Bel Canto Notes; Cacophony and Terrorism

Hello all (and mostly Dr. Reimer, since he will probably be the only person reading this)! 

Since I had to leave school early to fight fire, I wrote these notes on my reactions to Bel Canto. I am writing this on my iPhone since I am out working in the mountains with a couple bars of 3G, so forgive any grammatical mistakes. 

The term bel canto literally means "beautiful singing."  And upon further review of a Wikipedia article about this term, I came to find out that this term was originally applied in the 17th century to refer to sophisticated singing dwelling mostly in the realms of opera or sacred song. The term underwent a series of applications throughout the following centuries, and now, in the 21st century, is "used nostalgically to evoke a lost singing tradition." 

So how does this apply to Ann Patchett's novel? 

First, one must do some research on the Lima Crisis, on which the book is based. I read a series of Google Scholar findings on this event, and mostly what I came up with was that the Lima Crisis occurred in 1996 when MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement--a Marxist revolutionary group in Peru) took hundreds of important figures hostage; this event--the Lima Crisis--is also called the Japanese embassy hostage crisis because it occurred at the residence of the Japanese ambassador (in Peru), Morihisa Aoki. The hostages were freed in 1997 by Peruvian armed forces, and the President of Peru (Alberto Fujimori) was given most of the credit for their release. 

Since then, a number of allegations and reports have emerged that the insurgents (MRTA) were executed after surrendering. It is important to note that the act of terrorism was mostly instigated so that MRTA could demand amnesty in order to participate in life among normal (non-commando) citizens. They also demanded better conditions in jails. 

This event has sparked many a discussion apropos amnesty, execution, terrorism, and the rights of jailed individuals. 

The plot of Bel Canto is essentially described above, except it is viewed in terms of the relationships between Roxane Coss and Katsumi Hokosawa and Gen Watanabe and Carmen, who is a terrorist. Politics and language barriers are the main obstacles in their relationships. 

The dynamic of the relationships in this novel can be described as nothing more or less than star-crossed; they reminded me of Jack and Rose in the Titanic and Romeo and Juliet in, well, Romeo and Juliet. Both relationships are highly political and, musically and linguistically, cacophonous. 

Hokosawa ends up dying in an attempt to save Carmen even though he loves Roxane (and her voice). Roxane's aptitude for all things musical ends up comforting the party during the standoff--a clear testament to the power of music. Watanabe is a translator. Carmen dies because she is a terrorist and most people do not have any tolerance for terrorism. Watanabe and Coss end up together because their partners died and that would be the most natural thing to do after your lovers die...sympathizing with someone whose lover also died. 

I could talk about the obvious theme of music bringing people together in times of crisis...the ability of opera to comfort people in dire circumstances. That is a superficial reading, in my opinion. It does no good to me as a human and to the readership of the novel in terms of a modern era that is very much subject to politics and globalization. 

But it is the idea of the broken hallelujah that was most resonant to me in this book: I want to focus on the modern meaning an context of bel canto--a word to describe nostalgia of lost traditions. To me, this nostalgia is particularly applicable now...in the midst of the tragedy that occurred recently in Boston. Lives were lost, and that is a shame. But the sound of bombs, screams, and sheer terror--CACOPHONY--makes us wonder about our capability as humans to understand violence. How do we take it in? Nostalgically, was there ever a time when we, as citizens of the United States, cared unanimously about the wellbeing of another country's citizens more so than our own? 

To me, it is ridiculous that this event in Boston caused so much alarm. Things like this happen every day in other places, and we, as an isolated and sheltered society, choose to ignore the screams of those who do not live on U.S. soil. This, to me, is the meaning of cacophony, and, the meaning of the broken hallelujah. 

We have discussed the idea of circles in depth and at length this semester. Take this quote from Bel Canto: 

"The day no longer progressed in its normal, linear fashion but instead every hour circled back to its beginning, every moment was lived over and over again. Time, in the manner in which they had all understood it, was over" (106).

The term bel canto represents nostalgia and returning to values that have always held true for societies. One of these values in love. Life itself is linear because time (in its Western interpretation) is linear. However, at the end of the novel, love is the only thing that appears to be circular and never-ending. 

And that holds true outside of literature as well. 

Thanks for a great semester, and have a great summer. 

Blessings! 

Jenna P. Lyons 

End Notes

Beginning with Beethoven (arguably) and extending through the Romantic period, the codas to symphonic compositions become longer and longer, and more elaborate, as if there's a kind of desperate desire to affirm something before the last note must fade into the air. This, maybe, is the 376 blog's equivalent, as I will probably now find myself writing a series of "final" postings. It seems fitting, though, that we also have a last posting about music. In noting the passing of the great album cover art designer, Strom Thorgersen (think Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon), a few weeks, NPR queried their readers with the question "What are your Top 5 album covers?" I was pleased to see that the article's author, Robin Hilton, included Shearwater's Rook among his choices. I know album art is less prominent now with the confining dimensions of cds (not to mention the immateriality of mp3s), but what might make your list?

I hope things are going well with the multigenre essays. There was a great article about writing, by the way, in a recent issue (April 29) of The New Yorker: John McPhee's "Draft No. 4." You might check it out if you get a chance, especially since he writes so well about the agonies all of us endure anytime we sit down to write something. Here's a brief teaser: "You are working on a first draft and small wonder you're unhappy. If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut out to do this, if your prose seems stillborn and you completely lack confidence, you must be a writer. If you say you see things differently and describe your efforts positively, if you tell people that you 'just love to write,' you may be delusional.... First drafts are slow and develop clumsily, because every single sentence affects not only those before it but also those that follow.... There are psychological differences from phase to phase, and the first is the phase of the pit and the pendulum.... For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something -- anything -- out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something -- anything -- as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit again -- top to bottom. The chances are that about now you'll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all that takes time.... Without the drafted version -- if it did not exist -- you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day -- yes, while you sleep -- but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun." Unfortunately, because of the pressures and compacted time of the semester, we don't often enough get to pursue this process of "drafts." It's like Kundera's "unbearable lightness of being" that comes from the awareness that there is no dress rehearsal for our lives: we just have to go on stage cold. Well, anyway, I will look forward to reading your essays when the time comes.

Well, there it is: "Now my charms are all o'erthrown," lamented Prospero (which is not to say I won't return to post again!). Thank you for all of your hard work, good cheer, and many contributions to the course. As I noted on Wednesday, I feel like I've lived the material in many ways during the semester (in good ways and, lately, in unwanted ways); as we head into the graduation, and into the summer and beyond, perhaps we can all remember Charlie Parker's advice that "if you don't live it, it won't come out your horn." After I've had the chance to recover, to "sleep like a rock or a man that's dead," I'm assuming the "thump, thump, thump" will start kicking in again, and I'll start looking towards the next iteration of the class. You and your contributions will be an important part of it when I do. And maybe someday we'll meet again under the tamarind tree! All the best ...

Of Slender Silver Slivers

Apropos of yesterday's discussion, here is a link to an NPR article regarding the poetics of hip-hop and rap; the article appeared over two years ago, but those of you interested in this area might want to seek out the anthology that is reviewed. As I said, it makes me wonder what other blind spots we might have in the course as it's currently designed -- or maybe not so much "blind spots" as just other possibilities (texts, genres, issues, etc.) that might enrich a course like this one. Thinking back to your musical DNA papers from the beginning of the semester, part of me wonders if music and children's literature might be an interesting little mini-unit (half a class?). Some children's books can be positively brilliant -- in terms of rhythm, alliteration, rhyme, assonance and consonance, et al. -- and can function like sheet music and yield new inflections every time they're read aloud/"performed." I think of something like Lloyd Moss's Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin, for example, which deals with music directly: "With mournful moan and silken tone, / Itself alone comes one trombone. / Gliding, sliding, high notes go low; / One trombone is playing solo. / .... / Flute, that sends our soul a-shiver; / Flute, that slender, silver sliver. / A place among the set it picks / To make a young sextet--that's six." Or Karma Wilson' wonderful Bear Snores On, which is always a positive delight to read: "An itty-bitty mouse, / pitter-pat, tip-toe, / creep-crawls in the cave / from the fluff-cold snow. / Mouse squeaks, "Too damp, / too dank, too dark." / So he lights wee twigs / with a small, hot spark." / The coals pip-pop and the wind doesn't stop. / But the bear snores on. / Two glowing eyes / sneak-peek in the den. / Mouse cries, "Who's there?" / and a hare hops in. / "Ho, Mouse!" says Hare. / "Long time, no see!" / So they pop white corn. / And they brew black tea. / Mouse sips wee slurps. / Hare burps big burps! / But the bear snores on." Well, if you have any other ideas for texts and topics germane to a future iteration of this course, send them along!

e krii?

Another quick announcement (although, since this blog venue seems not to offer the equivalent to the charms of Solibo's tamarind tree and Sucette's ka-drum, it's hard to know how many of you will gather here to read it): in any event, I have put some brief comments on your multigenre preludes, and I will be able to put them in my mailbox (in LA 133) by Friday at 11:00 in the event you want to stop by and pick them up. Do consider, as well, posting a teaser of your multigenre project here on the blog: this would not only allow everyone to get a glimpse of each other's projects, but it could also produce some cross-fertilization and maybe become a way for getting some ideas from your colleagues as to how you might use the course texts in support of your inquiry. It all depends, though, on whether there are any potential "e kraas" out there at this point! Anyway, just a thought!

I'm repeating myself in this instance, of course, but I always get jazzed by the way disparate texts end up speaking to one another in a class like this: thus my repeated reference to the fact that one intertext (from early in the semester) that sheds some useful comparative light on the situation and dilemma of the character of Chamoiseau, the "word-scratcher," is Blake's "Introduction" to the Songs of Innocence. As you recall, the piper in that poem is commanded first to pipe, then to sing, and then to write, and with each step in the sequence there seems to be a kind of diminishment that occurs (until finally the child vanishes when he sits down to write, and then he subsequently "stain'd the water clear"). Solibo warns Chamoiseau of a similar peril in moving from an oral to a written mode of expression, and the latter finally laments the situation: "In rereading my first notes from the time I followed him around the market, I understood that to write down the word was nothing but betrayal, you lost the intonations, the parody, the storyteller's gestures, and all of this was made even more unthinkable for I knew Solibo was hostile to it. But I called myself a "word scratcher," a pathetic gatherer of elusive things, like the draft through the wind's cathedrals" (158). Of course, without the efforts of the word scratcher we wouldn't have the novel, and Chamoiseau must be commended for making such a sonorous, musical, and rhythmic text, and for honoring the oral tradition in the process.

If you read through the novel again in light of my attempt to link it with Bakhtin and the carnivalesque, you'll undoubtedly find a good many passages that become newly relevant to you. The events of the novel take place during Carnival, of course, and the nature of those events, and the manner of the transactions between the witnesses/mourners and the police emerge from Bakhtin's characterizations: e.g., "The whole place soon began to resemble a market during the sale of red pepper. Screaming. Astonishment. Sympathies offered to the line of witnesses. Curses of mysterious origin in the direction of the policemen" (68). There are also the various references to laughter, including the "thick and greasy laughs" when "all were displaying molars" (62), laughter which often serves to undermine institutional power. And there's still so much more we could say about wakes and quiverings in the context of this novel, too. Given that this is a novel about the processual, fluid, and multiple nature of identity, how appropriate that it's focused on the transition between life and death; we're reminded that death induces us to look at life as a process of change, and brings with it a kind of poetics of liminality in which there are no easy answers or categorizations (which creates rich overlap, potentially, with Kay's Trumpet). These poetics call upon the performance of storytellers, too, and somehow I find myself thinking of the various itinerant bards we've encountered in this course: Mr. Tambourine Man, perhaps; the squeezebox singer in the Martin Sexton song we listened to; Mikey Smith (whose "Me Cyann Believe It" we'll listen to on Monday); Robert Johnson and then the crossroads bluesman in the O Brother film clip; Solibo; Medouze in the Black Shack Alley film clip; et al.

Finally, there are a good many wonderfully evocative and poignant moments of writing in this novel, which are worth contemplating in isolation. An example: "That scene lasted forever -- and could have gone on and on: a tafia-soused audience, sitting in a circle at the crack of dawn, does not inscribe itself in the ephemeral. But then, after eons (exactly three hours, thirty-eight minutes, and twenty-two seconds, says the coroner), a basaltic old man left the assembly and made toward Solibo. His name was Congo and he seemed to owe Death four centuries" (16). Or this one, on memory and grieving, and on storytelling's solace: "Sidonise, who had seemed for a few moments to be drowning in another world, starts to murmur an inaudible story. A strange smile transfigures her pain, her eyes follow the flight of internal visions. There is a prowling memory there, of those that death, in its tide, drains from our heads, our hearts, our dreams. Oh life plays hide-and-seek, never giving all of herself at once, but leaving to death's seasons the essence of her stems, her flowers' subtle perfume. There, through the small sherbet vendor, Solibo confronts our distress, dissipates it, as certain churches do the sadness of the devoted. Charlo' forgets his cheek and raises his inundated eyes" (78-9). Perhaps you have other examples that you would add to the list ...

Hope you enjoy Bel Canto this week & weekend ...

A Musical Inventory

Hi everyone. I have another assortment of disparate items to send your way. The first is an article I just chanced upon entitled "Writers in Love with Other Arts," which surveys a range of writers who have found inspiration (as well as formal and aesthetic influences) from painting, the performance arts (ballet, etc.), music, etc. It seems germane, in quite obvious ways, to our interdisciplinary inquiry this semester. You might note the discussion of E.M. Forster, in particular, and the quote from A Room with a View (1908): “The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world. It will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words.”

When we were talking about the healing power of art last week (during our discussion of elegiac writing vis-a-vis Sheffield, Lethem, et al.), and after the reference to Mrs. Ramsay's metaphorical green shawl in To the Lighthouse, which covers over the pig skull and, symbolically, death, I promised to get a quote to you by Jane Hirshfield (from her essay "Poetry and the Constellation of Surprise") about poetry's efficacy. Here it is: “It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry's depth of newness. Still, the permeability seems to travel both ways: a changed self will find new meanings in a good poem, but a good poem also changes the shape of the self. Having read it, we are not who we were the moment before.... Art lives in what it awakens in us... Through a good poem's eyes we see the world liberated from what we would have it do. Existence does not guarantee us destination, nor trust, nor equity, nor one moment beyond this instant's almost weightless duration. It is a triteness to say that the only thing to be counted upon is that what you count on will not be what comes. Utilitarian truths evaporate: we die. Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance, a path through the grief of that insult into joy.” Lovely stuff, really. It applies to music, as well (and will no doubt register with those of you writing about grief, consolation, healing in your multi genre essays) -- that ability to help us "bear the tally and toll of our transience," but, more than that, to help us come out from the other side of that grief ("that insult") into a kind of joy.

Finally, as I start to get a bit recapitulatory and retrospective in my thinking relative to our course, I was reminded of the DNA assignment you all completed and thought I should post some DNA material of my own. It's more list-like in nature, but you'll notice that in the "elsewheres" section to the right I've posted a link to "Eric's Top 145" -- the 145 songs that I feel I can least do without in life! As I indicate on the page, it's a rather absurd endeavor to identify these songs, but I suspect at least 2/3 of them could withstand the fluctuations of my daily whims! It's not always a list based on perceived quality, of course -- oftentimes the songs are simply ones that were hard-coded into my being by the events and contexts of my life, and thus they will always have special significance to me (even if you find yourself thinking, Blue Oyster Cult? Really?!).

One other way of measuring the passage of time this semester (on a personal level) is to list all of the music I have purchased or downloaded during the semester. It would include the following: Tegan and Sara -- Heartthrob; Local Natives -- Hummingbird; Bowerbirds -- The Clearing; Goodnight Texas -- A Long Life of Living; Hey Marseilles -- Lines We Trace; Andrew Bird -- Hands of Glory; Martin Sexton -- Live at the Fillmore and Live in Portland; The Tallest Man on Earth -- There's No Leaving Now; Samantha Crain -- Kid Face; Pearl Jam -- assorted songs; Fossil Collective -- assorted songs; Iron & Wine -- Ghost on Ghost; Laura Stevenson -- Wheel; The National -- Trouble Will Find Me; Patty Griffin -- American Kid. (Those last two records won't be released until this Tuesday, but they'll be in my possession shortly thereafter!).

Last Writes

I hope the malleable, nonlinear, collage-like aesthetic of the multigenre essay will suit you over the next two weeks; it is an essay that should build its structure and its associative links incrementally and sometimes stealthily. If it works for you it's probably because you will manage to channel Montaigne, who once described the essaying impulse by noting that "my style and my mind alike go rambling." Some of you will sense the literary possibilities of the genre, and others the musical possibilities. By the way, I recently chanced upon this very appropriate paragraph in Robert Root's The Nonfictionist's Guide: On Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction:

"The segmented essay is like an oratorio or a concerto. The spaces are like intervals of silence between the separate elements. Sometimes the segments of prose in an essay can be recitative, aria, duet or trio, chorus; they can be allegro non troppo, allegro appasionato, andante, allegretto grazioso. This is what the spaces say: In this interval of silence hold onto what you have just heard; prepare yourself to hear something different; ponder the ways these separatenesses are part of a whole. Like musical compositions, nonfiction need not be one uninterrupted melody, one movement, but can also be the arrangement of distinct and discrete miniatures, changes of tempo, sonority, melody, separated by silences. This is what the spaces say" (86).

I also like Susan Griffin's description, in her meta-essay, "The Red Shoes," of the wandering nature of language and storytelling, and think it gives us another way to think about the essays you just worked on:

"The extent of the unknown borders all language. One's relationship with it is erotic. One has a passion to know. But one can never entirely know what is other. Telling a story, no matter how much you know, you are very soon pulled into unexplored territory. Even the familiar is filled with unexpected blank spaces. The usual Sunday drive is all of a sudden a wild ride into terra incognita. You are glad to be going, but there is a vague feeling of discomfort. Where are you?"

So you're all embarking on your essayistic wandering without a map, honoring Robert Davis's and Mark Shadle's belief that "motion is the essay's ubiquitous trope." These writers elsewhere refer, quite appealingly, to the essay's potential as a "cabinet of wonders." I continue to be drawn to the idea of creating a collaborative "cabinet of wonders" for a course like this, an essay for which each of us contributes one section of a group oratorio that we then try to get published somewhere. Another time, I guess! In the meantime, do feel free, in this space, to provide a window onto your writing process, to share a segment of your essay, to ask for advice from the group, etc.

Stray Notes

Hey, all. Well, we have to keep in touch with current goings on in the music world, too, right? In case you missed it, Rush was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just over a week ago on April 18th, a recognition that legions (including me and, undoubtedly, you, too, Tyler!) felt was unconscionably overdue. This might be an occasion to include a link to one of their classic progressive rock tunes ("Tom Sawyer," "Spirit of Radio," "Limelight," et al.), but as I think about my reference in class to my "best songs of 2012" cds maybe it would be more appropriate to include a link to Rush's "The Garden," which was one of my favorites of 2012 (though for whatever reason I didn't include it on one of those cds). It's strange to pick a ballad when it comes to a representative Rush song, but it's a particularly majestic and poignant one, and may quite possibly be the best song they've written in the last thirty years. See what you think!

Elsewhere, The National performed the new songs "Sea of Love" and "I Need My Girl" (from their upcoming release Trouble Will Find Me) on Jimmy Fallon the other night, which you can watch here, and Iron & Wine performed "Grace for Saints and Ramblers" (from the new release Ghost on Ghost), also on Fallon. Finally, Patty Griffin has released the song "Ohio" from her much anticipated new release (at least in these quarters, and, I suspect in Kelsey's!), American Kid.

And for you country fans out there, we of course should note the passing on Friday of George Jones, who was famously/humorously recognized at one time by Frank Sinatra as being "the second best singer in this country." Some have called "He Stopped Loving Her Today" the best country song ever written.