At this point in our history, and in my life, I am surrounded by such mean spirited, nasty, and cruel shit, hour in and hour out in my job, then going home and watching the latest political, social, economic, military atrocity roll by the dead pan delivery of the evening news, that I was grateful for the few nights in a row there was the pretense of hope, the pretense of something good to come, I just weeped and weeped. It wasn't true, it was all the usual half truths, affordable healthcare, not single payer, not needs based, and so on. Sure I heard all the subtle qualifiers, the sliding around withdrawl plans dragging them out another two years, the shift over to Afghanistan, the wholesale acceptance of the war on terror and so forth.
But for just a few minutes, it was nice to hear what I wanted to hear, fool myself for just a few minutes of love for the world again... And to hear at least some castigation of those responsible,
So, tonight I am playing Beethoven's 3rd, its long second movement conducted by Otto Kemperer who was a master of the depth and sweep of this funeral march for the Ancien Regime. God that it would true, that we could see light, another dawn, a clear and clean day once upon another time. It is a prayer that I understand.
And then there is the grand daughter to No. 3:II, which is No.7:II, far more beautiful and full of grace. Between the two, Beethoven had become metaphysical, he had risen up from his immediate experience and begun to soar, from the glory of great empire and great battles, to battles of the spirit, the battles of history, of those eternal realms were we all seem to be alive. Wow, what a fucking art. God how it wish we could give it concrete meaning at a moment in our history, where, there is a threshold, some super-ethereality where it matters most. I am not being ironic, snoty, this is from the heart.
It is so over due, so long past due, I don't believe it myself. Could it finally happen, could we be delivered from this nightmare world? I am tired of the struggle. For me, it's been forty years, forty years is a very long time. If you don't think so, live it as I have and see.
Can you imagine the Ancien Regime in all its decrepitude, resurrected out of its lime pits, as a headless horror show of the living dead, zoomie like, staggering rotten flesh of putrifaction, bacterial slime running down its carried heads-skulls, speaking death and breathing out a fetided ooz so foul, it was mind numbing to watch living, young people celebrate this horror as a revolution? What the holy fuck are you talking about? To me, Reagan looked like the green preserved contents of the large bowel of a medical school corpse---something so disgusting, it was unthinkable.
We have had this stuff, this green jam foulness spread on our cheeks, and lapped into our mouths and up our noses like apple butter for babies. Forty years of it. Basta! Basta! Basta!
Now we are fetted with Cruella of the frozen pipelines and her Frankenstein, sewn together from the dead battle grounds of Vietnam. His piercing eyes of glass, his wretched movements, rigor mortis, babbling voodoo chants and incantations to rise the dead and live again in their glorious nightmare realms. Hell's own bitch, copulating with dogs delivers us Goyaesque horrors and calls them humanity. Oh, get out the lacy bonnet, paint on the red lips, curl the hair, and put on the booties. Click. Post card from The City of Night. Children of the New American Century. Children of the Mire. Los ninos de la noche.
I have finally understood why Goya made the Capriccios! One finally gets enough of it. Basta!
CG