Rynick on Lennon and/not vs Bannon, me on clap-trap

Can't make the hyperlink thingy work, so back to cut and paste:

http://davidrynick.com/john-lennon-stephen-bannon-and-a-middle-way/

We might wish we lived in Lennon's world, but we don't. (I really don't want to live in Bannon's world -  a state of affairs he and his C-in-C could bring about, if they're not careful.)

Putting all our identity into opposing something may make us feel better, but what does it change? It empowers that which we are opposed to, because it enlarges its presence in our state of being.

Specific action may change things, though we should be humble enough to admit the probability of unintended consequences. I respond well to those who tell us (in the UK) to stop banging on so much about Trump, it simply strengthens his power over our thinking. Coretta King was right about that psychological process. 

In my darker moments, I find a degree of clap-trap in some left/liberal emanations. "Clap-trap," I've just discovered, is an 18th century expression from the theatre, meaning something superficial which is merely intended to provoke applause. It's a trap for clapping, nothing significant. Easy emotion, easy responses.

There is, I'm sure, a value in an in-group strengthening its own morale. The Natural Voice movement is an example. Many of us enjoy singing songs about harmony across the world, nations will cease to be, we are one people. We aren't, of course, and I can't see any way in which we (human-kind) ever could entirely be so. 

We can sometimes touch the deep things all people share in common, but those things are not to be found in Lennonism, or Bannonism. We can certainly avoid tearing at each other in rage and fear. We can yearn for a more harmonious world in this world, not just in our hearts.

So inevitably there is sometimes a pleasant feeling of claptrappiness about our singing. That's not the same as the powerful communality that comes from singing together, and I believe that communality does change people by pulling them together.

And singing pleasant clap-trap is not the same as, though it might help with, raising money for useful work by singing at events like Sing For Water, Cardiff June 18, London in September. (You don't have to go there and sing, just contribute, please.)

Or The Cold Concert in Bangor Cathedral last night to raise money for people locally without homes - a number which is inexorably and disgracefully rising. In our wealthy-for-some country. And you could say that any clap-trap at that event helped bring the donations in.

It's called the Cold Concert because homeless people get wet and cold in this weather, and because the cathedral is a bloody cold place to sit in for a couple of hours in February - good. A useful reminder. Contribute, and stop whinging, I told myself.

But in the end, real change comes from widening our states of being, understanding others, looking for any common ground for right action, as Rynick (and Ghandi) argue. Real change comes from inner work as well as outer action.

Lennon (particularly with McCartney) was, I think, one of the very few truly original artists of pop, so no disrespect intended to his shade. Nothing wrong with a bit of cosy clap-trap sometimes, so long as we don't mistake that pleasant warmth for the difficult fires of real personal and social change.

Singing gripes and thanks

                                  (top - Bangor Community Choir; next down - Threnody)


When I was a lad - this is personal but has, I hope, a wider point - I  was in the school choir - boy treble (i.e. soprano) reputedly the purest sound of all. (In general, I mean, not just me!) 

When my voice broke, I was out of the choir. No-one took the trouble to see if, in time, I was developing a useable tenor or bass voice as I matured. They had enough tenors and basses, I guess.

And the usual adolescent self-consciousness kicked in, so that apart from strumming a guitar and singing along, I assumed I was not much good at singing. Choirs seemed to require auditions, and the ability not just to read music but to pitch your voice at the dots. I couldn't do so, (not realising it's a matter of training) so assumed I didn't have a good ear.

Choirs seemed to be this sort of thing:

Wonderful sound, but not anything that I could do. In any case, my heroes of song were mostly black Americans (blues and soul) or British folk singers. It was unlikely I would sound like any of those models, since I was neither a sharecropper from Mississippi nor a plumber from Hull.

And then, in my retirement years, I encountered the natural voice movement, in the form of Bangor Community choir, and Threnody (as in pics at the top.)

Well, stone me, I can sing. Not wonderfully, not very flexibly, and not with the best-trained ear in town, but I can sing. Perform in public, even.

Here's what they didn't do when my voice broke: 

• they didn't find out if I wanted to go on singing (I loved it)
• they didn't train my ear, even when I took up an instrument
• they didn't encourage all of the boys to sing - so it became a specialist activity

So now most community choirs I come across are short, or very short, of male voices.  Now I wonder, if you'll excuse a technical term, why the fuck that would be? (Sorry - a touch of futile bitterness there; it's all those years after school I could have been singing but wasn't.)

We must take care of the singing abilities of everyone, not just the future stars amongst us. In particular, boys need help and attention as they enter adolescence so that their singability doesn't lose out to male self-consiousness and musical neglect.

Why does this matter? because Sing Is Good For You (science says so!)

So I'm hugely grateful to the woman third from the right in blue, the gent with the flowing silver locks and the magnificent braces on the second right, and the woman extreme right in the first picture at the top: Pauline Down, Colin Douglas, Sara Brown.

Without them I would still be worrying why I couldn't sound like Ray Charles or Luciano Pavarotti, and not singing much at all; Threnody wouldn't be singing at funerals, and what would I do with Wednesday evenings?