At the end of this post is a poem I wrote a few weeks ago--it's also a song to a jazzy big band melody I haven't put down on paper yet. It's about my love/hate relationship with the Pledge of Allegiance. As a child and youth, I loved standing to say the pledge, especially with large groups of people. I love the idea of people standing together, speaking as one about a cause they believe in. The pledge both directly verbalizes and indirectly represents some ideas that I, personally, believe in: loyalty, love of country, gratitude for God, community, democracy, liberty and justice.
But the pledge also tends to represent some ideas that I don't believe in. I don't believe that the country is indivisible--I mean, why shouldn't a
state or two break off if they want to, what's the big deal? I don't believe that the U.S. is God's favorite country. I don't believe that belief in God is a prerequisite to patriotism. I don't believe that the pledge is worded in a manner inclusive enough to sufficiently unite the modern American population.
And I don't really believe that elementary school students should be expected to stand and repeat it all together. This tradition was started in the 1940s, when war permeated Americans' minds; when militant habits seeped into our language, our hairstyles, and our classrooms. In the 1950s, under the reign of McCarthyism, the pledge was a reminder that any person accused of criticizing the government could be fatally blacklisted.
At any rate, my general reaction to the pledge is not dramatic. I'm just tired of taking the whole thing so seriously. The pledge is not a test that reveals which individuals in a room love democracy--and it certainly isn't a real oath (Thank heavens, we are not coerced into making oaths of obeisance to our government!) It's also not the best way to teach the values it attempts to teach. I mean, let's get real. Teaching kids to express their personal feelings about their country is more meaningful than asking them to memorize and daily repeat something that someone else came up with.
On the other hand I don't think the Pledge should be banned, either. It's a quaint tradition that many regard with fondness. Say the pledge if you feel like it, but don't expect everyone to chime in. Or, reject the pledge if you want, but don't expect the government to formally amend or renounce it. Eventually, I believe it will fizzle out on it's own.
So, here it is, below, my poem. Again, it's mostly about my feeling that the ideas in the pledge are important, but that the pledge, itself, shouldn't be taken too seriously.
The Pledge
The pledge--some patrage allegiance,
a sledge that can Christmas
the wedge that's betwixt us?
The blood of our founding,
foregrounding resoundings:
Rockefeller and Old Yeller.
Blitzkrieg lips, read this:
Applaud, appalled. Uphold the old glory phrase.
I told you, gist
raise a fist, Texas twister.
Emancipate a race, suffragistic sister.
Encrypted snacks in Liberty's lap,
Justice for Albequerque and even Mr. Turkey Lurkey,
Madame Allegiance, go free lance!
Applaud, appalled. Uphold, the old glory frays.
Treasonable supricion,
seasonable remission in the sale of
apple pie fillin' cans--what's the brand?
And to the corn for which it stands!
In God we fussed a crust,
in gold we thrust a must,
in time we trust a dusty gust,
or bust,
it's just--
Applaud, appalled. Uphold the old glory phrase.
Showing posts with label Man and the Loss of Tradition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Man and the Loss of Tradition. Show all posts
Friday, March 29, 2013
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Man and the Loss of Tradition: Weighing in the Balance by Karen
It's Friday night. A few dozen high-school warblers raise a toast over a bar. As they fill their bodies with a champagne-colored liquid, their drama club teacher laughs and tosses a brownie into his mouth. They, and their Styrofoam cups of ginger ale party hard without even breaking curfew. The next day, they give a couple of smashing performances. “Where's tonight's party?” students are likely to ask in the dressing room following the show. They need a place to joke about rehearsal bloopers, impersonate irksome teachers, and relax after a stress-filled stage moment.
Like all traditions, that of supervised “cast party” is heart-warming, but bound to change over time. Some hold that the main purpose of a cast party is to keep the kids from creating their own drunken revelries. Students tend to understand. Even students who don't particularly care about the law. They don't want to show up for the Saturday matinee with a hangover anymore than their directors and parents want them to. If parents offer to furnish a welcoming location, and free food, the kids will gladly show up.
Meanwhile, a parent-hosted cast party certainly poses an expensive, time-consuming answer to such a problem even when the supervised control it furnishes is usually considered to be the most valuable end of the deal. Things start to change in a community when parents trust their children (and other people's children) such that the potential risk that the students may engage in inappropriate behavior that could hinder their next-day performance is a lesser cost than the potential time/money/other effort that may be spent on a cast party. Let us imagine this as a scale:
Cost of Party (time/money)--------- Fear of unsupervised revelry
The greater the fear, the more time and money the parents will be willing to spend to ensure that their students are not, in fact, hosting their own unwise parties. If parents are relatively unafraid of such a phenomenon, the desire to host a party every night for the students will wane. It's about economic demand. Just as the horse-and-buggy lost its place in the economic market as the trust in the automobile increased, so may a community lose the charming “cast party” tradition. However, while it is human to mourn the loss of a beloved tradition, it must be remembered that “New and Improved” is one of America's core values.
Besides, losing a cast party isn't so bad when tradition-lovers consider that new-found, measurable trust in the youth of their community is a prize to be claimed. That extra box of brownie mix that you didn't waste on other people's kids might come in handy, too.
Like all traditions, that of supervised “cast party” is heart-warming, but bound to change over time. Some hold that the main purpose of a cast party is to keep the kids from creating their own drunken revelries. Students tend to understand. Even students who don't particularly care about the law. They don't want to show up for the Saturday matinee with a hangover anymore than their directors and parents want them to. If parents offer to furnish a welcoming location, and free food, the kids will gladly show up.
Meanwhile, a parent-hosted cast party certainly poses an expensive, time-consuming answer to such a problem even when the supervised control it furnishes is usually considered to be the most valuable end of the deal. Things start to change in a community when parents trust their children (and other people's children) such that the potential risk that the students may engage in inappropriate behavior that could hinder their next-day performance is a lesser cost than the potential time/money/other effort that may be spent on a cast party. Let us imagine this as a scale:
Cost of Party (time/money)--------- Fear of unsupervised revelryThe greater the fear, the more time and money the parents will be willing to spend to ensure that their students are not, in fact, hosting their own unwise parties. If parents are relatively unafraid of such a phenomenon, the desire to host a party every night for the students will wane. It's about economic demand. Just as the horse-and-buggy lost its place in the economic market as the trust in the automobile increased, so may a community lose the charming “cast party” tradition. However, while it is human to mourn the loss of a beloved tradition, it must be remembered that “New and Improved” is one of America's core values.
Besides, losing a cast party isn't so bad when tradition-lovers consider that new-found, measurable trust in the youth of their community is a prize to be claimed. That extra box of brownie mix that you didn't waste on other people's kids might come in handy, too.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Is composition in the traditional sense an abandoned art form?
Is composition in the traditional sense an abandoned art form? The concept of a masterwork seems to have already been embalmed before I was even born. The only people who even bother with it anymore these days are film score composers, musical composers, and dreaming, private hacks in the ignominity of their own garage.
But there are those exceedingly rare, highly canonized exponents who already have their own name and can demand a fortune for each five minute commission. The ideal of a Mozart or a Beethoven composing day and night, scribbling out countless pages of manuscript seems to be gone from our culture. Ellington, an American, but also someone beyond the classical realm wrote master works in ostensibly art-for-art's-sake experiments, but composition doesn't seem to have gotten any salutary attention aside from his tributary works.
Of course in so many implicit, subconscious ways American culture is just the annex of lichen-overgrown European idioms. Europe got too overcrowded for its own art and history, so we were bumped out here. The Fates and the Muses wanted us to seize the opportunity to find a new expression of ourselves, to cut and tear away from the new earth a new art, a new thought. We were to declare a new philosophy of creativity, but what have we got?
Sonny Rollins knows what we got. The one class of people who came into America, carrying in their bosom the new, bright expression the gods demanded Americans to place on the altar of music as a condition for coinheriting the New World were invidiously punished, because they weren't made in the tired old European design.
When we Americans think art, it is in the European context. When we think travel, we think Europe, or those places worldwide that our father Europeans have already established a cultural base for us.
And when we think music, we think fine music halls with precision acoustics. We think of all those thousands of highly skilled and talented musicians we trained on traditional instruments to play masterworks from the canon for us as we listen to them in ceremonial attire. It is an complex religious affair, with seating rules for each type of ensemble, and a comprehensive etiquette. We do not sigh, rapture, or otherwise participate. We expect them to play the masterworks flawlessly and with the precise amount of conviction. They are interchangeable, our players, in their black, formal robes. Occasionally one great musician will stand or sit out in front of the rest, piercing our hearts with fiery passion. Every decade or so the man standing backwards in tails whisking the stick around in dizzying, calligraphic artistry gets replaced, but we don't care too much about that, the perfect music will stay the same, just like it came from Beethoven's pen; authenticated, authorized, scholarly reproduction. Beautiful music performed in a gilded hall. This we call art. That is what Beethoven wanted, isn't it?
(Justin)
But there are those exceedingly rare, highly canonized exponents who already have their own name and can demand a fortune for each five minute commission. The ideal of a Mozart or a Beethoven composing day and night, scribbling out countless pages of manuscript seems to be gone from our culture. Ellington, an American, but also someone beyond the classical realm wrote master works in ostensibly art-for-art's-sake experiments, but composition doesn't seem to have gotten any salutary attention aside from his tributary works.
Of course in so many implicit, subconscious ways American culture is just the annex of lichen-overgrown European idioms. Europe got too overcrowded for its own art and history, so we were bumped out here. The Fates and the Muses wanted us to seize the opportunity to find a new expression of ourselves, to cut and tear away from the new earth a new art, a new thought. We were to declare a new philosophy of creativity, but what have we got?
Sonny Rollins knows what we got. The one class of people who came into America, carrying in their bosom the new, bright expression the gods demanded Americans to place on the altar of music as a condition for coinheriting the New World were invidiously punished, because they weren't made in the tired old European design.
When we Americans think art, it is in the European context. When we think travel, we think Europe, or those places worldwide that our father Europeans have already established a cultural base for us.
And when we think music, we think fine music halls with precision acoustics. We think of all those thousands of highly skilled and talented musicians we trained on traditional instruments to play masterworks from the canon for us as we listen to them in ceremonial attire. It is an complex religious affair, with seating rules for each type of ensemble, and a comprehensive etiquette. We do not sigh, rapture, or otherwise participate. We expect them to play the masterworks flawlessly and with the precise amount of conviction. They are interchangeable, our players, in their black, formal robes. Occasionally one great musician will stand or sit out in front of the rest, piercing our hearts with fiery passion. Every decade or so the man standing backwards in tails whisking the stick around in dizzying, calligraphic artistry gets replaced, but we don't care too much about that, the perfect music will stay the same, just like it came from Beethoven's pen; authenticated, authorized, scholarly reproduction. Beautiful music performed in a gilded hall. This we call art. That is what Beethoven wanted, isn't it?
(Justin)
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