If someone like Beethoven had a vision of the future and realized the impact his music had on humanity, would he be able to compose with the same fortitude and confidence, or rather, would the pressure of the realization of his own importance would eventually render him dysfunctional?
I don’t confuse this hypothetical inquiry with Beethoven’s realization of his genius. I’m sure he knew of his own greatness. This is different, though, from the pressure that one may experience if his or her genius is also perceived in its historic context and significance.
In other words, would Beethoven be able to remain Beethoven if, well, he was conscious of the fact that he was Beethoven, (or Beethoven the way he is perceived today)?
These musings of mine could easily be dismissed as exercises in futility or outbursts of excessive if not useless imagination if they were not so coincidental with the policies and style of our current government and prevailing cultural mindset.
Just reflect on how inappropriately often and in such unjustified associations we have heard the word “historic” in our very recent history. Obama’s presidency is “historic.” The first female Republican VP is “historic,” as well the first “historic” female Democrat VP, who by the way had a falling out with the first “historic” African-American president. Now, we have a “historic” first Latino woman who was nominated as a Supreme Court Justice.
This concept of “historic” assumes a false level of quality and meaning. Unhealthy awareness and emphasis on “historic” deprives us from the realization of the meaning of history. “Historic” has become the whore of history. It is a telemarketers’ approach to history. Instead of letting history happen, it is being fabricated. The event is being hyped up and flashed out as something that we must acknowledge as carrying some sort of generational significance. The real process is not allowed to take place and stand on its own merit but instead forced into history as something that belongs there on the basis of it being “historic.”
It is a tautology that has a danger of infinite regression to nonsense.
Isn’t everything that happens in history “historic?” Just like everything that happens in the physical world is physical.
“Life happens to us when we are busy planning it’, said John Lennon. And so does history.
Real history is a process that involves the totality of existence and experience, the concept of “historic” disrupts this process and takes everything out of context and meaning. “Historic” spotlights and does not comprehend. History is a conscious memory, while “historic” is a selective amnesia. Just compare how “historic” was the ascension to Presidency of Barack Obama, the son of white college educated woman and Kenyan student and how hostile and “un-historic” was the appointment of a grandson of slaves Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Also reflect on how “historic” was Hillary Clinton, the wife of a former president running for president, and how “un-historic” was Sarah Palin the wife of an Alaskan fisherman.
“Historic” it is not just sickness of our age. Every age has heralded its “historic” moments while ignoring the true meaning of history as a living totality of time – past, present and future.
Yet, our age of instant communication tends to overly “historisize’ an event or an individual without giving it due time to mature and organically enter the fabric of human memory.
It is only unfortunate that this flashy media/entertainment/ marketing hype became such an established norm and guiding star in our everyday decision making process and social attitudes.
The first three days following Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination for the Supreme Court Justice have already been indicted in the Wall of Fame of “Historic.” Anything that follows now will be working against this “historic” candidacy. In reality, “historic” rapidly becomes the code word for race and gender politics and, of course, by default, race and gender blackmail.
“If there is the perception that somehow she is being treated unfairly or they are distorting her record or comments, I think there will be a backlash in the Latino community,” said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza. “All we want is for the process to be respectful and fair. There could be great resentment within the Latino community if it is seen somehow that she is not being treated with the respect due to a Supreme Court nominee.”
One recalls confirmation hearings of Judge Clarence Thomas and wonders why there was no backlash in the African-American community over “the high tech lynching” of a brilliant black man, a descendant of slaves, who was moving up to a “historic” height of becoming the first black conservative Supreme Court Justice.
Why there was no backlash from African-American leadership and community when a black man was treated with appalling level of disrespect by a white male whose family possessed slaves only three generations ago? That white male did not consider Judge Thomas as a “historic” personality when he was accusing him on the basis of false and unsubstantiated claims, but years later by the same iron logic of “historisizing” that man had a change of heart and became the second man to “the historic” personality of Barack Obama. Yes, that white male who was publicly and unreasonably humiliating Clarence Thomas was no one else than venerable Senator Joe Biden, now very sensitive to “‘historic” process after he lost his presidential bid.
Why did Judge Thomas lose his immunity of “historic” being? Was it because Judge Thomas never thought of himself in “historic” terms, or to open parenthesis – in racist terms? Is it because Clarence Thomas who was removed from slavery only by three generations and grew up as poor boy working on his grandfather’s farm from dawn to dusk entered the history on his own merit and based on the “content of his character” rather than riding on the “historic’ wave?” Or was it that he never thought in Judge Sotomayor’s lines when she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”?
If by “historic” we agreed to imply accomplishments and processes that entirely exclude white male and if we have to be careful, as Press Secretary Gibbs suggests, in criticizing the “historic,” then let’s call it what it is – “a racial blackmail.” I am sure Judge Sotomayor is a brilliant woman but there are a lot of brilliant and capable and Yale graduate types of people who do not meet the fundamental qualification of being on the Supreme Court.
The primary qualification is not brilliance, a great personal story or being “historic” but a highly just and measured intelligence equipped to translate the truth in totality — in the real time of history that transcends race and gender, that transcends the precise definition of flashily marketed “historic.” It is a person’s balance of character that elevates one’s judicial capability beyond personal opinions and leanings as well as the dangerous trends of time.
In fact, the Supreme Court Justices are not the 9 best jurists chosen from the multitude, but the 9 best equipped citizens who can be trusted with the custody of eternal truth. By definition, the Supreme Court Justices, must be those citizens who transcend personal and contemporary beyond ordinary
What we need on the Supreme bench, at least as an ideal, are “Beethovens” of the law so we can be ameliorated by their ability to transcend the left and right vibrations of our soul and interpret the law of balance, the only truthful music of society.
Just as is the case of Beethoven when we listen to his music, we could care less if he was the first great deaf composer or the last sharp-seeing German. We are carried away by the meaning and power of his music and it is the beauty of his work that highlights Beethoven in the history of humanity. If Beethoven was concerned with being the first “historic” deaf German composer from Bonn, we would’ve had him in the “Guinness Book of Records” rather than on our shelves of favorite music and eternally burning the light of truth and beauty in our hearts.
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