{"id":1233,"date":"2011-02-10T22:49:56","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T06:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/216.92.17.21\/?p=1233"},"modified":"2016-02-09T15:54:12","modified_gmt":"2016-02-09T23:54:12","slug":"words-rant-response-preamble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/?p=1233","title":{"rendered":"what is it about words? a rant in response to a preamble"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s another pile of words in response to Mira’s essay, “the problem with music: a preamble in expectation of a response<\/a>.” I started writing here with every intention of addressing the matter of emotionality in music cognition, but something Mira said about goose-stepping sent me off in another direction entirely, and what came out caught even me a bit by surprise.<\/p>\n

She wrote,<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like what music can do to people. Especially music with a catchy driving beat. Or so sweet that your eyes cannot help but tear. Or so unbearably lovely that your heart just breaks to hear it. We are captives when we are captivated. We lose control. Our bodies sway. Or march in goose step compliance to the F\u00fchrer. How could I not despise such deliberate entrainment? How could I not suspect the motives of the musician? They wield the weapon called music, and before you know it, millions are incinerated. They play and our minds just nod in assent, as our bodies thoughtlessly respond.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whoa, Mira! Hitler’s musicians had a tiny bit of help, you know\u2014those itty-bitty post-war economic conditions, a modest few millenia of bigotry, some wee epochs of Holy Roman Empirical thinking, and\u2026<\/p>\n

Oh, gosh, I know there was something else\u2026 It’s on the tip of my tongue\u2026<\/p>\n

Oh! Right!<\/p>\n

A little thing called rhetoric<\/em> factored into the rise of the Third Reich, as I recall.<\/p>\n

Words.<\/em><\/p>\n

Your refuge, Mira.<\/p>\n

The musicians were just following orders. Like Eichmann<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But it’s true. Music sits alongside religion as an opiate for the masses, and when music joins<\/em> religion, it’s a truly powerful drug\u2014one that scares the crap out of me sometimes.<\/p>\n

It’s been a little too quiet around here lately. Shall we stir the pot, or kick it over<\/a>? Let’s talk about how religion keeps our planet at war, and let’s talk about how music lures people into the religious fold, and\u2014while we’re at it\u2014let’s talk about all the sacred music that is doing our world no favors, shall we?<\/p>\n

No. I don’t have the whole next month free, either. But do let’s talk about bad sacred music, at least.<\/p>\n

I’ll do Christian; Mira, can you take Jewish?<\/p>\n

So\u2026 (All good stories start with “So\u2026,” you know. Or, “So, there’s this guy\u2026”)<\/p>\n

Recently Mira and I bonded in an ecumenical rant against 1970s folk-pop sacred music. Even picturing the black spiral-bound Folk Hymnal<\/em> in my mind is enough to gag me with the memories of Christian Bible Camp\u2014what Mira beautifully dubbed “Jesus Camp”\u2014that it dredges up, and everything I absolutely freaking hated about it, and that list is plenty long, but it starts and ends with awful music.<\/p>\n

“He’s got the whole world in His [white! male!] hands,” for example. I especially love how this song’s god is at once a man with hands holding the baby and a Him with a capital H.<\/p>\n

Another favorite in the Christian Jingoism Hit Parade is the (sadly, very singable!) “They will know we our Christians by our love [or our self-satisfied bigotry, how about?],” which\u2014delicious irony of all ironies\u2014concludes, “and we pray that our unity may someday be restored.” That one lends itself well to parody, at least. I came up with, “they will know we are Buddhists by our calm\u2026 and we’ll meditate together for our own enlightenment” and the sillier, “they will know we are Taoists by our Pooh\u2026 and we’ll eat nuts and honey and live longer than the rest.”<\/p>\n

How about this gem of a tune about a god created in man’s image: “My God and I go in the field together, we walk and talk as good friends should and do; we clasp our hands, our voices ring with laughter\u2026”<\/p>\n

That book wasn’t all bad. It also introduced pale Lutherans to the world of spirituals like, “Go tell it on the mountain,” a truly great tune even if I don’t care for the idea of Jesus as my boss at the watchtower\u2014and after you’ve heard the Swingle Singers’ version of it, there’s no going back! Go to 06:40 on this YouTube medley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those “black book” tunes were all junior high Jesus Camp songs, though, and with guitar and perhaps a fireplace, they were almost tolerable. A few of them were at least fun to sing\u2014like, “Pass it on”: “It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around will warm up in its glowing.” What makes it fun is that you can insert little “pass it on!”s at the end of each phrase. What’s not so fun is that it goes on to recruit us all to be missionaries: “That’s how it is with God’s love\u2014once you’ve experienced it, you want to \u2026 pass it on.” Now, I realize there are a whole lot of missionaries out there doing good work, digging wells and immunizing babies, but you don’t want to get me started on the proselytizing thing. I’ll just mention that George Carlin’s metaphor of nailing shoes to people’s feet says it all for me.<\/p>\n

In grade school Jesus Camp, the songs were even worse. My personal favorite features the line “I’ve got the wonderful love of the blessed redeemer way down in the depths of my heart” crammed into four beats of sextuplets, and it finishes with a rousing chorus of “and if the devil doesn’t like it he can sit on a tack.”<\/p>\n

Do I even need to write out the snarky comment about that<\/em>?<\/p>\n

The only song of its ilk I remember liking\u2014even at the time, mind you\u2014was the “I’d like to teach the world to sing” adaptation, because it was actually good music, and if you mumbled through some of the lines, it was just like you were doing the Coke jingle. Somehow commercial colonialism has never bothered me quite as much as evangelical colonialism does, but maybe that’s because I didn’t have to spend every Sunday morning of my childhood at the Kellogg School of Business.<\/p>\n

The real problem for me, of course, is that I never liked the folk-pop idioms of the 1960s and 70s to begin with. I was the geek listening to Johnny Cash and Beethoven. While the normal kids in Luther League were grateful to be doing something that was just sappy and not also several hundred years old, I was missing Bach and lampooning it all.<\/p>\n

I’ve mostly forgotten my “Guitar Service in Five Minutes” parody, but I haven’t been able to forget how uncomfortable I felt during the interminable open prayers at the guitar service in college, the few times I made the mistake of attending. Especially the night not just one or two but four<\/em> earnest Lutheran students offered sanctimonious weepy prayers for the salvation of their friends and roommates who were struggling with the abomination of\u2014gasp!\u2014homosexuality. I wish I’d been far enough out of my closet and comfortable enough with Jesus-speak that night to offer the prayer I wanted to offer: that the fearful, narrow-minded “Christians” in our midst might be enlightened by the example of “our Lord Jesus Christ, who\u2026” blah, blah, blah\u2026 Insert just about any Jesus parable here, because just about any one of them would do the job.<\/p>\n

It comes back to the music, though. If some of that Folk Hymnal<\/em> had been more like Peter, Paul, and Mary, or if I’d been more like the normal kids, then I probably would have liked those songs well enough and managed to forget their regrettable texts by now.<\/p>\n

See, it’s not the music that gets me, it’s the words\u2026 I hated the music, but it’s the words that torture me today.<\/p>\n

Then there’s all that transcendently great Christian sacred music\u2014consider Peter Tschesnokoff’s “Salvation is Created,” or Maurice Durufl\u00e9’s “Requiem,” or F. Melius Christiansen’s “O Day Full of Grace,” or Olivier Messiaen’s “Vingt regards sur l’enfant-J\u00e9sus,” or pretty much anything J.S. Bach ever wrote\u2014all of it majestically complex and simply gorgeous, humbly dedicated, “Sole deo gloria” at the top of each manuscript\u2014to God alone be the glory.<\/p>\n

To paraphrase a friend of mine who says she doesn’t have a lot of faith but believes in her grandfather’s faith, I have barely any faith at all, but I have a hard time not believing in Bach’s faith.<\/p>\n

As long as I don’t listen too closely to any of the words. What I need is some good solid music<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Music<\/em>. And then I’ll be fine again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Music sits alongside religion as an opiate for the masses, and when music joins religion, it’s a truly powerful drug\u2014one that scares the crap out of me sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[250],"tags":[217,68,39,121,9,214,229,224,50],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-eichmann","tag-faith","tag-feminism","tag-holocaust","tag-music","tag-musicians","tag-musicology","tag-politics","tag-queer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4510,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions\/4510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}