I saw a marvelous concert video last night, Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006), filmed at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN by Jonathan Demme. The background story is that in 2005 Young was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm and received (apparently successful) treatment for it. Also, in that year, his father died. Knowing that most of his life was then behind him (but hoping for some more ahead), Young wanted to put down a introspective legacy statement - a look back and a summing up. He gathered his middle-aged friends as a backup band in the middle of the country and performed his new and old middle of the road songs - which is not to denigrate the performance at all; it was wonderful. His songs were about the stuff that are likely to concern a sixty year-old man: the passing of a parent, the empty nest, a favorite old guitar, a departed pet dog, God. Now being an old man himself, he also put his famous song Old Man into perspective. (People cheered when the banjo part came in.) I've never heard Neil Young sound so direct, perceptive or musical. This concert had soul. And Young even looked good and dressed well - I suspect his wife Pegi picked out his on-stage wardrobe.
There were no long Cowgirl in the Sand-style electric guitar solos and no amplifier noise or grunge. Young was content to play an old Martin D-28 acoustic that once was owned by Hank Williams. It seemed that everything was done in deference to the venue, the Ryman, where many legendary musical performances have taken place. (This was one of them, I'm sure.) I hope to see the place sometime; I especially hope to hear a good concert there. And call me odd, but I'd like to find the Ryman doorway were Porter Wagoner once depicted himself as a wino on an album cover.The other production I saw was a completely different matter, not at all suffused with the warm, human glow of Neil Young's sentiments: The Architecture of Doom (1989), about the artistic aesthetics and leanings of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. Like German National Socialist beliefs about art, it was a bit tedious. Much time was given to depictions of the Nazi "Degenerate Art" exhibitions of the 1930's (I own a book about them), where party flacks took modern, often expressionist, art to task. And there were also a lot of footage of what the Nazis called socially "healthy" art: nude blondes with their hair in braids staring out at some wonderful NSDAP horizon, middle class mothers embracing children, buff nude men with Aryan features striding confidently forward - that sort of thing.
The problem is, I think a lot of what gets discussed about art in this context is invariably colored by association with the Nazis - it must be bad because the Nazis liked it, and you will agree that it was bad. My own perception is that some of the stuff the Nazis decried as being degenerate was degenerate, and some of the stuff advanced as socially healthy art was socially healthy art. (A sort of Norman Rockwell realism with German accents, if you will.)
Of course, any art critic worth his National Endowment for the Arts grant will savage me for even proposing that there is such a thing as "socially healthy art." To them I'm sure it very much smacks of a totalitarian, controlling government and, besides, the role of the artist is not to console anyone. (Quick, somebody tell Neil Young!) It's to annoy, provoke and call attention to social wrongs. Whatever. There are ideologues on the Left as well as the Right, and when it comes to art, hey, I like what I like.
I must admit that I was impressed with the footage of those massive, staged Nazi rallies. What political theater! Watching, I was stuck with a thought (it happens): I am certain that being in them was either an exhilarating and powerful experience - Look How Strong We Are (what red-blooded, two-fisted male couldn't be up for that?) - or a tiresome pain in the neck, what with the endless staging in place and standing around, waiting. Maybe both. I bet plenty of Nazis locked their knees while standing and passed out - it used to happen all the time in the long formations I was in while in the Marine Corps. The memory of craggy old Master Sergeants walking up and down yelling "Don't lock your knees!" is one of my enduring memories from my time as one of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children.
Well, say what you will about the German National Socialists being vicious, genocidal, crazed, ruthless killers who espoused all that was vile, hateful, bestial and evil in human nature - they sure could stage impressive rallies! Not to mention come up with good-looking uniforms... but I disagree with the Gestapo's use of the death's head, however. (For the record, I disagree with everything about the Gestapo.) While I know it also appears on much American heraldry and patches, often in connection with the special forces, I just can't bring myself to agree that the death's head has a place in a modern Democracy. There was a hilarious skit about that in a British comedy, once: Are we the baddies?
Fun fact: I learned from this documentary that Hitler himself, a major wanna-be artist, designed those Romanesque NSDAP Deutschland Erwache banners. Didn't know that.
(Necessary blog disclaimer: I don't find Nazis or laudable or at all worthy of praise. I take a great deal of personal pride in the fact that my own dear Pappa was in Germany with the United States Army in 1945, doing his part to kick Nazi butt. As bad as they they were, we wuz badder. There is no part of me that wants to be a jackbooted thug. And while it is true that there are some modern day American politicians I'd like to slap around a bit and that I have played some rugby, I am not by nature a violent person. I am not composing hate speech, nor do I allow hate to shrivel my soul. And remember, when you point a finger of accusation at somebody, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself. So there.)
Tomorrow my bride and I are planning to stroll by the Potomac Tidal Basin to see the lovely pink cherry blossoms. (See? Would a neo-Nazi do that?) Depends upon the weather, however - Cari is not a big fan of being cold. And hopefully there will be a yard sale or two... we've got to get this season started! C'mon, people. Bring out those classical CDs and good books you don't want anymore...
Have a great weekend!
2 comments:
One of my readers commented,
"I had a professor in college who was a child and tween in Nazi Germany and a member of the Hitler Youth. He described being in the rallies as a real otherworldly experience. He said the sieg heil call and salute would come out over the crowd like an overwhelming tide that it swept everyone along no matter how cynical they were. He said it made you feel like you were surrendering and becoming part of something larger than life. According to him, after that experience everyone in the crowd was in kind of a collective daze and that's when the speeches would begin. While he was not a fully formed adult when he experienced this and almost certainly very indoctrinated at that point in his life (his family left Germany in 1945 for Paraguay), I bet his experience is close to the norm."
Not that you particularily care, but I'm trying to come to terms with the way my blog looks, with thsoe random linefeeds. Here's the problem, as described to the Blogspot Help Forum:
I want a blog with paragraphs of text separated by a line of space (a line feed). I think this is better on the eyes that a monolithic block of text with the paragraphs separated by a margin indentation. See my past blog updates for samples.
The problem is that the blogspot software seems to have a will of its own in inserting linefeeds and extra tags after I switch from the "Edit HTML" to the "Compose" windows and vice versa.
My standard blog format is as described above, plus an image atop each page and my hypertext links open a new window. This means that I have to insert a "target='_blank'" statement after the "a href" tags, using the Edit HTML window. When I go back into "compose" my format gets all messed up, with extra spaces and tags everywhere. The same thing happens after I insert my image.
And it seems that in the last week or so a change was made in that I can no longer easily ensure one line feed while switching between Edit HTML and Compose modes - something changed.
What is the easiest way of obtaining my text formatting standard: paragraphs separated by one line feed, an image at top and hypertext links opening new windows when clicked? Editing in blogspot used to be doable and fun. Now it's a pain.
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