So savoured) quasi-verbal gift to speak
Such secrets as Mnemosyne can tell
Only in structured form. That’s why the sound
Of some small phrase or fragment may compel
The vagrant memory to cast around
For its pre-intimations in a zone
Of meanings more precise than any found
In recollected sounds or tastes alone.
And so mémoire involontaire unfolds,
For Proust, in ways most intimately known
Through music and the colloquy it holds
With lifetimes spent in quest of that which time
May yet pluck vibrant from the cramping moulds
Of time-fixated habit. So what I’m
Here getting at is how those who content
Themselves with less—like giving up on rhyme
And meter through desire to circumvent
Such formal impositions—will thereby
Be giving up on everything that went,
Back then, most forcefully to give the lie
To any notion that the only fit
Way present-day composers can apply
Their special gifts or skill is to submit
Each work to just that principle of least
Resistance that requires it be a hit
With those whose satisfaction’s much decreased
By every slight departure from the norms
Discreetly though effectively policed
On their behalf by all the varied forms
Of vox-pop taste enforcement. What they class
Good music’s aptest then to be what warms
The hearts of listeners predisposed to pass
Such works as listener-friendly, and to fail
The more demanding kind. So, Philip Glass,
That’s why I’ve taken Proustian leave to rail
At how your music manages to turn
The Vinteuil question round and thus entail
That any answer to it’s one we learn
Not on account of venturing out beyond
Safe waters to where deeper currents churn
The tonal depths. More, it’s some pool or pond
With surface quite unruffled by such thoughts
As else might prompt the listener to respond
With further questions rather than retorts-
In-kind of just the formulaic type
To which the well-trained minimalist resorts
As sub-melodic brainworms gently wipe
Out all last memories of how music fared
In better times. If, then, I seem to gripe
Too much about what’s trivial compared
With other things—and if indeed it’s true
That problems duplicate, not halve, when shared—
Still I’d suggest the question’s aimed at you,
My fellow-listener, next time you retreat
Into that lotus-land whose scents subdue
Your mind, make criticism take back seat,
And switch off all awareness of how far
This music goes in striving to complete
Their obsolescence. Though my note may jar
On such nirvana-seeking nerves and fall
Way short of getting them to say au revoir
To the seductive, thought-quiescent call
Of minimalism still it might succeed
In helping those less thoroughly in thrall
To its hedonic spell and so impede,
For a short while at least, the downward drift
Toward musique d’ameublement. The need
For that’s as striking as the Doppler shift
Produced when music-history’s revoked,
As here, in ways that open wide the rift
Between a hard-line modernism yoked
To the emancipation of all tones
In the chromatic scale and feelings stoked
Against it by the multiplying clones
Of Glass or Arvo Pärt whose music harks,
Reactively, right back to the bare bones
Of old tonality. So it embarks
On strategies to over-write the script
Co-written by the sundry heirs of Marx
And progress-minded modernists who’d tipped
As winners just those works that best brought out
How tightly history’s dialectic gripped
The kinds of music they’d most keenly tout
For what it told of conflicts, whether waged
Directly in some recrudescent bout
Of the class-struggle or obliquely staged
(As theorists prefer) in subtle ways
Requiring that the music be engaged
Only by those whose discourse best displays
Such mediating skills. No doubt there’s room
Here for a counterpart to the malaise
I’ve diagnosed, that is, for works that plume
Themselves (along with the elective set
Of standard-bearing acolytes for whom
They’re chiefly meant) on cancelling the debt
Art owes to pleasure, or—to strike a note
Less hedonistic—making sure we get
The maximal incentive to demote
What gratifies the ear. Yet pleasure came,
Back then, not just from music’s power to float
The boat of listeners hoping for the same
Old aural comforts, but how it could take
Us into regions far beyond the frame
Of ear-accustomed indolence and break
Its hold by tonal innovations more
Effective since not so inclined to make
A rule of disavowing all rapport
With any temperament that’s still attuned
To vibes they programmatically deplore,
Those holdout modernists. Yet music pruned
Of tonal affect as a point of strict
Decree is apt to find itself marooned,
Together with its phalanx of hand-picked
Promoters, in a situation just
The opposite of works that neatly ticked,
In minimalist fashion, every box that must
Be ticked by music seeking to regain
The ear of audiences left nonplussed
By music of the other, more arcane
Or ear-repellent genre. Hence the flip-
Flop pseudo-dialectic where a strain
Of throwback populism trying hard to skip
Three centuries of change now coexists
In mutual though uneasy partnership
With a left-over vanguard that enlists
Its waning energies more in the cause
Of showing how intently it resists
The siren-call of popular applause
Than showing how it might at length achieve
And (the most vital qualifying clause)
Achieve on merit a long-term reprieve
From short-term memory. Still it’s much worse,
So Proust would have us think, to find that we’ve
Been hearing skilled executants rehearse
The sort of music that, when billed a top
New work commissioned from the public purse,
First asks of us that we consent to drop
All pre-existent notions of what’s worth
Our listening-time. Then it requires we stop
Our ears against the rising tide of mirth
That greets—or ought to greet—the nth reprise
Of a duff theme that, owing to the dearth
Of musical invention, has to tease
Its paltry substance out through umpteen bars
Where not much happens. This then guarantees
Consumer satisfaction since it mars
No pleasure serviced by the aural balm
Dispensed to drivers traffic-jammed in cars
And punctually supplied with stuff to calm
Their jaded nerves by
doses of FM
Relaxative. That’s how your pieces palm
Their hearers off with what impresses them,
Since pre-convinced, as offering the last word
In those sublime simplicities that stem
From innocence regained, but might be heard
More aptly—if again we bear in mind
The deep self-questioning Marcel incurred
At Vinteuil’s fictive hands—as so designed
That early converts to them quickly lose
All sense of just much got left behind
In music’s self-eclipse. So je t’accuse,
And you especially, since it’s the scale
Of your works that convinces listeners whose
Respect’s won by sheer playing-time that they’ll
Derive more benefit from works that run
To full symphonic stretch than those that fail
In that respect through tendency to shun
Such elevated forms in (as one might
Quite reasonably think) the way best done
By self-styled minimalists. For if, despite
Their scale, those works yield nothing to reward
The keen-eared listener soon put off by trite
Ideas or by some root-position chord
Interminably held then it’s a moot
Point, surely, whether being amply scored
And of a length proportioned to best suit
Performance as the second half of some
Big concert should entail that they dilute
Yet further what’s already now become,
Even in those echt-minimalists who stick
With short forms, music such as lets us plumb
Its structure, like its feelings, in a tick
And—if so minded—figure out the means
Of their production by a bit of quick
Text-book analysis. Should those routines
Turn out to be the very sort that fits
This music it’s because their method screens
The duplex question every work submits
To every auditor who’s then compelled
To ask not simply how the piece acquits
Itself by their lights but what truths it held,
And might yet hold, for listeners breaking through
To grasp the more exacting message spelled
Out to those restless souls among them who,
As Nietzsche said, experience the fate
Of music like an open wound. If you,
Our maxi-minimalist, could once relate,
If fleetingly, to something like Marcel’s
Self-questioning response it might deflate
That penchant for the kind of form that swells
In length and scale inversely with the drive
To leave no forms in place beyond those cells
Of sub-thematic stuff that then contrive,
By repetition, somehow to convey
A sense that they’re organically alive
Like so much replicating DNA.
However—as the simile concedes—
This notion just won’t stick since there’s no way
Genes could equate to that which far exceeds
The grasp of any sequencer and stands
To our genetic blueprint as our needs
For music’s consolation trump demands
For acephalic pleasures of the sort
Your compositions yield. It’s this that brands
Them works that too assiduously court
The easy-listener’s favour and confess,
Between the notes, their mission to abort
All trace of music’s impulse to transgress
Those comfort-zones. Where once it gave fresh nerve
To human striving, now it would repress
Whatever bucks its smooth regression-curve,
Or any intimation of what you’ve
Kept constantly in check. So you deserve
At least the thanks of those who’d seek to prove,
On current evidence, that we’re the fools
If we suppose that music’s power to move
Our minds as well as hearts by breaking rules
Of custom or good form might be the spark
That lights a flame beyond the music-schools
Since kindled by those minds against the dark
Of mindlessness. Then let us not conclude
Too quickly that the only valid mark
Of music’s worth is some beatitude
Attained exclusively by intellect’s
Preparedness to have its bearings skewed
By inchoate emotion or effects
Of the soft power exerted by what earns
Acceptance just so far as it respects
The status quo. Let’s think the flame still burns
And, on the strength of that, let’s think there’s yet
Some extant cause to hope that music turns
Aside from the compulsion to forget
Its promesse de bonheur and so abjures
Your music’s promise never to upset
The habit of compliance that secures
Its listeners’ readiness to fall in line
With every muzac-ready bar that lures
Them on beneath its stupefying sign.
A MORAL VACUUM
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was brutally interrogated countless times by the CIA following his capture in 2003. But while the methods the CIA used to break down their prisoner were well-worn, the way in which they pieced him back together was not.
Mohammed—who in more innocent days took a degree in mechanical engineering at a US university—asked his captors a strange favour: would they let him design a vacuum cleaner? And the word from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, was, yes.
Having extracted a confession and everything else it could by duress, the agency’s priority now was to keep their star prisoner sane. Perhaps in calmer circumstances he might have further, less time-sensitive information to divulge. And who could say, he might even one day testify at a trial, at which he would need to appear a credible and uncoerced witness.
In other words, his handlers had to repair the psychological damage inflicted by the waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” to which he was subjected immediately after being captured. Gradually, his self-esteem grew. Britelite had a debriefing room where Mohammed held what he liked to call “office hours,” lecturing his captors about his childhood, his family and his path to jihad and al-Qa’ida. Tea and biscuits were served at these occasions.
—The Independent, Friday, July 12, 2013
It seems his treatment got a little rough.
Do what you like with him, their orders said,
Since the worst you can do’s not bad enough,
But don’t forget: more use alive than dead.
And so his minders did the usual stuff,
Took their complete immunity as read,
Then made the most of this great chance to duff
Him up now that they’d got the go-ahead.
The problem was, the guy turned out so tough
And torture-proof that their lot just saw red,
Ignored all that don’t-kill-the-bastard guff,
And looked dead set on wasting him instead.
This meant the use of sundry off-the-cuff
And ratcheted techniques that quickly led
The Pentagon to fear he’d sooner snuff
It at their hands than have the rumour spread
That he’d cracked after all. Let them be taught
A gentler way, ask him what might best heal
His psychic wounds if not the other sort,
And, just to keep him on an even keel,
Enquire what kind of therapy he thought
Would help him most effectively to deal
With having not so long ago been brought
/> Close to death’s door by their excessive zeal.
So that’s the sweetener those guys offered: short
Of freeing him or letting him appeal
Against these practices in open court,
They’d try to fix things so that he might feel
His sanity restored rather than thwart
Their purpose by declining to reveal
What more he knew, or else by the resort
To babbling incoherence, whether real
Or feigned. When he came up with his request
It’s likely they surmised this was the case
Since, after giving it much thought, the best
Way to get his head clear of that bad place
(He said) was to design and put to test
A vacuum-cleaner from the database
Of those he’d studied years back with a zest
For cleanliness that occupied the space
Now claimed by godliness. We glean the rest
From what’s let drop from time to time by grace
Of sources, CIA among them, blessed
With warrant to dissimulate all trace
Of doings we’d be hard put to digest,
As ‘concerned citizens’, if made to face
The facts head-on with no ruse to divest
Them (and ourselves) of all that might disgrace
Freedom’s fair name. In which case we’ll perhaps
For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 7