There isn’t going to be any new encounter with a set of words, nor any new musical combination with them today. I’ve mentioned during the last part of 2020 how this project that has brought me much joy and surprise has become more difficult for me. There are complicated reasons of little general interest that contribute to this, but this week there are again public events that have made it harder for me to concentrate on work.

Unless you are meditating in a cave somewhere, and only check in here as religious penance, you may easily guess what events this week have waylaid me. I feel compelled, for no logical reason, to bear witness to them, to watch them closely over the Internet at my shelter-in-place distance. Yesterday and certainly today that Internet will be filled with opinions. Well, that’s always so isn’t it — even if it may be to some degree even more so today. If you need opinions, you can drink of them until you are falling over swollen with them. I won’t fault you if you do, because I have read and will read some of them myself. I say this only to say that there’s no shortage of them, and so I will be brief and circumspect.

Painting by poet Kenneth Patchen who was also a pioneer in melding poetry and music, so don’t take this as some universal pronouncement. .

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I revere democracy. Not because I think it incapable of monstrous acts. All governments are so capable, and if they exist for more than a brief moment, history testifies that capability will be exercised. Not because I think that our particular U. S. government structure is divinely inspired. Not because I’m likely to agree with what the majority of fellow humans believe about a great many things. I revere democracy because its evils are our evils, its good is our good — and that good is redeemable to outweigh the bad in us.

Whether the actors I’m observing are dressed as a Senator or dressed in a jokey t-shirt and a red half-billed hat, the desire — no, the actions — so brazenly presented and recently taken in the cause of maintaining the rule of a man so roundly rejected by our voters are obviously counter to that reverence. The Capitol building, the august chambers, are just symbols. Since many of us are writers, we know symbols can have a heft even if imagined, but still the real thing being attacked should be certain: democracy.

That’s right:  the symbol has bricks and glass, the real thing is something we need to hold in our hearts and minds, another thing that’s a verb not a noun.

Instead of a new piece, here’s one I’ve presented before, by another Reverend of Democracy, Carl Sandburg. Don’t miss Sandburg’s subtlety here. He admits right off that we can be a mob. When he says “The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns.” He doesn’t merely mean that the notables, the big figures of history arise from the crowd. Sandburg means to contrast Napoleon who quickly became a military dictator with a Lincoln. We can bring both forward.

Here’s a link to the text of Sandburg’s poem, and my performance of it is available in this highlighted hyperlink, or via a player gadget you may see below. I still hope to be back with new pieces soon.

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