A brief meditation on adversity
When you're able to survive extraordinary difficulties with some measure of grace, and many of the people around you exist by constantly pretending everything is normal, a sort of cover story, certain contradictions arise. It is important to fix in the mind that when you honestly engage with the work, the arts, the studies, and pass all of the tests, and gain useful understanding, but don't go along with the corrupt practices in the city, the schools, and, ultimately, the houses, you find yourself eventually in the cold, on the street, whatever objective correlative term comes to mind, and the expectation is that you simply won't exist for much longer. When a culture's wealth is concentrated in its institutions, it is possible to encounter the traditions authentically within these institutions, but when the manner of running these institutions drives you out of the garden, the first moment after noon tends to be night, and the actual conditions of social life in the country (which to be fair, a very large percentage are able to isolate themselves from in suburban houses) start to take a sledgehammer to the intricately ground gears of the pocketwatch.
It is important to fix this in the mind, though there's no reason for it to be at the top of the mind, and the first subject of conversation. It does force an extraordinary discipline onto day-to-day existence, and it appears that few are capable of that level of discipline, which explains why many of the excluded don't make it very far. And one does miss out on the wine of life, but that is the nature of the time.
It is important to understand that this is part of a larger history. A generation won a world war, and devised a system of industrial prosperity for its children, and that generation grew very corrupt within the comforts of industrial prosperity.
What is to be done? Well, first, the work that has nothing to do with this social circumstance. This matter must not be at the top of the mind, or you'll simply give the old mistakes life by arguing with them. But there is a very important point that has to be made. The claim of right for just going along with things, that being part of a group in power is its own good, is a very old lie being given a new claim on truth. The claim is that simply being effective is greater than any notion of the good, or of higher truths, because it ultimately reveals truths that are greater than the higher truths, presumably because all claims of truth are false.
The chief task of those in difficulty is not to get onto the right side of the corruption, or to tear down the machines that guarantee the prosperity, but to point out the false claims of right where they arise. Ultimately, the wealthy won't be troubled by losing that argument. But the point isn't being made for their benefit.
Tosca at the capital's national theatre. Soli surprisingly strong. $7.50, top balcony, stood off to the side rather than risk the actual seat.
When I was going to the orchestra concerts in Cleveland during the MFA, I favored the absolute back row, as the sound was caught perfectly against the wall. (They've renovated since, so I'm not sure if that's still the case.) Same, to a lesser degree with the family circle standing at the Met. (Which I hear they've restored, after doing away with standing room for a few years.) In the large Balkan cities (Bucharest, Belgrade, Budapest) I've actually had better luck right next to the plaster line, far above the orchestra itself -- you get the full force of the sound rising from the strings, even if most of the stage is hidden from view. But even though I'm a theatre fellow, I go to the opera for the music, not the scenography.
The litmus of any production of Tosca is the Te Deum. If Scarpia is the center of everyone's attention, it's not right. The point is that he's off to the side during the central liturgy, forgetting about God. But I discovered a new error with this production. They took the liturgical music as an emotional cue -- dimmed the lights, the supers on stage took on a serious aspect. The music is an interpolated liturgical action -- it plays out within the event of the opera, but it's not the underscoring or the emotional tenor of the moment. In the emotional world of the opera, we are with Scarpia, not the liturgy. The Bucharest Te Deum is quite memorable. Dark, massive cross rising from the stage after the stageful of laity file on through the house in Romanian peasant blouses. (But if memory serves, they make the same error with Scarpia.)
But again, surprisingly strong soli. Very worthwhile evening.
One entailment of the metaphysics of presence and encounter is that people tend to think that the encounter with danger will be characterized by the perception of danger, or at least its near approach. But that's simply not what danger means. The awareness of danger is an awareness that we don't know what's going on, and to expect to know that that you don't know what's going on is simply an ontological Escher drawing.
There's industrial prosperity, of course, thanks to the grandfathers, the postwar structures of industrialization, but the people running things now, and the character of these industrial forms now, are making things very difficult for a large number of people. (Not incidentally, including myself.) For six years, we've had basically a Bond-villain government of the American continent, and the robber-baron redux of the tech boom has left a legacy of a mechanical infrastructure that could conceivably be used for the most oppressive widely based authoritarianism in the human experience. (This was largely accomplished by allowing people to play the lottery using prime numbers, and cheat on their homework.)
I suppose the most problematic point is yet to come, in the next few months, while the present faction still controls all of the hall passes in the corridors of power. The structural reversal in the recent elections was always going to happen, of course -- the popularity of the scapegoat is always prelude to the alignment against him or her; a king is simply a condemned fellow with an indeterminate commutation of sentence, as Girard says. The point is that it happened after three-quarters of the presidency in question had elapsed. The art of power sometimes involves not annihilating your opponent, because then another one will arise, but in cultivating both your opponent and his or her weaknesses.
I cultivate my own garden. Like a Franciscan friar in a Shakespearean play, I'm coming to understand that knowing what these flowers of philosophy and thought can do is a worthwhile task, not because of their uses in the world outside the garden, but simply because there is a garden. Logic enough.
One note I made at the beginning of the present journey seems relevant. If you arrive in a mountain meadow (there were many of these in Macedonian Pirin, including the principal, majestic one near the top of the great mountain), and you see that the trees are stunted or bent in a particular direction, you don't assume that the trees of the place have gotten things wrong from the beginning. You assume that there has been some climate or soil condition that has affected the species, that given the expected conditions, would otherwise grow straight and true. Similarly, if you arrive in a place and see that the people have a certain general character, you don't assume that they've just gotten it wrong from the beginning, and existing in the wrong manner has gotten wrapped up with basic existence in their minds. You assume that these trees have grown within a certain spiritual climate, and that this is what a tree looks like that grew up within that climate. Not necessarily in the encounters with each other; it might just be the long, quiet hours when fears rise inexplicably to the mind. Something about being here results in this type of person. That's the lesson, I think. Futile to look to genetics; genetics mends itself, that the nature of it. Nutrition is relevant, because the manner of eating is an action, and can be inflected. Exercise similar. Bad social networks are an element of it, but these arise among people of a certain spirit, and the spirit of the people is the question.
In the Old English Exeter Book, there is the story of St. Guthlac, a hermit in the muddy fens. Our civilizations have drained the swamps and built the concrete living places after decades of struggle, but stories like those of the old Christian hermits remind us that it wasn't merely a question of mud, disease, and bad air. (Though these things were rather important to work on.) We only understand a small part of what our notion of understanding suggests to us that we should in fact understand. Places have spiritual natures, and the essence of the Christian mission, as a religion of the light as opposed to one of the cultic mysteries of the shadows, is perhaps not to be affected by the shadows as they arrive, not to feel that our sense of truth commands that we be angry or disconsolate. Three are many kinds of evil in the world. Many of them are within concentrations of wealth and power. Knowing that we only understand a small part of what understanding thinks itself capable of, it is useful to remember that, whatever the prognostications, intimations, or prophecies, the day itself will be sufficient, and likely prevail.
Commander Chekov died, apparently. Now only Kirk and Sulu left. Interesting quote in the Times obit, something along the lines of that he was proud to have been part of something that taught so many people how to operate in the world. And now we talk to computers and ask them for information, and board vessels that take us to strange worlds where we observe the prime directive. Which not so many people worldwide were doing back then, but American postwar industrial prosperity, together with some old world scientists, was pointing the way.
There is the moon, and there is an apple above our head. Reaching upward has many uses.
The vocation director of the society of priests that I discerned with some years ago was also a Star Trek fan, very hardcore, he was preoccupied with getting autographs at conventions. At the time, I sort of dismissed it as the usual fandom thing, but there's also a message involved. Concern for the humans involved. The best sci-fi points us back to ourselves -- know thyself, says the oracle. Consider the floating human at the end of 2001, or the figures emerging from the planet in Solaris. Perhaps jaunting between planets isn't like a fly going from apple to apple, but more about coming to realize that our perceptions and thoughts are fundamentally about being on this particular orb. Perhaps the journey between worlds is grounded in a different understanding of the way things are, and less about our thoughts on this world of falling apples and feathers.
Two thoughts from the proverbial escalier. First, because they were the only ones left, I had to go well over budget for that necessary Richard II after the election. Still under $20, but not the usual $6. As a result, I was downstairs, where I've only been once (for Tin Drum last visit -- I had a balcony ticket, but the house was very light). Upstairs and downstairs are very different at the JDP. It's likely I was surrounded by folks with a more complicated relationship to the present politics. Perhaps there was a bit of catharsis up among the gods at the back of the balcony, where I usually sit. But there certainly wasn't much of a reaction to anything during the play from the folks downstairs. Very television mode.
Second -- one of the most memorable communications after the elections was from the rector of the university here, who came to some fame after giving a speech from the balcony of the administrative building, and I think went up to Brussels for some meetings afterwards, though I could be wrong about that. A text card on social media: "The university has been defended." (Two words in Serbo-Croat, et seq.)
Interesting times. And to be clear, I'm just here to read Hegelian philosophy and observe the theatre while sending out CVs. Gently down the stream.
In 1601, on the afternoon before the abortive rebellion qua unpermitted parade of the Earl of Essex, the conspirators did something very unusual. They went to the theatre. The management of Shakespeare's theatre had received a certain financial contribution in exchange for staging (in midwinter) the play that the conspirators had selected -- Richard II. The point was thought to be the deposition scene, where Richard (often thought to have been based on Elizabeth, including by the sovereign -- "I am Richard the Second, know ye not that?") surrenders his crown.
So, given recent events here, it was basically impossible for me not to attend the JDP's R2, staged two days after the historic election. I gave it the late afternoon, went to the cafe at the bookshop next door and re-read the play and made notes over some coffee, and then walked next door. I had seen that theatre's house-party production of Much Ado a few years back, and last year, I saw the national theatre's Macbeth, so I had some sense of the general Shakespearean gestalt here. But I was completely unprepared for what happened. Or, rather what didn't happen. The play simply didn't function. There wasn't the slightest frisson in the house at the critical moment. Admittedly, during the curtain call, there were inspiring cheers, chants and banners, but the play itself was simply an anodyne entertainment with a very questionable staging that seemed at times like a Russian made-for-television bros-and-guns movie, and the audience simply sat there and watched it as such. (Perhaps playing Richard III during a production of Richard II is a form of progress in the materialist-historical sense.)
Rather disappointing evening in the πανανθροποσ department. Of course that just means that the salient fact was that this sort of theatre doesn't really function here, which is a useful thing to know. But this play was written to receive and express precisely this political moment -- and, whether due to the translation (that sounded like prose, though the local languages are notoriously averse to the iamb, pentameter or otherwise) or the staging, the event of the play simply didn't occur. But the curtain call was very interesting. Fascinating to be in a country when it's in the process of regeneration (this country has actually looked to the universities during its last few cycles of renewal), and observing the shared notion of community.
But it would be better with a functioning Shakespearean drama, at least when staging a Shakespearean drama.
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