Laughter, Sacrifice, Mourning and You

I have rediscovered Donny Hathaway, and his voice, with its dynamic but faded shade of melancholy, has taken up residence in my mind. I only listen when I am fully girded-up in impenetrable armour, paying strict attention to melody, singing along. Letting myself get lost in the depth of Donny Hathaway's A Song for You is a recipe for emotional disaster. I begin to regret a past that never existed. I sacrifice myself to the love god.

And speaking of sacrifice, I saw The Chronicles of Narnia yesterday, and although I didn't think it came close to the depth of the books (It was a Disney movie, after all. How could it not slide into cartoon-character voices, over-simplification and other atrocities that fit their blueprint for "success"?), I did really love the childrens' faces, especially Lucy and Susan, and I liked being reminded of how I felt when first reading the series. That feeling of wonder, of wider purpose, being called to be a warrior (a girl, no less!), the hero's journey, recognition of purpose.

So for that I was thankful, and also for big winter coats, and long-lost loves, and snow.... and especially for laughter. It seems that many of us need laughter now. How can we not be overcome with sorrow as we watch the political corruption around us? How can we tolerate the injustice and not self-destruct as we watch our government arrogantly dominate and destroy?

Gidget is bemoaning Mykeru's disappearance from the blogosphere, and this poem, left in a comment on his site from this interesting-looking blog addresses the necessity of laughter.

A Brief for the Defense 

Sorrow everywhere.  Slaughter everywhere.  If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else.  With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our loves because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine.  The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well.  The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick.  There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight.  We can do without pleasure,
but not delight.  Not enjoyment.  We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.  To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
—Jack Gilbert

But it's not only Mykeru who is on overload. I put up new curtains, reign-in my raging anger at our government, go to a movie. Another whittles away at student loan debt, keeping her eyes on the ledger, watching her debt diminish. One hopes for sanity within long sleepless nights. Another dispassionately disconnects. We fear connection. We fear disconnection. We have no captain at the helm of this vessel that carries us, in the name of god, toward the next atrocity.

I saw Syriana a couple of days ago. The flatness of the presentation of evil, the corruption, the length our government will go to ensure corporate dominance.... Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief... truth and fiction have merged, kids, and I am left counting pennies, throwing bread at the birds outside, watching the Great Lakes die. We no longer think that we can change things.

Still, there are voices speaking, if we are allowed to hear them. I drop my curtains. They are nothing to me. A child smiles. A car swerves in the snow.

[My country] now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries... [My country] possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning... The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US. (Harold Pinter, The Nobel Lecture, Thursday, December 8, 2005)

Along with Donny Hathaway I remember Roberta Flack, who sang one of the most soulful, haunting, self-incriminating anti-war ballads of the Vietnam era, Business Goes on as Usual.

Business goes on as usual
The corn and the profits are high
And TV's boom in every living room
They tell us what deodorant to buy

Business goes on as usual
Except that my brother is dead
He was twenty-five and very much alive
Now the dreams have all been blasted from his head

In a far-off land with a gun in his hand
He died in a war he did not understand

Business goes on as usual
There's plenty to choose from the racks
And rumour goes that the latest thing in clothes
That the latest thing in clothes will be black