I was walking Pomme this morning, a nicely cool and windy morning as we are being grazed by Typhoon 25. Many people were out walking their dogs, and our local Very Genki Uncle--an athletic man in his 70s who encourages everyone to join in ラジオ体操 (Rajio Taiso: radio exercise, calisthenics led by an announcer on NHK radio every morning)--was, as usual, walking with his old FM pocket radio playing news loudly, while he gave out hearty good mornings to everyone. This morning, the news played Earth, Wind, & Fire's "September," very appropriately. "Ah yes," I thought, "it's the 21st!"
It made me think of a paper I wrote some years ago, about the utopian vorschein (to use Ernst Bloch's term from Das Prinzip Hoffnung) present in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," a story that, to me, is an example of the perfect short story, one of the best American short stories of the 20th century. Though much of it is dystopic--the racism that Black people face, the horrors of heroin addiction, prison, and so on--when the narrator sees his brother, truly seeing him as an artist, a musician, as a creative person rather than as his wayward younger brother and a junkie--he sees the immanent utopian moment, unrealized and yet present, in his brother's jazz.
Utopia is often thought of as a destination, and often one that must be forced into existence and then kept unchanging, for how can perfection be allowed to change. This usually makes for bad fiction and even worse political movements, ones that conclude the only way to achieve utopia is through killing anyone who resists it. Indeed, that's what the USA is going through right now: Trump promises permanent happiness through ethnic cleansing and world domination.
Utopia is a positive force if thought of as a verb, an ongoing process of making a more-just society for all, with utopian dreaming being a guiding vorschien, a light that goes before, showing the way while the practical work of reality is done with steady determination, but also with compassion.
Utopian moments of vorschein are often present in music. Classical, jazz, religious music, funk, rock, Portuguese fado--it doesn't matter, even if there is sadness in the song, it can evoke moments of perfection.
Hero Music is a blog about writing song lyrics, and I love this post about two songs named "September": Mariya Takeuchi's and Earth, Wind & Fire's. Take a look, and listen to the songs.
September 21st is 'September Day' | Reading the two 'Septembers' through the lyrics of Mariya Takeuchi and Earth, Wind & Fire
Posted a day late due to technical difficulties, which seem fixed now!