Hope you got your things together Hope you are quite prepared to die Looks like we’re in for nasty weather One eye is taken for an eye
Well don’t go around tonight Well it’s bound to take your life There’s a bad moon on the rise
—Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Another Halloween night.
Thinking this morning of Halloweens past brings back memories of the ghosts, goblins, zombies, vampires, werewolves and the many other monsters in the horror movies and stories I hungrily gulped down as a kid. They scared the bejesus out of me back then. Halloween was a festive celebration of the fear they induced, never feeling as frightening as sitting alone in the dark with a monster movie on the TV and a racing imagination in my mind.
But in all those Halloweens and all the films and stories that inspired the fear it represents; this might be the scariest Halloween of my life. I am sure there are more than a few of you out there who understand and share the fear to which I allude. If you don’t know, you are the fortunate few.
It’s like sensing an impending attack from an army of monsters, demons, Martians with ray guns or whatever horrific creature haunted your childhoods. You know there’s a chance it might be coming but there is little that can be done now except wait.
I’m not going to go into it any deeper this morning. Let’s just enjoy the idea of a day of innocent scares while we wait to see if a very real terror soon comes to our doors.
Though it might not be considered a classic Halloween song, here’s a scary song from CCR. Here’s their Bad Moon Rising.
I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
—William Butler Yeats, The Song of Wandering Aengus
The last Wednesday before a most important election here in the US. Let’s set politics aside for the day and focus on things of beauty, of mystery, of wonder. Those things that make this life more than tolerable. Things that deepen our existence here on this spinning rock we call home.
A fine example, in my mind, is the wonderful poem above from a favorite poet, William Butler Yeats. Perhaps we’re all a bit like Wandering Aengus, silently seeking something forever elusive.
Some of us might know what we seek. Some may not.
It probably doesn’t matter so long as we continue to seek whatever it might be that tugs at our soul. I think we all need that in some form or another. Until time and times are done…
Here’s Donovan with his version of the poem in the form of a song. Lovely.
Benteen: “I remember the Earth. I remember it as a place, a place of color. I remember, Jo-Jo, that in the autumn … the leaves changed, turned different colors: red, orange, gold. I remember streams of water that flowed down hillsides, and the water was sparkling and clear. I remember clouds in the sky: white, billowy things that floated like ships, like sails. You see, in ancient times that’s the way men moved their ships across the water. They unfurled large sections of canvas against the wind, and the wind moved them. And I remember night skies. Night skies. Like endless black velvet, with stars, sometimes a moon, hung as if suspended by wires, lit from inside.”
Jo-Jo: “What’s night, Captain?”
Benteen: “Night? Night is a quiet time, Jo-Jo, when the Earth went to sleep. Kind of like a cover that it pulled over itself. Not like here, where we have the two suns always shining, always burning. It was darkness, Jo-Jo, darkness that felt like … like a cool hand just brushed past tired eyes. And there was snow on the winter nights. Gossamer stuff. It floated down and covered the Earth, made it all white, cool. And in the mornings we could go out and build a snowman, see our breath in the air. And it was good then. It was right.”
Jo-Jo: “Captain, why did you leave there?”
Benteen: “Well, we thought we could find another place like Earth, but with different beauties, Jo-Jo. And we found this place. We thought we could escape war, we thought we could — well, we thought that we could build an even better place. And it took us thirty years to find out that we left our home a billion miles away to be only visitors here, transients, ’cause you can’t put down roots in this ground. But it was too late. So we spent thirty years watching a clock and a calendar.”
— Rod Serling, Twilight Zone episode, On Thursday We Leave for Home
This is a scene from a Twilight Zone episode about a group of people who have left the Earth and settled on a distant planet, V-9 Gamma. It is a harsh and barren place with two suns giving it an unending day on which the group has struggled to survive for thirty years. Some have only vague memories of Earth while children who have been born on the alien planet have no memory at all. James Whitmore plays the leader, Benteen, of the group who also tries to keep up their spirit.
I don’t know why I am sharing this today. Maybe it’s just a wonderful example of the lyricism of Rod Serling‘s writing. That would be enough in itself.
But maybe it has to do with the episode’s theme of opting for a radically different existence and leaving all that you know behind. We often don’t recognize the actual ramifications of such a decision until it is too late. We learn in that moment what has been lost. The absence of those lost things we all too often overlooked and took for granted weighs heavily on us.
What we may lose may never be regained. Those things lost turn out to be the things that enrich and define us as humans. What we think would be a better life ends up feeling like an alien existence with us longing for a way of being we have forever lost.
Oh, all you immigrants and visionaries, what do you hope to find here, who do you hope to become?
–Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall: A Novel
I love this line from Michael Cunningham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Hours, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film. It’s a line that seems to crystallize the appeal of America for the immigrant, in the voice of a destination that whispers that here you can follow your dreams and transform yourself.
Immigration is always in the news these days, especially as a tool of fear-mongers who often portray immigrants in sub-human terms. You have seen ample evidence of that in recent months of the current election. I will admit that there are problems with our system of immigration that need to be addressed in a clear-eyed and humane manner. That is obvious. But that is on us and not on the people who seek to make a home here.
Myself, I am personally heartened by the idea that people are still drawn to this nation, that they still see us as their last best hope. That, of course, echoes the words of Abraham Lincoln who in addressing Congress in 1862, during the Civil War, said:
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
He saw this nation as the last best hope of earth and that has long been the perspective of the oppressed and hopeless around the globe. A place where there is still hope for a better life for their families and the opportunity to become something more than they were allowed to be in their own homeland.
A place they can envision themselves calling home.
I personally like that these people still see us that way and seek to make a home here even though we have often not lived up to our outward attractive appeal. That they still come means that we have not lost our way yet, that we still have the ability to welcome them and weave them into the everchanging fabric of our nation.
How many other nations can say that? Are people abandoning all they once knew so they might swim rivers and cross deserts, risking their lives, to get into Russia? China? Iran or Saudi Arabia?
You know the answer– no.
I don’t want to become a nation where people wouldn’t want to come here. That has been the one quality that has differentiated us, providing the basis for American Exceptionalism. That is a term that generally makes me cringe, mainly because the people who spout that term the most are America First nationalists and their ilk. They often cite it as justification for any behavior, abhorrent as it might be, that furthers their aims.
The point they don’t seem to understand is that it is our welcoming nature and the opportunity we offer to all that makes up our exceptionalism. The idea that we are the last best hope is our sole superpower.
To take that away, to close ourselves off while vilifying those who seek to make this land their home, also takes away that exceptionalism. There is nothing exceptional in rank hatred. It makes us smaller, mean-spirited and cruel.
It weakens– no, it rips apart– the fabric of our nation. It is important that we remain that last best hope, for the oppressed around the world and for ourselves as a nation, because once that is lost our own hope is lost with it.
“To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits, to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love family and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world; to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words; to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done and then be resigned.
This is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satisfies the brain and the heart.”
–Robert G. Ingersoll, Words To Live By
We are in the final week or so until our election here in the US. There has been some discussion about policy and such, the things that accompany any political race.
But this election is not normal in any way. This race is solely about character. It is about who and what we are as a nation. What we truly stand for and against.
Character creates policy. Character sets the course for our future.
And there couldn’t be a starker distinction in character between the two candidates.
I am not going into the differences. You know what they are and if you don’t, the shame is on you. You know where I stand on this. But I think it is important that we take this time to ponder our character, both as a nation and as individuals.
Do we have any idea how to define our character? Do we have a creed by which we can abide? I say that because a lot of folks talk a good game about character then act in ways that betray it.
I shared the post below about a year and a half back but felt that the creed of Robert Ingersoll was applicable to this moment. Here it is again followed by this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection which is a real on-the-nose choice, Teach Your Children from Crosby, Stills and Nash. We sometimes forget that character might be the most valuable thing we can pass on to our children.
I wrote about Robert Ingersolla few years back, noting that the now somewhat overlooked orator of the 19th century was once one of the most celebrated men in the world. He spoke to huge crowds, sometimes 50,000 or more, at a time without microphones and loudspeakers. He was praised and idolized by the great men of the time– Walt Whitman, Thomas Edison, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass and so on. Whitman called him the living epitome of the American ideal of his Leaves of Grassand Fredrick Douglass proclaimed that “of all the great men of his personal acquaintance, there had been only two in whose presence he could be without feeling that he was regarded as inferior to them — Abraham Lincoln and Robert Ingersoll.“
One might think that someone with such influence in that era might have been a religious or political figure. Ingersoll was neither. Far from it. He championed rationalism and free thought, railing against the slavery of the mind that he believed organized religion fostered and the corruption of character brought on by political power.
His words often ring as true today as they did 125 years ago. I came across the words above yesterday when it was pointed out that the great American writer and film director Garson Kanin kept this creed from Ingersoll on his desk at all times.
Reading these words made me realize why Ingersoll achieved such popularity. They were inspirational words, describing positive traits and a rational way of thinking that was independent from the dogma of organized religion.
A way of living that anyone could live. An honest life of decency and generosity without being told how to live. Goodness for the sake of goodness alone.
A way of being that satisfies the brain and heart.
Ingersoll also wrote another form of this creed:
Justice is the only worship.
Love is the only priest.
Ignorance is the only slavery.
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here,
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Either of his creeds are mighty fine words to keep on any desk. Or better yet, to live by.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
–Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1855
Niche— At Principle Gallery, Alexandria
I use the word favorite quite a bit on this blog. I list many songs, movies, poems, quotes, people, etc. as being favorites of mine. There are probably a thousand songs or more that I could list as favorites, songs that always jump out at me. These are songs that raise very distinct feelings on hearing them. It might not be the same feeling for any of them. In fact, it certainly is not. Just something unique in each that excites me in a very specific way.
It’s that way with my work, as well. I am almost always asked at shows which painting is my favorite. It’s a question I can never answer as nearly every piece has something unique in it that speaks to me. Each affects me in its own way.
Some make me happy. Some make me think on darker things. Some make me look back and some forward.
Some make me feel large and powerful while others make me feel small and insignificant. I number many of both of these among my favorites.
Some make me cry. The painting shown here is one such painting. Even now, seeing it only on the screen, makes me emotional. As I wrote in an earlier post about this painting, Niche, they are not sad nor are they happy tears. They are tears of recognition and acknowledgment of the human condition. Tears of catharsis on clearly recognizing a large part of myself in it.
How could I not see this as a favorite?
It might seem improbable that one should have so many favorites but that’s the way it is. How could I place one above another? And why would I want to?
They say life is a banquet. Or maybe they should say life is an endless buffet of favorite things.
Anway, here’s a favorite song from a favorite artist. This is Favorite from Neko Case. How could this not be a favorite of mine?
In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that’s why you’re not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not.
–Primo Levi, The Periodic Table (1975)
Love this passage from Primo Levi, the famed chemist/writer and Holocaust survivor, especially with the growing stench of fascism lingering in the air.
I think it succinctly sums up the strength of this country: fertility.
Not fertility in the human reproductive sense of the word. More like when analogizing the country to its soil and its ability to gain strength from diversity, absorbing everything beneficial from the impurities that are blended into it, becoming more fertile and productive.
Without this diversity and the ensuing impurities, the soil becomes sterile and fruitless.
A simple analogy, of course. That doesn’t take away from its point– that the conformity and purity that fascism demands are antithetical to the individual and to humanity.
The fascist society requires absolute obedience and compliance. They desire a homogenous population that is easily dictated to and compliant in their response. Purity and conformity.
There can be only one viewpoint, that of whoever stands at the head of the governing body. The government is then that person, subject to the whims, beliefs, and aims of that person alone.
That sounds pretty goddamn un-American to most folks. We are not a one-size-fits-all country. There is practically no single unifying factor to this nation except a belief that we can say whatever the hell we want to say whenever we want to say it, that we alone can set our own course and make the important decisions in our life, and that our individuality counts for something.
We don’t like being told we have to be something other than what we are. Or being told what we have to do.
We are a contrarian place in many ways. But that somehow works here. We like the idea of the underdog, the David versus Goliath story of the little guy taking on the bully. Right over might.
Fascism is the opposite of that. It is might over everything, even right. Goliath would smash David to bits in their telling of the story. Fascists hate individuality, anything that veers from the uniform lockstep of their march forward.
Clean and compliant.
But in the end, that’s not who we are as a nation. We are messy and loud, sometimes stupid and wrong. But that’s just because, in theory, we try to give everyone an opportunity to follow their dreams and imagination. That’s the fertile part of it. In that crazy, diverse mix we have often found something that works for us, something that suits most of us in a fair way.
We are at our best when we celebrate the individuals, the oddballs, the non-conformists. When we recognize and respect the many diverse voices and viewpoints, not the commands of one rich old white guy who has exploited every one of the many advantages he has been given in life.
The end of that final sentence– that’s why you’re not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not– might be the best argument for rejecting the current form of fascism being seen as a solution by a sizable number of folks.
Some will not have a problem adhering to what is expected of them but many, when seeing how they will be limited and controlled, will flinch at the thought. But it will be too late at that point. Once it has taken hold, it won’t let go except by the physical force of the people uniting against it.
And it will do any and everything to prevent that. That means sterilizing the soil through the elimination of any impurities.
We all know what that means. Some will scoff at the mere suggestion. Some will feel they are safe– they already fit the mold that others will be forced into. I fit that mold– an older white guy who has lived a life of being able to blend in easily on the surface, often going unnoticed. But I certainly wouldn’t feel safe because I know that in my heart of hearts that I will never be part of that group. In any way.
I don’t want to be the same nor do I want that for anyone else. I want people to be the singular beings they should be, to celebrate their differences while still respecting and appreciating the differences of others.
I want the fertile soil that America alone can offer.
That’s a lot this morning, I know. Thank you for sticking with me to this point today. I apologize if you came here to be soothed. I can only offer that this–clarifying where I stand– serves as a check valve, helping to release the pressure of my own anxieties. Holding it in only serves to make it worse.
Here’s an all-time favorite song from the Kinks that I last shared a couple of years back. It’s title really speaks to the subject at hand: I’m Not Like Everybody Else. This is one of my favorite versions, a performance from their 1994 live album, To the Bone.
Lotte Laserstein- Evening Over Potsdam (Abend Uber Potsdam) 1930
I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.
–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, 8 April 1816
With two weeks to go until the election, I am bouncing between hope and fear. The consequences for this election seem to have a magnitude far beyond any past presidential race and there are days when I feel as though there is a bit of hope and light that the American people will not roll willingly into an autocracy that will forever change our nation’s future and character.
But there are also darker days when we seem destined to that path, that too many of us don’t recognize the peril or think it won’t affect their lives in any way. They are like sleepwalkers trudging in the dark.
Jefferson’s words give me a tiny bit of comfort. Hopefully, that feeling of black foreboding that sometimes fills me these days will drift away behind us as we sail into the bright light of the future, never to bother us again.
These feelings reminded me of a German painting from the 1930’s. I wrote about it here back in 2014 and it feels like a fit for today. It is slightly edited from that earlier post.
While looking up some the artwork that was branded as being entarete kunst, or degenerate art, by the Nazis in 1930’s Germany, I came across a number of amazing works, many by well-known artists but some from artists who were unknown to me. Many of these were Germans who were well on their way to establishing big careers as important artists before the war and its buildup but never really regained their momentum after the war. That is, if they even survived.
Lotte Laserstein at work on “Evening Over Potsdam”
The painting shown above, Abend Über Potsdam, or Evening Over Potsdam, by German-born artist Lotte Laserstein , stopped me in my tracks when I stumbled across it. It is a large painting that speaks volumes with just a glance. At first, all I could see was a sort of classic Last Supper type arrangement as if it had been painted by Norman Rockwell while he was in the deepest depths of despair.
It was big and brilliant, over 43 inches high by 80 inches wide. The facial expressions and the body language evoke a mood that is beautiful and tragic at once, perhaps filled with the foreboding of what was to come for these people and that city and that nation.
Perhaps the dog, a sleeping German Shepherd, is symbolic of the German people being unaware of what is ahead, an omen of what might be lost when the shepherd is not vigilant.
This was painted in 1930, just as the Nazis were beginning to make their fateful move to take over the German government. I can only that imagine someone with the keen perceptive powers of an artist such as Laserstein could easily imagine what might be coming for the German people in those dark clouds massing over that German city.
Laserstein grew up in Prussia and was trained as an artist in the creative whirlwind that was post- WW I Berlin. Art in all forms was flourishing, fueled by the desperation and fatalism of living in a post-war world. There was change in the air. Women were becoming bolder and more empowered, and modernity was pushing away the conventions of the past. Laserstein embraced this life, typifying the image of the single, self-sufficient New Woman. The painting shown to the right, her Im Gasthaus (In the Restaurant), is a great example of that time, showing a single woman with bobbed hair and fashionable clothes sitting alone in a restaurant. The hands are strong and the expression is pensive, thoughtful. It’s a great piece and a wonderful document of the time.
Laserstein was gaining stature at this point but in 1933 was marked as being Jewish and her career began to stall in Germany. In 1937, the same year as the famous Entarete Kunst exhibit put on by the Nazis where they displayed and mocked artwork labeled as being degenerate then destroyed much of it (a story worthy of another post), Laserstein was invited to have a show in Sweden. She traveled there for the exhibit and stayed until her death in 1993.
After the war she basically fell off the radar, although she was active until the end of her life. However, her work after the beginning of World War II lacked the fire of her earlier Berlin work. It was good work but it was less full, less expressive. No doubt the war had sapped away a great part of her. Her earlier work was rediscovered in her late 80’s and had a retrospective at a London gallery and in 2003, ten years after her death, she returned to Berlin, in the form of her paintings, with a large retrospective.
There were many victims of that horrible time. Lotte Laserstein survived and did produce work for half a century but was a victim, nonetheless. As with many surviving victims, there was something, some part of themselves, lost. We will never know fully where her work might have taken her without the war. As it is, she has left us some wonderful work to appreciate.
And in Evening Over Potsdam, to serve as a warning to stay forever vigilant.
To each his suff’rings: all are men, Condemn’d alike to groan, The tender for another’s pain; Th’ unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.
–Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742)
There was a lot I wanted to write this morning. I was up extra early, like 4:30, and my mind was racing. But after trudging to the studio and sitting here in the dark with only the laptop’s light in my face, I decided I didn’t want to say anything.
If I did, it would most likely be unproductive so why bother?
Instead, I am just going to sit here and watch as the morning light breaks through the trees. Maybe just let things be for a bit. Maybe listen to some music, something that will slow me down, something that soothe.
Here’s a favorite, Riviera Paradise, that can achieve just that. It’s from the late great Stevie Ray Vaughan. Hard to believe he’s been gone for 34 years now.
You can sit in with me to listen, if you’d like. Just keep quiet, okay?
I said: “Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!” He was hilarious: “That’s beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it’s our game: that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.”
–Horace Traubel, conversation with Walt Whitman (4 July 1889)
I wrote recently about the anxiety I have been experiencing from my concerns over the upcoming election and its implications. One would think a good way to alleviate the stress would be to divert one’s attention somehow, maybe watching a leisurely game of baseball.
One would be wrong.
The NY Yankees defeated the feisty Cleveland Guardians last night to move on to this year’s World Series, winning four of five games in the best of seven series. That is kind of misleading, making it sound like they had an easy time with the Guardians.
It was anything but that.
After winning the first two games in New York, the series moved to Cleveland for the next three games. Each of the three games there were absolute classics. Two were decided in the 10th inning, including last night when Juan Soto hit a decisive three-run homer for the Yankees to drop the final curtain on the Guardian’s season.
Each game was tight and stressful, the outcome of each coming as the result of one or two plays. A great pitch. A bobbled ball. A long and loud home run. The Guardians could have easily won all three. They certainly deserved to win. The stress of watching these last three games was extreme. I took to doomscrolling political posts on social media during the games– it produced less angst!
But in the end, the Yankees prevailed, much to the dismay of Guardians fans and Yankee-haters everywhere. You might think that I’d be happy. I am, of course. However, now the next two weeks will have the stress of what promises to be a very difficult World Series stacked on top of the gut churning anxiety of the election.
I don’t know if my gut can take it. I can only hope that in a little over two weeks that I will be able to celebrate, one way or another. It might be sacrilege to other Yankee fans, but I would easily trade a World Series victory for the Yanks for an abject beatdown at the ballot box for that other New Yorker.
Though a humiliating loss for him and a Yankee victory would be the best hurrah of all.
Okay. For this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection, I am going for some real stress relief. This is one of my favorite compositions, Gymnopédie #1, from Erik Satie. I may have to listen to it a lot over the next couple of weeks…
Redtree Times 