by Peter Dimock
Judith told me that Frears asked her without conflict—as if it were a matter of simple, empirical report—whether she would consent to be his mistress and available to him on short notice. She told me she answered yes without a second thought. Their affair lasted, she said, on and off, for three years.
Hold in your mind the results of this contemplation with the mental sound of the musical note constructed by combining the following elements from the method’s three tables: III. I. i(a); i(b). (Remember that the task is to devise just arguments against an imperial state that your one true love will apply to her own circumstances using this method, this juxtaposition of words and scenes.)
Extended notation from my practice: III. Historical Subject: Judith Takes (Governing scene: A young New England woman listens to a beautiful young man speaking in public about slavery on a summer evening on Nantucket in 1841. This image gives way and merges with the image of Judith approaching Charles Jason Frears in a Greenwich Village jazz club in September of 1963. She has just said, “I’ve brought you something for your birthday,” and he, laughing gently, is saying, “You’ve brought me you.”). I: Truth Statement: Every ruling minority needs to numb, and, if possible, to kill the time-sense of those whom it exploits by proposing a continuous present. This is the authoritarian secret of all methods of imprisonment. i(a). Constructive Principle (positive): Enlightenment ideals of individual meditative freedom are inseparable from the liberal dream of universal print literacy. i(b). Constructive Principle (negative): Historylessness was once assigned to those deemed unworthy of equality or incapable of mastering the Christian logic of redeemed American time.
Second Day’s Exercise: In the Jesuits’ version of this method the second day of the fourth week is devoted to imagining the two women standing in front of an open sepulcher cut into the side of a hill. The tomb’s covering of un-worked stone leans at an angle as if having been rolled away by unskilled laborers. The women are listening to someone speaking: “Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here.” There is no sign of the soldiers assigned to guard the place. The dead man was tortured and killed in accordance with the provisions of the law against fomenters of disorder and disseminators of sedition. One day my brother stole something. It was not the first time. The national narrative of redemption promises the end of history as material fact in the New World. This is primitive thought. But do not think for a minute that our class does not subscribe to its premises. Our self-regard could not survive any other narrative logic but absolute possession. My pleasure of rule extends as far as yours. Nevertheless, I saw what I saw in my vision and have decided to act. In the time I have left I will live in the present the one true history of my one true love. Repeat yesterday’s exercise: The juxtaposition of the governing scene for your third historical subject with the governing scene you use to call to mind easily your master narrative. Refuse empire; create reciprocity.
Hold in your mind the results of this exercise’s contemplations with the imagined sound of the musical note constructed by combining the following elements from the method’s three tables: III. II. ii(a); ii(b). Construct arguments against empire your one true love will believe.
Extended notation from my practice: III. Historical Subject: Judith Takes (Governing Scene: A nineteen-year-old woman listens to a man speaking in public about the red gate of slavery on a summer evening on Nantucket in August of 1841. This scene gives way and merges with the image of Judith approaching Charles Frears in a Greenwich Village jazz club in 1963.). II. Truth Statement: The most important element of poetics is the structure of events, for tragedy is the mimesis not of persons but of life and action. Happiness and unhappiness consist in action and the goal is a certain kind of action and not a qualitative state. It is by virtue of character that persons have certain qualities, but it is through their actions that they are happy or the reverse. ii(a). Constructive Principle (positive): It is both necessary and possible to live the one true history of your one true love. ii(b). Constructive Principle (negative): In any history of absolute possession reciprocity must be improvised moment to moment. Narrative implies direction; stories are vehicles of consent.
At the time of my vision during the music at Mary Joscelyn’s funeral in 1995, I was a happily married man and father of an infant daughter. I failed to knock on Jesse Bishop’s door in the spring of 1984. (I’ve checked and now have given the correct year.) Since 2007 I have separated from my wife and now see my daughter two nights a week and on alternate weekends. I developed this method in order to learn to live the one true history of my one true love. I declared my love to Leda Corot Rivers three weeks ago today.
I kept in touch with Judith Takes until her death last year. She always seemed much younger than her age. She died at the age of seventy.
I visited her only once toward the end. She said she wanted to say good-bye quickly. Judith wrote a much-praised book about the audiences the abolitionists addressed early in the early nineteenth century. She pointed out that this was the age of minstrelsy’s greatest popularity. Each age constructs word and act and nationality much differently. She was especially interested in what the women in the audiences heard and what they made of what was said. She tried to reconstruct, as accurately as she could, who was present at the meeting on Nantucket in August of 1841, arguing that that meeting and that young man’s speech signaled the potency—against all odds—of the political appeal of abolitionism.
Judith and I sometimes talked about whether American national historical subjectivity was a meaningful concept. I thought it was. She doubted it. History’s events, I now think, can be given biographical temporalities or denied them. That choice, I think, is made in the imagination first.
Derek is Judith and Jason Frears’s son. Judith left all her papers and her library of antislavery documents to the Frears Memorial American Music Archive. I have asked Derek to permit me to go through this material and his mother’s notes to see if possibly there is enough material for a book about popular culture and antislavery that McClaren Books and NCI might agree to publish.
Colloquy delivered to the accompaniment of the third subject’s second note: You were brave beyond what was expected. I was not. I have never been in a position to sign the kind of document you wrote and signed in late December of 2004. Until I practiced this method every day for several months, I had no way to begin to know what I would do in circumstances like the ones you faced. Now I can imagine nothing stopping me. I hope something similar will happen to you.
Third Day’s Exercise: Master narratives often sound as if they could tell us what to do: “Tell my disciples,” Jesus told the women, “to go up to Galilee and I will appear to them there.” “So they began to beat him early in the morning . . . I did not cast off the chains of slavery at the time of the surrender, they fell off at that camp meeting.” Narrative should not postpone the question of justice with the promise of perfection. Make the narrative of events serve consent to being in general and not to the self-justifying techniques of domination. I’m valuable because she came back.
Place the figure of your one true love inside the governing scene you chose for your master narrative. We hold these Truths to be self-evident: All men . . . Then find a way to declare your love.
Hold in your mind the results of this exercise’s contemplations with the mental sound of the musical note constructed by combining the following elements from the method’s three tables: III. III. iii(a); iii(b).
Extended notation from my practice: III. Historical Subject: Judith Takes (Governing scene: On a summer evening on Nantucket Island in 1841, a young woman listens to a man speaking of his introduction as a child to slavery as a legal system of impunity. This moment gives way to and merges with a picture of Judith offering her love to Frears in a jazz club in Greenwich Village in 1963.). III. Truth Statement: I would like to arrive at the point where I am able to grasp the essence of a certain place and time, compose the work, and play it on the spot naturally. iii(a). Constructive Principle
(positive): The most important philosophical question is the question of what Eurydice saw when Orpheus looked back. iii(b). Constructive Principle (negative): The time of the contemporary social determination of events is stochastic. This technique of managed discontinuity postpones the Enlightenment project of justice and equality continuously.
Colloquy delivered to the accompaniment of the third subject’s third note: You granted torturers immunity with your signature on December 30, 2004. I have memorized what you wrote:
Because the discussion in that memorandum concerning the President’s Commander-in-Chief power and the potential defenses to liability was—and remains—unnecessary, it has been eliminated from the analysis that follows. Consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the President’s unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture. “Torture” means an act committed by a person acting under color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control.
You were brave beyond the rule and measure of our training and learned with your body what words spoken in good faith could mean. A trainer in charge of teaching soldiers to endure being tortured by enemies stated for the record: “It’s not simulated anything. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. Our waterboarders are professional. When the water hits you, you think, ‘Oh Shit, this is a whole new level of Bad.’” Master narratives and governing scenes are not luxuries Homeland Security should be given the legal and technical means to censor and suppress to safeguard citizens’ national security.
Fourth Day’s Exercise: It was never customary to extend mercy to those living outside the laws of civilized nations whom we held at will, first as enemies then as property. This was always the fate to be expected by those who failed at diplomacy and arms. In my vision during the music at Mary Joscelyn’s funeral service I came to the end of myself and saw other people standing there. Fathers killing sons. I immediately demanded that Owen Corliss, my closest colleague and best friend, give me the equivalent scene from his own life to the one I had just given in tears from mine.
I was valuable because she came back. I tried to make him see Melisande Chandless’s face in the New Haven doorway and recognize her. Through music I was sure we could trust our memories—all of them. There were ways of hearing notes from which we could begin.
Narrate the happy ending implied by the governing scene you chose for this week’s exercises. In my practice a girl listens in the New England summer evening light to a man speaking publicly of his entrance through the red gate of slavery. This scene merges with an image of Judith offering her love to Charles Jason Frears on his birthday. Frears laughs lovingly, saying, “You have brought me you.” What Eurydice saw when Orpheus looked back determines the worth of his song. I failed to knock on Jesse’s door in Lexington, Kentucky in the spring of 1984. When Leda sang “Light Years” in Toronto last month, I knew I could use my method and act immediately according to the knowledge gained by the promptings of desire.
Juxtapose the happy ending your governing scene implies with the happiness your master narrative intends to bring. I did not cast off the chains of slavery at the time of the surrender. They fell off at that camp meeting.
In the Jesuits’ version of this method, Jesus’s resurrection and public, historical ascension into heaven from Mount Olivet seal the perfection of events. It is not much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but the intimate understanding and relish of the truth.
Owen Corliss refused what I asked of him. Nevertheless, I have found a way to act on the truth of vision. History and Enlightenment open onto an inner realm (operating by its own laws) without any extrinsic purposes whatsoever.
Hold in mind the results of your contemplations by constructing the mental sound of a musical note, combining the following elements from the method’s three tables: III. IV. iv(a); iv(b). (Remember that the task is to narrate the happy ending implied by your governing scene and juxtapose it with the universal happiness your master narrative intends to complete.)
Extended notation from my practice: III. Historical Subject: Judith Takes (Governing Scene: A young woman listens to a man speaking and imagines her own entrance through the bloodstained gate of slavery. This scene gives way and merges with an image of Judith offering Jason Frears her love. Both Judith and Frears trust their happiness.). IV. Truth Statement: Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future that replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear very much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity. iv(a). Constructive Principle (positive): It is both necessary and possible to create a society of equal historical selves (SOEHS). iv(b). Constructive Principle (negative): All music derives its beauty from the way the notes take flight over the ground of reproach issuing from the continuous speech of all the anonymous dead.
Colloquy delivered to the accompaniment of the third subject’s fourth note: If I can devise some easier, friendlier way of conveying my goodwill, I will share it with you between now and the 19th and when we are scheduled to meet.
Fifth Day’s Exercise: Imagine the violence of the governing scene you have chosen with which to hold the third historical subject in mind. Then imagine the happy ending your master narrative implies for everyone. Since I have begun practicing this method, I have decided to act on desire. Leda in the midst of her singing is a braided chord, sounding aloud the actual history of my one true love.
The nature of true virtue is consent to being in general. A history of the work of redemption in the New World implies that there will be nothing between events and words. I am valuable because she came back. This is the true nature of historical action.
Hold in your mind the results of your meditation during the exercise assigned to your third historical subject’s fifth day. Do this by constructing the mental sound of the musical note made by combining the following elements from the method’s three tables: III. V. i(a); i(b). (The task is to juxtapose the violence of the imagery you chose with the happiness the master narrative intends to achieve.)
Extended notation from my practice: III. Historical Subject: Judith Takes (Governing scene: A young woman listens to a man publicly speaking his remembrance of slavery. This scene merges with a picture of Judith declaring her love.). V. Truth Statement: Whenever events lose their independent value, an abstruse exegesis is born. i(a). Constructive Principle (positive): The emancipative dimension of bourgeois literacy implies a universality of communicative reciprocity between autonomous individuals of equal worth. History is the narrative of the fulfillment of this idea. i(b). Constructive Principle (negative): The historylessness that characterizes contemporary experience harms both individual and collective life and prevents a just reciprocity among equals.
Sixth Day’s Exercise: When in December of 2004 you wrote and signed the legal memorandum permitting torture, the virtue of American historical syntax was undone. The liberal logic of slavery prevailed over nature’s freedom. Music comes to us first as words that have to be discarded in the emergency of events. Narrate the happy ending your master narrative has given your third historical subject’s governing scene knowing the syntax of domination is unworthy of trust. Greet your one true love as if after a long absence.
Hold in mind the results of your contemplations during this exercise with the mental sound of the musical note constructed from the following elements taken from the method’s three tables: III. VI. ii(a); ii(b).
&
nbsp; Extended notation from my practice: III. Historical Subject: Judith Takes (Governing scene: A woman listens while blood pours down in a child’s sight to a man publicly speaking of himself as a child watching a woman suspended from a iron hook in a ceiling’s wooden beam being whipped and screaming because she was loved and owned. This picture merges with an image of Judith declaring her love to a musician who has just played a love song to an audience of strangers in September of 1963.). VI. Truth Statement: When the whole world is a computer and all cultures are recorded on a single tribal drum, the fixed point of view of print culture will be irrelevant and impossible no matter how valuable. ii(a). Constructive Principle (positive): It is both necessary and possible to live the one true history of your one true love. ii(b). Constructive Principle (negative): Reciprocity must be improvised, moment-to-moment.
Colloquy delivered to the accompaniment of the fourth week’s sixth note: You will soon receive (if you have not already done so) an invitation to attend, as a special guest of NCI, the public dedication on June 19th of the Charles Jason Frears Memorial American Music Archive and Performance Center just now being completed on the New Carrollton campus of the University of Maryland. I understand that your home is quite close by. I have sent you this letter and historical method in advance in the sincere hope that you will be able to attend and we will be able to find a time and place to meet.
Seventh Day’s Exercise: I recently found among Judith’s papers in her handwriting lyrics to Charles Jason Frears’ signature composition “Light Years.” I can find no evidence or anyone’s anecdotal remembrance of their existence prior to my discovery. I have taken the liberty of removing this page from the collection until we are able to establish, with your firm’s help, the potential commercial value that the licensing rights to these words may command.