes.

If you’re about to explore any aspect of American culture, you rarely go wrong by beginning with a Walt Whitman quote. Here he is on the subject of music:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics–each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat–the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench–the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song–the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning,
or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother–or of the young wife at work–or of the girl sewing or washing–Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day–At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

In our time (gratuitous Hemingway allusion) you’ve probably heard one pundit or another bemoaning the conspicuous absence of music as commentary on social/political issues. So why isn’t America singing these days? Answering that question is the aim of this rambling, unscientific stroll thorough the history of American song.

The poet (I know, I know – this is supposed to be TunesDay – I’ll get there) with the most in common with Whitman (both stylistically and in outlook) of the last 120 years is probably Carl Sandburg, who in 1927 published one of the seminal collections of America singing – The American Songbag. Gathered by Sandburg in a less scientific way than Alan Lomax gathered the material for his archives and without the commercial intent of Ralph Peer, Sandburg gives us the lyrics to what Whitman heard – America singing. Here is an example:

Hallelujah, I’m a Bum

Sandburg:
“This old song heard at the water tanks of railroads in Kansas in 1897 and from harvest hands who worked in the wheat fields of Pawnee County, was picked up later by the I.W. W.’s, who made verses of their own for it, and gave it a wide fame. The migratory workers are familiar with the Salvation Army missions, and have adopted the Army custom of occasionally abandoning all polite formalities and striking deep into the common things and ways for their music and words. A “handout” is food handed out from a back door as distinguished from a “a sit down” which means an entrance into a house and a chair at a table.”

Lyrics:
1. Oh, why don’t you work
Like other men do?
How the hell can I work
When there’s no work to do?
Hallelujah, I’m a bum,
Hallelujah, bum again,
Hallelujah, give us a handout,
To revive us again!

2. Oh, I love my boss
And my boss loves me,
And that is the reason
I’m so hungry,
Hallelujah, etc.

3. Oh, the springtime has came
And I’m just out of jail,
Without any money,
Without any bail.
Hallelujah, etc.

4. I went to a house,
And I knocked on the door;
A lady came out, says,
“You been here before.”
Hallelujah, etc.

5. I went to a house,
And I asked for a piece of bread;
A lady came out, says,
“The baker is dead.”
Hallelujah, etc.

6. When springtime does come,
O won’t we have fun,
We’ll throw up our jobs
And we’ll go on the bum.
Hallelujah, etc.

The assumption of cultural historical knowledge that under girds this song says much about American cultural knowledge. It is this tradition of reference to social and political history that forms the basis of balladry and folk music – the ability of the musician to reference events that listeners know and beliefs that listeners either share or dispute is as old as the Middle Ages – and how America has always sung about herself. This music allows musicians – and the people – to observe, reflect upon, and critique their society and government.

It has long been part of our national conversation.

Even as recently as Boomers’ lifetimes, that conversation was in full bloom. Here’s Bob Dylan:

Masters Of War

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.

We all sense that the conversation is being stifled now. In Boulder, a high school rock band was prevented from performing the above song. Other than some raging here in the blogosphere, almost nothing happened.

Where’s the outrage, so many have asked.

And that leads us back to the punditry (almost exclusively progressive) and their complaint about the lack of music discussing the clear cultural/social/political war being fought in our country. In succeeding posts I’ll explore the evolution of our national conversation in “the people’s music,” as Alan Lomax once called it – and why we’re at the sterile place we seem to be now….

(Next time: Goodnight Irene, goin’ down to the Crossroads…)

Our economy has demonstrated remarkable resilience.

— President Bush at a press conference; July 16.

We’re spending like a drunken sailor.

— Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., predicting the federal budget deficit would double this year; according to Manu Raju of The Hill newspaper, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, for the first nine months of fiscal 2008, the government ran up a $268 billion deficit, $148 billion more the same period last year; July 17.

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.

— Mark Twain, in “Roughing It,” published in 1886.

Our results, frankly, reflect all the difficulties weighing on the media sector … but we have been in down cycles before and know how to manage through them.

— Craig Dubow, Gannett Co. chairman and chief executive, after Gannett reported that second-quarter profits were down 36 percent from a year ago; revenue fell 10 percent, shares were off 7 percent and USA Today advertising sales dropped 17 percent; July 17; emphasis added.

[The loss reflects] a weakening economy and a continued challenging business environment in the publishing division.

— Marshall Morton, president and chief executive of Media General, owner of 22 dailies and 275 weeklies and other publications, on its second-quarter loss of $129,000 vs. a $5.2 million profit a year ago; its newspaper ad revenues fell 17 percent; July 17; emphasis added.

Unprecedented fuel prices have created a real crisis in the airline industry, and Delta has been a leader in responding with quick, decisive action.

— Edward Bastian, president and chief financial officer of Delta Air Lines, following the announcement that Delta posted a $1 billion loss in the second quarter because of high fuel costs; Delta said it will reduce flights and cut about 4,000 jobs this year; July 17; emphasis added.

My co-workers are doing a great job working through the significant challenges facing our industry. We will continue to work together to react to the market and maintain our focus on providing quality service to customers.

— Larry Kellner, Continental Airlines’ chairman and chief executive officer, after Continental reported a second-quarter loss of $3 billion; Continental plans to reduce domestic flights, retire 67 aircraft and cut 3,000 jobs; July 17.

It seems to me that other financial institutions not accepting these checks is only furthering the panic. Sure, IndyMac will give you a check, but what good is it if no other institution will accept it?

— Sheryl MacPhee, 46, of South Pasadena, Calif., who tried to deposit a check from an IndyMac branch in another bank only to be told she could not have access those funds for up to eight weeks; regulators from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have taken over the ailing bank; July 16.

My hope is that people take a deep breath and realize that their deposits are protected by our government.

— President Bush, at an unscheduled press conference, reminding Americans that the federal government insured their deposits up to $100,000; July 17.

It affects everybody, and you need not be a home owner, or have credit or be a consumer. People are getting used to a new terminology; they know all sorts of credit-crunch-related terms. Money can be made now, but generally it’s a hugely unfortunate economic time. There’s a lot of talk about how bad it is.

— Martin Slaney, head of derivatives at GFT Global Markets in London, discussing the global economic slowdown; July 17.

You see a consensus developing that the current system is unsustainable. But actually saying what has to happen next is a little bit scary if you’re in a campaign, especially if some of your most prominent supporters have such deep ties to these entities.

— David C. John, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, discussing the rumors of insolvency regarding Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the virtual silence about them from presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama; July 17.

The business was going nowhere, so the only thing I could fund the business with was more credit cards. I just started panicking.

— Jeremy Riney, describing how he started Music America Records in Los Angeles by financing his business with personal credit cards until he owed about $100,000; The Washington Post’s Simone Baribeau reports that “[s]mall businesses will charge 2 1/2 times more this year than they did in 2002, when credit card charges ran about $140 billion”; July 4.

Blindsided, distraught, disrespected. All those adjectives. I definitely feel insulted. … I didn’t realize my salary was that much compared to everyone else’s. They basically dumped mine and got nothing in return.

— former Denver Nuggets center Marcus Camby after being traded to the Los Angeles Clippers; Mr. Camby will earn a base salary of $8 million and could make as much as $11.7 million if he hits all his incentive bonuses; July 16.

A lot of the busy guys used to brag that they had patients waiting six months or a year. Granted, I thought it was exaggerated for their own p.r., but now you almost never hear that. Now you hear a month or two.

— Dr. Michael A. C. Kane, a plastic surgeon in Manhattan, about complaints from plastic surgeons that the economic downturn is affecting their business; June 16.

These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people. Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery and personal indignity. … In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

— from the first inaugural address by President Ronald Reagan; Jan. 20, 1981.

When we work on tough issues in the U.S. system, which is the best system in the world, it takes a while. There’s never unanimity, but I am feeling very good.

— Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. about his plan for the federal government to rescue the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; July 17.

The economy has continued to expand, but at a subdued pace.

— Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in which he did not utter the word “recession”; July 17.

Those will do more than any $300 you might send out to the taxpayers.

— Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., criticizing Democrats’ plan to provide more consumer incentives and agreeing with the White House position that adopting legislation to limit home foreclosures and expanding domestic production of oil would to more to stimulate the economy; July 16.

It’s just amazing. It’s irresponsible. This guy does not have any love or care for the sport. The unfortunate is that we are learning that things that look too good to be true are too good to be true.

— British cyclist David Millar after Italian rider Riccardo Riccò became the third rider in the Tour de France to test positive for the performance enhancer EPO; July 17.

We’re absolutely stunned by what is happening and by the behavior of one of our riders. He seems to have secretly used banned substances, hiding everything from everybody else in the team.

— from a statement by Caudio Corti, manager of the Barloworld team, denying knowledge of drug use by one of his Tour de France riders, Moises Duenas Nevado of Spain; July 17; emphasis added.

[Police found] numerous small medical materials like syringes, needles, and medical drip bags which theoretically a cyclist should not have in his room.

— Gerard Aldige, the state prosecutor in Tarbes, France, discussing what was found in Duenas Nevado’s hotel room; July 17.

As our society becomes more fragmented, more bombarded with images, more numbed to feeling, more restless and impatient, what the artist has to offer becomes more and more essential to the health of the community. In a sense, there are three basic artistic strategies which fulfill this function. One is to make art which states the problems or wounds of society; which makes people aware of the underpinnings of the society and wakes them up to act or make changes in their lives or in their communities. The second is to make art which offers an alternative; that demonstrates human behavior which becomes a paradigm for what creativity, cooperation, freedom and playfulness could be. The third is to make art which in itself provides glimpses of a larger consciousness or reflects upon the inexplicable. Some artists mirror the time in which they live. Others convey in their work a sense of timelessness and continuity. That we have this variety of approaches is healthy and meaningful.

— from a speech titled “Some Thoughts About Art, America
And Jumping Off The Cliff” by Meredith Monk, an American composer, delivered in April 1990.

I leave with the belief that this eclipse of the soul will soon pass and with it the lunacy that sees artists as enemies and ideas as demons.

— from a speech at the National Press Club by John Frohnmayer after being deposed in February 1992 as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts by President George H.W. Bush; Republican challenger Patrick J. Buchanan had threatened to make a campaign issue out of President Bush’s support for the then-controversial NEA and Mr. Frohmayer’s leadership.

This is to ensure that we have flexible funds to devote to both building our collections and undertake targeted strategic initiatives where we feel we can really make a difference.

— James Woods, chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, announcing the trust would cut 114 jobs so it could free resources to spend on its visual-arts programs; May 14.

A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she’s
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.

— from “A cat/a future” by Kay Ryan, chosen to be the nation’s 16th poet laureate by the Librarian of Congress; July 17.

photo credits:

• credit cards: Ilya Genkin, Istockphoto.com
• Italian cyclist Ricardo Riccò: Nicholas Bouvy, European Pressphoto Agency

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

He also professes his love for the TV series Starsky & Hutch and claims he invented Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. You read it right.

More in a Paris Review interview snippet here…

x-post: JfH

One Life, by Johnny Clegg, first released 2006, 16 tracks, ASIN B000I5YROM

We’re on our way home to find our freedom
and I’m on my way home to find you my friend
where we can stand in the light of the people
and breathe life into the land again.

“When the System Has Fallen,” Johnny Clegg

“If you have a patch of ground the size of a door, you can feed a family of four,” rhymes my friend, John Broom. John is well over 80 and has been involved in teaching gardening and feeding schemes in Africa for the Quaker Peace Foundation for decades. I believe him.

Africa itself is a vast and fertile land. The small state of Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of the Sub-Saharan region, able to supply wheat and maize to tens of millions of people. South Africa still exports some 3 million tons of cereals a year, 33% of production, while feeding a population of 45 million.

Ethiopia continues to be the poster child for starvation. Five million children a year die in Africa from malnutrition. A third of Africa’s population is malnourished. Yet this continent of 30 million square kilometres produces only 143 million tons of food cereals, less than 10% of the world total of over 2 billion tons. The US, by comparison, produces 450 million tons on less than 10 million square kilometers of land.

Clearly, there is a problem.

Pop stars of the world claim to have a solution.

The Solutions of the Stars

Bono, front-man of Irish super-group, U2, tells African countries that all they need to do is learn from Ireland. “Twenty years ago our economy was down the toilet, the IMF were telling us what to do and the World Bank were down our pants.”

Well, yes, Bono, so what African countries need to do is join the EU, collect hefty subsidies on infrastructure and agriculture, and have tariff-free access to the European market? And on which planet is this going to happen?

In other words, what we learn from an aging, fading pop star is that Africa’s future success depends entirely on what the rest of the world chooses to do. That Africa is an innocent victim of the choices of other countries.

Bono is a twit. As a friend said, “I think the only fair thing, now that Bono has become an economist, is for him to allow all of us economists to join his band.”

To which I respond, “I’m really clear on opportunity cost, comparative advantage, moral hazard and I once saw a guitar … I think I can take over from the Edge.”

Even more foolish is the pie-eyed response from Bob Geldof. Live Aid, in 1984, raised $300 million that allowed Ethiopia’s blood-drenched dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and his Derg army, to butcher and destroy more people before being overthrown. Ethiopia’s new government has, 24 years later, banned journalists from visiting the worst-affected areas of renewed conflict and famine in order to avoid embarrassment. The UN’s World Food Programme estimates that 9.5 million people – 12% of Ethiopia’s population – need emergency food aid in 2008.

So humming along to, “We are the world. We are the children,” made a really big difference. I think Geldof should let me in his band too.

The world of Juluka

In 1993, Johnny Clegg released a deeply moving album, Heat and Dust and Dreams. His first album, Universal Men, was released in 1979. There are few musicians that endure for such a long period of time, and fewer still who reinvent their musical style to continue to say something both original and relevant over that period.

Heat and Dust and Dreams has the energy and originality of a first album; of a new band. Yet it has the depth of meaning and clarity of understanding that is achieved at great personal cost.

South Africa, in 1993, was a dark and terrifying place. The glacial progress towards liberation was giving way to a chaotic stampede: bomb-blasts going off all over the show; horrific violence as “liberators” wrapped “conspirators” in car tyres, covered them with petrol and set them on fire; riots and damage. No one knew if we would come out of this alive as politicians played brinkmanship.

Heat and Dust and Dreams challenged us to remember why we came here and what we were doing it for. It was an homage to those of us active in the “struggle” to keep going. And a remembrance of those who fell along the way.

In 1990, Clegg’s lead dancer – and anyone who has seen a live show will know that the Zulu war dancing is the focal-point of the music’s energy – Dudu Zulu was shot and killed while attempting to mediate in a violent dispute.

Johnny Clegg’s story is a testament to the astonishing charisma and determination of the man. Born of middle-class Jewish parents, he was captivated by the sound of township music; music produced by migrant Zulu workers drawn to Johannesburg to earn a living and work deep underground in the mines. Clegg used to sneak into the townships – where it was illegal for white people to visit – and beg to be allowed to learn how to play. Then he learned Zulu war dancing.

He took Zulu traditional themes and added a rock score and released an album. The “White Zulu” was born.

I was at a concert of Clegg’s in 1994 with kids – most of us who hadn’t even been born when he released his first album – when he lead into a song with this intro: “You know, it’s quite something when you write a song and, 21 years later, people still want to hear it.”

Then he played “Impi” and the kids tried to jump out of their skins with a roar of delight.

And here’s the thing, “Impi” isn’t a ballad or some power rock song about being a teenager. It’s a history lesson.

In 1879 Mageba, General to King Ceteswayo, led his Zulu impi to slaughter the central column of Lord Chelmsford’s army at the Battle of Isandhlwana. The British had deliberately incited the war by setting the Zulus the ultimatum of submitting to the crown and disbanding their army. Five columns of troops were sent, inappropriately dressed in their red coats and black pants, to engage Ceteswayo.

Lord Chelmsford was another of the spectacularly incompetent generals that the British enjoyed appointing to their colonial armies. He couldn’t be bothered to spy out the land, considering the Zulu to be cowardly. Far from it, the Zulu lay in wait and attacked mercilessly and without warning.

After the battle they ritually washed their spears in the blood of the fallen. The blood ran; a river into a river.

“Impi” – so joyously danced to by the descendents of British settlers – is the rebel yell of Zulus defeating a British colonial army. You can’t beat that sort of irony.

The poet within: Heat and Dust and Dreams

If that was the end of Johnny Clegg’s story that would already be the basis of an astonishing Hollywood move, but it isn’t. Clegg went on to get an Honours in Social Anthropology and went on to lecture at the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Natal. In 2007 he even received an honorary doctorate from Wits.

Go through the lyrics of his songs and you are struck by the complexity, depth of feeling and beauty of the words. Clegg’s music is so joyous, so transcendent, so musically astute and so downright danceable, that the lyrics – a mix of Zulu and English – can get overlooked. Sometimes even by the descendants of British colonists.

The opening lines of the opening song, “These Days,” on Heat and Dust and Dreams:

Yashimbawula!
(the watchman’s fire is burning)
What happened to the diamonds in your eyes,
What happened to the hunger for the day’s chase?
What happened to the electric smile
That danced your life across your face
We used to talk about changing the world
Now all you want to do is change your name
Come on baby don’t surrender now
to the empty heart of these days.
We used to talk so deep into the night
You had the heart of a wild horse running
You bared your soul to me
and we both knew these days were coming

“These Days”

A song of the determination need to achieve liberty and resonated particularly during the terrifying days before South Africa’s 1994 universal sufferance. Or how about “The Crossing,” Clegg’s tribute to Dudu and all struggle victims:

Through all the days that eat away
at every breath that I take
through all the nights I’ve lain alone
in someone else’s dream, awake
all the words in truth we have spoken
that the wind has blown away
it’s only you that remains with me
clear as the light of day
Chorus:
O Siyeza, o siyeza , sizofika webaba noma
(we are coming, we are coming, we will arrive soon)
O siyeza, o siyeza, siyagudle lomhlaba
(we are coming, we are coming, we are moving across this earth)
Siyawela lapheshaya lulezontaba ezimnyama
(we are crossing over those dark mountains)
Lapha sobheka phansi konke ukhulupheka
(where we will lay down our troubles)

“The Crossing“

I still weep when I listen to this. And there are others. My anthem in the ’90s was “Tough Enough”:

Picture the end of a cycle
here’s the fire from heaven
There’s a tired planet closing down
no more news at eleven
somewhere the last of a species has died
somewhere a child is born
when I hold you, I tremble inside
can we ride out the storm?
Are you tough enough – can you take the strain?
Are you tough enough – to walk in the burning rain
Are you tough enough – can you take the change?
Are you tough enough – baby just say!
Chorus:
Into the heart of the human dream
into a strange new world
remember me under the Tree of Man
where I first heard your words
gonna make it through, I can feel it

“Tough Enough”

Heat and Dust and Dreams was a political anthem. A declaration of what the world will be and what will be required to get there. In 2008, Clegg released One Life, looking at what all that energy has released and created. And looking forward at hope.

Johnny Clegg and the Tyrants: One Life

Anyone who has seen a Johnny Clegg performance knows that they are high-energy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When Clegg rejoined his original partner, Sipho Mchunu, for a concert in Grahamstown in 1994 at a school hall in the middle of the local township, they danced on an old carpet.

The dust from that carpet was stomped out into the air causing Clegg to go into a coughing fit. “Haai,” said Mchunu, “the old man is tired.” A typically laconic statement from the man who left Juluka, Clegg’s original band, at the height of its success – when world popularity awaited him – to go back to rural Zululand so that he could raise a big family and watch his cows grow fat.

The concert I saw in 1995 was a one-off, and unique. Could you imagine Bono, or any of the rock legends holding an impromptu concert in a large theatre, sitting on his own with nothing but a guitar and speaking about the stories behind the songs?

Clegg sat and gave us a miraculous, beautiful insight into his life, and the history of the music. He played little musical snatches, showing how the music evolved, where it came from. He talked about Zulu dancing, Zulu music, how to rewire an accordion or a guitar to play Zulu music. Hours hurtled past as he sang and he played and he talked.

I love music. I have a lot of favourite musicians. Many of them are top European or American acts. Sting, U2, Evanescence, Nickelback, Eric Clapton, Peter Grabriel. I’m not especially interested in any of them as people. Bono and Geldof prove to me the vacuousness of most of what they have to say.

Clegg is different. He is genuinely smart, sticks entirely to what he knows and doesn’t claim to have the answers. What he does is humanise, contextualise and emotionalise the questions.

And so, via a lengthy introduction, we come to One Life.

It’s 2008. Johnny Clegg is 55 and has been performing for 29 years. He is not as popular in South Africa as he used to be. People aren’t interested in asking the hard questions anymore. He is still extremely popular in France, where the French have an oddly soft-spot for all things African. I think that Clegg has done well out of his music, but he is never going to be a super-star. That he continues to perform and write is because he loves what he does, and he still has something to say.

This album is a great album. Not just great in comparison to his own work, but a great album. And it just works so well. It has the energy and originality of a first album; of a new band. Yet it has the depth of meaning and clarity of understanding that is achieved at great personal cost. And, yes, I said that before.

This isn’t the first album that Clegg has released since Heat and Dust and Dreams, he stepped into purely traditional sounds in between with albums that weren’t especially memorable. We were all, South Africans, lulled into a pleasurable daze following the success of the 1994 democratic transition. No more.

I am a boy soldier
See my eyes’ empty stare
Each day explodes with pain
And it’s more than I can bare
The ghosts of the slain
Are the shadows in my eyes
And I dream tomorrow will come
And carry me away
Every second in No Man’s Land
I hold my life in these small hands
Every day in a world gone mad
Hard to face who I am
Chorus:
Once we were children
Once we played in the morning light
Once we were dreamers
One morning they came, the soldiers took us away

“Boy Soldier”

“Boy Soldier” opens with a hauntingly beautiful base melody. The lyrics and music evocative of lost childhood, of innocence looking out of a tortured soul. There is no anguish, just sorrow.

Clegg nods to two new languages, apart from his typical English and Zulu, and recognises two audiences that have supported him through the years: Afrikaans and French. I don’t think that Afrikaans works as a musical language. You can swear in it, but you can’t sing in it. Clegg does his best, but he really shines with French which has always blended beautifully into African music.

Can Clegg only talk about politics? No, of course not. Many of his songs are about love and the fragile strength and beauty of human relationships. Writing about one of his ballads, Clegg says, “The sun evaporates water but the sea is not scared of the sun’s flames because it’s infinite. In the same way that the sea is tested everyday by the sun, love is tested by human folly and difficult circumstances. Migrant work separates lovers far from each other over long periods of time and distance. This is the perennial problem of the life of a touring musician. Real love is like the ocean which cannot be evaporated by the burning sun.”

He can even be gently humorous:

I would like to be the sky
You could be my blue
You could be a dancing foot
And I could be your shoe
Oh, it’s hot in here and I need some air
I’ll wait outside for you
Come what may, there will be a day
I will wake up next to you…

“Bull Heart”

Lines I sent to my love, so far away from me across the sea. But Clegg is best when he is roaring defiance:

He’s a leader, talks of freedom
He knows the power of the Big Idea
He’s a dealer, he’s a seeker
Of the power that comes from fear
He gave his life to the party machine
Holding onto a secret dream
He knows better than anyone
Power comes from the barrel of a gun…
And he’s rising up against them now
And he’s rising up in country and town
Rising up against them now, rising up
Chorus:
The revolution has eaten its children
I see the river of dreams run dry
I’m so thankful I got to love you
You are the reason I survive

“The Revolution Will Eat Its Children“

The defining song of the album speaks truth to power. Don’t trust your leaders, they are human, and their motives may be entirely selfish.

“The dry old grass is made young, green and new again only by fire. This means that often hard and difficult experiences in your life make you confront and reinvent yourself giving you a new perspective. We learn some of our deepest lessons through pain,” says Clegg.

Don’t think that this album is only about struggle and survival. It isn’t. It is musically complex, while being a tremendous dance album. The instrumentation is wonderful and you’ll enjoy listening to it repeatedly as the various layers of music and lyric unfold around you.

This is an album that speaks to youth and beginning a life, with all its challenges; those of love and relationships, of loss and horror, but also of dreams and the ambition of changing the world and making it new again.

Oh! this is your time
This is your life
This is your day
Oh! look at the night
These are your stars
They show the way
I feel your heart beat
This is your time
This is your life
This is your day

“Day in the Life”

For Sam, for whom I bought this album and still haven’t actually gotten round to sending it to him. I promise it will be in the mail. Soon.

Well, sorta. You may have noticed that mobile is getting to be a really big deal, and you may have noticed that Them Danged Kids® are texting until their thumbs fall off. You probably didn’t realize, though, the magnitude of mobile and the SMS phenomenon. There are now over 3 billion mobile phones in the world and nearly all of them have SMS capability. Telephia estimates that revenue from premium SMS entertainment services in the US topped $1B last year. And the stuff that people are paying for – $5/month for a joke of the day (and Yo Mama joke of the day!), horoscopes, music reviews, health tips, sports, and on and on. It’s all a little hard for a guy like me to believe, but there it is.

Anyway, you have this new medium, so it was only a matter of time before it began sparking artistic innovation. One of my businesses is an SMS entertainment content company, and a couple years ago we developed something called online blitz fiction – SMS short-short stories for the text environment. There are places that have attempted to adapt and serialize non-SMS content (with not-so-great results), but to the best of our knowledge we were the first to begin building literature specifically around the form and unique demands of the 160-character context.

It’s weird, too. Because you have so little space, there has to be a hyper-emphasis on each word. Additionally, since the time lapse between one entry and the next can be a day, you don’t have the freedom to take a sentence or two off. It’s an insanely compressed form, in other words, and my surprise discovery was that SMS blitz fiction has more in common with narrative poetry than it does with traditional prose.

Today, WordsDay invites you to subscribe to “The Continuing Adventures of Hawthorne Curve, Private Dick: The Case of the Emerald Espadrille,” by your truly, the very first for-SMS story ever written. Normal messaging costs apply, but there’s no additional fee to subscribe to the story. If you’re interested, text Blitz to 47647.

Enjoy. But beware The Scot.