the question, of course, is how you can make your soul clap its hands and sing
The question, of course, is how you make your soul clap its hands and sing.
My bones seemed built out of incomprehension.
The road was rutted enough by winter rains so that the car drove itself.
I was ringed by four mountain ranges in this valley but then natural beauty seems to offer no more than you can bring to it. There was scarcely a patch in a thousand square miles I hadn’t covered on foot.
Looking down you see blue and black gama, side oats gama, curly mesquite, sprangle-top, and the grassy skin of the local earth.
Straight up is invariably sky.
Up in my own country it was apparently our nature to kill seventy million buffalo just as it was our nature to destroy the Native cultures.
History will not help your soul clap its hands and sing but it is unconscionable to proceed without knowing it.
From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).
Mr. Harrison is referencing the poem, Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats.
Mr. Harrison quotes the 2nd of 4 stanzas.
An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing.
And louder sing.
An aged man is but a paltry thing.
History will not help your soul clap its hands and sing but it is unconscionable to proceed without knowing it.
So much news of late.
How frail our constitution was.
How frail life is.
Therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.
BTW – to make this work, I had to add a word to Mr. Harrison’s words … have a feeling he would not have been happy but when I do the same thing to Shakespeare and Sandburg …
to me, was wholly simple, without vanity, grandiosity
To me he seems one of the two or three greatest men ever born of our blood.
You will observe that I am talking as if we were one household and speaking of our blood, for no drop ran in his veins which was not British in its ultimate origin.
I like to think that in him we see at its highest that kind of character and mind which is the special glory of our common race.
He was wholly simple, without vanity or grandiosity or cant.
He was a homely man, full of homely common sense and homely humour, but in the great moment he could rise to a grandeur which is for ever denied to posturing, self-conscious talent.
He conducted the ordinary business of life in phrases of a homespun simplicity, but when necessary he could attain to a nobility of speech and a profundity of thought which have rarely been equalled.
He was a plain man, loving his fellows and happy among them, but when the crisis came he could stand alone.
He could talk with crowds and keep his virtue; he could preserve the common touch and yet walk with God.
There is no such bond between peoples as that each should enter into the sacred places of the other, and in the noble merchantry of civilization let us remember that, if we of England have given Shakespeare to America, you have paid us back with Lincoln.
From Two Ordeals of Democracy, an address delivered on the Alumni War Memorial Foundation at Milton Academy, Massachusetts, October 16, 1924 and republished in his book Homilies and Recreations by John Buchan (Books For Libraries Press. Freeport, NE, 1926).
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (born Aug. 26, 1875, Perth, Perthshire, Scot.—died Feb. 11, 1940, Montreal) was a statesman and writer best known for his swift-paced adventure stories. His 50 books, all written in his spare time while pursuing an active career in politics, diplomacy, and publishing, include many historical novels and biographies.
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (born Aug. 26, 1875, Perth, Perthshire, Scot.—died Feb. 11, 1940, Montreal) was a statesman and writer best known for his swift-paced adventure stories. His 50 books, all written in his spare time while pursuing an active career in politics, diplomacy, and publishing, include many historical novels and biographies.
According to Wikipedia, “Outside the field of literature he was, at various times, a barrister, a publisher, a lieutenant colonel in the Intelligence Corps, the Director of Information—reporting directly to prime minister David Lloyd George—during the First World War and a Unionist MP who served as Governor General of Canada, the fifteenth to hold the office since Canadian Confederation.
Canadian history professor Roger Hall noted in a book review that “a great deal of [Buchan’s] success resulted from the extraordinary person he was, adding that “not many of our contemporary [Governor General] candidates come with those credentials” and “in the end it is Buchan’s role as a moral compass that seems most worthy.”
Buchan’s moral certainty was, as historian Sir John Keegan wrote, “one of his strengths as a writer [giving] him the power to achieve something particularly elusive: moral atmosphere”
John Buchan was and is an “inspiring example of a life lived for others”, as Ursula Buchan has written, from humble origins “without money or family influence, he nevertheless carved out a hugely successful writing and public career … His strengths, underpinned by a sincere and unwavering Christian faith, were his intelligence, humanity, clarity of thought, wit, moral and physical courage, a capacity to get on with everybody, from monarchs to miners, and an elegant prose style that appealed to a very wide readership.
Mr. Buchan saw something in Mr. Lincoln.
I think often of Mr. Lincoln today.
As President, Mr. Lincoln governed a nation that was so split, that a good part of the country fought tooth and nail to stop being a part of the country.
Luckily or maybe unluckily, the feelings were regional and the divide by feelings accommodated the geography.
He was wholly simple, without vanity or grandiosity or cant.
Wholly simple.
Without vanity.
Without grandiosity (what a great word).
Without cant.
In this case, one source states: cant here means insincere, fake, preachy, or hypocritical talk, especially moralizing language someone doesn’t truly mean.
Not insincere,
fake,
preachy,
or hypocritical talk,
especially moralizing language someone doesn’t truly mean.
Buchan’s moral certainty was, as historian Sir John Keegan wrote, “one of his strengths as a writer [giving] him the power to achieve something particularly elusive: moral atmosphere”
In this moral atmosphere of Mr. Buchan’s was Mr. Lincoln.
I have this feeling that had Mr. Buchan been around today and asked to describe that current man in office, he would take up his pen and think and put it down and take it up and think and put it down and finally, give it up.
What can one do when your subject lives outside any moral atmosphere.
mighty effort to rigidify society to protect the top
Adapted from the book, The Road Home by Jim Harrison (New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988) where Mr. Harrison writes:
It struck me for the thousandth time that when you were on the move you noted the bottom third,
at least a third it seemed had become social mutants and were scratching along as minimum-wage menial laborers and without any reliable way to get anyplace else for a fresh look;
those in Washington who could help simply had never noticed these people,
that there was something about the xenophobic power trance in politics that made them unable to extrapolate any other reality than the effort toward reelection.
They were making a mighty effort to rigidify the society to protect the top, and the bottom third were being openly sacrificed.
It struck me as I read this how hard folks who have ‘got there’ work to maker sure their place is secure rather than look to help anyone else ‘get there’, where ever your ‘there’ is.
Tom Wolfe writes in Back to Blood how the simple act of being able to gain access to a road through the ‘Owners Gate’ gave satisfaction to rich people as they passed the long line of cars in the ‘Employees/Guest’ Gate.
Me?
I am with Bob Dylan and got nothing so I got nothing to lose as I continue to bankroll my kids best I can one my way to bankruptcy so its easy for me to say we should remember the poor.
So it was with some satisfaction when I read in today’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd’s column, My Ted Talk, as she recounted the life and times of Mr. Ted Turner.
Mr. Turner was rich and he knew it but he lived a life that, in contrast to other rich lives currently in the news cycle, lived free of law suits and court filings.
Mr. Turner was BIG.
And I am not sure he was ever small in the ways that get you negative headlines aside from his manic Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way mantra.
For me, he was that sailor guy who won the America’s Cup sailing races for the New York Yacht club, owner the Atlanta Braves and created CNN.
The mouth from the south but also seemed to be real if you know what I mean.
Ms. Dowd writes …
He was generous — another quality missing from many modern plutocrats. In 1996, at his friend Tom Brokaw’s urging, I called Turner to write a column on a pet peeve of his: the parsimony of fellow billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
Turner had, two years earlier, forked over $200 million to charity. He told me that he empathized with the fear of giving away so much money that you would fall off the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans.
But he challenged his peers — or “ol’ skinflints,” as he called them — to shut down that fear and open up their purse strings.
He suggested a list focused on who did the giving rather than the having, proposing an “Ebenezer Scrooge Prize” to embarrass stingy billionaires and a “Heart of Gold Award” to honor the biggest givers.
“Scrooge felt a lot happier when he saved Tiny Tim and bought the turkey for the poor family, right?” he said. The column I wrote spurred Michael Kinsley, then the editor of Slate, a pioneering online magazine, to start the Slate 60, a list of the most generous philanthropists. The following year, he donated $1 billion to the U.N.
Now lets do some creative imagining and imagine that current man in office saying, “Scrooge felt a lot happier when he saved Tiny Tim and bought the turkey for the poor family, right?“
often to win us to harm, instruments of darkness tell us truths
Into yet another Monday of my life and Big Bill’s Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow was running through my mind which led me to look, anew, at the play Macbeth and I came across Banquo’s speech where Banquo says …
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s In deepest consequence …
I need not remind you that this is prefaced by Banquo’s question, What, can the devil speak true?
According to Wikipedia, Banqo or: Lord Banquo, the Thane of Lochaber, is a semi-historical character in William Shakespeare’s 1606 play Macbeth.
In the play, he is at first an ally of Macbeth (both are generals in the King’s army) and they meet the Three Witches together.
After prophesying that Macbeth will become king, the witches tell Banquo that he will not be king himself, but that his descendants will be.
Later, Macbeth in his lust for power sees Banquo as a threat and has him murdered by three hired assassins; Banquo’s son, Fleance, escapes. Banquo’s ghost returns in a later scene, causing Macbeth to react with alarm in public during a feast.
It came to me that Banquo would fit right in with today’s executive branch of Government.
He would fit in, but what might Banquo say if he were here?
I asked ChatGPT and I got this:
If Banquo from Shakespeare’s Macbeth were suddenly serving at a modern table and addressing Donald Trump, he’d likely speak in measured, wary verse—ever mindful of ambition, power, and the uneasy nature of prophecy.
Something like this:
“My lord, though fortune sets thee high in state, Yet crowns are hollow when they court the storm. I’ve seen how words, once feathered with fair hope, May turn and prick the hand that feeds the flame. So tread thou light where praise grows loud and fast, For vaulting pride oft breaks the rider’s back.”
Ever mindful of ambition, power, and the uneasy nature of prophecy.
For vaulting pride oft breaks the rider’s back.
Banquo might well say this.
But who in the executive branch would understand it and its warnings.
