[ by Charles Cameron — query re his quote on an American dictatorship ]
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Can anyone give me a source for this quote from Donald Atwell Zoll?
One of the reasons why many Americans do not fear a domestic dictatorship is that they assume dictatorship would take some exotic form similar to those they have observed in Germany, Japan, or Russia, and they cannot imagine such conditions as an indigenous set of arrangements and customs. An American dictatorship would be no more like Nazi Germany in style than it would resemble the Zulu empire of Chaka — it would be dictatorship American plan, complete with George Washington, Valley Forge, the Stars and Stripes, the “home of the brave,” the World Series, Captain Kangaroo, and Mother’s insipid apple pie. It would appear to be the apotheosis of democracy — and, of course, in a sense, it would be.
[ by Charles Cameron — a bridge & burial ground in Turkey, an Oregon creek & road, all named for death ]
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There’s a certain power to names. Ursula LeGuin described it best, perhaps, when she wrote:
He saw that in this dusty and fathomless matter of learning the true name of every place, thing, and being, the power he wanted lay like a jewel at the bottom of a dry well. For magic consists in this, the true naming of a thing.
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I included that quote in my post Indistinguishable from magic? six days ago, little realizing I would need it again so soon, but here we are: a dark magical DoubleTweet:
Scenic Bosphorous Bridge crossing the Bosphorous river, connecting Turkey w/ Asia to be renamed "Martyr's Bridge"' pic.twitter.com/5Ocso5D5dr
A couple of other notes from the poster of that second tweet:
The term “traitor” is still very loosely used in Turkey; some day may come, all those accusing eachother of treason might lie side by side..
Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor had announced the will to construct the Traitors’ Cemetary some days ago “for all to spit on when passing by”
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When my Lakota mentor, Wallace Black Elk, came to teach a class in the building and ceremonial use of the stone people’s lodge (“sweat lodge”) at what was then Southern Oregon State College in Ashland, Oregon, the route to the site where we performed the rituals on Dead Indian Creek went along the clearly marked Dead Indian Road. Wallace always got a chuckle out of that.
But then, Wallace was glad Columbus told Queen Isabella he was en route for India, not Turkey — “Full-Blooded Turkey I’d be,” he’d say, “Native Turkey Movement, Bureau of Turkey Affairs..”
The road, though not perhaps the creek, has now been renamed:
[ by Charles Cameron — for those wishing for discourse above the political fray ]
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Yesterday, Sunday, I was going to post a “Sunday surprise” about a voice that transcends that of Donald Trump — the voice of Alison Balsom, trumpeter extraordinaire. But my thread linking Balsom and Trump was a slender one — Trump and trumpet — and I thought better of it, and deleted my reliminary notes for that post.
Amjad Sabri, an eminent Pakistani qawwal -— a Sufi devotional musician in the tradition of world-renowned Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and son of the famous singer Ghulam Fareed Sabri of the Sabri Brothers — had been shot dead in his car in Karachi ten days earlier by the Pakistani Taliban. He’d been praising the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his noble family a little too much for the Taliban’s liking. And so they had their way with him. In a nation inured to violence, Sabri’s death, nevertheless, struck at the communal soul of Pakistan. ..
Thousands of Pakistanis came out on the streets, united in grief, to protest Sabri’s death. Sabri was a child of Pakistan’s own soil. He belonged to a venerable, centuries-old musical dynasty. His spiritual attunement and the muscular faculty of his voice transported people to ecstasy, raising mere mortals above the denseness of an earthly, mired existence, above differences of class and wealth into a celebration of the Divine. Sabri’s music was a glorification. And it belonged to a distinct tradition of South Asian music, a legacy irrefutably inherent in the DNA of Pakistan, twinned to the devotional practice of Islam and its syncretic cultural roots in the region. Invoking a transcendent joy, Sabri’s qawwali created a milieu of harmony—completely antithetical to the Taliban’s backward, beclouded ideology of hate which thrives on sowing seeds of discord.
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It’s that second paragraph I’m interested in, because it says so exactly what I was trying to get at in my deleted post about Alison Balsom: that “mere mortals” can be lifted, lofted “above the denseness of an earthly, mired existence, above differences of class and wealth into a celebration of the Divine”.
Here’s a taste of Amjad Sabri, for those who appreciate the Sufi tradition and the haunting ecstasies of the Qawwals:
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And here’s Balsom, whose trumpet voice likewise lifts us, for those with ears more attuned to the western classical tradition:
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— and best of all, though I’ve posted it here before:
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
