My Last Brush with Savages

Being a lowly blogger in a world wholly immersed in information, I cannot be sure that my words here will be much noticed or long remembered. And it's frankly doubtful that I will be able to match the historical significance of the Last Night of Porky's. But sometimes, in the course of human events, it simply becomes necessary to do the right thing as you the individual are so moved. With no hope of reward.

That moment has now come for me. Whether I've been internally provoked by the controversy over the Washington Redskins name, Abraham Lincoln's alleged racism, or a visceral disgust at what comes out of Republicans' mouths daily, I've decided to live and let live. No more mental and verbal dissing of the so-called "savages" of the world. That's all behind me now.

Like everyone else my age, I grew up with a pretty huge disgust for what we called at the time savagery. (I just changed in the last couple days, so I hope I don't have any relapses in the course of this post.) The savagery of the world, particularly in the vile acts of cannibalism, the disgusting shrinking of heads, and the perverse roasting of missionaries, was driven home to me, touching me deep in my soul. Just saying it now, I still recoil at the idea that these people -- perhaps for good reasons only they knew (at this point I won't quibble) -- would think any of that was good.

There are, however, customs and cultural differences, which even if they don't make sense to me are probably to be respected. I'm not the judge and jury. There's another they'll have to answer to, and perhaps they'll be commended for following His light, or perhaps not. That's not for me to know. Let's take cannibalism as a cultural difference. Of course it's not my cup of tea. But if you think about it, what's the difference? The guy's dead ... why let him go to waste? Let's say a tiger eats him; it's the same difference. It's not that savage of an act.

The other two -- the shrinking of heads and the roasting of missionaries -- could also be justified. If you're hoarding heads for some reason, to possess the power of their souls (or whatever), if you shrink them they take less room. And they'd make nice toys for the kids, just like we in "civilization" played with gourds. Both heads and gourds are part of nature and make good gifts. The brain inside dries up, and when shook makes a fun noisemaker. As for the roasting of missionaries, my church used to send missionaries overseas. The missionaries then would come home every couple years on furlough, always claiming it'd cost $10,000 more to send them back. Now I realize why: they didn't want to go back. They didn't think we could raise the money. Haven't heard from them now in years...

The basic thing about this switch in vocabulary is as simple as this, the world's changed. We now respect other cultures. And something else has changed. We've been able to look at ourselves more closely, whereas before we only looked out. In those years, we made ourselves the standard of good and right. We were quite definitely blinded to the ways of others, and even to the humanity of others. You'd see it when native peoples were naked, smeared with paint, bones in their noses, etc., and whooping and hollering while dancing around a fire. It never occurred to us that these were rituals of power, pride, oneness with nature and world, and a good way to recycle bones.

Being blinded, then, we didn't see that many of our own rituals were just that, rituals. With the big difference between us and the "savages" being that we had emptied our rituals of power and made them secondary to our "real life," the daily grind. We traded our oneness with nature and world for a few disposable trinkets -- crass materialism and man-eat-man capitalism (cannibalism?) -- and all this time, in our terrible emptiness, we set up ourselves as the standard of excellence! While destroying our environment. Makes me feel bad, a little. I don't know if I can go on...

OK, scratch all that. We're not so bad. If we keep going like we're going, we surely have a good 50-100 years of civilization left, OK? ... It's not that dire. Surely we can steward our water and other resources for another 100 years before they're gone. Ouch, I just had a thought, a terrible thought. That when we're gone, when we've gone the way of the dinosaurs, some of those tribes in Africa, the ones you read about in National Geographic, "untouched" by civilization, will still be going strong. Maybe the "savages" are on to something!

That Infernal Mexican Music

Hell of a picture, huh? That's one of mine, a Hipstamatic edited. I saw a reference the other day to "El Vez" the Mexican Elvis. I'm thinking this isn't him, but it might be. Whoever he is, he's definitely got it going on. "You ain't nothin' but a chihuahua, you ain't never caught a rabbit, and you ain't no amigo of mine."

If that was the face of Mexican music, I'd be OK. In fact, I'm OK right now. What do I care? I well imagine if I lived in Cuba, I'd get used to seeing cars from the '50s all the time. And if I lived in Mexico, if that's the music I had, I'm sure I'd eventually fit in. Get me a big old weird accordion and show me a few notes, I'm sure I could grind out something. Or one of those fat assed guitars.

You have to give the Mexicans this much: They have the happiest music I've ever heard. It's always perking along, bubbly as it gets. Which is a feature of accordions. It makes everything sounds like jelly beans. Bubble pop clown eyes music. It just gets tiresome after a while, some days like five minutes.

I was out for Mexican today -- with a date (it's true). I like this one place where it's authentic. Which of course leaves out the shams like Taco Blech and other places like that. If you want the little tacos with the enormous chunks of steak, and the onions, and the little greenery, you gotta go authentic. Only, they haven't been making it near greasy enough for me lately. I don't know what the problem is. I like it greasy. I've been having pain in my finger joints, which I blame on them not giving me enough grease. Seriously, folks, do I have to bring my own grease? I don't know how to make it as good as them.

When you're out on a date, of course you want to make a good impression. So I did what any paramour does, stuck a napkin on his hand and moved his fingers on the table like two legs dancing. And what dancing! The happy authentic Mexican music was bubbling along. That was fun. But once the amusing stuff is over, and you're just sitting there listening to the music -- this happens occasionally -- you start getting a queasy feeling.

We had to laugh. Yes, this is one of those days! Good grief, that's awful! But they seem to love it ... they must love it, it's constantly on, the same thing over and over. How can they stand it like that, forever? Surely there's cultural differences, I appreciate that. But this is strange. It's like it is the '40s or '50s forever. Big old tubas, and weird whiny instruments. And accordions as far as the ear can hear! The style never changes!

Usually, I like it -- or am indifferent. Not today. It was absurd. It really got to me. And I'm not one of those guys into ethnic judgments, even in jest. I'm a bleeding heart. I'm no Don Rickles. Live and let live.

SSuffering SSuccotash, It's SSibelius

Today I'm going to show you my cultural side, that I'm able to swing culturally with the best of them, critics, reviewers, various experts.

The subject today is music, and in particular, classical music, also known as the most mysterious form of music there is. The purveyors of classical music, except for Leonard Bernstein, and, as I've recently discovered, Sibelius, all lived hundreds of years ago. They died and that was it, the classicists were gone.

But somehow Sibelius made it to more recent times, having died when I was four years old.

I bring all this up because I have a CD by the composer called Sibelius. There seems to be some dispute -- I'm going to call it a good-natured debate, i.e., without rancor -- as to what his first name was, Jan, John, or Jean. It seems like a simple glance at his long-form birth certificate might clear it up, but that's a controversy for another day. We will simply state as a matter of fact that it likely starts with J.

I'm looking at my picture of J. Sibelius, and the first thing I notice is that he looks like Jackie Coogan, aka Uncle Fester, which might be why everyone liked him so much, assuming they did.

OK, the CD I've got is a symphony called No. 2, indicating to me that he probably also had at least one other symphony. That's two more than I've ever written, so I won't mock him  for it. No. 2 is called "Finlandia," so I'm guessing he was a big fan of Finland. To me, that's closer to the North Pole than I ever want to be. If he was from Finland, no doubt he wrote music by the light and warmth of a very large candle, although unless you have more than one wick it doesn't matter how big the candle is, you're going to get the same little flame. So much for candles.

My commentary on Sibelius is this, his name sounds like the name of a substitute teacher. "My name is Mr. Sibelius." "Good morning, Mr. Sibelius." Being a nice student, I probably would have offered to stay after class and clean the erasers for him.

Other things we could say about his name, it's kind of like the Sibyl, the fount of all knowledge in the ancient world. "O mighty Sibyl, should we attack the Huns, or just leave them alone?" Or how about this? The S sound -- Sibelius starting and ending with an S -- makes me think of lispers, with many sizzling sibilants spitting forth from his lips, "SSuffering ssuccotash, you sstudents sstay in your sseats!"

Then Mr. SSibelius passes out the ssyllabus and the ssemester is finally underway.

Update: The picture doesn't do Mr. SSibelius any favors, I know. But in high contrast black and white, everyone looks like crap.

The Abomination Called Bagpipes

I was downtown tonight, I thought for a pleasant time. But then out of the blue, without any warning, suddenly I heard the sickening sound of bagpipes in the area. Which, had I known that would happen, I never would have left the house. How sickening!

I've never liked the squealing of bagpipes, like most people. It sounds like someone stepping on a cat's tail, if you can imagine a cat's painful squealing in slow motion and very prolonged. Whatever kind of apparatus they've got inside a bagpipe to make such a terrible sound, it is without question something infernal deriving from Hell itself. The instrument puts forth such a putrid sound, it immediately sickens most hearers. I've found that something about it connects in an archetypical way to the gag reflex, and, I don't know, maybe even incontinence or involuntary bowel movements, which might be why the players always wear kilts, for easier evacuation.

I know what everyone's going to say: We try to like bagpipes, we're not up in arms about them, because we want to honor other people's cultures, however foolish they might be. Well, I'm sorry, this is one I've tried to like, but I've found it's impossible. I'd rather have newborn twins crying loudly, one close to one ear and the second close to the other, and spitting up, than be anywhere within a mile of a set of bagpipes. If I could gather up the world's bagpipes -- seriously -- I'd burn them. Although I'll give you this, I would graciously put one of the instruments in a laboratory somewhere, frozen like dangerous viruses, so mankind would always have one sample, however locked away it was, for study by future generations were they to deem it necessary.

OK, I know I'm preaching to the choir, because we all -- most of us, of course excluding sadists and masochists -- hate the bagpipes. And yet -- and this is something I don't fully understand -- people do like the bagpipes on the song "Amazing Grace." Which might be why bagpipe players are always playing it, because they're trying to inspire an actual liking for the instrument, however impossible such an elusive dream has to be.

I would guess the reason people tolerate bagpipes on "Amazing Grace" is because you usually hear it at funerals and other serious commemorations. So it worms its way into people's psyches; they associate it with burying Grandpa and getting their inheritance. So they come to think, however subconsciously, that "Amazing Grace" means easy money. That's actually kind of how it is with me, too. I had a rich uncle. He died. They played "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes at his funeral. I got an $800 inheritance, which I immediately gave to other anti-bagpipes agitators.

Of course the other side of this coin is the odd fact that "Amazing Grace" is one of our least favorite songs, again speaking for nearly everyone. Because they do play it at everyone's funeral. So it's come to represent death, the fear of death, the stench of death, etc. We want to avoid it at all costs. And if it weren't for the dream of inheritances, we'd rise up and ban both it and the bagpipes.

Frankly, I've never been much of a fan of the song, riches or not. It has the words in it, "That saved a wretch like me." That doesn't do much for my self-image, I don't know about you, but I'm not a wretch. I'm pretty darned good. But in a weird way it fits. If you hear a bagpipe guy playing it, he actually is a wretch! A normal musician would be playing a normal instrument, not this abomination.

So what are we left with? A crap instrument and a crap song, but, amazingly (no pun intended), both are more or less tolerated when they're together! Yet I'll insist on this truth: Get rid of the inheritances -- just try it -- everyone give your estate to charity, and the bagpipes would finally get what they deserve!