For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

  So savoured) quasi-verbal gift to speak

  Such secrets as Mnemosyne can tell

  Only in structured form. That’s why the sound

  Of some small phrase or fragment may compel

  The vagrant memory to cast around

  For its pre-intimations in a zone

  Of meanings more precise than any found

  In recollected sounds or tastes alone.

  And so mémoire involontaire unfolds,

  For Proust, in ways most intimately known

  Through music and the colloquy it holds

  With lifetimes spent in quest of that which time

  May yet pluck vibrant from the cramping moulds

  Of time-fixated habit. So what I’m

  Here getting at is how those who content

  Themselves with less—like giving up on rhyme

  And meter through desire to circumvent

  Such formal impositions—will thereby

  Be giving up on everything that went,

  Back then, most forcefully to give the lie

  To any notion that the only fit

  Way present-day composers can apply

  Their special gifts or skill is to submit

  Each work to just that principle of least

  Resistance that requires it be a hit

  With those whose satisfaction’s much decreased

  By every slight departure from the norms

  Discreetly though effectively policed

  On their behalf by all the varied forms

  Of vox-pop taste enforcement. What they class

  Good music’s aptest then to be what warms

  The hearts of listeners predisposed to pass

  Such works as listener-friendly, and to fail

  The more demanding kind. So, Philip Glass,

  That’s why I’ve taken Proustian leave to rail

  At how your music manages to turn

  The Vinteuil question round and thus entail

  That any answer to it’s one we learn

  Not on account of venturing out beyond

  Safe waters to where deeper currents churn

  The tonal depths. More, it’s some pool or pond

  With surface quite unruffled by such thoughts

  As else might prompt the listener to respond

  With further questions rather than retorts-

  In-kind of just the formulaic type

  To which the well-trained minimalist resorts

  As sub-melodic brainworms gently wipe

  Out all last memories of how music fared

  In better times. If, then, I seem to gripe

  Too much about what’s trivial compared

  With other things—and if indeed it’s true

  That problems duplicate, not halve, when shared—

  Still I’d suggest the question’s aimed at you,

  My fellow-listener, next time you retreat

  Into that lotus-land whose scents subdue

  Your mind, make criticism take back seat,

  And switch off all awareness of how far

  This music goes in striving to complete

  Their obsolescence. Though my note may jar

  On such nirvana-seeking nerves and fall

  Way short of getting them to say au revoir

  To the seductive, thought-quiescent call

  Of minimalism still it might succeed

  In helping those less thoroughly in thrall

  To its hedonic spell and so impede,

  For a short while at least, the downward drift

  Toward musique d’ameublement. The need

  For that’s as striking as the Doppler shift

  Produced when music-history’s revoked,

  As here, in ways that open wide the rift

  Between a hard-line modernism yoked

  To the emancipation of all tones

  In the chromatic scale and feelings stoked

  Against it by the multiplying clones

  Of Glass or Arvo Pärt whose music harks,

  Reactively, right back to the bare bones

  Of old tonality. So it embarks

  On strategies to over-write the script

  Co-written by the sundry heirs of Marx

  And progress-minded modernists who’d tipped

  As winners just those works that best brought out

  How tightly history’s dialectic gripped

  The kinds of music they’d most keenly tout

  For what it told of conflicts, whether waged

  Directly in some recrudescent bout

  Of the class-struggle or obliquely staged

  (As theorists prefer) in subtle ways

  Requiring that the music be engaged

  Only by those whose discourse best displays

  Such mediating skills. No doubt there’s room

  Here for a counterpart to the malaise

  I’ve diagnosed, that is, for works that plume

  Themselves (along with the elective set

  Of standard-bearing acolytes for whom

  They’re chiefly meant) on cancelling the debt

  Art owes to pleasure, or—to strike a note

  Less hedonistic—making sure we get

  The maximal incentive to demote

  What gratifies the ear. Yet pleasure came,

  Back then, not just from music’s power to float

  The boat of listeners hoping for the same

  Old aural comforts, but how it could take

  Us into regions far beyond the frame

  Of ear-accustomed indolence and break

  Its hold by tonal innovations more

  Effective since not so inclined to make

  A rule of disavowing all rapport

  With any temperament that’s still attuned

  To vibes they programmatically deplore,

  Those holdout modernists. Yet music pruned

  Of tonal affect as a point of strict

  Decree is apt to find itself marooned,

  Together with its phalanx of hand-picked

  Promoters, in a situation just

  The opposite of works that neatly ticked,

  In minimalist fashion, every box that must

  Be ticked by music seeking to regain

  The ear of audiences left nonplussed

  By music of the other, more arcane

  Or ear-repellent genre. Hence the flip-

  Flop pseudo-dialectic where a strain

  Of throwback populism trying hard to skip

  Three centuries of change now coexists

  In mutual though uneasy partnership

  With a left-over vanguard that enlists

  Its waning energies more in the cause

  Of showing how intently it resists

  The siren-call of popular applause

  Than showing how it might at length achieve

  And (the most vital qualifying clause)

  Achieve on merit a long-term reprieve

  From short-term memory. Still it’s much worse,

  So Proust would have us think, to find that we’ve

  Been hearing skilled executants rehearse

  The sort of music that, when billed a top

  New work commissioned from the public purse,

  First asks of us that we consent to drop

  All pre-existent notions of what’s worth

  Our listening-time. Then it requires we stop

  Our ears against the rising tide of mirth

  That greets—or ought to greet—the nth reprise

  Of a duff theme that, owing to the dearth

  Of musical invention, has to tease

  Its paltry substance out through umpteen bars

  Where not much happens. This then guarantees

  Consumer satisfaction since it mars

  No pleasure serviced by the aural balm

  Dispensed to drivers traffic-jammed in cars

  And punctually supplied with stuff to calm

  Their jaded nerves by
doses of FM

  Relaxative. That’s how your pieces palm

  Their hearers off with what impresses them,

  Since pre-convinced, as offering the last word

  In those sublime simplicities that stem

  From innocence regained, but might be heard

  More aptly—if again we bear in mind

  The deep self-questioning Marcel incurred

  At Vinteuil’s fictive hands—as so designed

  That early converts to them quickly lose

  All sense of just much got left behind

  In music’s self-eclipse. So je t’accuse,

  And you especially, since it’s the scale

  Of your works that convinces listeners whose

  Respect’s won by sheer playing-time that they’ll

  Derive more benefit from works that run

  To full symphonic stretch than those that fail

  In that respect through tendency to shun

  Such elevated forms in (as one might

  Quite reasonably think) the way best done

  By self-styled minimalists. For if, despite

  Their scale, those works yield nothing to reward

  The keen-eared listener soon put off by trite

  Ideas or by some root-position chord

  Interminably held then it’s a moot

  Point, surely, whether being amply scored

  And of a length proportioned to best suit

  Performance as the second half of some

  Big concert should entail that they dilute

  Yet further what’s already now become,

  Even in those echt-minimalists who stick

  With short forms, music such as lets us plumb

  Its structure, like its feelings, in a tick

  And—if so minded—figure out the means

  Of their production by a bit of quick

  Text-book analysis. Should those routines

  Turn out to be the very sort that fits

  This music it’s because their method screens

  The duplex question every work submits

  To every auditor who’s then compelled

  To ask not simply how the piece acquits

  Itself by their lights but what truths it held,

  And might yet hold, for listeners breaking through

  To grasp the more exacting message spelled

  Out to those restless souls among them who,

  As Nietzsche said, experience the fate

  Of music like an open wound. If you,

  Our maxi-minimalist, could once relate,

  If fleetingly, to something like Marcel’s

  Self-questioning response it might deflate

  That penchant for the kind of form that swells

  In length and scale inversely with the drive

  To leave no forms in place beyond those cells

  Of sub-thematic stuff that then contrive,

  By repetition, somehow to convey

  A sense that they’re organically alive

  Like so much replicating DNA.

  However—as the simile concedes—

  This notion just won’t stick since there’s no way

  Genes could equate to that which far exceeds

  The grasp of any sequencer and stands

  To our genetic blueprint as our needs

  For music’s consolation trump demands

  For acephalic pleasures of the sort

  Your compositions yield. It’s this that brands

  Them works that too assiduously court

  The easy-listener’s favour and confess,

  Between the notes, their mission to abort

  All trace of music’s impulse to transgress

  Those comfort-zones. Where once it gave fresh nerve

  To human striving, now it would repress

  Whatever bucks its smooth regression-curve,

  Or any intimation of what you’ve

  Kept constantly in check. So you deserve

  At least the thanks of those who’d seek to prove,

  On current evidence, that we’re the fools

  If we suppose that music’s power to move

  Our minds as well as hearts by breaking rules

  Of custom or good form might be the spark

  That lights a flame beyond the music-schools

  Since kindled by those minds against the dark

  Of mindlessness. Then let us not conclude

  Too quickly that the only valid mark

  Of music’s worth is some beatitude

  Attained exclusively by intellect’s

  Preparedness to have its bearings skewed

  By inchoate emotion or effects

  Of the soft power exerted by what earns

  Acceptance just so far as it respects

  The status quo. Let’s think the flame still burns

  And, on the strength of that, let’s think there’s yet

  Some extant cause to hope that music turns

  Aside from the compulsion to forget

  Its promesse de bonheur and so abjures

  Your music’s promise never to upset

  The habit of compliance that secures

  Its listeners’ readiness to fall in line

  With every muzac-ready bar that lures

  Them on beneath its stupefying sign.

  A MORAL VACUUM

  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was brutally interrogated countless times by the CIA following his capture in 2003. But while the methods the CIA used to break down their prisoner were well-worn, the way in which they pieced him back together was not.

  Mohammed—who in more innocent days took a degree in mechanical engineering at a US university—asked his captors a strange favour: would they let him design a vacuum cleaner? And the word from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, was, yes.

  Having extracted a confession and everything else it could by duress, the agency’s priority now was to keep their star prisoner sane. Perhaps in calmer circumstances he might have further, less time-sensitive information to divulge. And who could say, he might even one day testify at a trial, at which he would need to appear a credible and uncoerced witness.

  In other words, his handlers had to repair the psychological damage inflicted by the waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” to which he was subjected immediately after being captured. Gradually, his self-esteem grew. Britelite had a debriefing room where Mohammed held what he liked to call “office hours,” lecturing his captors about his childhood, his family and his path to jihad and al-Qa’ida. Tea and biscuits were served at these occasions.

  —The Independent, Friday, July 12, 2013

  It seems his treatment got a little rough.

  Do what you like with him, their orders said,

  Since the worst you can do’s not bad enough,

  But don’t forget: more use alive than dead.

  And so his minders did the usual stuff,

  Took their complete immunity as read,

  Then made the most of this great chance to duff

  Him up now that they’d got the go-ahead.

  The problem was, the guy turned out so tough

  And torture-proof that their lot just saw red,

  Ignored all that don’t-kill-the-bastard guff,

  And looked dead set on wasting him instead.

  This meant the use of sundry off-the-cuff

  And ratcheted techniques that quickly led

  The Pentagon to fear he’d sooner snuff

  It at their hands than have the rumour spread

  That he’d cracked after all. Let them be taught

  A gentler way, ask him what might best heal

  His psychic wounds if not the other sort,

  And, just to keep him on an even keel,

  Enquire what kind of therapy he thought

  Would help him most effectively to deal

  With having not so long ago been brought

/>   Close to death’s door by their excessive zeal.

  So that’s the sweetener those guys offered: short

  Of freeing him or letting him appeal

  Against these practices in open court,

  They’d try to fix things so that he might feel

  His sanity restored rather than thwart

  Their purpose by declining to reveal

  What more he knew, or else by the resort

  To babbling incoherence, whether real

  Or feigned. When he came up with his request

  It’s likely they surmised this was the case

  Since, after giving it much thought, the best

  Way to get his head clear of that bad place

  (He said) was to design and put to test

  A vacuum-cleaner from the database

  Of those he’d studied years back with a zest

  For cleanliness that occupied the space

  Now claimed by godliness. We glean the rest

  From what’s let drop from time to time by grace

  Of sources, CIA among them, blessed

  With warrant to dissimulate all trace

  Of doings we’d be hard put to digest,

  As ‘concerned citizens’, if made to face

  The facts head-on with no ruse to divest

  Them (and ourselves) of all that might disgrace

  Freedom’s fair name. In which case we’ll perhaps