music week: ohrwurm oder before I put on my make-up

Designing to write a bit on the theme of music—pop music, really but we shall see, becomes a bit challenging in a muted landscape. Of course, the internet has propagated and shaped the language of music significantly, until or unless one runs up against a copyright patrol and the recordings are available at one’s home of record or there’s no reciprocal agreement between clearing-houses. That’s a bit frustrating and I wouldn’t what to try to base a composition on a leitmotif that would be eventually scavenged altogether by the copyholders.

So I was looking for stories to share without the proper instrumentation for accompaniment. One recurring episode that comes to mind—in fact, whenever I wake up—is the phenomenon of starting the day, like some sleep-grit in one’s eyes and dreamy residue, with the cobwebs of some highly-random and usually brash and grating song in my head. There’s a German term, Ohrwurm (ear-worm) for having a song stuck in one’s head that’s hard to shake. Usually I refrain from belting out into song but the lyrics trudge through my mind as I brew the coffee and brush my teeth and don’t fade for quite some time. It’s happened since adolescence and I used to be afraid that I was channeling a radio station, that I had some kind of receiver for this expansive repertoire, but it’s persisted almost every morning and on both sides of the Atlantic. I don’t understand, weird but no original nor exceedingly rare compositions and yet nothing I have heard recently neither, and I hesitate to commit the words to any of these tunes to paper for fear that they might be contagious and infect someone else’s waking up ritual.

meinungsfreiheit

While the first through the fifth estates in Germany are wrangling with the question of what it means to curtail freedom of opinion and expression—surely too a sacrosanct right but not without limitations, over whether to allow a public-viewing of that repulsive trailer smearing Islam the discussion keeps returning to America’s founding axioms and the sanctity of the First Amendment. It is a difficult matter to essay and presents dangerous and weighty precedents on either side—mostly, I believe touching on the fact that the role of the state is not perfectly defined and such guarantees, in any pluralist society, are neither a perfect system nor perfectly enforceable.

Does the state give tacit licence by suffering such demonstrations or is a free public necessarily a responsible one?  To exacerbate the situation, the message and controversy is being championed by some right-wing elements that have urged (or submitted) to the idea of having one hate and hellfire preacher come from Florida to officiate. This preacher formerly tried to dictate the US president’s foreign policy and priority by holding holy books ransom. The actual video clip is of course marginalized by the vitriol it represents and the genie is already out of the bottle, so it does not matter so much anymore if the trailer itself is spread or censored further for the public-good. Unlike the clip, which is intent without content, the permission or restriction—more broadly, is intention that reaches far beyond any one disputable statement. While these American standards are being enshrined in the German media and government, and difficult questions are being ricocheted, it seems an even bitterer irony that the steadfastness of the internet hosts, that communication æther that fills the voids left by bureaucracy, &c., &c. may not be choosing to defy the wishes of the US government and majority of public and let the clip remain on-air and in circulation out of noble ideals—the speech should be free even if repulsive, but rather because such a policing (even at the behest of another) might make the hosts liable for policing all contributions and enforcing everyone’s rules and not just their own. If the guarantors of liberty are now the mechanisms for avoiding for lawsuits, then we are all in trouble and the United States certainly seems like not example to follow.

music week: turning to the horoscope and looking for the funnies

Digital audio pioneers at the University of Erlangen and the laboratories of the Frauenhofer Institute helped early on to make music (and later video files with standardized formats like AVC) more manageable by figuring out how to compress inherently huge files by diluting the depth of the data without sacrificing the sound. A raw music file, a bit of time and vibrations digitized, would still be a huge thing and impossible to work with on most platforms—even given how personal computing has advanced, and sadly not predicting this kind of progress in storage capacity and the ever increasing detail of photography, I ruined few good pictures from the beginning of the decade, convinced I needed to apply a lossy space-saving routine to them if I ever hoped to keep them all.

 Engineers had one favourite test track, familiar and catchy so programmers would instantly hear how a changed parameter affected the recording—which was the 1984 release of Tom’s Diner (which in reality is Tom’s Restaurant on the corner of Broadway and 112th Street in Manhattan and portrayed in fiction as the diner in the television series Seinfeld) by Suzanne Vega. The same talent that produced the mp3 file format is also currently overseeing piecing together a monumental puzzle, which will have ramifications on how any archive or collection of sibylline leaves are organized in the future. From the partition into the East and West until the reunification of Germany, the German Democratic Republic’s secret police, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, also the Stasis) swelled to a network of over a quarter of a million operatives and informants keeping watch over all citizens and amassing some fifty million pages of dossiers. As the dissolution of the DDR became imminent, there was a rush to dispose of these files—which was more volume than any mechanical shredder could handle, so many people in the office resorted to rending them by hand. These torn pages were relatively easy to recover, but this low-hanging fruit only accounted for a fraction (about two-hundredths of the total documentations) that could be reassembled by hand by a team of specialists over the past twenty years. Frauenhofer Institution is now aiding the reconstruction efforts by cataloguing each scrap of paper and the text on it (even the ones that made it through the shredder), producing a virtual jigsaw, mosaic that may eventually fall into place... When I'm feeling someone watching me and so I raise my head. There's a woman on the outside, looking inside—does she see me?

music week: soundtrack

As far as prequels go, especially those whose backstory involves time-travel that usually raises more paradoxes than can be explained and whose formula would probably rejected out-of-hand for division by zero and makes one wonder that studios don’t retain logicians since no movies would ever get made, the in the latest in the Men in Black (MiB III)  franchise was, I have to admit, pretty good. The theme music was pretty catchy as well, though it was the only title song in the series not performed by the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, a rap that tries to reconcile nostalgia with said time-travel and samples the guitar riff from the 1956 Mickey and Sylvia hit Love is Strange. Although I guess the song was included on the soundtrack of Dirty Dancing—though only a snippet—I remember hearing it first played on the television show Designing Women, where Suzanne Sugarbaker was sidelined from the decorating firm’s talent show entry because she insisted on performing in black-face, so she and Anthony Bouvier had their own lip-syncing number.

bayreuth-beirut

Though overshadowed by the protests triggered by the ignorant and ridiculing portrayal of Islam, the Pope went ahead with a planned trip to Lebanon, originally and without taking sides for the seated regime or the rebellion to urge peaceful resolution to the civil war in Syria. Neighbouring Lebanon has taken in tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the violence, and there are fears that the conflict may spread.

As Benedict XVI reaffirmed to his audience, however, Lebanon has struggled to become a model nation, recapturing the harmony and hospitality that was thrown into turmoil with independence and its own civil war, pulled in different directions by other regional players. Much of the crowds that thronged to see the Pope, I am sure was comprised to a large extent by the forty-percent Christian population that the country hosts, but the government declared a public holiday over the weekend for the Pope’s visit so more people might have the chance to see him. Lebanon also hosts the spectrum of Islamic sects and traditions, who by turns, have also been targets of intolerance. The message of peace, understanding and empathy, I think, was not restricted to any one demographic of the audience and takes on a more urgent meaning in light of other, reviled and impugned embassies.

vorbild

There has been a strange culminating coincidence of following Germany’s example in the media echo-chamber of three diverse episodes and I am not sure what to make of it. The first two decisions came from the States but came in such a fashion seemingly unaware that of Germany’s contemporary hardships and debate over the same issues: the decision to award an outrageous prize to a former Swiss banking executive who was willing to disclose the practices of his old employers regarding US accounts, and the decision on the part of the state of New York to regulate circumcision ceremonies.
Regarding the former, not only does what the US tax authority did by putting its faith in the char- acterization of a jilted banker, probably dismissed from his post for cause, sound dangerously like the trust that the war-mongers and architects of the invasion of Iraq placed in dissident and informant Curveball (who told the planners exactly what they wanted to hear—German intelligence recommended that one ought to consider the source, incidentally), America is moreover choosing to traffic in stolen goods and jeopardize any established agreements to share information. Germany was put in agonies by the same breed of thieves and illegal sales. The later matter is certainly not a trivial thing and means a lot to a lot of individuals, but the repetition of the controversy on Germany’s proposed ban on circumcision carried out on solely religious grounds was nearly nauseating to hear, considering the subject, and sparked protests and counter-rallies. Even though the government recanted, somewhat, later, the anger is still fresh and repercussions are still being felt and relations need to be mended. The last instance was of a surprising and somewhat uncharacteristic protest on the part of the people of Japan. As Germany done in the immediate aftermath of the disaster of Fukushima, the Japanese demanded a phased drawdown of nuclear power. Japan, however, was fully cognizant of the challenges that Germany is facing and scramble to maintain energy for a hungry industrial sector and affordability for the public. The decision, in this case, was made by the people and not the government and had some time to incubate.

plenipotentiary or chargé d'affaires

Doubtless, while the raw rage and violence is a dread and frightening thing inflamed at cultural crossroads the world over, it is in fact a completely understandable reaction. Measured or otherwise, an attack on the sensibilities of others, profaning the sacred, is not something I think the occidental press and public are accustomed to really framing or presenting in a way that’s not even more dismissive or divisive.

Our (Western) not so measured but pretend-sophisticated response rakes the matter over such pedestrian and alienating questions like why even dignify the insult with a response, worse—I think—that these people are riding the swell of revolt from toppling long-seated tyrannies and another, crueler order is managing the chaos. I believe, rather, that Americans, specifically and the their partners and aspirants by extension, are the ones so beaten down by oppressions, castes and the impossibility of mobility, a hundred affronts to personal dignity daily that propagate in subtle, lulling ways and placated by false and empty comforts and assurances, have no limits or standards of respect, not respecting themselves to ever say that that is one infringement too far or to hold anything as sacred or inviolate. Rather than understanding and reconciliation, the security apparatchiks will use this excuse to tighten their grips. Of course, this is not a true or fair characterization of all of Western culture and there are many individuals and group-causes that are passionate and care about justice and healing, just as the Muslim world is not monolithic. That fact, however, is too easily forgot, just as one tends to not remember that aversion is not the sole response to hatefulness but also rage.

franconian churches

Spanning from Schmalkalden in the northeast to Schwabisch Hall in the southwest with a lot of culture and history in between, the Bavarian region of Franconia comprises a distinct part of Germany that’s bound by a shared identity, though it would be an overly-ambitious undertaking to try to give a succint and deserving definition. It would be beyond the scope of this blog to trace the tracks of empire, kingdom and diocese that united and distinguished this broad area, but its churches do remain as landmarks, anchors of communities large and small, as testament of those allegiances and shifting divisions that flowed with the people—the tribe called the Franks.

The first image is of a covered well and modern sculpture depicting the tableau of Calvary hidden in a remote valley by Münnerstadt in the modern district of Bad Kissingen county. The town and its possessions were over the last millennium under control of the Abbot of Fulda, part of a principality of the Holy Roman Empire—afforded the rights and license of immediacy, under the administration of the Teutonic Knights (Deutschritterorden) who helped from their bases of operation, establish a banking network through letters of credit and standardization (developed after the crusading was done from the association of outposts that remained)—a point of contention for the archbishops of Würzburg, held by Swedes and Napoleon’s armies, and finally annexed by the Kingdom of Bavaria.

That’s quite a secret history for such a seemingly small and out-of-the-way place, and they all have similar stories to tell. Both steeples and towers abound, and while there’s no signature style across the region or the ages, there are some renowned architects whose design, like Balthasar Neumann who built the Basilica Minor and pilgrimage church of the Holy Trinity in Gößweinstein. Here are two other impressive treasures in places that also might be regarded as tiny and out of the way: the church of Saint Lampertus rising from the fallow fields near Bergtheim on the road to Würzburg and the gilt interior of the Saint Nicolas church in Strahlungen in the Rhön.

The prime-mover of a refined and fused Baroque style planned many structures throughout the region, still standing as his legacy and all could well be included in this article. The final image is of resplendent interior of the abbey church of the monastery at Ebrach, close to Bamberg. The Trappist monks have moved their order to the highlands above the vineyards, and the cloister is used as a juvenile justice centre today, but the church remains.

For hundreds of years, it was tradition among the archbishops of Würzburg to have their hearts interred here, while their bodies were placed in the crypt at the Cathedral of Saint Kilian—their home church, and the rest was buried in the Fortress of Marienberg that overlooked the city.   This triangle was not shared as broadly as the power and influence of the cities of Fulda, Bamberg and Würzburg in Lower Franconia but it does not seem that the connection was ever far out of reach.