Wednesday open thread: In memoriam, contra Plato
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| John Prine at Merlefest, 2006, by Ron Baker, CC BY-SA 2.0 |
Imagine a world without Shakespeare. Without Milton. Without Soyinka. Without H.D.
Or, in our modern world, imagine it without Dylan, or McCartney, or Springsteen, or Hill. Imagine a world silenced of words and music.
Last night, singer-songwriter John Prine was the latest victim of the novel coronavirus. Another light who illuminated our dark days was taken from us, while those who profit off of our deaths continue to prosper.
We need poetry more than ever now. We need music more than ever now. We need the unacknowledged legislators of the world more than ever now.
We need steady leadership to be restored to our country and our world. But we also need those men and women who peer past the quotidian. We need people who can unearth truths we've ignored, even though they're in plain sight.
I never liked Plato much. His Republic was a quasi-fascist ideal state. And any state which banishes poetry is a state which banishes humanity.
As we lose another poet to this plague, remember that poetry is more than entertainment. At its most profound, it makes us question ourselves to our core, and hopefully exposes us to the divine.
I share this as my encomium.
Death will not stop. Why should he?This is your open thread.
He sees himself as our master, and
Why would he think otherwise?
The cosmos is designed to kill us,
And we help it along, offering more fuel
For the fire than ever Death could hope for.
A genocide here, a murder there;
After a while it adds up to something real.
He should not be so proud; for all our
Failings, we still claim life beyond him.
We claim the words which ring down
Through time; we claim the music whose airs
Are ancient. We are the stuff of our history.
Death abides. But we, in his face, endure.