Today we’ll conclude my exploration of music inspired by the moon, with a work I had no idea at all existed until just the other day when I was searching for a piece to wrap this mini-series up with…and as soon as I saw it, I realized that it’s one of the most obvious things in the world, and I should have assumed it existed somewhere. American composer Eric Whitacre, who has written a lot of wonderful choral music (and whom I have featured on this site before!), wrote a setting of the words from the iconic children’s book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I mean, you don’t get more iconic than that, do you?
(OK, though, before I present Mr. Whitacre’s piece, here is one of my favorite all-time bits from The Simpsons:
“Don’t make me tell you again about the scooching!”
OK, back to the real business at hand….)
Throughout this series I’ve heard a lot of interesting music about the moon, and it’s interested me to see the varying emotions the moon seems to inspire. For me, though, the moon is always a welcome sight, and its silver light always brings me a feeling of peace. That’s what Mr. Whitacre’s piece evokes for me most of all, and he captures the profound feeling of heading into rest that the book always made me feel back when I was reading it aloud to a very young daughter.
There’s a lot more “Moon Music” out there, obviously! This may well be an idea I revisit someday…but for now, here is Eric Whitacre’s “Goodnight Moon”.
President Barack Obama runs down the East Colonnade with family dog, Bo, on the dog’s initial visit to the White House, March 15, 2009. Bo came back to live at the White House in April. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) (image via)
This photo is one of my favorites from Barack Obama’s time in the White House. It was taken less than two months into his administration. I love Presidential photography and always have; glimpses into the inner life and the humanity of the people who hold the office of President and those who serve the President are always welcome. I find now, though, a certain tragic note as well in photos like this, and not just of Obama but of Presidents Biden and Bush and Clinton and Bush the Elder and even Reagan, Carter, Ford, and hell, even Nixon, who as weird and skeevy as he was at least looked like a human being sometimes. The guy liked to bowl, at least. The current guy? There’s not a human moment to be found in the man. His White House is bereft of art and music and humanity. He has no dog, no cat, no pet goldfish. Looking for humanity in President DJT is an exercise in futility. It’s one of the things about him that I find the most baffling, in terms of who he is and how he has been so thoroughly embraced by millions of Americans he wouldn’t dream of embracing in return.
Of course, the photo is also sad because of the components in the photo, only one–President Obama himself–still exists. Bo the dog passed away several years ago, and President DJT had the East Colonnade demolished last week in favor of building his colossally stupid ball room.
I’ve had President Obama on my mind of late, for various reasons…and not just because I find myself wistfully looking back on a President who wasn’t, well, garbage in every way. I’m thinking about him because of a talking point that I see over and over again from right-wingers.
I rarely try to plumb the depth of right-wing logic anymore, because generally the right (at least in the US, I’m not sure about elsewhere) increasingly bases its ideas on pure, unadulterated fantasy coupled with constructs of logic that are about as sound as the present-day hull of the RMS Titanic. But one talking point that I have heard a lot in recent years that actually does pose an interesting look into just how the American right views the world is their idea that the most divisive political figure in recent American history is not Donald Trump, or Mitch McConnell, or Steve Bannon, or Stephen Miller, or JD Vance. No, for them the most divisive political figure in recent American history (or in all of American history, depending on who is spouting the talking point) is former President Barack Obama.
When I’ve encountered this notion, I’ve pretty much laughed it off because it just doesn’t make any sense…but I keep hearing it and I keep hearing it, to the point that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I had to figure out just how on Earth President Obama is supposed to have been a deeply divisive person, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got it.
Maybe this is the most obvious thing ever, but…the man is Black.
Yes, I know. But why would he be divisive just by being Black?
This is where the white “entitlement” comes into play. Because Barack Obama didn’t just be president while being Black. He also talked about his Blackness. He talked about race. Did he talk about those things a lot? Probably not. Did he talk about those things enough? In my opinion, definitely not. But for many Americans, and almost all of them on the right, his error was in ever talking about his Blackness in particular and about race in general at all.
Barack Obama was elected President for many reasons: his predecessor had made a thorough mess of everything; he was an energetic new voice who spoke with eloquent relish about rising to the challenges facing the country; and yes, he is Black. For many Americans, if not most Americans, the prospect of President Barack Obama was an opportunity to embrace a future that was unthinkable just years before, certainly within my lifetime. The problem is that for a great many Americans, and quite possibly a majority of white Americans, the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States wasn’t just about making a big step in our nation’s long struggle with race. No, for many–and certainly for everyone on the right, even if they never once considered voting for him–the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency was about ending our nation’s long struggle with race.
With Obama’s election, race was over. It was done. We had finally defeated racism, for all time. How could a racist country elect a Black man to its highest office? Obviously it couldn’t…which means, ergo, that America was no longer racist. All such talk was now off the table permanently. “See, Black people? We did it! We let one of you be President! Now it’s all done and none of you can complain anymore!”
That is absolutely the logic that the American right took when Obama was elected…and so, when it turned out that no, we were not done with our racial struggle, not by a long shot, not by any damn sight, that meant that it was all Obama’s fault. He was supposed to get into office and declare racism over, but he didn’t. Racial things still happened, and worst of all, Barack Obama talked about it. He brought it up.
And that is where the division, the divisiveness, comes in. Because by electing Barack Obama, White America finally gave itself permission to not think about race anymore. The slate was clean, atonement was achieved, and all wrongs had been addressed. And now this uppity Black President thinks that he gets to talk about race more? He thinks he gets to keep–gasp!–playing the Race Card?
(That’s what “playing the Race Card” means. You realize this, right? You know that when a white person complains about a Black person “playing the Race Card”, the white person is actually saying, “That Black person mentioned race in a way that I do not personally approve of.”)
Ultimately, Barack Obama is seen as “divisive” because white people don’t want to have to think about race anymore, and he made them think about it. White people don’t want to talk about race anymore, and he made them talk about it. White people want Black people to just calm down and be quiet about all that unpleasantness, see. Race is over, see. Why do you gotta keep bringing it up?
Why can’t you people just stay in your lane? Why can’t you people just stay where you belong?
They think Barack Obama is divisive because he didn’t quiet down and he dared set the direction of the national conversation. Which is what Presidents of the United States are supposed to do, isn’t it…unless. Unless they’re Black. In that case, a President is supposed to prioritize the comfort of white people. He was divisive because he didn’t maintain the national conversation in a way that they preferred.
As for me…well, I wonder if President Obama wasn’t divisive enough. I, for one, am deeply tired of all of the factors holding America back, and one of those is very much the “comfort of white people”. Maybe it’s time for more discomfort. Maybe. Just maybe.
Ooooh, I haven’t done one of these in a while, let’s get on it! This one‘s pretty easy:
Four 5’s
FIVE things on my to-do list:
1. Set up an Etsy store for books and photography
2. Marinate chicken for tonight’s dinner
3. Order a planner for next year
4. Study art history and read photography books
5. Organize the overalls collection
FIVE snacks I enjoy:
1. Cheese Balls (Planters or not)
2. Peanut-butter filled pretzels
3. Stroopwafels
4. Popcorn
5. Apples and peanut butter (this is also a solid breakfast)
FIVE places I have lived:
1. Cranberry Township, PA (where I first lived!)
2. Hillsboro, OR (we lived there three times, long story)
3. Olean, NY
4. Baldwinsville, NY
5. Orchard Park, NY (this list is not exhaustive, I’ve lived in a lot of places)
FIVE jobs I have held:
1. Technical services, St. Bonaventure University library
2. Shift Manager, Pizza Hut
3. Assistant Manager, Bob Evans Restaurants
4. Telesales, Parmed Pharmaceuticals (they fired me because they thought I sucked. In their defense, I did suck. Taking that job was probably an error on my part.)
5. Facilities Technician, The Store (I don’t like mentioning my current company by name on here because I don’t want to give any hint that I’m speaking for the company on this space, even if it is pretty easy to figure out who I work for.)
This has been on my mind of late, which means it’s probably time to track down the movie and rewatch it: “Building the Barn”, from Witness. Music by Maurice Jarre.
Today a long tone poem by composer Michael Kamen, who is famous for his film scores (Highlander, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Three Musketeers) as well as his work with many rock musicians, often providing orchestrations for their songs that required such services. One notable entry in this part of his oeuvre is the orchestra work on Pink Floyd’s album The Wall. Kamen had a wonderfully engaging musical voice, and his untimely death in 2003 when he was just 55 was a deeply hurtful blow to the music world.
This piece is called (in keeping with our ongoing “Moon” theme!) New Moon in the Old Moon’s Arms. Kamen cited as his inspiration for this work the Anasazi Tribe who flourished in the American southwest, and later disappeared, close to a thousand years ago. The piece is by turns contemplative and extroverted, rhythmic and lyrical, dance-like and song-driven. It’s very dramatic music with a lot of ebb and flow and contrasting musical textures thoughout.
The work’s title is an inversion of a phrase used sometimes to describe a very real astronomical phenomenon. Sometimes, during a new moon, when the visible part of the moon is just the barest sliver, the rest of the moon can be faintly seen in the reflected glow of the earth. This is typically called “Earthlight”, but another, possibly more poetic, term for it is “Old moon in the new moon’s arms”. Kamen seems to have intended his inverted title to hint at greeting the future in the light of the past.
I’ve been thinking about reviving my dormant Substack newsletter and one feature I’m thinking about is an occasional (maybe monthly) deep look at an entire album that I love or that has special significance to me, but I have no more thought through on the notion than that, so we’ll see. Meanwhile, here’s my favorite song from a candidate album: Enya’s 1989 record Watermark. The song is “On Your Shore”.
“Divisive”
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
(image via)
This photo is one of my favorites from Barack Obama’s time in the White House. It was taken less than two months into his administration. I love Presidential photography and always have; glimpses into the inner life and the humanity of the people who hold the office of President and those who serve the President are always welcome. I find now, though, a certain tragic note as well in photos like this, and not just of Obama but of Presidents Biden and Bush and Clinton and Bush the Elder and even Reagan, Carter, Ford, and hell, even Nixon, who as weird and skeevy as he was at least looked like a human being sometimes. The guy liked to bowl, at least. The current guy? There’s not a human moment to be found in the man. His White House is bereft of art and music and humanity. He has no dog, no cat, no pet goldfish. Looking for humanity in President DJT is an exercise in futility. It’s one of the things about him that I find the most baffling, in terms of who he is and how he has been so thoroughly embraced by millions of Americans he wouldn’t dream of embracing in return.
Of course, the photo is also sad because of the components in the photo, only one–President Obama himself–still exists. Bo the dog passed away several years ago, and President DJT had the East Colonnade demolished last week in favor of building his colossally stupid ball room.
I’ve had President Obama on my mind of late, for various reasons…and not just because I find myself wistfully looking back on a President who wasn’t, well, garbage in every way. I’m thinking about him because of a talking point that I see over and over again from right-wingers.
I rarely try to plumb the depth of right-wing logic anymore, because generally the right (at least in the US, I’m not sure about elsewhere) increasingly bases its ideas on pure, unadulterated fantasy coupled with constructs of logic that are about as sound as the present-day hull of the RMS Titanic. But one talking point that I have heard a lot in recent years that actually does pose an interesting look into just how the American right views the world is their idea that the most divisive political figure in recent American history is not Donald Trump, or Mitch McConnell, or Steve Bannon, or Stephen Miller, or JD Vance. No, for them the most divisive political figure in recent American history (or in all of American history, depending on who is spouting the talking point) is former President Barack Obama.
When I’ve encountered this notion, I’ve pretty much laughed it off because it just doesn’t make any sense…but I keep hearing it and I keep hearing it, to the point that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I had to figure out just how on Earth President Obama is supposed to have been a deeply divisive person, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got it.
Maybe this is the most obvious thing ever, but…the man is Black.
Yes, I know. But why would he be divisive just by being Black?
This is where the white “entitlement” comes into play. Because Barack Obama didn’t just be president while being Black. He also talked about his Blackness. He talked about race. Did he talk about those things a lot? Probably not. Did he talk about those things enough? In my opinion, definitely not. But for many Americans, and almost all of them on the right, his error was in ever talking about his Blackness in particular and about race in general at all.
Barack Obama was elected President for many reasons: his predecessor had made a thorough mess of everything; he was an energetic new voice who spoke with eloquent relish about rising to the challenges facing the country; and yes, he is Black. For many Americans, if not most Americans, the prospect of President Barack Obama was an opportunity to embrace a future that was unthinkable just years before, certainly within my lifetime. The problem is that for a great many Americans, and quite possibly a majority of white Americans, the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States wasn’t just about making a big step in our nation’s long struggle with race. No, for many–and certainly for everyone on the right, even if they never once considered voting for him–the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency was about ending our nation’s long struggle with race.
With Obama’s election, race was over. It was done. We had finally defeated racism, for all time. How could a racist country elect a Black man to its highest office? Obviously it couldn’t…which means, ergo, that America was no longer racist. All such talk was now off the table permanently. “See, Black people? We did it! We let one of you be President! Now it’s all done and none of you can complain anymore!”
That is absolutely the logic that the American right took when Obama was elected…and so, when it turned out that no, we were not done with our racial struggle, not by a long shot, not by any damn sight, that meant that it was all Obama’s fault. He was supposed to get into office and declare racism over, but he didn’t. Racial things still happened, and worst of all, Barack Obama talked about it. He brought it up.
And that is where the division, the divisiveness, comes in. Because by electing Barack Obama, White America finally gave itself permission to not think about race anymore. The slate was clean, atonement was achieved, and all wrongs had been addressed. And now this uppity Black President thinks that he gets to talk about race more? He thinks he gets to keep–gasp!–playing the Race Card?
(That’s what “playing the Race Card” means. You realize this, right? You know that when a white person complains about a Black person “playing the Race Card”, the white person is actually saying, “That Black person mentioned race in a way that I do not personally approve of.”)
Ultimately, Barack Obama is seen as “divisive” because white people don’t want to have to think about race anymore, and he made them think about it. White people don’t want to talk about race anymore, and he made them talk about it. White people want Black people to just calm down and be quiet about all that unpleasantness, see. Race is over, see. Why do you gotta keep bringing it up?
Why can’t you people just stay in your lane? Why can’t you people just stay where you belong?
They think Barack Obama is divisive because he didn’t quiet down and he dared set the direction of the national conversation. Which is what Presidents of the United States are supposed to do, isn’t it…unless. Unless they’re Black. In that case, a President is supposed to prioritize the comfort of white people. He was divisive because he didn’t maintain the national conversation in a way that they preferred.
As for me…well, I wonder if President Obama wasn’t divisive enough. I, for one, am deeply tired of all of the factors holding America back, and one of those is very much the “comfort of white people”. Maybe it’s time for more discomfort. Maybe. Just maybe.