| << An empty hole | 2002 > October | Core Audio drivers for Digidesign hardware >> |
Patriotic music from ghetto blasters ::
Over the weekend I had some strange reactions to music. At the WTC there was a man playing, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and then “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on a flute. At one point I heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” coming from a ghetto blaster—and I deliberately use that perjorative term for a portable music-playing device, because for some reason the emotions I felt at hearing patriotic music in this context were not what I would have expected, not after being in Thailand in January and hearing a gentle Thai man’s first words to me, “I’m sorry about what happened to your country.”
I’d had a weaker form of this reaction a week earlier, hearing highly amplified patriotic music, at my parents’ in Ithaca NY, as the direction of the wind shifted during a fireworks display celebrating the opening of a new Target store a mile down the road. Then, I’d felt offense at Dayton Hudson appropriating the symbols of Independence Day to promote their new store; I felt that the meaning of my freedoms, instead of *including* the freedom to shop in the world’s largest free market, was being *reduced* and equated to that freedom to shop (ironically, the next day, I did shop at the Target).
In New York, the patriotic music assaulted me like violent rap music—I thought of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” coming from a giant boombox carried by one of the characters in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. I felt that the intent of the communication was to inspire righteous indignation and moral superiority. A “God Bless America” bumper sticker suddenly seemed to be omitting the rest of its message, “And God Damn the Rest of This Sick and Twisted World.” What happened to “love thy enemy?”
Perhaps this outpouring of patriotism is a salve for some peoples’ wounded psyches, but I’m concerned that it promotes an “us vs. them” mentality.
A very tall African-American man got on my subway car yesterday afternoon, politely introduced himself, and began singing gospel music in a beautiful baritone, songs like “If We Ever Needed The Lord Before (We Sure Do Need Him Now)”. When he got off at Times Square, I suddenly felt bad that I’d been in Urban Desensitization to Excess Stimuli mode, and not given him a dollar.
| << An empty hole | 2002 > October | Core Audio drivers for Digidesign hardware >> |