The killer last line here is only the middle of the linked entire column.
"In the Niagara of words spoken and written about the Obamas' trip to Copenhagen," says George F. Will, "too few have been devoted to the words they spoke there. Their separate speeches to the International Olympic Committee were so dreadful, and in such a characteristic way, that they might be symptomatic of something that has serious implications for American governance.
Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about ... themselves. Although the working of the committee's mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago's bid for the 2016 games on aesthetic grounds ...
In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns "I" or "me" 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences was sufficient to convey the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago's case compelling.
In 2008, Obama carried the three congressional districts that contain Northern California's Silicon Valley with 73.1, 69.6 and 68.4 percent of the vote. Surely the Valley could continue its service to him by designing software for his speechwriters' computers that would delete those personal pronouns, replacing them with the word "sauerkraut" to underscore the antic nature of their excessive appearances.
And — this will be trickier — the software should delete the most egregious cliches sprinkled around by the tin-eared employees in the White House speechwriting shop. The president told the Olympic committee that: "At this defining moment," a moment "when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations" in "this ever-shrinking world," he aspires to "forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world."
Good grief. The memory of man runneth not to a moment that escaped being declared "defining" — declared such by someone seeking to inflate himself by inflating it. Also, enough already with the "shrinking" world, which has been so described at least since Magellan set sail, and probably before that. And by the way, the "fate" of -- to pick a nation at random — Chile is not really in any meaningful sense "inextricably linked" to that of, say, Chad. ..."
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Why You Need to Start Talking to Yourself More
Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, pp. 20-21.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, pp. 20-21.
Sorry!
A terrific piece from Boundless webzine. I am more and more struck by how it is almost impossible to keep good things in my mind if I follow current culture, on the radio, on the screen at the gym, at the checkout. "Whatever is good, pure, noble... Think on these things." To follow that advice you have to be a bit extreme by normal standards.
SORRY, SORRY, SORRY.
Kanye West says he's sorry. Serena Williams says she's sorry. Joe Wilson says he's sorry.
Are any of them? Really?
Actually, maybe. It's tempting to speculate on the individual cases. But let's not. Let's focus on the big picture.
I gotta say, I hate these ritual public apologies. I know, on one level, that they're necessary. Public sins call for public apologies: A society that doesn't require them is a shameless society. But I still hate them, for a couple of reasons.
(1) They generate so much cynicism. We all know that these people all have to apologize, or else. Even the really sincere, tearful kind can't be trusted, because we know we're listening to someone who must work hard to be seen as sorry. Maybe he really is. But how do we know?
(2) They invite us to spend time dwelling on other people's sins and judging the sincerity of other people's repentance. It's a captivating spectacle, and we have a hard time tearing ourselves away even if we try. Often we don't try very hard.
I've come to think the way to look at these things — both the scandals and apologies — is to try, very hard, not to look at them.
In some cases, maybe you can't look away completely: Voters have to weigh who to support, parents have to weigh who their kids can watch. Even then, don't dwell on celebrity sins or repentance more than you have to. You've got enough sins of your own to repent for every day. I sure do.
Besides, we've got better things to think about.
© 2009 Matt Kaufman
SORRY, SORRY, SORRY.
Kanye West says he's sorry. Serena Williams says she's sorry. Joe Wilson says he's sorry.
Are any of them? Really?
Actually, maybe. It's tempting to speculate on the individual cases. But let's not. Let's focus on the big picture.
I gotta say, I hate these ritual public apologies. I know, on one level, that they're necessary. Public sins call for public apologies: A society that doesn't require them is a shameless society. But I still hate them, for a couple of reasons.
(1) They generate so much cynicism. We all know that these people all have to apologize, or else. Even the really sincere, tearful kind can't be trusted, because we know we're listening to someone who must work hard to be seen as sorry. Maybe he really is. But how do we know?
(2) They invite us to spend time dwelling on other people's sins and judging the sincerity of other people's repentance. It's a captivating spectacle, and we have a hard time tearing ourselves away even if we try. Often we don't try very hard.
I've come to think the way to look at these things — both the scandals and apologies — is to try, very hard, not to look at them.
In some cases, maybe you can't look away completely: Voters have to weigh who to support, parents have to weigh who their kids can watch. Even then, don't dwell on celebrity sins or repentance more than you have to. You've got enough sins of your own to repent for every day. I sure do.
Besides, we've got better things to think about.
© 2009 Matt Kaufman
Nobelitics
By Victor Davis Hanson
October 10, 2009
Norway is a tiny country that was born lucky. It is weak and defenseless (and was quickly overrun in World War II [while neighboring, neutral Sweden sold the Third Reich 40% of its iron ore, that went for everything from Tiger tanks to kill Americans to the ovens at Auschwitz—with free shipping across the Baltic included as a favor]. In the late 1940s it would have been Finlandized during the Cold War, if not for American-led NATO. And the world’s largest military is still pledged to its defense, in case any of the nations, to whose icons it bestows awards, some day decides to send terrorists or nukes its way
Second, it sits on or near enough oil to allow what is otherwise a rather insignificant country to be the wealthiest per capita oil producer in the world, and enjoy the influence that many in the Gulf have grown accustomed to. Throw in minerals, natural gas, timber, and fish and the nation sits on a bonanza of natural wealth. No wonder there are philosophers who ponder how to dispense the largess and absenteeism is a national crisis (one receives almost ad infinitum the same cash whether “sick” at home or well on the job). The population of under 5 million is largely homogeneous (90% Nordic), and is thus stable, and both rich and safe beyond its wildest dreams. It does not border a Third World country; “difference” and the “other”—even with recent Islamic immigration—is still defined as speaking Swedish or Danish.
Hollywood Nation
In other words, Norway has the leisure to be utopian, and cannot quite understand why other countries are not as liberal as it has proven. So Norway loves to give award to all sorts of right-thinking frauds (Menchu), scoundrels (Elbaradei), terrorists (Arafat), Stalinists (Le Doc Tho), Elmer Gantrys (Jimmy Carter) and hucksters (Gore)— as it sits in judgment of others from Lala land.
Remember, though, the Norwegians privately would not like to live under Central American communism of the Ortega brand, or right next to nutty nuclear Iran, or have Palestinian terrorists on their borders, or in general live the real life that the nation sanctimoniously advocates in the abstract. It sees what happens to neighboring Denmark’s cartoonists when they exercise free speech. It once saw what Neville Chamberlain wrought for its own neighborhood.
Norway is, in other words, the Hollywood nation. Imagine it is as the son or daughter of a movie star, one who grew up in Malibu, and feels so terribly about it that he lectures the U.S. about everything from global warming to George Bush’s assorted sins—confident that he will never have to work at Ace Hardware, and never have to live near South Central LA. That’ sums up Norway.
T-Ball Awards
Effort and intention, not achievement, matter to these pious Europeans. We should honor preseason favorites, not 20-game winners; praise dazzling book proposals, not best sellers; gush about on-the shelf Pentagon plans not battle victories. Don’t dare end the Cold War, or save millions in Africa from AIDs, or get rid of Milosevic; but most certainly do dare to convince the world that the Muslims jump-started the Renaissance. For that brave assertion, global peace will surely follow.
Norway on the Potomac
More seriously, the Obama Prize represents two recent larger Nobel trends: 1) an effort to curtail American foreign policy in favor of international deference (as in the case of rewarding Carter and Gore for their defamation of Bush in their opposition to Iraq); 2) a general disconnect from accomplishment in favor of leftist intentions, as in the case of Elbaradei or Rogaberta Menchu who accomplished essentially nothing (and spoke or wrote about that nothing in suspect fashion), but were a hit among international Western elites as authentically anti-Western non-Westerns.
Anyone who has taught in the university over the last thirty years has witnessed dozens of mini-sorts of Nobel Prizes each year handed out to faculty on the basis of what they represent or said rather than accomplishment; but it is still remarkable to see such postmodernism hit the world stage, where reality is virtual and constructed on language and expressed intent.
Think of the tiny Norway’s Machiavellianism: A utopian American President is now supported for his rhetoric—and yet also sent a signal that brave new Nobel Prize laureates simply don’t support Israel, pressure Iran, stay in Afghanistan or Iraq, or keep open Guantanamo. It is as if that Oslo is saying ‘our man in Washington’ is, well, now really ‘our man in Washington.’
The vision of Norway is now to be the aspiration of the world, albeit with the understanding that in the era of cap-and-trade someone will still buy Norway’s oil to power their carbon-foot-printing cars, and its timber for their ungreen homes, and still offer icky planes, rockets, nukes, and carriers to ensure Norway is safe in a fashion that it was not sixty five years ago. Quisling is still its chief loan word to the English Language.
It’s Your Surge, Mr. President
OK, Mr. President, here’s your call. Your former bad, optional, get out by March 2008, unnecessary, “the surge in not working” war in Iraq is, mirabile dictu, about over. It’s quiet; fewer soldiers are dying there per month than die on average from illness or accident elsewhere in non-combat theaters.
But the defeated enemy has now refocused its attention on your good, necessary, must win war–one that you praised all during the campaign. Yet, Dr. Zawahiri senses hesitation among us the winners, and renewed zeal among his legions of losers. He wants to recoup the tarnished brand of radical Islam, and even up the score, by taking Kabul for losing Baghdad.
You recently announced that your new strategy was “finalized”, and, indeed, proved that by appointing your man in Kabul, General McChrystal. Now both your strategy and your team are in place, but need more troops to do in Afghanistan what we accomplished in Iraq. Your hot pursuing into Pakistan likewise would require additional reserves.
Still, the call is much easier for you than what faced the evil Bush: a) your Republican opposition is mostly on your side, not demonizing your general as a traitor (cf. General Betray Us) as the left once did in 2006-7; (b) your polls (50%) are higher than those of Bush in late 2006 (35-40%); you are coming off an incredible victory in Iraq, Bush was facing two ongoing wars, which were being written off by the pundits who used to chest-thump for both; and (c) the American people are more likely to support escalation (ca. 45%) than they once did the surge (ca. 30%). (I know that, since I have never gotten more hate mail than in late 2006 / early 2007 for politely suggesting the surge was necessary, would work, and would save lives, both ours and Iraqis.)
But can Noble Peace laureates still escalate in the short term to win a war, save thousands of Afghan lives from a Taliban take-over and ensure that “evil-doers” do not plan another 9/11 from safe havens? Will you—or tiny Norway—determine U.S. foreign policy? Is the medal around your neck a shiny medallion of honor or an albatross sent from a wily bestower?
Some of us had doubts about your ‘let me at ‘em’ stump speeches, and ‘go into Pakistan’ tough talk in 2008. I felt that you were posturing and politicizing the war, given your Democratic opponents’ suggestions that you were weak on national security. As I wrote then, I worried that the goddess Nemesis was watching as you sounded like Patton on Afghanistan and Chamberlain on Iraq—and that an accounting might come due once the theaters were reversed. And so they have, and so the tab is now due.
Is it to make the Norway angry, the elite international community “troubled”, the Left at home “ambiguous” or to finish the job and secure Afghanistan against the odds as we once did in Korea and Iraq—but not in Vietnam?
Do the Right Thing?
It is not an easy call, either politically or militarily. But still the choice is one far easier than the prior surge—given our unprecedented strength, the ability of liberal Presidents to calm Pavlovian anti-war outbursts, and the fact that we are fighting a nasty form of fascism, not a boutique sort of communism that appeals to the ignorant. (A cap-and-trade, gay-marriage, anti-American may find an Ortega or Castro romantic in a way he does not bin Laden or Zawahiri.)
So you can (1) get out, watch a general slaughter and boat-person-like overland exodus of the doomed; blame Bush, borrowing the language you employed against Iraq in 2007-8—and enjoy the acclaim accorded to laureates with troubled brows and bitten lips;
Or (2) you can sort of, kinda, maybe, maybe not, vote present, and continue as we are now, hoping we don’t lose as we don’t win. It’s the LBJ choice, counting on the sympathetic New York Times and NBC and Newsweek for a bit longer not to turn on you, and so will ignore the ‘tolerable” monthly body count;
Or (3) you can offend your liberal base, snub you sponsors in Oslo, and send in another 40,000. That would mean Churchillian talk of winning, a visit to the theater, and a FDR-like encouragement of the troops.
You might have to define the Taliban for what it is—a fascistic sort of murderous religious zealots—and lay out the objectives at hand: freedom for the Afghan people to govern themselves, with a message to radical Islam that never again will they plot the destruction of the US from a safe haven.
1-2—or-3?
If you pick the easy 1, your friends will praise you not as expedient, but “brave”, “principled, and “daring.”
The even easier choice 2 ensures you grudging report, more disdain for Bush, and a neutral issue that neither hurts nor helps you in 2010. You may still do the old “Bush did it” to me thing and staunch the bleeding. Your “ordeal” and “agony” will earn Newsweek essays daily, and photos of you walking troubled and alone in the Rose garden.
But 3? That offends both your base, the Europeans, and even the public—and helps only the soldiers out on the frontier, sometimes outnumbered and outgunned. They are fighting and dying for a vision of freedom and security that they once took as sincere when they landed in that godforsaken country to fight godforsaken enemies from the 7th century. Do 3 and you will be surprised at the number of us who did not vote for you, but who will support your decision—even as casualties mount in the short term from the surge, and those who voted for you turn on you.
It is not easy, and a lot harder than campaigning. But that’s what Presidents do—they are trashed while they are in office, and judged fairly only when they are retired or beyond.
October 10, 2009
Norway is a tiny country that was born lucky. It is weak and defenseless (and was quickly overrun in World War II [while neighboring, neutral Sweden sold the Third Reich 40% of its iron ore, that went for everything from Tiger tanks to kill Americans to the ovens at Auschwitz—with free shipping across the Baltic included as a favor]. In the late 1940s it would have been Finlandized during the Cold War, if not for American-led NATO. And the world’s largest military is still pledged to its defense, in case any of the nations, to whose icons it bestows awards, some day decides to send terrorists or nukes its way
Second, it sits on or near enough oil to allow what is otherwise a rather insignificant country to be the wealthiest per capita oil producer in the world, and enjoy the influence that many in the Gulf have grown accustomed to. Throw in minerals, natural gas, timber, and fish and the nation sits on a bonanza of natural wealth. No wonder there are philosophers who ponder how to dispense the largess and absenteeism is a national crisis (one receives almost ad infinitum the same cash whether “sick” at home or well on the job). The population of under 5 million is largely homogeneous (90% Nordic), and is thus stable, and both rich and safe beyond its wildest dreams. It does not border a Third World country; “difference” and the “other”—even with recent Islamic immigration—is still defined as speaking Swedish or Danish.
Hollywood Nation
In other words, Norway has the leisure to be utopian, and cannot quite understand why other countries are not as liberal as it has proven. So Norway loves to give award to all sorts of right-thinking frauds (Menchu), scoundrels (Elbaradei), terrorists (Arafat), Stalinists (Le Doc Tho), Elmer Gantrys (Jimmy Carter) and hucksters (Gore)— as it sits in judgment of others from Lala land.
Remember, though, the Norwegians privately would not like to live under Central American communism of the Ortega brand, or right next to nutty nuclear Iran, or have Palestinian terrorists on their borders, or in general live the real life that the nation sanctimoniously advocates in the abstract. It sees what happens to neighboring Denmark’s cartoonists when they exercise free speech. It once saw what Neville Chamberlain wrought for its own neighborhood.
Norway is, in other words, the Hollywood nation. Imagine it is as the son or daughter of a movie star, one who grew up in Malibu, and feels so terribly about it that he lectures the U.S. about everything from global warming to George Bush’s assorted sins—confident that he will never have to work at Ace Hardware, and never have to live near South Central LA. That’ sums up Norway.
T-Ball Awards
Effort and intention, not achievement, matter to these pious Europeans. We should honor preseason favorites, not 20-game winners; praise dazzling book proposals, not best sellers; gush about on-the shelf Pentagon plans not battle victories. Don’t dare end the Cold War, or save millions in Africa from AIDs, or get rid of Milosevic; but most certainly do dare to convince the world that the Muslims jump-started the Renaissance. For that brave assertion, global peace will surely follow.
Norway on the Potomac
More seriously, the Obama Prize represents two recent larger Nobel trends: 1) an effort to curtail American foreign policy in favor of international deference (as in the case of rewarding Carter and Gore for their defamation of Bush in their opposition to Iraq); 2) a general disconnect from accomplishment in favor of leftist intentions, as in the case of Elbaradei or Rogaberta Menchu who accomplished essentially nothing (and spoke or wrote about that nothing in suspect fashion), but were a hit among international Western elites as authentically anti-Western non-Westerns.
Anyone who has taught in the university over the last thirty years has witnessed dozens of mini-sorts of Nobel Prizes each year handed out to faculty on the basis of what they represent or said rather than accomplishment; but it is still remarkable to see such postmodernism hit the world stage, where reality is virtual and constructed on language and expressed intent.
Think of the tiny Norway’s Machiavellianism: A utopian American President is now supported for his rhetoric—and yet also sent a signal that brave new Nobel Prize laureates simply don’t support Israel, pressure Iran, stay in Afghanistan or Iraq, or keep open Guantanamo. It is as if that Oslo is saying ‘our man in Washington’ is, well, now really ‘our man in Washington.’
The vision of Norway is now to be the aspiration of the world, albeit with the understanding that in the era of cap-and-trade someone will still buy Norway’s oil to power their carbon-foot-printing cars, and its timber for their ungreen homes, and still offer icky planes, rockets, nukes, and carriers to ensure Norway is safe in a fashion that it was not sixty five years ago. Quisling is still its chief loan word to the English Language.
It’s Your Surge, Mr. President
OK, Mr. President, here’s your call. Your former bad, optional, get out by March 2008, unnecessary, “the surge in not working” war in Iraq is, mirabile dictu, about over. It’s quiet; fewer soldiers are dying there per month than die on average from illness or accident elsewhere in non-combat theaters.
But the defeated enemy has now refocused its attention on your good, necessary, must win war–one that you praised all during the campaign. Yet, Dr. Zawahiri senses hesitation among us the winners, and renewed zeal among his legions of losers. He wants to recoup the tarnished brand of radical Islam, and even up the score, by taking Kabul for losing Baghdad.
You recently announced that your new strategy was “finalized”, and, indeed, proved that by appointing your man in Kabul, General McChrystal. Now both your strategy and your team are in place, but need more troops to do in Afghanistan what we accomplished in Iraq. Your hot pursuing into Pakistan likewise would require additional reserves.
Still, the call is much easier for you than what faced the evil Bush: a) your Republican opposition is mostly on your side, not demonizing your general as a traitor (cf. General Betray Us) as the left once did in 2006-7; (b) your polls (50%) are higher than those of Bush in late 2006 (35-40%); you are coming off an incredible victory in Iraq, Bush was facing two ongoing wars, which were being written off by the pundits who used to chest-thump for both; and (c) the American people are more likely to support escalation (ca. 45%) than they once did the surge (ca. 30%). (I know that, since I have never gotten more hate mail than in late 2006 / early 2007 for politely suggesting the surge was necessary, would work, and would save lives, both ours and Iraqis.)
But can Noble Peace laureates still escalate in the short term to win a war, save thousands of Afghan lives from a Taliban take-over and ensure that “evil-doers” do not plan another 9/11 from safe havens? Will you—or tiny Norway—determine U.S. foreign policy? Is the medal around your neck a shiny medallion of honor or an albatross sent from a wily bestower?
Some of us had doubts about your ‘let me at ‘em’ stump speeches, and ‘go into Pakistan’ tough talk in 2008. I felt that you were posturing and politicizing the war, given your Democratic opponents’ suggestions that you were weak on national security. As I wrote then, I worried that the goddess Nemesis was watching as you sounded like Patton on Afghanistan and Chamberlain on Iraq—and that an accounting might come due once the theaters were reversed. And so they have, and so the tab is now due.
Is it to make the Norway angry, the elite international community “troubled”, the Left at home “ambiguous” or to finish the job and secure Afghanistan against the odds as we once did in Korea and Iraq—but not in Vietnam?
Do the Right Thing?
It is not an easy call, either politically or militarily. But still the choice is one far easier than the prior surge—given our unprecedented strength, the ability of liberal Presidents to calm Pavlovian anti-war outbursts, and the fact that we are fighting a nasty form of fascism, not a boutique sort of communism that appeals to the ignorant. (A cap-and-trade, gay-marriage, anti-American may find an Ortega or Castro romantic in a way he does not bin Laden or Zawahiri.)
So you can (1) get out, watch a general slaughter and boat-person-like overland exodus of the doomed; blame Bush, borrowing the language you employed against Iraq in 2007-8—and enjoy the acclaim accorded to laureates with troubled brows and bitten lips;
Or (2) you can sort of, kinda, maybe, maybe not, vote present, and continue as we are now, hoping we don’t lose as we don’t win. It’s the LBJ choice, counting on the sympathetic New York Times and NBC and Newsweek for a bit longer not to turn on you, and so will ignore the ‘tolerable” monthly body count;
Or (3) you can offend your liberal base, snub you sponsors in Oslo, and send in another 40,000. That would mean Churchillian talk of winning, a visit to the theater, and a FDR-like encouragement of the troops.
You might have to define the Taliban for what it is—a fascistic sort of murderous religious zealots—and lay out the objectives at hand: freedom for the Afghan people to govern themselves, with a message to radical Islam that never again will they plot the destruction of the US from a safe haven.
1-2—or-3?
If you pick the easy 1, your friends will praise you not as expedient, but “brave”, “principled, and “daring.”
The even easier choice 2 ensures you grudging report, more disdain for Bush, and a neutral issue that neither hurts nor helps you in 2010. You may still do the old “Bush did it” to me thing and staunch the bleeding. Your “ordeal” and “agony” will earn Newsweek essays daily, and photos of you walking troubled and alone in the Rose garden.
But 3? That offends both your base, the Europeans, and even the public—and helps only the soldiers out on the frontier, sometimes outnumbered and outgunned. They are fighting and dying for a vision of freedom and security that they once took as sincere when they landed in that godforsaken country to fight godforsaken enemies from the 7th century. Do 3 and you will be surprised at the number of us who did not vote for you, but who will support your decision—even as casualties mount in the short term from the surge, and those who voted for you turn on you.
It is not easy, and a lot harder than campaigning. But that’s what Presidents do—they are trashed while they are in office, and judged fairly only when they are retired or beyond.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The controversial founding of Columbus Day
"One may not think of the month of daylight savings time, breast cancer awareness, and Oktoberfest as particularly controversial, but beneath the surface of several Catholic holidays in October are truths and memories that bring a maelstrom of protest from the modern world," writes Michael P. Foley in "The Controversial Holidays of October" (Latin Mass magazine, Summer 2009). In a previous article, Foley already discussed one of these: the Feast of the Holy Rosary's commemoration of the defeat of the Turks at Lepanto (October 7). In the current issue, he turns to two more "October surprises" — Columbus Day (October 12 or the second Monday in October) and All Hallows' Eve (October 31). Here we limit our attention to Columbus Day:
I should probably be given the stake for discussing a secular holiday in a column on the liturgical year, but Columbus Day merits our attention for several reasons. First the holiday owes its existence to the efforts of U.S. Catholic citizens, particularly the Knights of Columbus. In the 1900s the Knights lobbied state legislatures throughout the country to make the anniversary of America's discovery a holiday; not only did most states acquiesce, but the federal government eventually did as well, first as a national holiday in 1937 and then as a legal holiday (on which banks close) in 1971. Though they were instituted as a fraternal benefits organization, the Knights of Columbus were also keen to dispel anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States. One way to meet this goal was to emphasize America's debt to Catholic figures, starting with its papist discoverer. Not coincidentally, this fraternity, founded by an Irish priest, was named not after Saint Patrick but after the daring Italian who reached the shores of our hemisphere on a Spanish ship.
The Knights' strategy of claiming Columbus as a most Catholic of heroes was also a well-aimed counterattack. American historians had tried mightily to turn the famous seafarer into an Enlightenment figure, a secular saint championing scientific progress in the face of a superstitious Church still clinging to outdated ideas of a "flat earth." As it turns out, Columbus had nothing to do with the flat-earth debate; the story was invented out of whole cloth by Washington Irving in 1828 and later used as anti-Catholic propaganda to "prove" that that clerical religion was inherently hostile to rational inquiry. Queen Isabella's geographical advisers knew the globe was globular; they rejected Columbus' proposal because they had a much more accurate grasp of it's massive circumference, rightly concluding that his plan to reach China via a western route in a matter of weeks was unsound.
Given the prevalence of the anti-Catholic flat-earth myth, it is not surprising that Pope Leo XIII celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' maiden voyage with these stirring (and perhaps overly generous) remarks:
But there is, besides, another reason, a unique one, why We consider that this immortal achievement should be recalled by Us with memorial words. For Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum ... it is indubitable that the Catholic faith was [his] strongest motive ... so that for this reason also the whole human race owes not a little to the Church.
Take that, Know Nothings!
Pall Over the Holiday
Ironically, after winning the battle for Columbus Day, many Catholics today would prefer not to be associated with either the man or his holiday. While most Latin American countries commemorate the date of Columbus' discovery as the Día de la Raza (the Day of the Race, that is, the day the races met), Hugo Chávez's Venezuela observes observes Día de la Resistencia Indigena (Day of Indigenous Resistance). Similarly, Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who made headlines for calling the victims of September 11 "little Eichmans," has led the American Indian Movement's protests against the Columbus Day in Denver.
What Chavez and Churchill, in their characteristically understated ways, are alluding to the bleak events that followed Columbus' discovery. Despite the friendliness of the natives, Columbus' men initiated hostilities with them that culminated in a massacre, while Columbus himself enslaved a thousand Indians and instituted the repartimiento system that led to the serfdom of countless others for years to come. Combined with a wave of unintentionally imported diseases the local immune system had never encountered before, such treatment quickly decimated the Native American population.
Assessing Columbus
What, then, should we make of Columbus in light of his spotty record? I suggest five things.
First, it is clear that Columbus was not a good administrator on the land, and his incompetence led to cruelty. In fairness, however, before his undisciplined men destroyed relations with the native Taino or Arawaks, his goal was to protect them from the cannibalistic Caribs (one of the most savage peoples in the Americas) who were fast advancing. Indeed the Caribs remind us that the first step in assessing the Columbian legacy is overcoming any assumption that either side in the conflict has a monopoly on evil.
Second, it is important to remember that many of Columbus' contemporaries also deplored his deeds. Queen Isabel certainly did, which is why Columbus' third return to Spain was in chains, and Spanish law, thanks in large part to the Church's teaching about the full humanity of Native Americans, consistently condemned the actions of rapacious colonists. This is significant, for no other civilization has shown such a capacity for healthy self-criticism as the Christian. Indeed, the shrill condemnations of a Chavez or a Churchill are possible only because of the tradition of public self-examination first developed in Catholic societies.
Third, despite tragic costs, the benefits of European contract with the New World did far more good than harm. This is particularly true in the realm of evangelization. Columbus' genuine zeal to convert all peoples to Christianity should be commended rather than condemned. To depict all New World conversions as forced and foreign is, ironically, to patronize people of color, who were and are every bit as capable of seeing the beauty, truth, and goodness of the Gospel as their unwashed invaders.
Fourth, despite his flaws Columbus was a devout Catholic who, as Pope Leo XIII noted, was motivated by his Faith. His favorite prayers was Jesus cum Maria sit nobis in via -- "may Jesus, along with Mary, be with us on the way." Columbus chose to depart into the unknown the morning after August 2, the feast of Our Lady of the Angels, so that his men could celebrate this Marian feast with their families; he even made sure that they received confession and Holy Communion in order to obtain the plenary indulgence available that day. Columbus' prayers were apparently answered: his tiny fleet reached land on October 12, the day after the Feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin.
Finally, Columbus Day praises not Columbus' explorations on land but his exploits at sea. We know that a single-minded man convinced the monarchs of Spain to fund an extremely hazardous journey with little likelihood of return, and that he pulled it off, not once but four times. We know that he was exceptionally courageous and resourceful, and we know that he was an outstanding seaman. There is nothing wrong with raising a glass to genuine courage and persistence, as long as one does not go on to use these to excuse other crimes and misdemeanors. I wonder if much of the animus against Columbus today really springs from a contemporary disdain for honor that would like to purge manhood of its chivalry and daring. As the historian William Carroll notes, "It is right to criticize the failings [of heroes], but wrong to deny their greatness and the inspiration they can give."
And if there is any note of sorrow or regret to be struck on this otherwise celebratory occasion, it should not be fore the exceptional evil of the white man or the Catholic faith but for the universal darkness in man's heart so aptly explained by the doctrine of original sin. Yet, thanks be to God, this spiritual blight is never allowed to dwarf the triumph of the Cross, which providentially uses both vessels of honor and dishonor to meet its goals.
What to Do
How should one celebrate Columbus Day? In 1892 Pope Leo decreed that the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' discovery should be marked with a Solemn High Mass of the Most Holy Trinity either on October 12 or on the following Sunday. (This was mandatory for Spain, Italy, and the two Americas, and recommended for the rest of the world, since "it is fitting that an even from which all have derived benefit should be piously and gratefully commemorated by all"). Certainly Mass would be a good idea today as well, along with a fervent prayer for the spiritual future of both the Old and New Worlds. And all of the documents I have cited are worth reading for more information on Christopher Columbus.
Perhaps one could even enjoy these readings with one of the items rumored to have returned with Columbus on his first voyage: tobacco. I would recommend a pipe for the occasion, as a cigarette is far too lowly a thing for honoring either the noble savage or the noble explorer. As for food, one could turn to any of the nationalities involved: American, Italian, Spanish, or even Caribbean. And for the little ones, miniature Niñas, Santa Marias, and Pintas can be made out of walnut shells, toothpick masts, and paper sails and used to adorn a cake or have a race in the bathtub.
I should probably be given the stake for discussing a secular holiday in a column on the liturgical year, but Columbus Day merits our attention for several reasons. First the holiday owes its existence to the efforts of U.S. Catholic citizens, particularly the Knights of Columbus. In the 1900s the Knights lobbied state legislatures throughout the country to make the anniversary of America's discovery a holiday; not only did most states acquiesce, but the federal government eventually did as well, first as a national holiday in 1937 and then as a legal holiday (on which banks close) in 1971. Though they were instituted as a fraternal benefits organization, the Knights of Columbus were also keen to dispel anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States. One way to meet this goal was to emphasize America's debt to Catholic figures, starting with its papist discoverer. Not coincidentally, this fraternity, founded by an Irish priest, was named not after Saint Patrick but after the daring Italian who reached the shores of our hemisphere on a Spanish ship.
The Knights' strategy of claiming Columbus as a most Catholic of heroes was also a well-aimed counterattack. American historians had tried mightily to turn the famous seafarer into an Enlightenment figure, a secular saint championing scientific progress in the face of a superstitious Church still clinging to outdated ideas of a "flat earth." As it turns out, Columbus had nothing to do with the flat-earth debate; the story was invented out of whole cloth by Washington Irving in 1828 and later used as anti-Catholic propaganda to "prove" that that clerical religion was inherently hostile to rational inquiry. Queen Isabella's geographical advisers knew the globe was globular; they rejected Columbus' proposal because they had a much more accurate grasp of it's massive circumference, rightly concluding that his plan to reach China via a western route in a matter of weeks was unsound.
Given the prevalence of the anti-Catholic flat-earth myth, it is not surprising that Pope Leo XIII celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' maiden voyage with these stirring (and perhaps overly generous) remarks:
But there is, besides, another reason, a unique one, why We consider that this immortal achievement should be recalled by Us with memorial words. For Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum ... it is indubitable that the Catholic faith was [his] strongest motive ... so that for this reason also the whole human race owes not a little to the Church.
Take that, Know Nothings!
Pall Over the Holiday
Ironically, after winning the battle for Columbus Day, many Catholics today would prefer not to be associated with either the man or his holiday. While most Latin American countries commemorate the date of Columbus' discovery as the Día de la Raza (the Day of the Race, that is, the day the races met), Hugo Chávez's Venezuela observes observes Día de la Resistencia Indigena (Day of Indigenous Resistance). Similarly, Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who made headlines for calling the victims of September 11 "little Eichmans," has led the American Indian Movement's protests against the Columbus Day in Denver.
What Chavez and Churchill, in their characteristically understated ways, are alluding to the bleak events that followed Columbus' discovery. Despite the friendliness of the natives, Columbus' men initiated hostilities with them that culminated in a massacre, while Columbus himself enslaved a thousand Indians and instituted the repartimiento system that led to the serfdom of countless others for years to come. Combined with a wave of unintentionally imported diseases the local immune system had never encountered before, such treatment quickly decimated the Native American population.
Assessing Columbus
What, then, should we make of Columbus in light of his spotty record? I suggest five things.
First, it is clear that Columbus was not a good administrator on the land, and his incompetence led to cruelty. In fairness, however, before his undisciplined men destroyed relations with the native Taino or Arawaks, his goal was to protect them from the cannibalistic Caribs (one of the most savage peoples in the Americas) who were fast advancing. Indeed the Caribs remind us that the first step in assessing the Columbian legacy is overcoming any assumption that either side in the conflict has a monopoly on evil.
Second, it is important to remember that many of Columbus' contemporaries also deplored his deeds. Queen Isabel certainly did, which is why Columbus' third return to Spain was in chains, and Spanish law, thanks in large part to the Church's teaching about the full humanity of Native Americans, consistently condemned the actions of rapacious colonists. This is significant, for no other civilization has shown such a capacity for healthy self-criticism as the Christian. Indeed, the shrill condemnations of a Chavez or a Churchill are possible only because of the tradition of public self-examination first developed in Catholic societies.
Third, despite tragic costs, the benefits of European contract with the New World did far more good than harm. This is particularly true in the realm of evangelization. Columbus' genuine zeal to convert all peoples to Christianity should be commended rather than condemned. To depict all New World conversions as forced and foreign is, ironically, to patronize people of color, who were and are every bit as capable of seeing the beauty, truth, and goodness of the Gospel as their unwashed invaders.
Fourth, despite his flaws Columbus was a devout Catholic who, as Pope Leo XIII noted, was motivated by his Faith. His favorite prayers was Jesus cum Maria sit nobis in via -- "may Jesus, along with Mary, be with us on the way." Columbus chose to depart into the unknown the morning after August 2, the feast of Our Lady of the Angels, so that his men could celebrate this Marian feast with their families; he even made sure that they received confession and Holy Communion in order to obtain the plenary indulgence available that day. Columbus' prayers were apparently answered: his tiny fleet reached land on October 12, the day after the Feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin.
Finally, Columbus Day praises not Columbus' explorations on land but his exploits at sea. We know that a single-minded man convinced the monarchs of Spain to fund an extremely hazardous journey with little likelihood of return, and that he pulled it off, not once but four times. We know that he was exceptionally courageous and resourceful, and we know that he was an outstanding seaman. There is nothing wrong with raising a glass to genuine courage and persistence, as long as one does not go on to use these to excuse other crimes and misdemeanors. I wonder if much of the animus against Columbus today really springs from a contemporary disdain for honor that would like to purge manhood of its chivalry and daring. As the historian William Carroll notes, "It is right to criticize the failings [of heroes], but wrong to deny their greatness and the inspiration they can give."
And if there is any note of sorrow or regret to be struck on this otherwise celebratory occasion, it should not be fore the exceptional evil of the white man or the Catholic faith but for the universal darkness in man's heart so aptly explained by the doctrine of original sin. Yet, thanks be to God, this spiritual blight is never allowed to dwarf the triumph of the Cross, which providentially uses both vessels of honor and dishonor to meet its goals.
What to Do
How should one celebrate Columbus Day? In 1892 Pope Leo decreed that the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' discovery should be marked with a Solemn High Mass of the Most Holy Trinity either on October 12 or on the following Sunday. (This was mandatory for Spain, Italy, and the two Americas, and recommended for the rest of the world, since "it is fitting that an even from which all have derived benefit should be piously and gratefully commemorated by all"). Certainly Mass would be a good idea today as well, along with a fervent prayer for the spiritual future of both the Old and New Worlds. And all of the documents I have cited are worth reading for more information on Christopher Columbus.
Perhaps one could even enjoy these readings with one of the items rumored to have returned with Columbus on his first voyage: tobacco. I would recommend a pipe for the occasion, as a cigarette is far too lowly a thing for honoring either the noble savage or the noble explorer. As for food, one could turn to any of the nationalities involved: American, Italian, Spanish, or even Caribbean. And for the little ones, miniature Niñas, Santa Marias, and Pintas can be made out of walnut shells, toothpick masts, and paper sails and used to adorn a cake or have a race in the bathtub.
Monday, July 27, 2009
CAN YOU PLAY 'CHOPSTICKS'?!
America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates. [1] In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States.[2] The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding.
It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss. That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course - some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history.
"Chinese parents urge their children to excel at instrumental music with the same ferocity that American parents [urge] theirs to perform well in soccer or Little League,” wrote Jennifer Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer June 8 in an article entitled China's 'piano fever'.
The world’s largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today’s world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete. Few of its piano students will earn a living at the keyboard, to be sure, but many of the 36 million will become much better scientists, engineers, physicians, businessmen and military officers.
Whether this will happen for good, evil or neither is impossible to predict. Classical music is beautiful, but it is not necessarily good. Germany had the world’s best musicians in 1939, but put them in service of an evil cause, as can be seen in this Nazi propaganda newsreel of Germany’s best conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler, performing for weapons-industry workers under a giant swastika. It is encouraging that China has even more Christian converts than pianists (Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia Asia Times Online, August 7, 2007.)
There is little doubt that classical music produces better minds, and promotes success in other fields. Academic studies show that music lessons raise the IQs of six-year-olds.[3] Elite American families still nudge their children toward musical study. At Brearley, New York’s most exclusive girl’s school, playing in the orchestra is a requirement. American medical schools accept more undergraduates who majored in music than any other discipline (excepting pre-med).
Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts. Playing tennis at a high level requires great concentration, but nothing like the concentration required to perform the major repertoire of classical music. Perhaps the only pursuit with comparable benefits is the study of classical languages. It is not just concentration as such, but its content that makes classical music such a formative tool. Music, contrary to a common misconception, does not foster mathematical ability, although individuals with a talent for one often show aptitude for the other.
Western classical music does something that mathematics and physics cannot: it allows us to play with time itself. It is a commonplace that our perception of time depends upon the pace of events (so that time in graduate school seems to proceed slower than time in prison). Classical music, though, gives the composer the tools to extend or elide time in the service of beauty and irony.
Take any popular song and compare it to any aria by the Italian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), for example. Bellini expands and elides musical phrases, so that the musical content breathes in a different time frame than the verse. This seems simple but takes great skill to accomplish. In fact, Bellini was one of Frederic Chopin’s favorite composers. Far more complex is Mozart, who writes what seems to be an irregular phrase structure on the surface, which transforms a hidden regularity. Mozart keeps the listener continuously off-balance; he is an imp and trickster, the patron saint of practical jokes, as it were.
Few musicians nowadays get Mozart's jokes, but one of them is China's most famous musician, Lang Lang. The 26-year-old virtuoso has an undeserved reputation for mugging. "Like a hammy actor," wrote New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini on November 27, Lang Lang "has a penchant for interpretive exaggeration. His playing can be so intensely expressive that he contorts phrases, distorts musical structure and fills his music-making with distracting affectations".
Another way to look at the matter is that Lang Lang gets the joke, and Tommasini does not. Deadpan seriousness is a tradition among Western performers (the great pianist and teacher Josef Hoffman told his students to evoke the memory of emotion rather than emotion itself). But whatever makes Lang Lang so beloved among audiences, in a field where thousands of other pianists evince perfect technique, surely includes his own enjoyment of what he does. He is not the greatest interpreter of Mozart, surely no Murray Perahia or Radu Lupu. But he is an engaging personality whose connection to the music is manifest.
A case in point is Lang's reading of Mozart's C Minor Concerto K 491, with Long Yu conducting the China Philharmonic, available on Youtube). This work presents a famously enigmatic theme that immediately chases itself into a chromatic sequence, only to be interrupted by yet another chromatic sequence in a different voice, before it stumbles into a concluding cadence. Underneath this, the informed listener senses, there must lurk the familiar four-bar phrase of popular music, but Mozart never once spells this out. He leaves us off-balance at every point. It is a romping-ground for musical surprise, an enchanted forest of tricks and track-backs in which the true path always is obscure.
When the Mozart C Minor Concerto is performed properly, there shouldn't be a dry seat in the house. In the version available at Youtube, Lang Lang smiles and sometimes grimaces in appreciation of Mozart's jokes. One may fault him for losing the comedian's dead-pan, but surely that is preferable to not getting the jokes at all. The pianist is beset by a sense of wonder at Mozart. That is a very good thing, because the Chinese nation that looks to Lang Lang as one of its heroes is learning the high culture of the West with a collective sense of wonder.
Something more than the mental mechanics of classical music makes this decisive for China. In classical music, China has embraced the least Chinese, and the most explicitly Western, of all art forms. Even the best Chinese musicians still depend on Western mentors. Lang Lang may be a star, but in some respects he remains an apprentice in the pantheon of Western musicians. The Chinese, in some ways the most arrogant of peoples, can elicit a deadly kind of humility in matters of learning. Their eclecticism befits an empire that is determined to succeed, as opposed to a mere nation that needs to console itself by sticking to its supposed cultural roots. Great empires transcend national culture and naturalize the culture they require.
China's commitment to classical music will have effects that are at once too subtle and too powerful to categorize easily. It is not that classical music helps to train good scientists, for example. Music and the sciences are different disciplines to begin with. Mathematicians who learn music, though, are more likely to cast an ironic eye upon their craft, and look for flaws and opportunity in its cracks and crannies. It is not Mozart's sense of order, but his sense of irony that refines the mind of the mathematician. Mozart goes unerringly toward what is not mathematical in music, but instead is asymmetrical, strange and ambiguous. He can be inspiring, or frightening. Years of instrumental practice, knowledge of repertoire and study of theory are necessary to approach this sort of genius.
It is hard to explain what is important about something that most people never will understand. That is what makes America's music gap with China so difficult to remedy. Except in a vague way, one cannot explain the uniqueness of Western classical music to non-musicians, and America is governed not by musicians, but by sports fans (the lone recent exception was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is both). Hearing music is a skill somewhat like understanding a foreign language, and to appreciate music is like getting jokes told in a foreign language. Rare is the listener who can do this without having been reared in the language.
American musical education remains the best in the world, the legacy of the European refugees who staffed the great conservatories, and the best Asian musicians come to America to study. Thirty to 40% of students at the top schools are Asian, and another 20 to 30% are Eastern European (or Israeli). There are few Americans or Western Europeans among the best instrumentalists. According to the head of one conservatory, Americans simply don't have the discipline to practice eight hours a day.
As a practical matter, though, American policy-makers might think about it this way. Until now, the West has tended to dismiss China's scientists as imitators rather than originators. As a practical matter, China had little incentive to innovate; an emerging economy does not have to re-invent the wheel, or the Volkswagen, for that matter.
This was not true in the remote past, of course. China invented the clock, the magnetic compass, the printing press, geared machines, gunpowder, and the other technologies that began the industrial revolution, long before the West. When it comes time to develop the next generation of anti-missile radar, or electric car batteries, Chinese originality may assert itself once again. Chinese who have mastered the most elevated as well as the most characteristically Western forms of high culture will also think with originality. Anyone who doubts this should watch Lang Lang's performance of the Mozart C Minor Concerto once again.
SPENGLER in Asia Times Online
Notes
[1] Military budget of the People's Republic of China, Wikipedia.
[2] According to the Bluebook of Pianos.
[3] See Psychological Science, Music Lessons Enhance IQ.
It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss. That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course - some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history.
"Chinese parents urge their children to excel at instrumental music with the same ferocity that American parents [urge] theirs to perform well in soccer or Little League,” wrote Jennifer Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer June 8 in an article entitled China's 'piano fever'.
The world’s largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today’s world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete. Few of its piano students will earn a living at the keyboard, to be sure, but many of the 36 million will become much better scientists, engineers, physicians, businessmen and military officers.
Whether this will happen for good, evil or neither is impossible to predict. Classical music is beautiful, but it is not necessarily good. Germany had the world’s best musicians in 1939, but put them in service of an evil cause, as can be seen in this Nazi propaganda newsreel of Germany’s best conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler, performing for weapons-industry workers under a giant swastika. It is encouraging that China has even more Christian converts than pianists (Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia Asia Times Online, August 7, 2007.)
There is little doubt that classical music produces better minds, and promotes success in other fields. Academic studies show that music lessons raise the IQs of six-year-olds.[3] Elite American families still nudge their children toward musical study. At Brearley, New York’s most exclusive girl’s school, playing in the orchestra is a requirement. American medical schools accept more undergraduates who majored in music than any other discipline (excepting pre-med).
Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts. Playing tennis at a high level requires great concentration, but nothing like the concentration required to perform the major repertoire of classical music. Perhaps the only pursuit with comparable benefits is the study of classical languages. It is not just concentration as such, but its content that makes classical music such a formative tool. Music, contrary to a common misconception, does not foster mathematical ability, although individuals with a talent for one often show aptitude for the other.
Western classical music does something that mathematics and physics cannot: it allows us to play with time itself. It is a commonplace that our perception of time depends upon the pace of events (so that time in graduate school seems to proceed slower than time in prison). Classical music, though, gives the composer the tools to extend or elide time in the service of beauty and irony.
Take any popular song and compare it to any aria by the Italian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), for example. Bellini expands and elides musical phrases, so that the musical content breathes in a different time frame than the verse. This seems simple but takes great skill to accomplish. In fact, Bellini was one of Frederic Chopin’s favorite composers. Far more complex is Mozart, who writes what seems to be an irregular phrase structure on the surface, which transforms a hidden regularity. Mozart keeps the listener continuously off-balance; he is an imp and trickster, the patron saint of practical jokes, as it were.
Few musicians nowadays get Mozart's jokes, but one of them is China's most famous musician, Lang Lang. The 26-year-old virtuoso has an undeserved reputation for mugging. "Like a hammy actor," wrote New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini on November 27, Lang Lang "has a penchant for interpretive exaggeration. His playing can be so intensely expressive that he contorts phrases, distorts musical structure and fills his music-making with distracting affectations".
Another way to look at the matter is that Lang Lang gets the joke, and Tommasini does not. Deadpan seriousness is a tradition among Western performers (the great pianist and teacher Josef Hoffman told his students to evoke the memory of emotion rather than emotion itself). But whatever makes Lang Lang so beloved among audiences, in a field where thousands of other pianists evince perfect technique, surely includes his own enjoyment of what he does. He is not the greatest interpreter of Mozart, surely no Murray Perahia or Radu Lupu. But he is an engaging personality whose connection to the music is manifest.
A case in point is Lang's reading of Mozart's C Minor Concerto K 491, with Long Yu conducting the China Philharmonic, available on Youtube). This work presents a famously enigmatic theme that immediately chases itself into a chromatic sequence, only to be interrupted by yet another chromatic sequence in a different voice, before it stumbles into a concluding cadence. Underneath this, the informed listener senses, there must lurk the familiar four-bar phrase of popular music, but Mozart never once spells this out. He leaves us off-balance at every point. It is a romping-ground for musical surprise, an enchanted forest of tricks and track-backs in which the true path always is obscure.
When the Mozart C Minor Concerto is performed properly, there shouldn't be a dry seat in the house. In the version available at Youtube, Lang Lang smiles and sometimes grimaces in appreciation of Mozart's jokes. One may fault him for losing the comedian's dead-pan, but surely that is preferable to not getting the jokes at all. The pianist is beset by a sense of wonder at Mozart. That is a very good thing, because the Chinese nation that looks to Lang Lang as one of its heroes is learning the high culture of the West with a collective sense of wonder.
Something more than the mental mechanics of classical music makes this decisive for China. In classical music, China has embraced the least Chinese, and the most explicitly Western, of all art forms. Even the best Chinese musicians still depend on Western mentors. Lang Lang may be a star, but in some respects he remains an apprentice in the pantheon of Western musicians. The Chinese, in some ways the most arrogant of peoples, can elicit a deadly kind of humility in matters of learning. Their eclecticism befits an empire that is determined to succeed, as opposed to a mere nation that needs to console itself by sticking to its supposed cultural roots. Great empires transcend national culture and naturalize the culture they require.
China's commitment to classical music will have effects that are at once too subtle and too powerful to categorize easily. It is not that classical music helps to train good scientists, for example. Music and the sciences are different disciplines to begin with. Mathematicians who learn music, though, are more likely to cast an ironic eye upon their craft, and look for flaws and opportunity in its cracks and crannies. It is not Mozart's sense of order, but his sense of irony that refines the mind of the mathematician. Mozart goes unerringly toward what is not mathematical in music, but instead is asymmetrical, strange and ambiguous. He can be inspiring, or frightening. Years of instrumental practice, knowledge of repertoire and study of theory are necessary to approach this sort of genius.
It is hard to explain what is important about something that most people never will understand. That is what makes America's music gap with China so difficult to remedy. Except in a vague way, one cannot explain the uniqueness of Western classical music to non-musicians, and America is governed not by musicians, but by sports fans (the lone recent exception was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is both). Hearing music is a skill somewhat like understanding a foreign language, and to appreciate music is like getting jokes told in a foreign language. Rare is the listener who can do this without having been reared in the language.
American musical education remains the best in the world, the legacy of the European refugees who staffed the great conservatories, and the best Asian musicians come to America to study. Thirty to 40% of students at the top schools are Asian, and another 20 to 30% are Eastern European (or Israeli). There are few Americans or Western Europeans among the best instrumentalists. According to the head of one conservatory, Americans simply don't have the discipline to practice eight hours a day.
As a practical matter, though, American policy-makers might think about it this way. Until now, the West has tended to dismiss China's scientists as imitators rather than originators. As a practical matter, China had little incentive to innovate; an emerging economy does not have to re-invent the wheel, or the Volkswagen, for that matter.
This was not true in the remote past, of course. China invented the clock, the magnetic compass, the printing press, geared machines, gunpowder, and the other technologies that began the industrial revolution, long before the West. When it comes time to develop the next generation of anti-missile radar, or electric car batteries, Chinese originality may assert itself once again. Chinese who have mastered the most elevated as well as the most characteristically Western forms of high culture will also think with originality. Anyone who doubts this should watch Lang Lang's performance of the Mozart C Minor Concerto once again.
SPENGLER in Asia Times Online
Notes
[1] Military budget of the People's Republic of China, Wikipedia.
[2] According to the Bluebook of Pianos.
[3] See Psychological Science, Music Lessons Enhance IQ.
I WANT A PRINCIPLE WITHIN
Under the category of 'They Don't Write 'Em Like They Used To," here is the great Charles Wesley:
1.
I want a principle within
of watchful, godly fear,
a sensibility of sin,
a pain to feel it near.
I want the first approach to feel
of pride or wrong desire,
to catch the wandering of my will,
and quench the kindling fire.
2.
From thee that I no more may stray,
no more thy goodness grieve,
grant me the filial awe, I pray,
the tender conscience give.
Quick as the apple of an eye,
O God, my conscience make;
awake my soul when sin is nigh,
and keep it still awake.
3.
Almighty God of truth and love,
to me thy power impart;
the mountain from my soul remove,
the hardness from my heart.
O may the least omission pain
my reawakened soul,
and drive me to that blood again,
which makes the wounded whole.
1.
I want a principle within
of watchful, godly fear,
a sensibility of sin,
a pain to feel it near.
I want the first approach to feel
of pride or wrong desire,
to catch the wandering of my will,
and quench the kindling fire.
2.
From thee that I no more may stray,
no more thy goodness grieve,
grant me the filial awe, I pray,
the tender conscience give.
Quick as the apple of an eye,
O God, my conscience make;
awake my soul when sin is nigh,
and keep it still awake.
3.
Almighty God of truth and love,
to me thy power impart;
the mountain from my soul remove,
the hardness from my heart.
O may the least omission pain
my reawakened soul,
and drive me to that blood again,
which makes the wounded whole.
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