Loomings ii

I offer this posting with regard

for a direct inquiry I received.

Most of us who blog, I'd wager, 

have our private correspondents,

who trade ideas and feelings out-

side of the repartée of the pub-

lic page. And I interpret the

character of the private corres-

pondent also to include the lit-

erary resource and the diaries

which interact with us in per-

mission and resiliency, uninter-

rupted by postal vicissitudes -

dynamic waveforms of memory, by

content less infused than style,

crystalline, sensuous, resurfac-

ing resources of our passage. 

Have you ever been asked, what

need there is for a masterpiece? 

Of course, one is always delighted

to find another person who under-

stands, say, that the right against

self-incrimination is the absolute

core of human rights; but one can

get along pretty well, simply to

allow it to shape one's judgment 

of pretty new suggestions, such as

enhanced interrogation.

Those who know their Peter Grimes

will know what I mean, when they

call to mind Britten's sea inter-

ludes, which I warmly believe un-

derstand Melville as well as Crabbe,

the naïve as well as the mad, and

speak to us undyingly of their

quest for reconciliation. The sea

interludes are suspiciously akin

to acoustic production design, 

but work as internal soliloquy.

Politics in America cast us back 

on that sea, to which we are not 

called by any inner voice or na-

tural, Parliamentary timing, but 

by a Constitutional calendar com-

manding us to stamp government's 

ticket of legitimacy. The artifi-

ciality of the occasion undoubt-

edly lends that quality to its

enactment - inducing, it seems

very likely to me - a chronic

and distracting resort to reli-

gion, where the ingredients for 

a spirited secular dispute were

not mature enough in their clar-

ity to generate the savagery of

partisan vituperation. This is 

the natural space of the naïve 

as well as the mad. 

Now we are at it, again - as

the chorus has it in Britten,

Grimes is at his business -

and tomorrow night, the two

principal parties will put

forth their arguments to hold

the Executive sinecure in our

government - the submerged, 

regulation-writing, fate-dic-

tating borough of that showy

surface of name-calling tirade

which passes for an election in

this country. As in most such

diversions in the past, we are

to be fed a religious quarrel -

who detests Marxism more, who

apologises for slavery less -

to drive us toward a monument-

al financial consequence, of

often mortal dimensions.

Who knew, Ishmael? This year, the

great whale looms frenetically, as

the question of white, male rule,

by a thousand harpoons maddened in

its grazings out of sight, the on-

ly explanation for the morbidity,

hysteria, and birther refusal to

navigate the current with us all.

At the same time, the threadbare

Manichaean Heresy of revanchist

reasoning in our politics has

gained personification in a cham-

pion of absolute greed, a vocal

idolator of the Great Bear and 

Pleiades of money - only money,

mated by a minstrel of Palin-

esque depth and conscience. It's

almost an afterthought, to dismiss

everyone else as ugly, but with 

sublime, unwitting modesty. He is

right, of course. 

We're not his job to worry about.

    Well, then, however the old sea-

    captains may order me about - 

    however they may thump and punch

    me about, I have the satisfaction

    of knowing that it is all right;

    that everybody else is one way or

    other served in much the same way

    - either in a physical or metaphy-

    sical point of view, that is; and

    so the universal thump is passed

    round, and all hands should rub

    each other's shoulder-blades, and

    be content..

    And, doubtless, my going on this

    whaling voyage, formed part of the

    grand programme of Providence that

    was drawn up a long time ago. It

    came in as a sort of brief interlude

    and solo between more extensive per-

    formances. I take it that this part

    of the bill must have run something

    like this:

Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.

WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.

BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.

    The pale usher - he loved to dust his

    old grammars, it somehow mildly remind-

    ed him of his mortality.

Herman Melville

Moby-Dick

  or The Whale

  i  Chapter I: Loomings

  ii Etymology

op. cit.