Memorial Art

I guess we can say that everything we read/listened to this past Wednesday -- from Lethem and Sheffield to U2 -- was elegiac in some way: for lost mothers, spouses, friends, innocent victims, innocence itself, one's younger self, etc. I suspect that if you reread the Jonathan Lethem essay with some care you'll increasingly perceive the subtly interlocking sense of argument to his meandering progression, and you'll also likely get some additional worthwhile ideas for your own multigenre essays. You might, by the way, also be interested in Lethem's short tribute to his father (which includes a rather striking picture of his father with, coincidentally (or not), a beard) that appeared in Granta.

It's not as hip to be a U2 fan these days as it used to be (though to see them live, even now, is to believe all over again), but I wonder what you might have thought of that particular performance (including the "turn this song into a prayer" interlude and the Omagh victims tribute at the end); in some respects, you could nearly say that song was always meant for that one moment and and that one performance above all others. You may have noticed, hearing those twenty-nine names, that, as one report summarized, "the Omagh fatality list reads like a microcosm of troubles deaths, and left no section of Irish life untouched. The town they attacked is roughly 60-40 Catholic-Protestant, and the dead consisted of Protestants, Catholics, a Mormon and two Spanish visitors. They killed young, old and middle-aged, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and grannies. They killed republicans and unionists, including a prominent local member of the Ulster Unionist Party. They killed people from the backbone of the Gaelic Athletic Association. They killed unborn twins, bright students, cheery shop assistants and many young people. They killed three children from the Irish Republic who were up north on a day trip. Everyone they killed was a civilian. The toll of death was thus both extraordinarily high and extraordinarily comprehensive." These are the ironies of such terrorist attacks (which in this case, given the perpetrators, would presumably have been intended to kill Protestants).

I wanted us to read and discuss Seamus Heaney's "Casualty" to have a context for Bono's "eulogizing" act at the end of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"; the rich, moving portrait of and tribute to the man featured in the poem, who was a friend of the poet/speaker until he was killed in a pub bombing, causes us to reflect on the irony of the poem's title, which is meant to remind us that such victims too often become mere anonymous "casualties" and statistics, without names and (epic) personal stories. It's writing, storytelling, music-making, and art, generally, that we call upon to correct that situation. Recall Lethem from the "The Beards": "Syd Barrett wasn't dead, but "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was memorial art. It suggested that I didn't have to fall into ruin to exemplify the cost of losing someone as enormous as Judith Lethem. My surviving Judith's death would in no way be to her dishonor. I'd only owe her a great song" (65).

Back to U2 and the political dimension to the performance, we might think of the stage as a kind of space for dissident perspectives (we can forget or not realize that a song like "Sunday Bloody Sunday" may have augured the first real sign of generational change in terms of the Troubles in Northern Ireland), which may also make us think of other "spaces" in our course readings: the jazz clubs in Trumpet, the floors upon which Joe and Violet dance in Jazz, the alleyways and rented rehearsal spaces of the northside of Dublin in The Commitments, under the tamarind tree in Solibo Magnificent, etc.. Because sound can evoke spatial impressions, we might also think about music as creating imaginary landscapes. Springsteen once lauded the guitar work of U2's Edge, saying that it "creates enormous space and vast landscapes." In this way, U2 can perhaps elude their own ethnic and national status (which is largely assigned to them from outside) by extending the boundaries of Irishness. We've talked a good bit about home and exile in this course (beginning with sonata form), and Bono adds his own take on this: "How does the music of U2 relate to our being Irish? I come to this question as someone who does not know who he is.... I didn't know I was Irish until I went to America.... Maybe we Irish are misfits, travelers, never really at home, but always talking about it. I met a fisherman who told me we were like salmon: it's upriver all the time, against the odds, the river doesn't want us ... yet we want a way home ... but there is no home. Religious minds tell us exile is what having eaten the apple means, that 'home' is a spiritual condition. We in Ireland already know this, not because we've been exiles, but because hardships, be they economic or political, have forced us to be less material."