Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Oh to be home again/Down in Ol' Virginny
Reading this I suddenly realised what has begun to depress me about the American election. Jonathan Martin concludes his post on the rise of Obama support in Virginia with the words 'Ol' Virginny is dead'. I don't want Ol' Virginny to be dead, not least because of the most beautiful song by that most beautiful band, The Band. With the now evidently catastrophic Palin play, the Republicans attempted to mobilise the so-called 'base'. This involved talk about 'real' America being found in small towns inhabited by Plumber Joes, the underlying assumption being that the authenticity of these places was predicated on Republican values. This was nasty cynicism by people who didn't give a damn about small towns. Equally nasty, however, was the Democratic response which involves, basically, pouring scorn on small town America. (They'll deny this but the tone is unmistakeable.) An old and once lethal gap opens between metropolitan and rural America. I like both, but, if pressed, I'd vote rural. It's where America is most different from Europe and it's where homemade music-making of every kind is most alive. And it's certainly not, in my experience, the repository of the 'values' dreamed up by the Republican (and feared by the European) elites.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Who are these European elites. Most of those that I've come across carping about America, would give their eyeteeth and a hell of a lot more to have the lifestyle in Iowa. Elites indeed, a bunch of half fed little f..... . And that gent from the Nobel lit' medal, represents the cohort that holds that if a 60 mile arc centered on Delphi does not contain it, it does not exist. That plank would have the same exact problem with Thomas Hardy.
ReplyDeleteThere was a similar & rather ambivalent yearning for simple rustic life in Rome, back in the day. Though the Romans themselves were generally corrupt, typical city folk, they had this ideal of the simple, austere farmer (eg Cincinnatus), as being the original strength of Rome. Of course none of them would have wanted to live like Vergil did, they just liked to praise such a life as being more 'authentic' (which i'd say it was, but then i'm not a city person).
ReplyDeleteNearly as good as Gerry Colonna's "carry me back to ole Vigineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
ReplyDeleteMalty junior wrote the name Virginia in his notebook then scratched it out, someone nicked his mountain bike in a small town called Ashland.
Ol' Virginny = slavery days, plantations. That's back when it was called "Ol' Virginny." See "Swallow Barn: A Sojourn in the Old Dominion," by John Pendleton Kennedy. First published in 1832 and quite a portrait of Ol' Virginny from a white Baltimore lawyer's perspective. (He was visiting cousins.) You can't help but feel it would be a *very* different story from one of the slaves' (he makes 'em quite happy and speaking in very thick dialect) p.o.v.'s. But of course they couldn't write it: They were forbidden to learn how to write.
ReplyDeleteCheck it out.
It isn't just urban vs. rural, Bryan. It's people like my brother - who worked for years for the Philadelphia Gas Works - and his family vs. people who buy into every notion propagated by the New York Times and PBS and NPR and by virtue of that not only think they are better than my brother and his family but also feel free to be contemptuous of them.
ReplyDeleteWhich, by the way, is why, in this election, I am voting my class.
ReplyDeleteI love both elements of the US. New York is in a way the ultimate European city, a great supranational melding of urban ideals. But when travelling across that country the courtesy, friendliness and charm of remote parts of the mid-west has been a revelation. It's like an idealised English country life shorn of some of the class conflict and set in an infinitely grander landscape.
ReplyDeleteI would like to be part of a European elite... does anyone know how to join?
ReplyDeletemutley...
ReplyDeleteChange your name to redsetterthedog.
Hi Bryan,
ReplyDeleteEnjoying the music you're offering. By the way, I had a similar experience to your Texas afternoon, when I was in Oslo. We spent a terrific evening with each person reading poetry or playing piano, whatever the talent to share, the resident composer of the city's theater there, showing with recordings how his music to Ibsen differed from Grieg's. Of all I did in Norway, including going to Lofoten, that was the most enjoyable time of all. The family style meal was great as well.
On the politics, the issue of generic Republican versus generic Democrat falls a lot on the Democrat wanting the power to be in DC, federally controlled, versus the Republican wanting the power to be more localized. For instance, in Massachusetts, a largely Democratic state, we have higher state taxes for a more powerful state government with fancy programs. Just north, in New Hampshire, they prided themselves on going so long without a state income tax at all. However, their property taxes, paid to the cities and towns, is large in comparison. We who are close to the border know there really is no great savings one way or the other.
I think the biggest problem with this election, is that what should be important cannot matter. The press takes it all over and wants to talk about Sarah Palin's wardrobe, and the latest SNL skit. Obama, who has never done anything, is free from being attacked on his record. He gets to philosophize with his gift of gab. And you get the feeling that all the little stones are being turned over as to McCain's and Palin's records, looking for something, anything, for the next newscast. This is nightmare created by the media. Ir parallels that gloom and doom they keep wanting to report about the economy, keeping everyone from spending, the media doing their large part in bringing down the free world.
So I wish we could look at the rural versus metropolitan issues. The last time I went into Boston, was for the music. A trombonist friend of mine, Peter Garner from Montreal, was playing in a church there with the Blue Heron renaissance Choir, doing Music from the Era of el Greco & Velazquez: The Musical Patronage of Francisco Gomez de Sandoval y Rojas (1552 - 1625). Wow. Standing ovation.
Yours,
Rus
I also love 'rural' America- it has a texture, a rhythm, a culture of its own, which of course varies from region to region. And it's where most of the great music and not a few of the great authors, come from. Just to look at the artists on the Sun Record label alone, from Elvis through Johnny Cash to Roy Orbison- is to see how much the 'periphery' has given us.
ReplyDelete