What Comes Is Better Than What Came Before

I saw V For Vendetta last weekend. One of the things it did right was pick these three beautiful songs to have V play on his antique jukebox:

Cry Me A River – Julie London
I Found A Reason – Cat Power
Bird Gerhl – Antony & The Johnsons

He does know how to pick his tunes. Now the rest of us know what to play as we attempt to seduce Natalie Portman. Classy stuff. Cat Power’s contribution is a cover of a much older song:

I Found A Reason – The Velvet Underground

Which really just goes to show how brilliant Cat Power can be. What she did with that song is nothing short of amazing. Not that the original isn’t wonderful in its own right. “I found a reason to keep living/oh and the reason, dear, is you.”

The movie itself is by turns brave and irresponsible, powerful and cheesy, boisterously cinematic and drearily literary. Like the comic book was. I rather enjoyed it, and I’m generally a big fan of fantasies about overthrowing authoritarianism, even if they’re totally stupid and derivative or cheesy as hell or completely batshit insane. I think the wide domestic release of a movie that so comfortably and confidently attacks a sitting administration is something for America to be proud of – as is our refusal to let a fantasy like this translate into actual behavior in the political arena. There are probably legitimate concerns about a movie this brash being released overseas, and even to some extent here, and anyone who takes issue with the film’s (and the graphic novel’s) ethics certainly has a strong case. I like to think that, in general, the world is mature enough to enjoy what works in this film as entertainment and leave behind some of the baser insinuations the film makes and the theatrical charizma and dubious morals of the protagonist.

Sure, we could defend his actions, rigorously define circumstances under which violent opposition to a government is the moral course of action (wouldn’t we cheer on someone in occupied France taking our some Nazis? I don’t understand blanket condemnation of terrorism). The reality is there are vanishingly few, if any, situations in the world that present no more effective, more ethical option than terrorist violence (maybe someone in Burma?), and part of the whole human project is to make those situaitions permanently extinct. The insitutions of the rule of law and participatory government, the advancement of media technology and international interdependence, and a thousand progressive trends are conspiring to end the period of human history when one could reasonably celebrate freedom fighters.

I saw a presentation once about organized, armed Polish resistance to the Nazis during the occupation. Even in service of opposing such a chillingly evil and powerful force, the pursuit of violence was a painful and destructive one in these lives, families, and communities. We owe it to everyone on the planet to connect them and provide them with responsive, responsible governance and a media infrastructure that makes any question of resorting to violence for political ends obsolete. This won’t end terrorism; it will end freedom fighting. The political violence that remains is simply a law enforcement issue.

The Place To Be

If I do not see you at this summer’s Pitchfork Music Festival, put on by A Joyful Noise’s favorite eclectic, pompous, geeky hipsters, Pitchfork Media, I will be mightily disappointed. With tickets priced at 79 cents per band, and with it still several months away, y’all have no good excuses for your absence. They just updated the list of performers, adding Diplo (bangin’ hip hop and baile funk DJ) and techno DJs and jazz groups to indie rock all-stars such as The Mountian Goats, Spoon, and Ted Leo, brilliant and insane hip hop guru Aesop Rock, and whatever the hell you’d call Devendra Banhart‘s music. All this, and more: 38 performers over two days, all alongside “a massive craft and clothing fair” and a “legendary gargantuan record fair” for all you fans of spending money.

They’ll keep announcing awesome music over the next few months, but get the tickets here as soon as you know you can go. I will see you in Chicago at the end of July. You will all contact me asking to join me for some tasty road trip action. You will be told: hells yes. Let’s do this.

High As Hell And Born Again

My review of “Separation Sunday” by The Hold Steady is posted under “writing” to your right; you can also read it here. That album propelled me up a mountain over break, which gave me time to sift through all its images and stories and fall completely in love with the sound of it. Try to get your hands on a copy.

Purchase at eMusic or Amazon, and check out the band’s website. NPR has put up neat annotated lyric sheets here and here.

Quote of the Day

“With the growing indulgence of love matches, the very foundation of marriage has been eliminated, that which alone makes an institution of it. Never, absolutely never, can an institution be founded on an idiosyncrasy; one cannot, as I have said, found marriage on “love” – it can be founded on the sex drive, on the property drive (wife and child as property), on the drive to dominate… Modern marriage has lost its meaning – consequently one abolishes it.”

-Nietzche, Twilight of the Idols (1888)

More here. Marriage has been radically changing for a long time, and people have been upset about it for just as long. I don’t mean to preach, but I get a kick out of this quote. The sanctity of marriage threatened by “love matches.”

Appeals to tradition in the debate over marriage carry no weight for me.

Another Happy April

“Pot Kettle Black” by Wilco (off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) has this hook where Tweedy sings “every song is a comeback/every moment’s a little bit later.” This popped into my head yesterday as I walked around the tidal basin, which is absolutely beautiful this time of year, and packed with tourists and busloads of high schoolers and couples, nothing but couples as far as the eye can see. Here it is, one of my favorite tracks from this beloved album:

Pot Kettle Black by Wilco

There’s something about spring. The tidal basin has been graced by countless live performances for these few weeks that D.C. doesn’t look drab and everyone comes to visit; I was treated to a demonstration of Tai Chi yesterday and a bluesly, overweight band today on the steps on the Jefferson Memorial. The band actually had a fantastic, powerful, throaty singer who looked like a middle-aged mom just doing something she loved. I can’t get enough of people like that. I’ve also run into a gospel performance, a GW modern dance class practice, and two musicians playing something that everyone I was with swore sounded like the underwater level theme in Super Mario Brothers. Some moments like that are truly transporting; during the gospel set, surrounded by throngs of Americans of all colors and foreign tourists of all languages, all framed by Lincoln, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol and radiant amid the spring sun and flowering trees, I felt like I was in some cheesy but heartfelt documentary about how awesome America is.

A lot of my favorite music is perfect spring music, with lyrics and movement that celebrate opening, re-awakening, ressurections and beginnings and newfound hope. Credit for the title of this post, however, goes to a song that’s melancholy and nostalgic, more appropriate for still summer nights than bright spring mornings. Good thing its so achingly beautiful. “We all can love each other, like sugar in our tea.” Enjoy:

Sleeper by Eliza Gilkyson

I can’t really recommend Gilkyson’s other work, but I can heartily recommend the compilation of Greg Brown covers this song is on; buy it here. Oh, you know what I recommend even more? Greg Brown. I’ll eventually post something on him. Or just look him up for yourself.

One last thing: it is now frisbee weather. Anyone want to play?

We Chose Rejoice

A friend recently asked me for advice on where to start listenting to Devendra Banhart‘s body of work. I’d look at Cripple Crow first and then Rejoicing In The Hands for an introduction to this Texan-born part-Venezuelan wierdo hippie freak folk singer/songwriter who’s somehow more than a novelty act. Or just check out this song:

This Is The Way

Isn’t he cute? He’s a friend and fan of Vashti. Crazy hippie. Sings in English and Spanish, and never makes any sense.

Never Will I Marry

I admit I cringed when the debut of Big Love on HBO made public discussion of polygamy inevitable. The shrill voices of public commentators are grating even when they discuss benign, meaningless things. When they all start in on something I feel obligated to devote some attention to, because, well, its really important, I feel all beleaguered and resentful. But lo! I’ve found the article that solves it all!

Like this fantastic and impeccably argued column by Timothy Noah affirming the wrongness of bestiality, Jonathan Rauch’s new piece on polygamy clarifies why we’re all against these things we’re all against. Read it here. Both authors are not afraid to throw out the weak, “it just feels wrong” answers that begin to feel so uncomfortably flimsy when subjected to real scrutiny. But they replace them with factual, logical, and terribly strong arguments as to why these taboos are written into our laws.

With polygamy, the answer isn’t what most people think. Hint: women being allowed to freely choose to marry a man with another wife is not harmful but beneficial to women. Any economist could tell you that voluntary transactions make both parties better off. Robert Wright makes an entertaining, but completely sincere, case for why women’s advocacy groups should support legalized polygamy in The Moral Animal (have I mentioned that you really need to read that book?). Our prohibition, closely examined, is frightfully sexist.

Rauch, like anyone worth reading on marriage, understands why we’ve formalized protections for some relationships and not others. It’s about social policy. Polyamory (charmingly labeled “group love” by Rauch) among consenting adults is “an individual-choice issue,” to again use his language. It is a choice the government doesn’t, and shouldn’t, criminalize. However, state recognition of marriage is not about proclaiming the sinfulness of all human relationships that don’t qualify. It’s about desirable social dynamics.

An aside: Getting behind this statement makes advocating same-sex marriage a slightly more difficult task. Instead of merely arguing that there is nothing morally wrong with long-term gay relationships, one has to convince Americans that stable, lifelong gay partnerships are things our government should be encouraging and officially supporting. Of course, if you don’t believe this, you shouldn’t be arguing for gay marriage in the first place. If your only beef with the status quo is that its discriminatory, you should be arguing for the abolition of the institution of state-sanctioned marriage. Marriage is definitionally discriminatory. That’s why it’s worth something to get married.

Parenthetically: In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that A Joyful Noise does indeed believe that stable gay partnerships are socially desirable, and will argue wholeheartedly for their recognition by the government in a manner equal to to that of heterosexual lifelong commitments.

A bonus benefit of reading Rauch on polygamy is that after he explains why we really should continue refusing to define group arrangements as marriages, he goes on to spell out the relationship this debate has with the one over gay marriage. It isn’t the lazy line about how our increasingly lax standards have set the stage for an increasingly meaningless definition of marriage. It’s that social impact again. The two propositions are opposites:

Same-sex marriage stabilizes individuals, couples, communities, and society by extending marriage to many who now lack it. Polygamy destabilizes individuals, couples, communities, and society by withdrawing marriage from many who now have it.

He’s talking about those men who would be left without a partner if everyone were to marry whomever, and however often, they wished. These men would generally be the poor, the underclass, the subaltern if you will. Their resultant singledom would be socially disastrous and monstrously unfair. The article gives many examples of this actually happening, if this sounds hard to believe, and notes that no modern liberal democracy has been polygamous. Polygamy isn’t bad for those involved (assuming that, in modern society, these hypothetical marriages would be freely entered into and just as easy to leave as real marriages are). It’s bad for those left out. And the undesirability of a huge group of poor, permanently single and rootless men should be clear to everyone.

Conclusion: opposing polygamy should be the new cause célèbre of the Democratic Party, and the institution of marriage, as the government-sponsored, personal-freedom-restricting social programming it is, should be opposed by any self-respecting free-marketer in the Republican Party. I can hear the Dems now: Defend our social order and our modern institutions! And the Republicans: Denying multiple spouses to those with the means to support them is un-American! Bleeding-heart egalitarianism is trampling liberty! Down with big government marriage!

Sigh. Don’t you wish American politics worked like that? Maybe I’d be more eager to participate. But enough ranting for one day. I’ll let Nancy Wilson have the last word:

Never Will I Marry by Nancy Wilson with Cannonball Adderly

Pick up this wonderful album on Amazon. One reviewer proclaims it “a classic.” No controversy there.