The romantic in me wants to believe that a person filled with the poison of division might learn from seeing other human beings literally acting in concert.
Never mind that some of the people we encounter have rough edges. It’s the murderers and vengeance-seekers we need to fear, like those who sow justifiable terror in the citizens of Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, and a host of other states that are struggling to again become civil societies. News of terrorist mayhem in the Middle East and elsewhere feeds the obvious conclusion that human misery often flows from tribal tensions. But our knowledge in a 24/7 satellite-saturated world hasn’t really helped us understand the cultural origins of long-held animosities. We see effects more than their causes. Even so, with enough optimism it is possible to imagine how we might begin to tame regional hatreds that feed the impulse in some to fight to the death.
Call me naive, but I wish every actual or future ISIS executioner would volunteer to spend an evening listening to an orchestra of diverse members perform something like Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony. I’d especially wait in anticipation to see if their hatred might begin to melt under the warmth of the Third Movement. The romantic in me wants to believe that a person filled with the poison of division might learn from other human beings literally acting in concert to produce something transformative. You know this Adagio of the Symphony, where the melody is passed from the violins to a clarinet, back to the French horns, and eventually back to the strings. It’s probably the most breathtaking theme this melodic Russian master ever wrote.
This version by the Radio Philharmonic of Amsterdam is followed by comments on U-tube such as “beautiful,” “sublime,” “transfixing,” “magnificent,” and “incredibly emotional:” these, in a space usually owned by trolls.
Is it possible to find transcendence in a lyrical phrase? Can music soften anger and the kind of fixed rage that feeds the impulse to destroy? Could it be that we are looking for peacemakers in all the wrong places?
The idea of using music as an arena of shared experience is partly behind the efforts of Daniel Barenboim and the late Edward Said, who in 1999 founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. The group is made up of Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians. When war broke out in Gaza in 2009 Barenboim noted to audiences on both sides of the Palestine/Israel divide, “We aspire to total freedom and equality between Israelis and Palestinians, and it is on this basis that we come together to play music.”
The same impulse to return us to our shared humanity occurred In 1989, when Leonard Bernstein celebrated the end of a divided Berlin by performing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the wall with an international orchestra of musicians and singers. He noted that “we have not yet found ways, short of murder, to act out our suppressed rages, hostilities, xenophobias, provincialisms, mistrust and need for superiority. We still need some kind of lower class as slaves, prisoners, enemies, scapegoats.” The concluding section of the symphony is its triumphal “Ode to Joy,” which can be easily understood as an affirmation of the new freedoms possible in a country made whole again. Americans probably also heard a victory anthem at the rapid demise of a repressive Soviet Republic. But Bernstein meant that Beethoven’s music should mean more, noting that “somehow it must be possible to learn from his music by hearing it. No, not hearing it, but listening to it, with all our power of attention and concentration. Then, perhaps, we can grow into something worthy of being called the human race.”1
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1Bernstein quoted in Greg Mitchell, “When Bernstein and Beethoven Celebrated the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” The Nation, June 1, 2013.
John Wayne in Born to the West, 1937 Wikipedia.org
We use everyday garments to announce our identities in lieu of the more awkward task of trying to explain them.
The Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle was not the first to notice that clothing makes its own rhetorical statements. But he was clear in noting that “coverings” can be material and well as verbal. Just as we sometimes clothe our motives in language that conceals less admirable impulses, so we use everyday garments to announce our identities in lieu of the more awkward task of trying to spell them out. For Carlyle “the first spiritual want of man is decoration.” How we choose to appear before others is perhaps the straightest line to identity. It’s little wonder that teens grappling with an awkward transformation to a more personal self would be so particular about how they appear to each other.
Concerns with clothing and appearance can last for an entire lifetime. As the New York Times notes, no one was really surprised to find an apparently expensive Christian Louboutin stiletto stuck in an escalator near the new editorial offices of Vogue at One World Trade Center. Some well-dressed employee obviously moved on without it. At best, even the most policed architecture in the city can only delay but can’t deter the mavens of high fashion.
The principle of clothing as a “statement” is only more exaggerated in the fashion world. In reality nearly all of us trade in the imagery of personal presentation.
Ralph Lauren Source: Nowness
Consider three cases that exemplify the power of selected external skins to announce what we want to believe about ourselves. Designer and fashion mogul Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx 75 years ago. Today the Lauren empire often features the short and photogenic President in clothing that has become one of his signature styles: a leather or wool-lined jacket, a western hat that looks like its been kicked around the corral a few times, hand-tooled boots and jeans. Even as a teen in the Colorado mountains I never succeeded in looking so ranch-hand cool.
And there’s the case of the iconic tamer of the West, John Wayne, born Marion Morrison in Winterset Iowa. Wayne apparently disliked horses. But nothing in his past and his Midwestern roots would deter him from becoming Director John Ford’s favorite trailblazer. The Duke achieved on film what Theodore Roosevelt constructed in his larger-than-life legacy. He transformed himself from a sickly son of a Manhattan socialite into the “Rough Rider” who relished the possibilities of taming any country that could test his masculine prowess.
Donald Trump from Queens offers a related case that is more firmly anchored in the urban jungles of America’s biggest cities. Trump grew up into a comfortable family thriving on the business of building modest apartments and single-family homes in the Jamaica Estates area in Queens. He obviously expanded the base of the Fred Trump organization, creating a Manhattan-centered development model more suited to his ambitions as a real estate juggernaut. Though he would have us believe that he is a master-builder, a closer reading of his career suggests an aptitude for real estate marketing and self-promotion. Trump wears aggressive entrepreneurship as a badge of honor.
Trump’s Name on his Chicago Building Wikipedia.org
This mix of material accomplishment and relentless hype can be seen in a soaring Skidmore-designed building along the Chicago River. Its 20-foot tall TRUMP nameplate spanning the 16th and 17th floors is so large that one can imagine the structure listing toward the river under its weight. To be sure, the handsome 98-story structure—officially the Trump International Hotel and Tower–complements the skyline, and–unlike many–was his project from the start. But the outsized sign mars its sleekness and feeds stories among locals of the New York vulgarian who somehow still managed to blow in, even against the stiff prairie winds from the West. The twist is that the gaudy gold and chrome skins of his buildings have become surrogates for the conservative business attire even a brash mogul has to wear. For most of us the need for self-definition permits less flamboyance. But few of us are immune from the urge to calibrate our “look” to match our aspirations.
