I didn’t watch the inauguration. I wanted affirmation I suspected I wouldn’t find at this ceremonial event. Something as far away as possible from the Orange Monster and all he represented.
Something elegiac, tranquil and contemplative, then? The knave of Ely Cathedral, Constable’s Hay Wain, Alec Guinness at his most ironic reading Sir Brian has a Battleaxe, the photo Occasional Speeder took of her parents drinking Glühwein (mit Rhum – yes, that’s how they spelled it) at Cologne Christmas market.
All just a bit too passive. But since the Monster himself was active it would have to be a different type of action: creative, unifying and stirring.
I found it on Sabine’s blog Interim Arrangements. There’s a sea-shanty festival doing the rounds which I have unforgivably ignored. Sabine is honouring it. I’m glad I didn’t miss Leave Her Johnny by The Long Johns.
You would have thought social-distancing would have killed the choir stone dead. Not so. Technology has risen to the occasion. People in distant locations get in front of their webcam-equipped computer monitors and sing solo versions of an agreed song; through electronic necromancy the voices are combined and lo! A choir! Some genius has overcome the system’s delays and damn me, it’s a good choir.
But the sea shanty makes its own contribution. It doesn’t demand hyper-trained voices and the range is usually fairly narrow. So it’s not music generated by an elite; rather a musical democracy. And there’s an unpopular word at the former White House.
The call-and-response structure of the shanty, together with its overlapping lines, generate enormous energy. Suppressing all memories of past lies and narcissism.
Perhaps there was an attempted riot. I wouldn’t know.
I was hard at work today (Admissions season), but tuned in at the end to catch young Amanda Gorman ... her poem took my breath away and left me hopeful.
ReplyDeleteSabine and sea-shantys ... ! ♪ ♫ I'm on my way!
You should watch as much of it as you can.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: My response has been transmitted by other means.
DeleteHmmmm, we wallowed in the inauguration here. Joyful, tearful, hopeful, and this morning the horrid neck pain I've had for months was gone.... Enough said. SM
ReplyDeleteSandi (and everyone): Look, I wouldn't you all to misunderstand me. I'm as happy as anyone that the rapidly deflating Orange Balloon has squirted off to Florida in a send-off that was appropriately muted. For four years I've squirmed at his lies, at his mangling of the language sometimes known as English sometimes as American, shocked in the Biblical sense at the way he casually brushed into a corner the deaths of 400,000 of his fellow citizens, revolted at his appeal to all that is worst in the male psyche, and finally watched stony-faced at the predictable way it all ended when he allowed his ego to inflate to such a degree that even the potential destruction of his country's government had to take second place to his excessive use of the first person singular pronoun.
DeleteGood riddance and (here's an Irishism I've yearned to deploy) bad cess to the fella.
But for me the inauguration only had symbolic value. I doubt that Biden, however willing, however decent, will be able to shift the monstrous pile of ordure that he faces in the time he has available. I fear journalism has taught me to expect disappointment, and old age doesn't allow me sufficient optimism to even look as far forward as 2024. Hope springs eternal, and I'm glad that it does. And I wish all those US citizens who have graced Tone Deaf with their comments the fortitude that will be necessary to see themselves through the coming years.
Here's an analogy. The bathroom of our house in France was mounted on an underground concrete chamber into which all our merde dropped. Every so often a hose was lowered down into this mushy Hades and, to the accompaniment of hideous sucking noises, the merde was taken elsewhere. Was this an event to be celebrated? And if so, for how long? Perhaps for the length of time that elapsed before our next visit to the Ceramic Throne. Hence the fact that, in heartfelt relief, I looked for some form of comfort more durable than the mere ceremony of inauguration.
Yes, the 'swamp' that Trump so lovingly referred to as Washington...is really a thick sludge underneath all of America. Your words and meanings always seem to 'hit the ball' out of the park for me. The sheer fact they managed to sterilize and scrape 'merde' off the floors and walls of the Capitol and pull-together speeches, thoughts, music, poetry and dissuade everyone's fears(even if it took an entire ARMY of soldiers).
ReplyDeleteAll the symbolism was soothing, after the 'I-Maniac' was really gone. But, not gone is the ignorance fueled with insanity that is the far---way "far out", can't even say right, that nearly took out this experiment we call Democracy. And, we still have the others, the bulk of the the Trump voters-for what ever reasons, actually thought that man was or could make anything great.
The only thing that ever survives from a culture is its arts. Political power is transient. Political power is nothing. It will vanish. The most powerful man in the world is nobody. The only way we remember any of the powerful men of the world is the way they were captured by artists, often anonymous artists in ancient Egypt and Rome. The bequest of any civilization and the test of its quality is its arts. I feel that the left and the right, everyone across the political spectrum is guilty of offenses against the arts, and I hope that you will now go forth and be ambassadors for the arts.
ReplyDelete--Camille Paglia