Cassandra Voices

Author: casswp

  • Musician of the Month: Myriam Kammerlander

    When I was five, I made myself a paper flute. I played it sitting on a stone in the Danish summer. My parents later gave me a real flute and I played it fervently until my teacher said it was time I learned some more instruments. I didn‘t consider myself a musician. I just loved to play.

    My main instrument today is the harp, but it took me a while. Living near the Alps, it should have been easy. Alpine music is full of string instruments. But I played the flute, and loved folk music which was not from Germany. I didn‘t know at that point how fine German folk music can be. I thought Volksmusik was a lot about brass, and yodeling, and mostly for loud men in leather pants.

    Growing up in the Catholic Bavarian countryside can be an ambivalent experience. Like singing in the local church band while dreaming of travelling with a circus. My first idea for a future profession was to be a woodturner, or a carpenter, which earned me comments like, girls should not work as carpenters. This was in the 1990s.

    One day, I learned about an instrument maker in the region who taught people how to build historical harps by themselves. I was thrilled. This is how it started. I participated without being able to play one note on my new harp. In my head, making it came first.

    This self-made, improvised kind of doing things is a quality I like a lot about folk music. Generally, about this thing called Kleinkunst in German, small art. In the beginning, there often is just the longing to play. A tiny stage, a handful of people, you did‘t even plan it, and suddenly, there is magic in the air. Like in a song by the Portuguese band Deolinda:

    He passed and smiled at me and all of a sudden, the ugly face of the town changed, everything was covered in flowers … what would happen if we talked to each other?

    Passou por mim e sorriu (gerda vejle):

    Travelling musician

    What qualifies you to be an artist? If you make a living of it? Or is it a particular way to be in the world? If you manage to transform the ordinary into beauty? Tell a story in a manner that opens a new perspective on the world, which others can relate to?

    For me, it has to do with connecting. Connecting people, places and perspectives. I play a harp model called Bohemian Harp. It is neither a Celtic nor a classical harp. It is an instrument of travelling people, linked to the tradition of travelling dance musicians. Especially in the nineteenth century, there were small orchestras of Bohemian harp players, often women, who though poor managed to make an autonomous living by playing music travelling from place to place.

    I too had been travelling for some time when I arrived in Berlin, a place of many perspectives and travelling existences. Studying music therapy there and later with fantastic harp player and teacher Uschi Laar, I learned something important: That music is not something you show off. Music can be something that saves you. Sometimes it is the only continuity you have. It can give voice to the unspoken, transform depth into lightness. And it has a great inclusive power.

    I then met a storyteller, Ana Rhukiz. We started a travelling duo project, performing barefoot under the open sky, in tiny villages, on smaller and bigger stages, for young and old, few and many. We connected composition and performance, art and nature. What I like about fairy tales is that they often transport a hidden wisdom over time. One piece was about making rain. Drought had fallen upon humanity because nature had been disrespected. During the piece we would say the rain spell together with the audience. Often, it would rain for real, even on a sunny day.

    The Lucky Accident

    One element of improvisation is accident. And, at the right moment, Kairos.

    Do you know Kairos? The Greek God of the lucky accident. A harp maker in Berlin told me the story of Kairos: he has just one hair and is fast. When he passes your way, you have to be lucky to grasp him at his one hair before the moment is gone.

    Meeting violinist Judith Retzlik might have been one such moment of Kairos: I had placed one single note on a black board at university saying I was a harp player looking for other musicians. Our band was completed by double bass player Anne Drees, who gave the warm grounding to our violin, harp and voices improvisation. We named ourselves gerda vejle.

    In concerts, people ask: Who of you is Gerda? And we smile and say: all of us. Gerda is an imaginative woman. She is creative. She might change her identity now and then. She loves to try out new things, be it styles or genres. She certainly is a feminist.

    Over time, gerda has grown. She was drawn to idyllic and disastrous moments at the beginning. Much of heartbreak and rebellion. More themes arouse over time. Less drama, more questions. More laughing also. We made and discovered more instruments. The nyckelharpa, the trumpet, the ukulele. We sing in many languages, merging songs, mostly unplugged. I moved to Austria for some time, the yodeling came back to me from childhood days. I am not a great yodelist. It is a fun way to give credit to something that belongs to me without taking it too seriously.

    The Layers Beneath, and Beyond

    Gerda vejle is also often asked: Are you a cover band? And in fact, we play mostly songs that already exist. In the beginning, I had the ethos that we should be making our own tunes. But nowadays I would say I proudly cover. In folk music, like in oral tradition, the origin of a tune cannot always be figured out. And many true stories have been truly told before you entered stage. What gerda vejle is doing is collecting them, retelling them, giving her own voices and character to them.

    What I learned when I studied literature and ever more working with storytellers is that very text, be it written or spoken, is woven from other texts. Likewise, music is a texture of relations and worlds. It is a vibrant body with many layers under the surface. Folk pieces never get finished. You just keep on crafting them over and over again.

    Making music feels like exploring these layers by time. I seldom seek for ideas with a plan. They are hidden in the music, and sometimes quite somewhere else.

    With the pandemic and other crises, I am asking myself more questions. What is the role art should play in a time of transformation? Which responsibility falls upon artists when there is so much confusion, and where values are challenged and resources running scarce? Should art be more political, and if so, in which way? Or could artists become people you turn to in confusion, as they often have lived through confusion and hardship themselves? For me, art is not something you add to your life when everything else is fixed. Rather, it is something that can give you another perspective to look at during bumpy times, a bit like humour.

    So, one idea I found so far: there should be lightness in the heaviness. Thus, never forget the playfulness. When I teach music, I try to remind people they can be playful. I don‘t believe in the unmusical child. I believe everyone can enjoy creativity. You have to find the language. And a way to play around the bumpiness. Make a song of it. Make it fly.

    Gerda vejle – image by Juliette Cellier

    Coming to Ireland soon: gerda vejle in concert

    Friday Sept 22th, 2023 – Clonskeagh Castle, Dublin

    Saturday Sept 23rd, 2023 – Yeats Society, Sligo

    Links:

    Music and writing: www.wanderharfe.de

    www.gerdavejle.de

    Building a Bohemian harp: www.klangwerkstatt.de

    Featured Image: TEDxDresden2016

  • The Secret Garden

    The leaves of Greenwich Park were the soul of Autumn as I walked slowly up the hill to the secret garden in the quiet rain. I opened the gate and entered to find there was no one there. Maybe there was nobody in the whole park. A red squirrel went on eating in the middle of the wet lawn, untroubled by my presence. Above me sat the Observatory on its perch, a great seat of learning. An opportunity for humankind to understand the universe. Once upon a time you could see the stars from here on a clear night, but not now. Not since industry. Not since work.

    I opened a can of beer and lit up and made my way on through the drizzle wet, and felt lonely but not sad, this feeling of rain, delving sublime, richer than silk indigo was Inigo in ideas, deeper than feeling, in my own world almost auto stick, non-verbal, who are the same as us and yet not the same. One with everything, if only those little beauties could understand. I can’t. I went over and sat on the damp bench at the picnic table, content to be alone, for now at least. I had the plants and the trees and rain for company and that was all I needed. It’s a good time to think about people, when there’s no-one there.

    I don’t remember how long I spent in the secret garden. The time pieces of Greenwich had all floated clocks among the rainclouds tick-tock until sun’s return. The great orange ball at the top of the Observatory was obscured by mist. I noticed the clouds after that and drank deeply and rolled the cherry on the edge of the wooden bench, the place was damp so nothing could set fire. I put my hood up and felt the unmistakeable tingling of comfort. My eyes were good, and ears, and legs and arms and heart, nothing appeared to be dying. Nothing at all, not even the hiding sun.

    It felt good to finish the can of beer and crush the empty can in my fist. Especially as I had another one in my bag. Plenty I believe the word to be. It can be a good thing, better than drought. The trick to life is appreciation, in knowing when enough is enough, but knowing what enough is, has always been hard for me, because the memory of the shit never goes, so let the good times roll. There is a great beauty in this world of ours, remember, the world that created us, against all the naysayers. Yes, it’s beauty I made sure before I died.

    The squirrel has gone and I am alone with the half Red Stripe. Keep on smoking, careful not to get it wet as the rain isn’t easing. Under the picnic table with the paper and the tobacco and then the filter and finally the lick and flip. The new lighter is a good feeling and works first time producing a burst of smoke in the downpour. Maybe shelter soon but not just yet. I can hear the rain on my rain proof hood like music. Sit a while.

    I’ll leave this place before the rain lifts. I stand up and then rattle the can. I spy a bin and move towards it to leave my mark. I look around and think the place was worth visiting in all seasons, in all weathers. I am a little drunk, it was a long night, a good night, but genuinely, peaceful reader, nothing I can’t handle yet, my body holds out still as fifty approaches like an old friend I have fallen out with. The things that can’t be avoided must be confronted, who said that? Good mothers probably.

    And so on up to the top of the park and the General Wolfe statue who must have defeated the French in Canada. Let’s build a statue to remember wars won. Then it will have meaning, if it is remembered. But only then. I can see the days of Nelson from where I stand, and the days of Raleigh on the riverbank and we can see what happened when we hear the toothpaste advert from the other side of oceans, in a different accent of course. Why all the war, all the carnage, all the misery and death? Something to do I suppose. “Man cannot stand a meaningless life.”

    I can see all of London, but better to stay in the park and nature and rain. Different company. Maybe a teenager is being stabbed out there but maybe not, it doesn’t happen every second or every minute. Not enough for the politicians to get involved. Ten million people and a couple of hundred slaughtered youth on the street, lying in pools of their own blood. Nothing to see here, nothing to see here. Nothing to see.

    I turn and make my way past the pavilion and into the Flower Garden. Good name. The Flower Garden. Rain is letting up now. They had a good drink today. Strange thing, that nature has no control over itself, it spreads where it can when it has a chance, and now beyond where was once impossible. I spy the Observatory again over the brow. Let’s build monuments to war and keep the deers in the enclosure, they’ll be safe there. Good idea. One of them looks over at me through the fence. Through the misty rain. It’s free in its own world. Like me. Maybe a prisoner could be free if he had the right mind. If he was in control of his imagination, then where would he be?

    The Flower Garden is beautiful. The rain has returned so I put my hood back up. I remember I was here one hot summers day in nineteen eighty-five. Wouldn’t it be a thing to have dates for those childhood days of summer. They are now lost in time, they are time. The only time we know. The pinnacle of childhood, using imagination on everything. I look at the tree that has changed less than me since then. It is magnificent then and now. The tree, nature’s gifted form, blown about by the winds but always rooted. Only disaster and time can kill it. Like us. The rain is back for sure. I put my hood up and leave through the gate on Maze Hill. Back into the world, for now.

    Feature Image: Royal Observatory, Greenwich

  • Open

    The boy was wretched. He sat on the bed in shorts and T-shirt his hair a tangled mess. I noticed they had put him in a single room, the last on the corridor beside the fire escape. I examined his chart, apart from the nurse’s hourly checks no one had spoken to him since he had been admitted three days ago. I introduced myself.

    ‘I’m Dr Peter Philips your doctor.’

    The boy looked at me. He had piercing blue eyes and an odd way of tilting his head as if he was asking a question. There was no hostility, but it was obvious he was terrified.

    ‘Do you hear voices?’, I asked.

    He looked puzzled.

    ‘I mean do you hear voices other than your own in your head?’

    He still didn’t seem to understand what I was asking. I tried something else.

    ‘Your mother said you threw yourself from an upstairs window. Were you trying to kill yourself?’

    ‘No, I just wasn’t ready.’

    I withdrew from this cryptic comment and closed the interview.

    Later that day I looked through his case notes. He was involuntarily admitted, his mother had brought him in. The duty registrar had done the paperwork noting that the boy was unwashed, and he rambled on about a bird, a pet bird maybe? He was delusional with suicidal tendencies. Normally I would move on to treatment, but something about the boy bothered me. He obviously didn’t suffer from auditory hallucinations and there was something odd about his suicide attempt. I looked at the other entries on his file. He had never been in trouble with the Guards not even a scrap on the street. His mother had been interviewed separately. She was unwilling to say too much and appeared to be overwhelmed by what was going on. She did say her son had become obsessed by birds of prey. I didn’t draw any conclusions from this I was satisfied he was delusional.

    Nightfall, a nurse came into the room with a tray of medication. The boy took the pills and turned to the wall.

    ‘Alright Pat?’

    ‘Yeah’, he muttered.

    The night was windy, and a twig tapped on the window, a message tap, tap, tap. A message from the trees whipped by the wind. The boy listened curiously; he tapped his knee in time. Then there was a lull in the wind and the tapping stopped. In the morning there was porridge for breakfast. The dining room was full. Pat looked around at the other patients most of them were concentrating on eating. After breakfast there wasn’t very much to do, the day gaped like a long empty corridor.

    We had a team meeting the morning after I interviewed the boy. I set out the psychopharmaceutical position to murmurs of assent. There was a girl at the conference table. She introduced herself as the new occupational therapist on the ward.

    ‘His mother said he’s quite good at drawing. Could we provide him with paper and pens and see what he comes up with?’

    I was sceptical at first, the fact that he was suicidal created all sorts of problems, but then so far, my attempts to interview him had proved unproductive so I gave her the OK on the paper and pens.

    The day was slipping past, it was already afternoon, the lunch things cleared away. A smell of boiled potatoes hung limply in the air. Sunlight streaked the floor tyles and Pat let it land on his T-shirt and his legs. He felt restless as if something was boiling away inside him. He could see the sky through the high windows and a bird only a speck above the city. For a moment he felt pure joy then behind him a nurse said:

    ‘Time for you medication Pat.’

    It was almost time for the night shift to come on duty when she came through the door. She was wearing baggy black pants and she carried a bag. The doctor he had seen the first night was with her and they stood talking at the other end of the ward. Pat looked at her carefully. Her fine red hair was clipped back in a ponytail. Then she laughed a small nervous laugh, barely parting her lips. She put her hand on the man’s shoulder and said something Pat couldn’t hear. The man pointed towards Pat, and she came over to him. When she reached him, she held out her hand:

    ‘My name’s Anna, I’m the ward occupational therapist. I’m told you’re interested in birds.’

    Pat mumbled something. She smelled sweet like honeysuckle and her eyes were the colour of morning sky. He wanted to tell her everything, the peace, the freedom, to be up there looking down. Instead, she opened her bag and took out paper and pens. She was saying something like draw what you see, put down what you feel. He hardly heard her; he was so happy.

    At first it was a tremor, a flash of light a sweeping glance across the landscape. He was fifteen when it first came over him crouched at his window ready to fly. That time it only lasted minutes, but he was already caught willing it to happen again. In his sleep he dreamt of a huge black bird that soared above the fields. He became impatient and tried jumping from the windowsill, that landed him in hospital with a broken shoulder and a fractured knee. Remembering the first time, he imagined the bird and the wind beneath him, now he could see with the bird’s eyes. He sat still in his room focusing on the breath, waiting, waiting for the flash of light. Without knowing how he knew he was ready; he opened the window, and everything was there. With raised arms, the wind rushed past his face, and he could hear rustling feathers. Nothing could stop him, his feet lifted off the sill and effortlessly he cleared the treetops, the shifting breeze carried him into the clear blue sky. He wheeled around and headed back home gracefully landing again where he had left.

    The drawings were spread out on my desk. Some were remarkable pictures of birds. Others were indecipherable. I picked one up.

    ‘What’s this supposed to be?’

    ‘Well,’ Anna said tentatively. ‘At first I thought it was some kind of pattern and then I came across drone footage, and I realised it was a drawing from the air.’

    ‘So, he can imagine what things look like from the air?’

    ‘Yes, it’s amazing, isn’t it?’

    ‘But you’re not suggesting he can actually fly?’

    Anna sank back in her chair.

    ‘Look our job is to treat his symptoms. He needs to take his place in society, get a job, fit in. Maybe you’re too close to him someone else can take over.’

    Pat hung around the ward pretending he wasn’t waiting for anything. By lunchtime he wondered why she hadn’t come. Then it was three in the afternoon and when the ward door opened  it was his mother looking anxious and distracted. They sat in his room without speaking. Eventually she took out a bottle of fruit juice and put it on his bedside locker along with sixty euros in twenty euro notes. She was crying and took him in her arms:

    ‘Be a good boy,’ she said.

    Pat waited the excruciating hours until bedtime and still she didn’t come. In the morning at breakfast a nurse said quietly to him:

    ‘Dr Philips wants to see you as soon as you’re ready.’

    I saw him in my office first thing. He looked tired and hung his head as I went through his notes.

    ‘You’ve been doing some work with Anna. She’s been transferred to another ward, from now on you’ll be dealing with Carl,’.

    The boy looked shocked, and I made a note that he should be monitored carefully.

    When the nurse went into Pat’s room in the morning the small window over his bed was open. There was no sign of Pat. They never found him; he couldn’t have crawled out the opening the window afforded. Dr Philips maintained the door to the fire escape must have been left unlocked. Anna asked to see the room. She looked under the bed and lying there innocently waiting to be found was a glossy black feather. She held it up to the light and admired it, then she slipped it into her bag.

    Feature Image: AI Art Generator.

  • Musician of the Month: Garrett Sholdice

    Earlier this month I released The Blue Light, a selection of solo piano and chamber pieces spanning the last decade, performed by pianist Michael McHale and musicians from Crash Ensemble. The album offers a range of sound-worlds, and I like to think that I am open to the possibility of my music changing, but I realise that there seem to be some constants in what I am doing: I want to create highly concentrated, meditative – even ritualistic – experiences. Maybe I always will.

    In 2006, I co-founded a record label and music production company called Ergodos with composer Benedict Schlepper-Connolly. We have co-curated dozens of projects together, and my work as a composer has often involved composing for specific contexts (such as, e.g., the Ergodos Musicians project I Call to You). For The Blue Light, my first solo album, I wanted to try to keep a sense of curated “coherence” across the record, even though the album is essentially a compilation.

    The album opens with a solo piano piece composed last year: Und weinen, und lächeln. This short toccata takes its inspiration from “Des Fischers Liebesglück”, a song by Franz Schubert with words by Karl Gottfried von Leitner. The final stanza reads: “Und weinen / Und lächeln, / Und meinen, / Enthoben / Der Erde, / Schon oben, / Schon drüben zu sein.” An English translation: “Weeping, / smiling, / we think / we are relieved of the earth, / and are already up above, / in another place.”

    Audio embed: use code below to embed “Des Fischers Liebesglück” by Franz Schubert from Spotify

    Audio embed: use code below to embed Und weinen, und lächeln by Garrett Sholdice from Bandcamp

    St Dunstan-in-the-East for piano, two violins, viola & cello was also composed last year, although the idea for the piece was sparked several years ago, whilst visiting London. St Dunstan-in-the-East was a church on St Dunstan’s hill in the City of London. It was mostly destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. After the war, the decision was taken to turn the ruins into a public garden. The space is unassuming and beautiful.

    St Dunstan in the East, City of London.

    My piece St Dunstan-in-the-East represents an attempt to create meaning out of fragmentary materials, perhaps in a way that is resonant with the idea of transforming a ruined building into a public urban space. Looking back over the notebook I used whilst sketching the piece, I noticed the following entry: “where is it going / what is it made from / why is it here / thick / thin / husks / the beauty of damaged, fragmentary things…”

    Sketches for St Dunstan-in-the-East, from the composer’s notebook, 2022.

    The next work on the album, Das blaue Licht for two violins, viola & cello dates from 2013, when I was based in Berlin. The title (which means “the blue light” in German) refers to the luminous blue of the sky above Danziger Strasse in northeast Berlin, during the hot July weeks in which I wrote the piece. The first part of Das blaue Licht features intricate pizzicato “hocketing”: a brief (ec)static dance. In the second part a series of chordal “breaths” eventually lead to a gentle song inspired by Javanese gamelan.

    Berlin, Danziger Straße.

     

    Often, at the ends of my pieces, melodies emerge as if finally remembered or unearthed. (This can be heard in the second part of Das blaue Licht.) I think this comes from my earliest musical experiences as a boy chorister in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, where sung melody was a daily experience. It was here that I first got to know choral music of the late Renaissance, such as William Byrd and Thomas Tallis. The weaving of melodic lines in this music always seems somehow miraculous to me.

    At the beginning of the Tallis excerpt above, the soprano part (“S. P.” = “sexta pars”) and alto part (“Sup.” = “superius”) are both “divided” into two, a technique known as “gymel” in Medieval and Renaissance vocal music. This technique was the inspiration for my viola and cello duet, Gymel, composed in 2018. In my piece, the cello and viola begin in unison, singing as one. This unison line then bifurcates, and the individual personalities of the two instruments emerge.

    The album closes, as it opens, with a solo piano piece: Prelude No. 12, composed in 2017. This is a soliloquy: just me, spinning out a single unbroken melodic line. The American poet Frank O’Hara talked about writing “personal poems”; this is maybe a “personal piece”. When I wrote it, I prefaced the score with these lines from his poem, “To Gottfried Benn”: “Poetry is not instruments / that work at times / then walk out on you / laugh at you old / get drunk on you young / poetry’s part of yourself”.

    For me, as a composer working with notation in the classical tradition, the score is not the music – only the performers can create this. It has been my good fortune to work with such extraordinary performers for this record: pianist Michael McHale, and musicians from Crash Ensemble – violinists Diamanda La Berge Dramm and Larissa O’Grady, violist Ed Creedon and cellist Kate Ellis. The sensitivity with which they interpreted these scores was more than I could hope for.

    Similarly, I am in indebted to the most diligent and incisive audio team: assistant producer Caterina Schembri, recording and post-production engineer Eduardo Prado, and mastering engineer Christoph Stickel. Often, for my music, the challenge is to somehow translate the atmosphere of a live acoustic performance experience into a digital recording. Thanks to this team, the intimacy and ritual of live performance comes across on this record.

    Album cover for The Blue Light by Garrett Sholdice, featuring a watercolour by Neil Sholdice. (Cábán i n-aice na coille, Loch Coirib, 2019)

    Garrett Sholdice is a composer and a co-director of the Dublin-based record label and music production company Ergodos. See https://soundcloud.com/garrett-sholdice and https://ergodos.ie. His album The Blue Light is available to purchase (download / CD) from https://ergodos.bandcamp.com/album/the-blue-light.

    Feature Image: Néstor Romero Clemente)

  • The Dying Nerve of the Liberal Class

    Outrage is the currency of the times. Nearly everyone in New York City and a healthy proportion of Americans are by now aware of the latest outrage to command Gotham headlines: the tragic death of a mentally ill ‘black’ man on an NYC subway after being choked out by a ‘white’ ex-marine. Some said the victim died while pinioned in the arms of his attacker. Others said he died later, on arrival at the hospital. After questioning the police let the marine go, and he vanished into the night. He was later arrested for homicide.

    I italicize the words above because they are not factually derived descriptions so much as ideologically derived. Another common recap of the event puts it differently: A deranged criminal, arrested forty  times and released each time by Democratic government, threatened violence to innocent subway passengers. A heroic ex-marine approached him, put him in a headlock and, in UFC parlance, put him to sleep. The individual later died in hospital. Cause of death as yet unknown.

    A Jesuit priest once said that nobody argues about reality; rather we argue about our interpretation of reality. The former interpretation is the version of events embraced by most liberals, the latter by most conservatives and many independents. The liberals have come under intense criticism for their—some would say—extremist approach to policing, or rather not policing.

    In liberal capitals, prosecutors no longer prosecute misdemeanors, and hoodlums of all kinds are released back into the public despite their offenses. Police are decried for systemic racism. Immigration is embraced without question. Whites are reviled. Men are despised. Trans people are celebrated without rest and anyone who objects is deemed transphobic. Gender pronouns are enforced. Anyone expressing traditional values or ways of communicating are labeled with a battery of accusations, including being patriarchal, privileged, racist, sexist, and of committing horrid microaggressions. Social media has been aflame with predictable hot takes from both sides of the proverbial aisle.

    ‘A fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient.’ Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1966)

    Apogee of liberal decadence?

    It makes one wonder if we are witnessing the apogee of liberal decadence. A bonfire of ideals. Something of the kind that emerged in Weimar Germany before it fecklessly succumbed to the National Socialists. It seems the liberal ideology of multiculturalism and identity politics has run its course. As I understand it, it was first encouraged in the Sixties as a left counterbalance to the Communist left and, crucially, a form of progressivism that didn’t threaten capitalist profiteering the way Soviet socialism did. From there it progressed through the mild discomfort of political correctness to the full-blown hysteria of misgendering crimes.

    We are now witnessing a liberalism that is by many accounts excusing crime at the expense of its victims. A liberalism that is practicing an extreme form of social engineering, attempting to hire for diversity sometimes at the expense of merit, forwarding reparations legislation as the middle class drowns in debt, and driving immigration even as homelessness among citizens swells. In short, racism and sexism mean that minorities and women are blameless and ought to be privileged at the expense of whites and males.

    I am reminded of passages in Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift. After being extorted by a small-time crook with mafia connections, the narrator, Charlie Citrine, an effete and wealthy writer and intellectual, is subjected to regular visits from the criminal, who sees an opportunity to expand his horizon of scams. Citrine comments:

    Rinaldo was ticking me off for my decadence. Damaged instincts. I wouldn’t defend myself. His ideas probably went back to Sorel (acts of exalted violence by dedicated ideologists to shock the bourgeoisie and regenerate its dying nerve)…Maybe this was in part a phenomenon of modern capitalist society with its commitment to personal freedom for all, ready to sympathize with and even to subsidize the mortal enemies of the leading class, as Schumpeter says, actively sympathetic with real or faked suffering, ready to accept peculiar character-distortions and burdens. It was true that people felt it gave them moral distinction to be patient with criminals and psychopaths. To understand! We love to understand, to have compassion! And there I was.

    Later he notes that “Goethe was afraid the modern world might turn into a hospital. Every citizen unwell.”

    Seems Bellow—a Nobel Prize winner and one of America’s great pulse readers—had identified decadent virtue signaling liberalism in its infancy. In the name of progress, of multiculturalism and diversity as progress, liberals find themselves surrendering their class privileges and even the conventions of societal security and law and order since these must by definition not be civilization guardrails but instruments of oppression for which we, via our ancestors (sins of the father, in the old language), are wholly responsible.

    Saul Bellow.

    Reenacting Oppression

    What is lamentable in this capitulation is that the minorities—at least in the public realm—to whom bourgeois liberals are ceding every cultural corner seem to have few better ideas than to reverse and reenact the oppression itself, driving toward a mythical notion of equality of outcome that confuses inequality with unfairness. Many have critiqued the ideology, even a small minority of liberals, on a variety of grounds including evolution. Is this justice or thinly veiled vengeance?

    The entertainment industry is perhaps Exhibit A in this phenomenon. Hence the relentless insertion of minority actors into the old vestments of oppression worn by white people in the near and distant past. Blazoned across the marquee of my Netflix app is, “Queen Charlotte,” a beautiful black woman adorned in royal vestments. At once the show denies the historical accuracy of the British/Irish queen and repurposes the oppressed as the oppressor, as though it were some sort of social progress. It is progress in the cinematic universe, as people of color are now playing characters previously withheld for white actors in the interest of historical accuracy. But now fidelity to history has been discarded to advance minority representation in film and television. Soon we will march to make the executioners’ union more diverse. More females manning the gallows. Be careful not to misgender your local hangperson.

    In his prescient comments, Bellow notes Sorel and paraphrases Goethe. Then he cuts to the chase, hoping to explain the feebleness of liberal society, “Dostoevski’s Grand Inquisitor who said: mankind is frail, needs bread, cannot bear freedom but requires miracle, mystery, and authority.”

    Too true. One can trace the need for the miraculous to the liberals’ desperate embrace of draconian public health mandates and a swift demonization of anyone that resisted. As the hysteria of the pandemic has worn away, the public health response is increasingly seen to have been a series of disastrous dictates from compromised public health institutions beholden to amoral industry. A society of the unwell, gratefully heeding the guidance of benighted institutions. Goethe and Dostoevsky together confirm the worst elements of mankind, realized in the 21st century.

    Featured Image: A member of the Peruvian Army with a police dog enforcing curfew on 31 March 2020.

    Pandemic

    The pandemic revealed the open sore of liberal credulity, as it clutched the hems of the CDC and NHS and the other infallible acronyms of our salvation. But liberals had been trending in this direction for some time. The unforgivable original sin committed by unlettered philistines in flyover states and incalcitrant financiers in coastal megacities was the denial of Hillary Clinton of her rightful coronation—which was to be the capstone achievement of liberal Boomers of the old identity politics left.

    Elevating a black man and a woman to the highest rank in consecutive terms would have been the ultimate confirmation of their identity politics. In the wake of this catastrophic defeat for liberals (a catastrophe in their worldview), the bourgeoisie dropped their long-held antipathy for federal intelligence agencies and embraced the CIA, NSA, and DIA, taking their word as gospel in the prosecution of Donald Trump. How easily they forgot Cointelpro, the slaughter of the Panthers, not to mention their murky proximity to the deaths of both Kennedys and King. So the miraculous authority of the daddy state has once more taken hold of a significant portion of the population.

    It is a perhaps positive sign that on Rotten Tomatoes, Queen Charlotte scored an all-time low audience score of 1 percent (spilled popcorn icon) and just 11 percent with critics. Though it must be noted in fairness that the series has tripled its ratings among viewers since then, now subsisting at three percent approvals. Likewise, the disastrous Bud Light campaign using a deeply controversial minor trans celebrity has thus far engendered some $15.7 billion in losses. Thanks in part to its line of Pride month clothing for toddlers, Target has watched $9B vanish from its coffers in like fashion.

    But the mainstream media wages its holy war. Vogue furiously said of Queen Cleopatra criticism, “Let’s call it what it is: racism.” The Guardian said, “…the idea that you need a white actor is utterly insidious.” The New York Times couched the negative critiques as revealing, “Fear of a Black Cleopatra,” and offered its usual casuistic evasions by declaring nobody meaningfully identified as white in Cleopatra’s time. (Note, of course, how identifying as a race supersedes being a member of an actual race. Of course, liberals have long argued there is no such thing as race, much as transgender activists often argue there is no such thing as biology, aside from a patriarchal construct ginned up by mad misogynists.)

    Writer A.J. Kay nicely summarized the  movement as, “The rigid moral paradigm in which anything short of ‘affirmation’ is bigoted and hateful.”  It is an ideology of total affirmation of ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, and women, behavior notwithstanding. Its flip side is the total condemnation of whites and males, behavior notwithstanding. If white, one’s only recourse is to don the sackcloth and ashes, fall to one’s knees, and beg forgiveness from one’s victims. Their response is immaterial. One must atone.

    This stridency is born of extreme ideological bias. We are no longer a united states. We now live in a society of seething ire beset by social division, with a doddering senior citizen in charge, a carnival barker awaiting a second act, a legacy of Camelot calling for a great renewal. Everyone angry. Everyone lost. Some blinded by despair, some by rage. The collapsing scenery is perhaps more Shakespearean than Bellovian, Recall the opening scenes of King Lear, “In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack’d ‘twist son and father… We have seen the best of our time.” As an infamous communist once wrote: history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

    Julien Charles is a critic, corporate drone, and New Yorker hoping to call attention to the authoritarian drift of states across the Western world, and the narratives promoted to gain consensus for such measures. He has been published in,  Off-Guardian and The Hampton Institute, among other publications.

    Feature Image: Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama among those in the White House Situation Room getting real-time updates on the May 2011 mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

  • Musician of the Month: Evin O’Brien

    I always considered myself a late bloomer when it came to music. Growing up, I didn’t have many opportunities to play instruments, and I chose to focus on art rather than music during my secondary school years. Becoming a better musician seemed like a mysterious journey with no obvious roadmap.

    I credit my Dad for introducing me to some incredible artists like Led Zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd & Jethro Tull. In return, I introduced him to the captivating sounds of Radiohead, a band which played a pivotal role in developing my appreciation of interesting chord progressions and ambiguous harmony.

    We listened to a lot of music together and aged fourteen my Dad surprised me with my very first guitar – an SX acoustic steel string. I remember eagerly trying to bend those strings in the style of Jimmy Page, with no great success. It would be some years before I would get round to purchasing my first electric guitar.

    I struggled as a teenager to envisage my future career. I was less concerned with money, status, or even moral virtue. Instead, I found myself preoccupied with what the day-to-day experience would be like. I would ponder different paths, like the idea of becoming a doctor – helping people, earning a good income, a respectable profession. But then I would wonder, ‘What would the minute-to-minute reality be like?’ Would it involve blood, guts, and smelly feet? High stakes with people’s lives on the line?     

    That’s why I find myself where I am today – as a musician and a teacher. I derive immense joy from the everyday moments in my career. It’s not about the grand aspirations; it’s the day-to-day experience that fulfils me. Whether I’m playing music or sharing my knowledge as a teacher, I find deep satisfaction in the present moment.     

    Revelation!     

    Not long after finishing school, I stumbled upon a YouTube video of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ arranged for solo classical guitar. It instantly captivated me, and I dedicated that entire summer to learning the piece from start to finish. The experience brought me an unparalleled joy – the intricate polyphony, the interplay between the upper and lower voices, and the sublime harmonic movements, all projected from my own instrument! It was a revelation – I had finally found something I could pour hours into.     

    I discovered I had a knack for memorizing lengthy pieces, so I embarked on expanding my repertoire. Attending classical guitar recitals at the National Concert Hall became a regular thing, as I aimed to immerse myself in the rich tapestry of the classical guitar world. By the time I enrolled for lessons with Leslie Cassidy at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama in 2013, I had already delved into the works of various composers, including Villa Lobos, Tarrega, Barrios, Koshkin, and Albeniz. This played a pivotal role in shaping my technique and opened my ears to a more contemporary range of harmonies as I explored the guitar repertoire from the romantic period onwards.

    My time with Leslie was absolutely crucial to my growth as a musician. I eagerly looked forward to our weekly Saturday morning lessons, where he meticulously reviewed every piece I had learned, correcting my mistakes and helping me break free from bad habits – especially my woeful right hand technique. Though my time with Les lasted only two years, he was an incredibly supportive and motivating mentor and teacher. I miss him dearly, and I often wonder what it would be like to have a conversation with him today, at this stage of my musical journey.

    Everything in Its Right Place…     

    Regardless of my skill level as a musician, I’ve always been drawn to composing. It just felt right and has always been a natural part of how I absorb new musical ideas. I aim to combine elements that I find appealing in a way that feels satisfying—a blend of the familiar and the unpredictable. There’s a certain joy that comes with seeing a well-developed idea come to life, as if putting something in its rightful place.     

    I knew I lacked many of the skills and understanding necessary to compose music at the level I desired. Even though I was already composing for my band BiG Fridge, I wanted a deeper understanding of my own music to better develop and convey my ideas. That’s why I decided to enroll in the Bachelor’s program in Jazz Performance at the Newpark Academy of Music. Despite knowing little to nothing about jazz, I discovered that this foreign musical idiom shared many of the same values that resonated with me.     

    Attending Newpark was a humbling experience. I had never before been surrounded by so many individuals who loved and took music as seriously, if not more so, than I did. I met amazing people who possessed qualities I aspired to, and learned a great deal from them, both as individuals and musicians. Tommy Halferty, my teacher, was truly remarkable. He encouraged me to embrace my own strengths and musical voice, always pushing me to work harder and give my best.     

    Although I often felt out of my depth, the further I progressed at Newpark, the more I realized that I had ended up exactly where I needed to be. I was exposed to new and exciting forms of music, and I acquired not only the skills and knowledge I sought in harmony, arranging, improvisation, and composition, but also a common language to effectively communicate my ideas with my peers.     

    Moreover, the experience gave me a glimpse into the vast realms of what I didn’t yet know. It provided me with the terminology and techniques that empowered me to delve deeper into these subjects even after completing my degree. While at the time, the degree felt all-encompassing, I later realized it was merely scratching the surface of music theory.  

    Harmony Takes Centre Stage     

    If there’s one quality that takes center stage in my own music, it would be the harmonic content. Reflecting on my own compositions, I’ve discovered that I can learn a great deal about myself and my personal taste through retrospective analysis. This understanding of harmony is crucial for me to achieve that. It’s simply the aspect of music that I find most fascinating and exhilarating.

    Much of the music I create is either modal or strives to fully explore the relationship between two loosely related chords. I aim to employ parsimonious voice leading as a means of generating new movements that sound fresh and captivating to my ears.  

    After completing college, I set about forming the instrumental ensemble known as Rynx Laneran, with the goal of developing and performing my latest compositions. I joined forces with Andy O’Farrell and Alex Delogu, both of whom I had the good fortune of meeting at Newpark. The music we create is deeply influenced by my admiration for artists like Portishead, as well as renowned film composers such as Bernard Hermann and Lalo Shiffrin. Our sound also takes inspiration from the captivating style of Mulatu Astatke’s music.  

    I’m incredibly proud of the music we have crafted together thus far, and I eagerly look forward to returning to live performances this summer. Additionally, we have plans to release more music later in the year, and I couldn’t be more excited about sharing it with our audience.  

    Irish Music  

    My fascination with traditional Irish music began with a chance encounter at a party where I met guitarist Chris Cole. Chris took me under his wing and introduced me to the fundamentals of his rhythmic approach when playing traditional music on the guitar. He generously shared his insights into arranging tunes for the instrument, and as my repertoire grew, I started creating my own solo guitar arrangements of Irish tunes, drawing on my knowledge of classical technique.

    Last year, I received a tremendous validation for my efforts when the Arts Council awarded me the Music Agility Award, enabling me to develop twelve original arrangements of traditional Irish tunes for contemporary Irish classical guitar.  

    Currently, I’m exploring how to merge different genres from around the world by applying scales from folkloric music such as Ethiopian music to the Irish tunes I’ve arranged. I’ve recently completed three “Ethiopian Jigs,” as I’m currently referring to them, and they possess a unique quality that is both familiar and exotic. I’m excited to see where this compositional approach will take me next.  

    These days, my schedule is busier than ever, and I’m constantly learning and expanding my musical horizons. I consider myself fortunate to have encountered a diverse range of musicians who have allowed me to pursue my various musical interests, no matter how niche they may be. I’ve never wanted to limit myself strictly to classical or jazz music; my love for different genres is vast, and I aspire to play them all.  

    In the past year, I’ve arranged numerous classical pieces by some of my favorite composers, which I perform as a duo with bassist Alex Delogu. Additionally, I formed a gypsy jazz quartet called The Tenters with fellow guitarist John Mahon, bassist Dave Mooney, and violist Brendan Lawless, and we regularly perform around Dublin.  

    I thoroughly enjoy my role as a session guitarist, collaborating with various artists such as Christian Wethered, Adam Nolan, and Yankari Afrobeat Collective. Each experience adds to my musical journey and presents unique challenges that I embrace as a contributing member.  

    As I reflect upon my career as a musician, I feel incredibly lucky to have dedicated myself to the study of the guitar. It may sound unbelievable, but it often feels like every positive thing in my life has either directly or indirectly stemmed from my commitment to this instrument. It serves as my meditation, my hobby, and my livelihood. It’s what motivates me to get out of bed each day. The impact it has had on my life is immeasurable. I’ve discovered an endless game, a never-ending journey that reflects my approach to life, one of constant learning and growth, an outlook that I intend to maintain throughout my life and journey as a musician.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini