zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — continuing the search, plus mckibben & a touch of dylan as a sunday surprise ]
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First a chyron, based on Trump’s words:

Fascinating article: The Dawn of the Intra-Family Political Attack Ad

In August, Glosser published an essay in Politico magazine chiding his nephew by sharing the family’s own immigration story as Jews who fled the shtetls of Eastern Europe. “I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew,” Glosser wrote, “an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.”

Is House of Cards a poem, then?

Doug Stamper is the dog.

In the opening moments of Netflix’s House of Cards premiere episode from 2013, Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) hunched over a dog that’d been injured by a car. “There are two kinds of pain,” he said into the camera. “The sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain, the sort of pain that’s only suffering. I have no patience for useless things. Moments like this require someone who will act, who will do the unpleasant thing, the necessary thing.”

He then broke the dog’s neck. “There,” he said. “No more pain.”

In the final moments of the final episode of House of Cards—which occurs in a truncated season made after Spacey left the show due to allegations of sexual misconduct—the president, Claire Hale Underwood (Robin Wright), cradles her dead husband’s henchman, Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), in her lap. She has just stabbed him in the belly with a letter opener after he nearly slit her throat with it. Underwood puts her hand over his mouth and nose and tells him that everything’s going to be okay. His eyes close. “There, no more pain,” she says. Her eyes flick toward the camera. The credits roll.

Some sort of rhyming is going on here, clearly, but does the poem mean anything?

That “rhyme” is a DoubleQuote, really — a thought-rhyme if you like, and on a technical film-making sense a clever twist to end on. Not so much a synchronicity or coincidence, more a twist of authorial fate.

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Twists of fate, eh? And tangled up in blue? Here are two recent Dylan pieces to note:

New Yorker, Bob Dylan’s First Day with “Tangled Up in Blue”

New Yorker, Bob Dylan’s Masterpiece Is Still Hard to Find

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Bill McKibben, with a s game / play metaphor that derives its strength from the topic, not from the metaphoric play:

In the face of our environmental deterioration, it’s now reasonable to ask whether the human game has begun to falter—perhaps even to play itself out.

That’s from How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet — see also THE END OF NATURE.

Early and late, McKibben has been one of the voices crying that the wildness is shronking — from within the shrinking wilderness..

Wilderness / wildness yes, that’s deliberate..

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& by way of a Sunday surprise, here’s some extraordinary music for whenever you need extraordinary, need music — twists of tangled blue fate included:

[ by Charles Cameron — with the nost remarkable, beautiful, unexpected, unexpectable music at the very end, a total surprise ]
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Kendrick Lamar just won the Pulitzer for music. A small while back, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I haven’t seen anyone comparing Kendrick Lamar‘s Pulitzer fuss with Bob Dylan‘s Nobel shenanigans — yet.

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The black on white of the Dylan lyrics (upper panel, above) and the white on black of the Lamar lyrics (lower panel, above) aren’t racially intended, nor do they represent good and evil as so commonly elsewhere — and in any case, in black on white is it the black or the white that carries the meaning, and vice versa — but in the case of white on black, which do you notice most? And above, below, what do they mean?

Both, and.

Good’n’evil, rock’n’roll. Rock on, world.

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Sources:

These two will give you the surprise, surprise narratives:

New York Times, Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of Literature

NPR, How The Pulitzer Jury Opened Its Doors To Hip-Hop

And those two headlines make a nice contrapuntal DoubleQuote, too.

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Me, I’ve been listening to Dylan since I could crawl and he was folk, and had never consciously heard the words Kendrick Lamar until yesterday, when I started in on this piece.

Sources:

Here are the two musics from which the lytrics posted above are taken, both of which you may skip if you know them already:

and:

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But. And. Yet. Also. Splutter —

My remarkable discovery of the day.. It’s Caroline Shaw‘s astounding Partita for 8 Voices, written for and sung by Roomful of Teeth. Listen closely, beauty is born fresh here:

Kudos, where kudos due:

Slate, Classical Music Needs Kendrick Lamar More Than It Needs the Pulitzer

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Okay, just in case — what I hear:

Human voice sound poetry of Henri Chopin — I visited him briefly circa 1965 — via Glenn Gould‘s polyphonic voice radio plays, meeting Machaut, via Morten Lauridsen‘a O Magnum Mysterium, plus what funk meant first, before it was limited to funk — a twisty ringing of changes in sound: cough, swoop, taal, stutter and bend weaving in and out of dissonance, of purity..

Utterly fresh and brilliantly performed: watch and listen..

And tell me below if you knew this wonder already.

[ by Charles Cameron — gotta serve somebody, but best not Richard III ]
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Bear vs Tiger:

Watch a bear pick a fight with a tiger to try to save her cub

Only a few dozen tigers roam this 30,000-acre reserve in central India, according to the Hindustan Times. Yet they dominate the coveted water holes, where barking deer and hyena packs must come to drink. Even humans have to respect the laws of nature in this park. [ .. ]

And Matkasur ran from the bear; this time not turning back. She chased him all the way to the water hole. He splashed straight into it, as if it were sanctuary. Maybe it was, because the bear stopped at the water’s edge.

Projecting sanctuary back to the animal realm — semi-joking, srsly? And water, holy water, as the sanctuary? Or would the boundary (limen, in Victor Turner‘s terms) between earth and water might be enough? Obvs, the tiger doesn’t think, “Ah, Victor Turner time!” — but what might be the sensibilities of tiger and bear cognition? Seriously?

Paleo-religion? Time to rethink sanctuary cities?

Tyger! Bear!

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It Can’t Happen Here, i:

It Can’t Happen Here is a semi-satirical 1935 political novel by American author Sinclair Lewis, and a 1936 play adapted from the novel by Lewis and John C. Moffitt.

Published during the rise of fascism in Europe, the novel describes the rise of Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a politician who defeats Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and “traditional” values.

And so on..

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It Can’t Happen Here, ii:

Inspired by the book, director–producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation titled Storm Warnings in 1982. The script was presented to NBC for production as a television miniseries, but NBC executives rejected the initial version, claiming it was too cerebral for the average American viewer. To make the script more marketable, the American fascists were re-cast as man-eating extraterrestrials, taking the story into the realm of science fiction. The revised story became the miniseries V, which premiered May 3, 1983

And so forth..

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It can’t happen here, [Richard] iii::

Wachet auf!

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Serve somebody, i:

Why I regret being in the pocket of the NRA: Marc Dann

The mass murder of 17 students and staff at a high school in Parkland, Florida, has reignited the national debate about the availability of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that began nearly 30 years ago. Since the Parkland massacre, I’ve been asked repeatedly why politicians steadfastly oppose banning firearms that serve no other purpose than to efficiently kill innocent human beings.

I know the answer because, as an Ohio state senator and attorney general, I was in the pocket of the National Rifle Association. [ .. ]

I made a devil’s bargain with myself: To stay in office, I adopted pro-gun positions that made me uncomfortable.

The bargain paid off.

Amazing to see how (a) how he quite casually invokes theology by way of explanation, and/or (b) how the Faustian bargain “myth” works out in real life:

I soon learned however, that in making a deal with the devil to advance my political career, I had abandoned my principles and sold my soul.

D’oh! That’s what the Bargain is! You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed, you’re gonna have to serve somebody:

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Serve somebody, ii:

Yom may be the heavyweight champion of the world..

I’ll end on this note.

[ by Charles Cameron — gulf water temperatures 2° above average fuel winds, flooding in TX ]

This event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced. Follow orders from officials to ensure safety. #Harvey pic.twitter.com/IjpWLey1h8

— NWS (@NWS) August 27, 2017

Furthermore,

Going to a Cabinet Meeting (tele-conference) at 11:00 A.M. on #Harvey. Even experts have said they've never seen one like this!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2017

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These frank admissions that we have gone beyond the known signal a qualitative shift in the situation.

You don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

It’s altogether a hard rain falling..

[ by Charles Cameron — fwiw my first name, charles, translates to churl ]
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I am far from the only one to have noticed this juxtaposition:

I read the first of these as a simple statement of the concensus as to Mueller‘s character, what is generally known of the man after years of pubic service. I think of it, in other words, as a statement of received opinion, which Newt Gingrich is presenting for the record. I imagine I could find similar endorsements of Mueller from the Democratic side of the aisle.

The second tweet strikes me as of a diFfferent sort altogether. This one I believe I could find echoed in other statements from aides to Trump — it’s a talking point.

I know politicians lie. I imagine I could find instances of Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton, making similarly opposed statekents. I take Bill Clinton‘s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” to be the Lie Direct in Jacques’ terms. But this —

I don’t believe Gingrich has changed opinions, I believe he has simply changed hats. I think, in short, that he still takes Mueller for a man with an impeccable reputation for honesty and integrity — but in his second tweet, he’s parroting a party line, not his actual opinion.

Dylan: But what’s the sense of changing horses in midstream?

Maybe Jacques would classify this as a Reply Churlish. Gingrich, you’re a Churl.