This is the second movement of my EPIGRAM wind-percussion orchestra soundpoem project. It is based on one of my MINIATURES, “Confusion is pandemic.“ Here, we pick up the thread of meaning where the first, Hannah ARENDT movement [ https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/confusion-is-pandemc-i-wav ] left off: as she puts it, with a culture that has lost all sense of the reality of experience, and has long ago – – at least in the now-dominant Privatization and Commercialization-of-everything Political environment – – lost all sense of, and respect for, the intellectual standards of thought in thinking.
Like all my writing, “Confusion is pandemic” asks a simple question: Is this true? I would argue, yes, that we are surrounded by a culture that, at once, has unprecedented powers of destruction, while it at the same time lacks clarity, or is deeply confused about, just about everything that is important, that is relevant.
That makes, of course, for a deadly mix. That’s why the classic Laozi aphorism, “Give evil nothing to resist and it will vanish of its own accord,” no longer quite rings true. Why?
Well, try this thought experiment: Say, there are two ships. One, a rusty old oil tanker with an insane captain, hell bent on total (nuclear) war, that is about to sink. The other, a small life raft with an uncertain future on a dangerous, uncharted sea.
I would say, ethically, we all have to decide what ship we are on. The oil tanker will most certainly sink, regardless of what we do, as all evil eventually self-destructs. That’s what the Laozi is about, right? But there are two problems here: one, it might very well take down the whole planet with it; and second, we all want to enjoy the perks & privileges of a Disneyland-like projected reality while still aboard the tanker.
That is the contradiction.
This contradiction, in my view, deeply corrupts everything we make, say, and do.
Including, I would suggest, our sense of living sound and music itself.
So, we simply stop, retune our instruments and thinking, making sure to find new resonance with the Earth & Mother Nature, and start again.
What could be more beautiful than this?
