We have a new year of hope to look forward to.
Alas, it's 366 days away in 2025
because no way in hell this one is going to turn out well.
(Don't forget February 29, Leap Year Day.)
Think about it. This is a United-States-of-America Presidential election year. Last time, in 2020, two-thirds of American voted for one candidate and the other took office. At best those two-thirds of Americans are going to be in a bad mood fours years later and, most likely, the same sabatoge and subterfuge will result in another stolen election.
This is in addition to the escalating anti-Jewish hate that is appearing and exploding throughout the United States, most recently at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton. (We have to wonder what liberals in 2024 will do to match the COVID and Floyd hysterias that diverted Americans in 2020 from realizing it was supposed to be a presidential election year based voters choices. My own response is to make my only 2024 New Year's resolution to be alive long enough to have new resolutions in 2025.)
Any hope that 2024 is going to be an illuminating beacon of peace is looking dim indeed, but maybe 2025 will be better.
'Cellist Yo Yo Ma talked delightfully about the notion
of how we integrate foreign music into our own circle.
I believe his quote was, "the other becomes ourselves."
What a lovely notion, that we hear something alien and different
and we learn to make it part of our own musical mental library.
One extreme example I love is Dave Brubeck
hearing African rhythms and incorporating them
into his own jazz to the point where his odd-timed works
are now part of the music we often hum on the way to work.
(I thought it was fun they used that piece in the movie
"Pleasantville" to show social progress in the 1950s.)
He played some of Brubeck's "Take Five" as an example
and hearing that jazz played on Yo Yo Ma's 'cello
was quite a joy.
What sullied the evening for me was when Yo Yo Ma
talked politics.
He talked about the last century of horror,
which it has been,
and how we should get together and form common goals for the future.
I presume those goals should supercede the American ideal
of individual achievement and excellence that made our country great.
I wanted to stand up from my second-row-center seat and yell,
"You know, sir, we did that in 1910, the greater good was `fairness.'
The result was socialism in much of the world,
hundreds of millions dying in gas chambers and mass graves,
thousands of millions losing their liberty and livelihoods.
That's how 120 thousand Japanese-Americans ended up
in FDR's concentration camps
and six million Jews died in Hitler's holocaust.
We tried the worldwide-common-good ideal and it didn't work.
It produced the `century of horror' you referred to earlier.
Maybe, just maybe, you're completely wrong and
life, liberty, and property rights
are the greater good."
The next afternoon Renee Fleming spent two-thirds
of her concert where I hoped to hear opera arias and
Broadway songs doing a drippy piece on the environment
with pictures of nature's landscapes.
I guess I should be happy it wasn't a sermon on global warming.
I was sad that I didn't go hear the Mozart Requiem instead.
In 2020
the Philadelphia Orchestra supported a racist, genocidal group
that should send any responsible Jewish scurrying away.
Why do these people feel they should make political statements and,
should they decide to be political,
why can't they choose the side of
decency?
I waited many months with bated breath for these two concerts,
Yo Yo Ma on 2024 March 9 and
Renee Fleming on 2024 March 10.
While both were musically marvelous moments,
both were sullied by polical and social commentary.
What was especially galling for me was there was a performance
of the Mozart Requiem at the same time as Renee Fleming
that I missed to go to her concert.
If you like what you read here,
then
here
are my other American-issues essays.
13:05:09 Mountain Standard Time
(MST).
37 visits to this web page.