Some thoughts on words

In one of the many pseudo controversies of this exciting primary season, Barack Obama was criticized for borrowing words to defend his use of words that were argued to be just that: words. In his speech, borrowing from Governor Deval Patrick, Obama referenced a few influential grouping of words: those spoken by Martin Luther King Jr., those inscribed in our Declaration of Independence, and those offering hope to Americans in the wake of the Great Depression. What is tellingly lacking in Obama's appropriation is an additional phrase, coined in JFK's inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country." Patrick relied on this in his response to accusations of him providing words without substance. Obama did not. And I think this to be indicative of a subtle shift in the trajectory of contemporary American liberalism.

Contrast JFK's inaugural address to a typical refrain in a recent Obama speech: "I believe it's time for Washington to work for your hopes, for your dreams." JFK's speech was a call to arms from an avowed Cold Warrior to a public that was not so evidently committed to the perceived requirements of America's clash with international Communism. It called for the people to "pay any price," to "bear any burden," in order to contain and combat the spread of Communism throughout the globe. What became clear through the course of the decade was the lack of unanimous support for such sacrifice. One might argue that a great deal of Americans were more interested in their own hopes, their own dreams. If the rise of the 1960's counter culture tells us anything, it is that the quest for self-fulfillment often took priority over the call for national solidarity. While intellectuals and politicians from William F. Buckley Jr. to Ronald Reagan capitalized on this rupture in American consciousness to usher in the rise of modern conservatism, Obama's platform is indicative of liberalism striving towards the rational conclusion of the premises implicit in the counter culture. By their lights, it would seem that the role of government is to provide an environment amenable to individualism and private self-realization rather than to promote communalism and public solidarity.

It might be argued that Obama's popularity results from his ability to speak the the collective narcissism of our age. That a generation crying "Me, me, me!" responds well to a politician so disposed. And this might be right. But I'm not convinced that this is the most significant conclusion to be drawn. If one looks at the policies of a government committed to granting individual liberty, then one finds a break from a country's monarchical colonial government; the emancipation of slaves; the slow process of extending the borders of citizenship regardless of sex and race. To be sure, these efforts were not without flaws--the Revolutionary War granted freedom only to landed white men; emancipation was followed by Jim Crow; the expansion of citizenship is not without its exclusions--but it is clear that we are a better place because of these developments, and it is not clear that we would be as well-off if the government had not been proactive in extending the benefits of liberty to more and more people. Furthermore, I have trouble imagining a plausible alternative.

The current understanding of a nation tends to focus on what Benedict Anderson calls an "imagined community," a collective imaginary of bonds that tie different people from different places into a singular whole. The problem in imposing such a conception of a nation on the United States is the conflicting narratives that construct individuals' sense of national identity. Over the centuries and across the land no essential element exists to found an immutable, immortal sense of national identity. But we do have some evidence that an environment amenable to individual flourishing so long as it does not impinge on that of another tends towards more peaceful and tolerant societies. Is this individualistic? Is this narcissistic? Perhaps, but perhaps it is also pragmatic. Perhaps we must ask our country to do for us so that we may do for it. All of this is to beg the bigger question: Which candidate is likely to move towards what I take to be the desirable end? That, I suppose, is for each of us to decide.

[Editor's note: The above political commentary is admittedly idealistic and perhaps leaning towards utopian, but it's the best this humble author can muster before noon on Memorial Day. Do read with a charitable heart.]

Music, memory, catharsis

[The Blood Brother's abrasive "Jennifer" cuts the tension in my car like a knife.]
S: "What do you like about this music?"
D: "I don't know, there's just something about it..."

This is a dialog that has taken place a number of times over the years, with different artists being the cause for concern. The Blood Brothers are probably the most popular targets of such dismissive interrogations (I can hardly translate the sense of disdain in the voice of the inquisitor). And this morning, I believe I found the answer.

"While the cultured public thought music was just a collection of consonant chords played in neat meter, Stravinsky realized that they were wrong. Pretty noises are boring. Music is only interesting when it confronts us with tension, and the source of tension is conflict. Stravinsky's insight was that what the audience really wanted was to be denied what it wanted" (from Jonah Lehrer's Proust Was a Neuroscientist). If this doesn't get to the heart of the Blood Brothers' caustic cacophony of sound, I don't know what does-the unpredictable changes in tempo, the back and forth between fitful screams and pleading vocals, the abrupt conclusions of songs seeming to only be reaching their climax-these are the aspects of the Blood Brothers that hit me on a visceral level. Literally.

Lehrer's discussion of Stravinsky's genius speaks to a number of intuitions and curiosities that have long accompanied my appreciation of music. It has always seemed that music hits me in a far different way, on a much deeper level, than any other form of art. Schopenhauer placed music as the highest form of art in its ability to "transcend the will" (which I think translates to something like, "takes us out of ourselves," or perhaps more accurately, "breaks us free from our rational selves"). Furthermore, I have pondered for many years what it is in music that seems to tie me more concretely to my past experiences. This curiosity was further intensified by Lehrer's exploration of Proust's method in writing In Search of Lost Time. In that chapter, it is argued that our memories are most saliently tied to taste and smell, because of the way those senses are wired in the brain. This seemed counterintuitive to me, due to my own experience of memories being triggered by particular objects (from sight) and even more so by music. It turns out there is a method to my madness.

When Stravinsky's "The Rites of Spring" premiered in Paris, it inspired a riot. One is struck by the image of a crowd of bourgeois rising up in protest against a ballet, but so the story goes. On Lehrer's account, the plasticity of the brain allows for rewiring when faced with new phenomena. In listening to music, the brain unconsciously seeks patterns and imposes them on our auditory experience. When faced with dissonance, the brain has to a little extra work, and releases dopamine in the process. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter most intimately tied to our feelings and emotions, and in its release we experience a visceral reaction to our auditory inputs. This explains the rise one might feel in one's chest when responding to a song for the first time or experiencing a band's break from tradition in a live show. And more importantly for my purposes, it explains my deep attachments to certain albums and songs. The ones that I always return to when they fit my mood so perfectly. In joy, in anger, or in despondency, the right song is mine with which to identify, no matter how ambiguous the words or the structure might be. It is why I can't listen to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's live version of "Master and Everyone" without thinking of a particularly emancipatory time in my life; The Decemberist's "Engine Driver" without thinking of a overwhelmingly helpless period; or The Blood Brother's "U.S.A. Nails" without identifying with the ambiguous frustration implicit in its precise imprecision. Because in my own subjective experience, it seems my memories are tied not so much to cognitive reconstructions or narratives, but to the feelings I experienced (or project myself to having experienced) alongside whatever event the memory is tied to. And if a piece of music speaks to the same feeling that coincided with a particular event, it seems no great leap to see the connection. If the soundtrack to a particular event-say, Iron & Wine's Our Endless Numbered Days with a particularly lovely day on the couch with a particularly lovely lady-fits so perfectly with the experience, then how could I expect not to go back to that day every time "Love and Some Verses" pops up on the iPod shuffle?

I think this speaks to the cathartic, as well as the nostalgic, potential of music. When I find myself in a rut and want to feel anything else, to get out of my head, the dopamine distributing dissonance of the Blood Brothers might be all I need. It is why I turn to Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," when I want to feel the sting of nostalgia tied to simpler times in Nashville. And it is why the randomness of my iPod's shuffle can put me on an unpredictable roller coaster of memories and feelings long thought forgotten.