Extracts from the score to the ballet “Les Biches” by Francois Poulenc (1923):
Quirky and well-orchestrated, though it does cause me to flash back to the listening component of my A-Level music exam, where over a decade ago I was sitting in a cold sweat at an examination table writing about this very piece.
Andrew Sullivan, who a week ago was tearing his hair out at what he saw as the Obama administration’s collapse into the same neo-conservative, interventionist sinkhole as his predecessor, is now waxing eloquent about how well President Obama has engineered a situation whereby the Russians are forced to take responsibility for their wayward client state and help to enforce international norms and agreements. Fair play to him – my views on Syria have also been evolving, so I do not begrudge him that – though it is interesting that a week ago, Sullivan appeared fairly dismissive of readers who put forward the idea that Obama might be playing a tactical long game. Personally, I feel that Sullivan is giving Obama too much credit for a serendipitous outcome that appears to have sprung quite unexpectedly from an off-the-cuff remark by his jetlagged Secretary of State, John Kerry. One line in particular was too much for me: “Yes, he’s still a community organizer. It’s just that now, the community he is so effectively organizing is the world.” Really, Andrew? I think that this goes a little too far. The outcome may be encouraging, but the process by which we got there certainly was not. If Assad relinquishing his chemical weapons to the international community is enough to prevent US attacks on Syria, why was this not mentioned before everyone started dusting off the Tomahawk missiles?
That was one of the clearest, simplest and most moving presidential speeches to the nation I can imagine. It explained and it argued, point after point. Everything the president said extemporaneously at the post-G20 presser was touched on, made terser, more elegant and more persuasive.
The key points: it is an abdication of America’s exceptional role in the world to look away from the horrific use of poison gas to wipe out civilian populations and kill rebels in a civil war. Given that the world would have ignored August 21 or engaged in meaningless blather about it, Obama took the decision to say he would strike. Since such a strike was not in response to an imminent threat to our national security, Obama felt he should go to the Congress, and reverse some of the strong currents toward the imperial presidency that took hold under Dick Cheney.
As that moment…
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Guido Fawkes takes UN investigator Raquel Rolnik to task for writing a report condemning the UK’s “bedroom tax” (not really a tax at all) on the grounds that it represents a retrogression of the human right to adequate accommodation, and then leaking her report to the media months before it is due to be published. As Guido correctly notes, the report is quite rich considering that it was written by a national of a country where more than 50 million people live in inadequate housing, and also because Rolnik somehow failed to meet with the government ministers in charge of any of the relevant departments before arriving at her totally unbiased, 100% legitimate and not at all pre-ordained conclusions.
The haunting choral piece “On The Transmigration Of Souls”, by John Adams, commissioned in the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 as a tribute to the victims and those who were left behind.
Performed here by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
From the Wikipedia entry:
In an interview Adams explained: “I want to avoid words like ‘requiem’ or ‘memorial’ when describing this piece because they too easily suggest conventions that this piece doesn’t share. If pressed, I’d probably call the piece a ‘memory space.’ It’s a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions. The link to a particular historical event – in this case to 9/11 – is there if you want to contemplate it. But I hope that the piece will summon human experience that goes beyond this particular event.”
The title itself carries a certain heaviness of thought and meaning. According to Adams, “Transmigration means ‘the movement from one place to another’ or ‘the transition from one state of being to another.’ But in this case I meant it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience.”
I was present at the world premiere performance by the NYPO at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, in 2002. A very moving experience.
Semi-Partisan Politics 