Apocalypse No

Apocalypse! It's amazing how much ink and energy has been spilled on apocalyptic themes. It's a word that means "unveiling" in the sense of revealing something hidden. From what I've been able to learn the literature that has informed our western conversation about apocalypse has its origins in the 3rd century or so. Apocalyptic writing begins with Jewish texts responding to severe and traumatic suffering brought on by repressive leaders. The Book of Daniel is an early and important example.

In an interesting irony a leader by the name of Antiochus IV wanted to Hellenize the world under his jurisdiction, which included Palestine. Hellenize is another word for "civilize." His love of Greek culture was apparently matched by a cruel and tyrannical streak along the lines of, say, Stalin. When he introduced his proposal to make Greeks out of pious Jews of the time, they said no. That was enough to release his abusive tendencies and the bloodletting began. As an added touch he decided to make an animal sacrifice in the Jewish Temple to Zeus. And, to top things off, he banned the practice of Judaism in Palestine. Add some torture and death and you get the idea. For a people whose faith was rooted in their liberation by God from the tyranny of the Egyptian Pharaoh, this was a major problem. Where was God in the midst of such agony? What would become of them? Could they survive it? Daniel was written to bring comfort and to assure the people that God had not abandoned them and that they would be vindicated, their enemies destroyed, or, as we tend to say, "brought to justice."

Reading Daniel, particularly from chapter 7 forward, is to be immersed in dark and nightmarish images. This is the nature of apocalyptic writing, an expectation of the form. It isn't dissimilar to science fiction in the kinds of images it conjures. In Daniel's case we are given the pretext of prediction, as if it were written during the 6th century Babylonian captivity and could see several hundred years into a 3rd century world. Internal evidence from the text indicates that it was written during the reign of Antiochus IV, around 165 BCE. We are served with a lion, a bear and an empire that is symbolized by metallic images, the better to destroy others with. The author of Daniel is signifying the various empires of that had exercised power over the Jews since the southern kingdom of Judah was conquered in the 6th century. We are taken to the divine throne room in all of its glory and strangeness. The empires of destruction are ephemeral, we learn, and God is in control. Persevere and trust in God. Things will come out alright, despite all appearances.

At the end of the 1st century, during a period of Christian persecution, the author we know as John was exiled on the isle of Patmos. There he wrote down an apocalyptic vision using the images of Daniel and adding a couple of his own. Of course, his context was not the same as it was in 165 BCE. He wrote down his vision around 100 CE/AD. But the feeling of terror and destruction is the same. John recycles the images of Daniel for a new time and place and for the same purpose: to comfort and assure people who were suffering persecution. These texts address fear with the assurance that God will vindicate the righteous. The violence of Daniel is mitigated by the images of the Lamb (Jesus Christ) who seeks the redemption of all nations and not their destruction. But that's another topic in itself with plenty of room for discussion about violence vs. non-violence in the text.

Fast forward to the 1960's and we meet Hal Lindsey, former Campus Crusader for Christ turned best-selling author and peddler of a new apocalyptic text based on Revelation and Daniel. Lindsey doesn't offer a vision but rather an "interpretation" about the modern meaning of the images used in Daniel and John. Dragging the texts from their own geographies and histories he places them in the context of contemporary history. He helpfully decodes them for us. He decided, on the basis of a tradition from the 19th century, that these ancient texts predict the future, a future already part of God's plan and therefore a script for the future of the planet and of humanity. The short version: there will be, at some point in the not so distant future, a "rapture" or moment when believers in Christ on earth will be taken up into the clouds to meet Jesus, who will take then them into heaven to witness the events about to occur on earth. For those who missed the first cut, that is, those who are "left behind," they will have to endure years of suffering and violence, the appearance of the feared Anti-Christ (on the QT, he is both male and a Democrat who believes in world government) and a final battle at Armageddon in the Middle East. If you are working for world peace, or even peace in the limited terrain of Palestine and Israel, you are wasting your time, according to Lindsey. God intends to battle it out there with the devil. You may assume here that God is not a pacifist. The enemies of God will be destroyed and the righteous, those who believe in Christ, will finally be joined with God and Christ for eternity in heaven. In this scenario earth doesn't fare so well and is, well, left behind.

You can call this a "pop culture apocalypse" because that is what it has become. It continues to be a religious side show that parodies itself with book after book and sermon after sermon spreading chicken-little words of wisdom and taking it to the bank. If it has anything to do with the texts it purports to "interpret" it is hard to find. Any reasonable reading of the ancient texts will not lead to the absurd conclusions of Lindsey and company. Texts intended to comfort become, in their hands, something akin to slasher movies with everyone in fear for their lives. The loving Christ of the scriptures is strangely absent. Their Christ is a warrior and out to get his enemies, though he still loves his friends. The Risen Christ who says, repeatedly, "Do not fear," now says, "Have fear. I am here." The enemies list includes Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, unrepentant Jews, workers for world peace, secular humanists and liberals in general. Absurd is the right word to describe this contemporary apocalyptic worldview.

The question it raises for me is the way it teaches millions of people that being concerned about this world is a waste of energy. This, they seem to say, is a dying enterprise. Heaven is the goal, to be with Jesus. We have inherited this worldview and have heard it in songs like "This world is not my home, I'm just passing through" and "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It encourages people to turn their gaze away from our problems, away from possible solutions and away from the hard work of caring for this world and its people. It places God firmly in heaven, where God wants us to be. It is fundamentally anti-ethical. It ignores science and grounded rational thinking. It puts people in ethical retreat. Further, it advocates, as part of the divine plan for our future, for the special treatment of Israel over the claims for justice by the Palestinian people, whose suffering God does not hear. It casts a cynical glance at those who work for peace in that region, believing that God has predetermined their failure. Pitiful are the peacemakers, they are inclined to say, who are possibly in league with the devil himself. They trade a fantasy, a created fiction for the real world that needs compassionate human hands to steward and preserve it.

Apocalyptic thinking is not the province of Christians only. Doomsayers in general tend towards the apocalyptic. Ecological, financial or cultural doomsayers are similar and all traffic in some manner in fear and despair, or retreat into a world of their own devising. Apocalyptic thinking saps us of energy and makes us ineffective in solving the problems we face. For that reason I am inclined to reject the apocalyptic project entirely. I surprise myself with that conclusion because I haven't until recently really looked at these texts and the consequences of their thought. I have read them as somehow essential to Christian belief and essential to a Christian understanding of history. It's in the creed: Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I think we should say, paraphrasing the film, "Apocalypse No!" This thinking has had its time in history and in religion. If as a culture we continue to latch onto this kind of thinking, we will not get serious about the problems we face together. It doesn't matter whether it's the Christian version or the Mayan version or the latest words from Nostradamus. It's escapist and ethically and rationally bankrupt. I think it needs to be rejected out of hand for our contemporary situation.

Having said that I think there is a place for the creed's affirmation of Christ coming again to judge the living and the dead. But that doesn't have to unpack as an apocalyptic narrative. Apocalypse simply means unveiling. It exposes the truth of what is and affirms God's ultimate vindication and therefore our vindication. The apocalyptic authors have at least indirect roots in the prophets, who also unveiled the truths others would keep hidden. But once the unveiling takes place, the work begins to heal and transform. This is the heart of Christ's work, if we are using a positive and theologically responsible Christology. Judgment can be understood, not as a violent response to sin, but as a moment of truth in which the sinner/transgressor is confronted with the truth about themselves and their actions and consequences of their actions, but is then forgiven, redeemed and reconciled. It is the tears of confession and the true beginning of new life. there is plenty that needs unveiling in our world, including our own contributions to its problems. A little judgment is needed in order to move forward.

Instead of Christ coming in the clouds to take us away, Christ is with us to empower and move us towards loving service in the world. The prayer remains: "Your kingdom come, on earth, as in heaven." Earth is to be a reflection of heaven. We are the ones who have wanted to escape to the sky beyond. We are called, though, to the earth here and now. That is ultimately the call of all religions, when not distorted to become pious escape routes or fire insurance security. I think that is hard, given what we face. I think it means looking to science and rational thinking more than to Daniel and Revelation for answers to our problems. They carry messages of hope and work on us as poetry works on us, in the interior life where good things, new things begin. But to solve our problems, the problems of climate change and global warming, population exploding at 7 billion and counting, violence as an accepted means to solve political disputes, racism that continues to find new forms of expression and so many other issues, we are going to have to do some unveiling. We will need to study, discuss, vote and look for solutions in the real world. Otherwise we will fritter away our intelligence and moral capacity on escapist thinking and entertainment.

Apocalypse No. Collective problem solving and ethical action for the transformation of the world, yes.

New Music

I frequently drive by the Colfax Avenue concert venues, old theaters like the Bluebird, and see names of bands on the marquee. I don't know most of them, but I read the names, anyway. When I think about going to a concert I start thinking about the volume, the crowds, and the fact that I'd rather be home anyway. The music I grew up with was all classic rock, folk, folk-rock, Beatles and Stones and San Francisco and top 40 from the 50's forward. And there was James Brown on my list as well. My father loved jazz from the swing era and played stride piano with ease. He gave me an ear for jazz but I took to Thelonius Monk and Bill Evans, who were more modern at the time. Since I was trained for years as a classical musician I've got all of that music in my head as well. I'm hardly alone in that and as I've gotten older more and more young musicians experience music in that sort of eclectic way. One form seems to feed another and the forms are endless, especially with world music easily available.

Some think that this way of experiencing music, either as a listener or as a professional musician is a sign of some kind of cultural decline. I get where that comes from. If training is what others teach you, than that will be what you think is true. I was told endlessly that I was supposed to like and play certain kinds of music, all of it European. All I can say is, it didn't take.

So to the newer stuff, at least to me. The music sound track from the film Amelie by Yann Tierson was really interesting. I even liked Eddie Veder's soundtrack for Into the Wilderness. Apparently there were others who found it, well, distracting. Paul Simon's new album, which I've only heard in small segments, seems fresh and interesting. I saw Coldplay doing Fix It on a cable TV concert the other day and was drawn in completely. Their post-modern angst was almost mesmerizing, as if they've absorbed too early the pain of the world and want to release it back to the world again in a catharsis of rhythm, melancholic lyricism and fanatical physical energy. It was pretty cool.

The sort of improvising on the piano I do these days borrows from Brad Mehldau, a kind of expressionist jazz pianist when he's letting go. He's found a way in to the pop sound world and recycles it through through the acoustic grand piano, still a powerful medium. He's got a left hand that plays a little like Bach and a little like Chopin and sometimes like Scriabin, with some Bud Powell thrown in along the way. I love his music, especially when he stretches out of bounds and goes who knows where. I suppose he's got his own version of post-modern expressionistic angst going, but that's not all he does. He's a bit like Keith Jarrett but thankfully he doesn't scream like Jerry Lewis in heat when he plays. Sorry Keith.

But the latest music that I've liked is from Finland, a piano concerto with wonderful harmonic sonorities and virtuosic piano writing. The composer's name is Einojuhani and the piece is his Piano Concerto # 3 played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. It's consistently good throughout all three movements, one of the better modern classical works I've ever heard.
You never know when something new will grab you and this one got to me, a random visit to the library and there it was. I never would have found it on iTunes or Pandora or anywhere in cyber-media. It was sitting in a bin, just like the old days before Tower Records went under with all the other CD stores. Thankfully there are some bins left to cull and consider.

Micky Hart

Planet Drum is an older CD now, but Micky Hart has been continuing his fascinating explorations into world music and rhythm since then. I've never been a Grateful Dead follower, but I admire what they were doing and am really excited by Micky Hart's work. World music is nothing new nor is the idea of fusing foreign cultural elements together with familiar styles. Something new always comes out, not "pure" (not that this is possible) but interesting. Western music was built on the combination of different styles and aesthetics. Otherwise we would still be singing Gregorian Chant, itself the result of stylistic combination and revision. The music of medieval villages eventually made it  into early instrumental and orchestral music and continued its development from there with 18th and 19th century music in Europe. In addition to what became known as tonal harmony, it was rhythm that really transformed music from the otherworldly quality of chant and vocal polyphony to more earthy and dance-related styles. It was a re-discovery of the body, distrusted by a neo-Platonic church culture where spirit trumped flesh as an ultimate value. That, at least, is the broad narrative. There is a deeper narrative in the details.

When jazz first came on the scene in the south it was distrusted by hegemonic white, Christian culture still stuck in the idea of disembodied spirit moving towards heaven (away from the body and earth). The problem of acceptance was two-fold: the music used drums and powerful rhythms; and it was performed and composed by people of color. American and European pop music and certainly religious music was not subtle rhythmically. It was 2/4, 4/4 and 3/4 time-two beats, four beats or three beats to a measure of musical time, predictable and lacking in serious counter-rhythms or rhythmic layering. This lack of rhythmic subtlety was eventually called "square." The shapes seemed simple and even a bit boring compared to the interesting cross-rhythms in jazz or blues. Drums were the driving force articulating the interesting dynamics of rhythm in this music, carried forward in the solo and rhythm instruments on top (the harmonies/changes, melodies and solos that developed the melodic material). All of this came from Africa, Cuba, Latin America, the Caribbean-all places where the underside of American culture had come from during that era's practice of cheap labor known as slavery. White Christian culture was embedded in another worldview and economic reality and wasn't initially able to absorb or understand this other way of seeing the world. It looked uneducated, unsophisticated, dirty, poor, and unsavory. It was corrupting for anyone from a more genteel background. Keep your daughters away!

Of course, it was racist to the core. It was tied to economic elitism and colonialism, to the superiority of white culture and values, to a deep fear of the savage world ("deepest darkest Africa" sort of thing) and to a deep distrust of the body and human sexuality, which had to be controlled within rigid social expectations. White preachers felt compelled to condemn it for its corrupting influence.

Young people, at least a good number of them, saw it differently. It was liberating. It embraced what the churches rejected in strong moral terms. It felt good. It was fun. And for many the music was profound, a new way of human expression. White players joined the music, performing scandalously with black and brown musicians in public and eventually on recordings. And it wasn't European! It was American with roots in the rhythms and aesthetics of  Latin America and Africa, an explosion and fusing of cultures and styles and sounds. It changed the sound and face of American pop music. "Daisy, Daisy give me your answer, do" gave way to "I Got Rhythm," "St. Louis Blues," "Kansas City," and a host of classic American tunes. Kids danced to them, played them, listened to them. They became the new cultural soundtrack. It hasn't stopped since.

By the time we reach Micky Hart there is a long history of musicians studying, performing and integrating musics from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, not to mention other cultures from around the world. What even three decades ago was called "Latin" rhythm has become Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, and other sub-headings with specific characteristics. The knowledge base of a musician like Hart is vast, global and detailed. It is as specific and "learned" as any classical musician, say a specialist in Romantic piano literature or French Baroque music. It was always so, but it was unrecognized for decades by the majority of people, certainly by the classical and European-trained musicians of the first half of the twentieth century.

Sometimes, as I seek out what to listen to from the digital library I've accumulated, I like to hear music by Bruckner or Bach. But then I put on Planet Drum and find it equally if not even more compelling. It is different, to be sure. But it is also equally "good." The old pyramid with the German Three (Bach, Beethoven and Brahms) on the top has been flattened for good. They are no less wonderful, no less important, but they have been joined by the rest of the world.

August Wilson was a playwright who explored the African American experience in 10 plays, including Gem of the Ocean and Fences. I'm trying to get through them all. Once I begin a one of these plays I'm hooked to the end. The language is rich and the undercurrent of feeling and context is profound. In an amazing brief essay introducing Fences he speaks of New York as a place devouring endless ethnicities but spitting out the black community. African Americans end up on the margins, by the rivers and railroad tracks, trying to eke out an existence. The stories are written with a poetry of pain, joy, survival and hope. The lives of the characters cry out with desire for life and wholeness, even as they struggle with addictions and poor choices and the reality of racism and classism. In spite of everything there is never actual despair. Hope survives, even amidst death and betrayal.

Reading these plays, I am a white visitor to black culture. I feel like a fly on the wall, overhearing words that were always there but unheard before. All I ever had growing up were stereotypes and imagined ideas about being black in America. Jazz helped bridge that gap over time and the civil rights movement brought some of the reality home through TV and media images. I learned from literature and music and by reading Raisin in the Sun, and by knowing superficially a black family at my high school. No matter, I will always be a visitor.

Yet I know that my life has been affected deeply by black culture and friends and acquaintances over the years. I was in a class with jazz pianist Billy Taylor once at Amherst College in which he criticized Clint Eastwood's Bird about the life of Charlie Parker. For him it was just another story of a black man being helped by a white savior-figure. In the film Charlie Parker's own inner strength and intelligence were absent, overtaken by his drug addiction. The character in the film could not have produced the music that the real Parker gave the world. You wonder if Eastwood's Parker could even read a book. The real Parker studied scores, knew music well and was well informed and intelligent. To this day musicians study the jazz solos and recordings of Parker the way classical musicians study Bach. You'd never know that from the film.

It sounds overly romantic to say it, but I have been touched by a deep spiritual intelligence in African American culture. It shines through the music, literature, dance and much else. I can't even imagine American cultural life without the presence of the black community. Our popular music at the turn of the century was somewhere between sentimental and ridiculous. A Bicycle Built for Two is a typical example. That was before ragtime and jazz became well known. Despite the racist and classist reactionary rhetoric from churches and elsewhere this music took root in the hearts and minds of many in the white community, who embraced its rhythms and even its soul enthusiastically. It allowed for a vital and significant popular music to develop in this country, music which remains at the core of American life. In real ways it was taken, perhaps stolen, from the black community, but by now we are aware of the origins of the music and give due credit, mostly. There were plenty of injustices along the way and too many musicians were left behind financially or prevented from rising as far as they might have (black big bands, as one example, and much of their music has been lost to history, unrecorded). History is making the necessary corrections, so the story is being told increasingly as it actually happened. The white swing bands, as popular as they were, have receded in significance as Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams and countless others have risen in significance.

Though it is fair to talk about black history, in fact we have to, the larger picture for me is the relationship of one culture to another. Black culture grew in relationship to white culture, from slavery to the racist realities of post-Civil War America to civil rights and beyond. The same is true for Chinese, Japanese, Native American and all other ethnicities in this country. We still live in a culture of white hegemony. But what we call "white" is continually being influenced by the cultures that feed it. Our art, our music, our dance, our theater, our politics and so much else are in no manner purely "white," whatever that designation may mean. It would be nice if white culture would more graciously acknowledge its debt to the world it has taken from. But that would be another world, not the one we live in.

For those who retreat into European culture, largely of the past, it may seem like a safe haven. For that group things were fairly good until the turn of the 20th century. What has come since, in the last 100 years and more, is problematic. If only we could get back to a world of tonal music, unregulated capitalism, dogmatic religion and morality, a largely white world that could look down on other ethnicities and pity the poor, a world before the labor movement, a world without communism and a world that had no problem with the Western hemisphere colonizing the entire "other than white" globe. It was so good to be unchallenged!

It's nothing but a fantasy, an imagined world that no longer exists if it ever truly did. I opt for due acknowledgment of that past for its real accomplishments but I don't want to live there. If I wanted to live in that world I wouldn't bother with August Wilson and his plays. They would be irrelevant to me. Better to read Shakespeare or Victorian literature. Better to listen to European classical music. Better to watch classical ballet. Better to dance the waltz, for that matter. No reason to bother with the 20th, let alone the 21st, century with its complications, many of them brought on by the very attitudes that characterized the old world.

What is clear as I read August Wilson is that the realities of the world will not just go away. Just because we imagine a people to be invisible doesn't mean they are not there. It doesn't mean that they don't have a voice or a point of view. It doesn't mean they don't cry out from the margins and make us uncomfortable in our false security. And it doesn't mean, despite everything else, that we are not enriched by their presence, acknowledged or not.

Recovering Old Music

My long term project-recording old vinyl LP's (old enough to be called "long playing") keeps me in contact with music I have either grown up with or have known for 20 or more years. Old Beatles records still have life in them; recently I listened again to Rubber Soul from my old monaural LP (for those who have no idea what that is, there was a time when music was not recorded in "stereo," something we take for granted). The Lennon-McCartney songs still sound well (the lyrics seem to seek rhyme over sense; they don't reach too far) but more interesting are George Harrison's songs. Think for Yourself stretches lyrically and musically, at least to my ears. I suppose I like his more introverted and reflective personality and his tendency to reach beyond the moment in his life. He never really carried an entire album on his own, but somehow he always has something unique to say.

Then there is Graceland by Paul Simon. Simon has always looked for new ways to create music. He brought a great gift to music by featuring other musicians who worked in other genres of music. Cajun musicians, African musicians, jazz musicians, gospel musicians-he would work around their music and incorporate what they were doing with his own musical concepts. He had done it before Graceland, but this was a major project and done on larger scale. By now the music is well known. At the time it was fresh and opened new sound worlds, certainly for me. The township music of South Africa was totally new to me and many others. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, now famous, were a Western discovery. The lyricism of Simon's music blended with that music and produced appealing melodies and harmonies. Throughout the album the rhythms come from world music, the songs themselves are influenced by world music and the whole project seems like an international music festival. This fusion of musical styles is as old as music itself. Sometimes it's more intentional and Simon's album is one of those moments. But early Christian chant derived from Jewish chant, Bach and other Germans of his time learned from and borrowed Italian music, Brahms studied the polyphony of the Renaissance, and jazz is rooted in African, Latin American and sacred American music. Joplin rags, as one example, use hymn-like harmonies to undergird the syncopation. 20th century European music broadened its influences to include Balinese gamelan (Debussy), not to mention  Indian rhythms and even birdsong (Messiaen). It's a pretty exhaustive list if all were included. Simon did it in a new way and in a new genre.

I also recently recorded Wagner's Parsifal (with von Karajan conducting) and find it beautiful, pretentious and exhausting. It's hard not to be drawn in to this music, yet it also repulses. It's like a musical tsunami. You see it coming, you run as fast as you can and it overwhelms you in the end. Some people just don't live close enough to be affected, I guess. I once allowed myself to be baptized with Wagner's Ring cycle in a week long performance of the four operas. That was about enough. It was Romanticism on steroids. I have a hard time not feeling a good deal of megolomania in Wagner's music. His music seems to want to overwhelm everything around it, just devour it, like music with a personality disorder. I can't seem to ignore it but I want it to go away. I suppose it fits the story of his life, a history of using others for his own artistic ends. He is the artist as god-like, mating irresponsibly with humankind and producing semi-divine progeny. By the way, my Wagnerian baptism didn't take. I keep him around but I won't be visiting often. He won't leave the house.