Posted by
Zentrist on Sunday, February 22, 2009 10:13:48 PM
I could not make head or tail of the paintings in the background, but the guitar behind Larry King and Bill Clinton, during the Wednesday night interview, caught my eye and set my imagination wandering: The thirties and Robert Johnson in a Dallas recording studio; a street called "Rosedale" in Fort Worth immortalized by Johnson and then again by Eric Clapton in "Crossroads" (especially the Live Performance w/Cream, around 1967); a hit by the Moody Blues titled "Blue Guitar"; our "first black president," Bill Clinton, in the nineties...this free associating could go on ad infinitum. What did the symbol-aware Clinton want to say with this strangely global-looking guitar. It was a real instrument, not a painting. Maybe Clinton expounded upon this ecumenical guitar--I don't know. I watched only half the show. At any rate, this global guitar fairly exploded on the screen with its symbolism. I really don't know where to begin...
This planet-earth-looking-guitar stands for the globalism that Clinton himself stands for, especially certain places on the Globe: America, of course, the birthplace of jazz-blues. Or was it Africa? Ken Burns in his documentary pointed up New Orleans as the source of jazz--the city, the African-descended players using instruments left over from marching bands in the Civil War Era. A lover of music, jazz too, Clinton the sax player looked right at home there in "the music room" of his Library in Little Rock. Clinton chose this room as the setting for the Larry King Live interview....
Well, all of that and more was the symbol intended and the symbol delivered. I can't remember the lyrics from the Moody Blues song, "Blue Guitar," but I do remember fragments of the seventies. Beginning in '72, it may have been Bill himself who intoduced McGovern to an October ralley in Dallas (Snyder Plaza). Whoever it was, this hopeless October night--he spoke for thirty minutes, give or take.
To return to this Jungian symbol, the Blue Guitar is rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n roll, heavy metal and all the rest, including the universal appeal of the "classical" guitar. Not to mention hip-hop. From Johnson to Elvis to Lennon and Hendrix--the latter's version of the Star Spangled Banner at Monterey comes to mind in our present context. I was "for" these things back then and so was Clinton and so we many of us still are--within reason. The Sexual Revolution, however, well, that has changed for a number of good reasons. Anyhow, obviously, Bill was not trying to "sell" anyone the Revolution on Larry King Live. Nonetheless, this guitar certainly invites commentary and I've seen none so far.
So, this "decoration" in the background on Larry King Live, broadcast on CNN around the world: "This is America," President Clinton seemed to want to say. No, "this is the New World as transformed by America," he seemed to say, with the ocean-blue, the Mediterranean Blue Guitar gently weeping right there on the set. (Not really weeping, but the color of this blue guitar was/is reminiscent of the color of our planet as seen from the space ship rocketing towards the moon.)
That was yet another Symbol of America, and it deserves a paragraph of its own. Maybe even an aphorism. The Obama administration, by the way, wants to "return science to its rightful place" in our national life. Indeed, we need "applied sociology and psychology" to the nth degree to make progress in math and science in our classrooms--but that's another issue.
Bill Clinton, the Elvis of Politics, recently ranked above both Bushes in the recent ranking of our list of POTUSes from One to Forty-three. Forty-three, "W," came in about thirty-eight or so. Clinton ranked about seventeen and Bush Sr. about nineteen. But enough of these numbers and that particular theme.
A Rennaisance Man for our time on a level similar to Jefferson for his time, Bill Clinton on Larry King was doing what he does best: dazzling you with his "words of wisdom." Bravely and wisely, I believe, he put in a good word for Obama's work to date. We all need to get behind our president, one way or another in this critical time. Then last night or so Jimmy Carter, too, said good things about the Recovery Plan, noting confidently that it will take about six months to start going into effect.
I can't get that guitar out of my mind. Santana, Hendrix, Clapton, Jimmy Page, Justin Hayward and Chet Atkins, whose death brought tears of nostalgia to one particular "Prairie Home Companion." The blue guitar, the blues guitar, the accoustic guitar...is a prairie home companion. A friend in the great city of New Orleans. The color blue stands for the planet; it stands for the blues and rock; it stands for the living oceans; it stands for itself--sometimes a guitar is just a guitar. Yet, the ancient ancestor of the guitar, the lyre, was played, we are told, by the great Greek warrior, Achilleus, as he sat near his tent, near the set of Achaean ships, stationed near Troy (Today's Northwest Turkey), trying to decide what to do after the great humiliation. Clinton and Achilles have something in common, too. Both were humiliated; both have reputations for being, at times, angry men. Angry for justice. Let me hasten to add here that our Biblical David, too, played the lyre while he sang songs about the things of God. Or so we believe. So, this Blue Guitar, whether Bill knew it or not, stretches all the way back to things Ancient Greek and things Biblical.
Finally, this statement Clinton was making, this neon guitar (almost)...speaks to the whole "ecumene," the whole inhabited earth. That includes any Muslims who may have been watching or who may now hear about this famous guitar. That guitar and all it stands for ain't goin anywhere. The Library ain't goin anywhere. Freedom aint goin anywhere....I doubt Clinton meant quite all this, but what the heck.
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February 21, 2009: At work today (stocking the merchandise) I decided the real color of this interesting guitar in the Library, a president's library, is azure, the color that, according to Harold Bloom (see his early book on Shelley), symbolizes the English Romantic Movement, especially certain of Shelley's poems. The "Witch of Atlas" may be one of those--I'm not sure.
Anyhow, AZURE, if memory serves me well, symbolizes, I guess, the realm of the imagination as opposed to the mindset of scientistic rationality. AZURE, thus, is the color of hope--Obama's color. I'm sorry I don't have a quotation from Shelley, something to bring this to life with. Maybe some namedropping will help: Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass," Bill's Gift to Monica. (It's getting really thick in here right now, the compactness of all this name-symbolism--what these folks "stand for.") You tell me; I don't know.
Clinton's outlook on life (according to his enemies, especially) is somewhat romantic and sentimental, i.e., quintessentially American insofar as we tend to see things through "rose-colored glasses." Had he been less the Pollyanna, and more the Machiavellian, he might have gotten bin Laden.
But I like this guy. I love that picture: Larry King, an incredible blue guitar--and President Bill Clinton, one of our genius presidents. The Blue Guitar was yet another stroke of genius.
Bill I-want-you-to-listen-to-me Clinton has something to say to the "oikos," the "ecumene," the inhabited world. That guitar said it all. If I had to pick one word, that guitar would stand for Hope and the Man from Hope--that's more than one word.
The Clinton Global Initiative is what the man is all about today. The motto of the Jesuits (at the all boys school where I taught) is "men for others." Clinton attended a Jesuit school, Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. Ergo, he is indeed "a man for others." Indeed, "Jesuit" might well be Bill's middle name, so like a modern, secular Jesuit is he.
February 22, 2009: I don't have, as I sit here, a single fact about that guitar. Most of what is written above is just plain embarrassing. But this is a comment, not a dissertation.
BOTTOM LINES (hooorraaaaaaay): Clinton appeared recently on Larry King Live from Little Rock at the President's Library Museum. For backdrop material the two could have chosen 1) books 2) interesting architecture 3) intelligible or traditional paintings.
Instead, they or Clinton alone or SOMEONE--chose to "feature" in the background a very unique guitar. Was Clinton close to a guitarist? Offhand, can't think of one. Was this one of Marley's guitars? Did Bob Marley play guitar? What, in pop culture or pop history, does Marley stand for? What does Pat Donahue stand for? Who are some other great living guitarists? Vince Gill, Ricky Scaggs, Carlos Santana, Kevin Eubanks, Bruce Springsteen, countless others. Now, Bill Clinton plays the sax--I forget which--not the guitar. However, our 42nd president has been a lifelong aficionado of music, all kinds of music, from Elvis to the Eagles to blues/folk--whatever. He knows the universality of the "language" of song--and dance. He understands the overarching power of a symbol like a guitar. For the ancients, especially the Greeks, music and education were two sides of the same coin. Homer's "Iliad" was performed, most likely with some musical accompaniment. Homer's hexameters themselves were intense "music" to the ears of the Greeks. The verses were also the "core curriculum." Homer's "Iliad," his "Odyssey," taught the people about the human condition and the most important things in life: death, honor, glory, virtues (courage in battle, wisdom, moderation), food, poetry and "history" and...family.
Now, I'm going to shock you: Homer was to the Greeks what Elvis was to America. I'll repeat that in a different way: Homer was to the ancients what Clinton is to post-modern America. Bill Clinton's autobiography, titled, "My Life," is also the other side of the coin of another book, "My American Journey" (Colin Powell). Someone said that Clinton was "our first black president," so bonded was he with African-Americans. And he still is, by the way, in spite of everything. The blue guitar comes down to this, therefore: the blues and all it stands for (from the spirituals to Johnson to Mayall to Clapton and the Stones). (By the way, John Mayall, I was the drunk who came backstage to shake your hand after you performed at the Music Hall in Dallas, February, 1970.) There's that and all that. Furthermore, of course, there's the symbolism of the blues. B.B. King. Can't forget him and countless others. The reality of the blues and the symbolism of this influential music pioneered by so many--Muddy Waters, Louis Armstrong, John Lee Hooker ("Trouble Blues," "Everybody Rockin," "Tupelo"), the black spirituals/gospel, Buddy Holly ("not fade away"), and finally, THE TRANSFORMATION in ELVIS. But think of the impact, along with Elvis, of Buddy Holly on the Beatles (their name for one thing). Think of the impact of Holly's death on folks who later would comprise the Hollies! (It only now occurred to me, for heaven's sake.) Think of the impact of the Beatles on World History. Imagine.
If that Blue Guitar stands for one thing, other than hope, it stands for the IMAGINATION over against, again, the mindset that reduces things to....THE BOTTOM LINE. "Getting and spending we lay waste our powers," sang William Wordsworth. For those who play and for those who listen, for those who do both (Lennon was "in heaven," he said, while listening to Elvis on the radio), the guitar is everthing--it is almost divine. Without it and what it stands for, our crime rate, our suicide rate, our depression rate, etc., would be much, much higher than it is. Without the music of the Beatles, I may not have made it to the age of twenty-three. Without their hip-hop, some of the kids where I work may not make it to age 23. If Bill Clinton stands for anything, it is for our kids "making it" to adulthood...and then "making it"...to whatever level they are capable of. For Bill "our kids" are all the kids, all the youth. The guitar was put there not just on the spur of the moment. It was meant to be a pleasing something to draw people in, to get them out of themselves, to, in a sense , "save them," not their souls but their behinds. Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker; Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix; Bruce and Jagger...at first, I couldn't stand Janis Joplin...but then after a while (about 33 years) her rough and troubled voice made sense to me. The Blues made more sense to me. The logic of it.
And finally, what about Larry King? The Third "person" in this sacred secular trinity. Folks, I have news for you. Though he doesn't know it fully, Larry King is a great man, a great American, and a great citizen of the world. He was denounced, this Jew, denounced by Jews, for hosting President Ahmadinejad. Did King "do the right thing"? If he is living in a free country, I would say so. He set an example--you talk to your enemies, unless you want one hundred years of war.
FREEDOM AND OBEDIENCE. This was part of the message Ahmadinejad gave the world when last he spoke at the United Nations. The next day, Larry King had him on his show, for all the world to see. I wish I had seen THIS interview. My own position here is the "politically correct" one: non-judgmental. But for that part of the Iranian President's speech (which I heard, twice) which preached the two-sided "coin," FREEDOM AND OBEDIENCE, I have nothing but praise, for this is a REALITY. As for the things Ahmadinejad "slipped in" to the latter parts of the speech, well, it could have been worse. He said nothing, even though he had a huge audience and knew it, about "wiping Israel off the map."
It would be nice if the Iranian leadership too, could someday come under the spell of this enchanted Blue Guitar. During most of his speech to the United Nations, it was as if Ahmadinejad had been enchanted not only by the guitar, but by Apollo as well; not only by the good feelings of Dionysus, but by the rationality of the Sun God. The man even spoke about the virtue of forgiveness, a virtue which I had thought was unique to Christianity. I hope and pray that, with Hillary as a factor, "we can do business" with Iran and its Leader.
Finally, with the incredible election on November Four, 2008, the dream represented in part by this fabulous guitar has come true.
In spite of everything, a dream of Bill Clinton's has come true. "My Life," OUR LIFE, our future, has only just begun. The guitar stands not just for the blue states, not just for the red states, and not just for the United States. It stands for St. Peter's Basilica, for 10 Downing Street, for Wall Street and Main Street (including Rosedale, in Fort Worth); it stands for Hyde Park, for Highland Park, for Lee Park, and for Battery Park; it stands for the Colliseum, the Forum, the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, the Flag, the United Nations, yes, but get this: It stands for a few things that are singularly Western. The unashamed Beauty of Women; the Tradition of Rule of Law; the standards of Bill Bennet, our Education Czar with his Book of Virtues; yes, for Janis Joplin and Bill Bennett and all that they stand for.