Titanic Emerson Shock Theatre

“I am so terrified America
Of the solid click of your human contact….”
– D.H. Lawrence lines from The Evening Land

“The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time if we just wait.” — Condoleezza Rice

Marcel, half-naked on the couch, was watching “Something’s Gotta Give” with me and Sylvie, taking in the chemistry between Keaton and Nicholson, when he blurted out, “Hey, that’s Charles Trenet, I know that song.” His playing with himself came to an abrupt halt, and he began to sleepily put on his jammies.

I knew he had been listening to Douce France at the shop on and off, along with lots of other CDs featuring ditties from the 30s through the 50s, but I never dreamt that our seven-year-old had been associating those old tunes with particular artists. Memorizing.

Mesmerizing. Just his noticing the background music in and of itself blew me away. It was very late, and “La Mer” (or was it another?) seemed to snap him to like a bump in the road does for a sleepy driver on an overly long haul overland.

Over there. Where 1917 plays out all over again. And not just in Iraq.

Over here…where Marcel knows that the semiliterate Bush bunch only tell different lies than their opposition, their vision of the Evening Land imposing ideas of order upon the universe…whilst critics make a good living pointing out implied links to Emersonianism.

Emerson’s mind has become the mind of America, and this is not always a good thing. For our self-reliant United States rapes at will, exalting and abusing advantage as it parodies the Roman Empire. And ruins all roads that lead to Health. A Future.

Yes, Emerson valued power for its own sake, and his morality is not primarily either humane or humanistic. But he loathed American imperialism, and he made it really clear to his audiences –incessantly, on innumerable lecture tours– that John Brown’s execution had made the gallows as “glorious as the cross.”

No, we can’t picture Bush or his Pentecostal, Southern Baptist or Mormonic contemporaries boasting a noose around their necks in lieu of….

Emerson’s notions of self-trust and self-reliance were not carved out with Henry Fords in mind, regardless of the fact that such prototypical Americans were deeply influenced by him. With both their well-heeled descendants and their robotic underlings remaining so to this day. Along with admirers, copycats, wannabes, all go-getters, et. al.

But what kind of Emerson do you think is taught in our schools? The Spiritless. Spit.

Neither the life of children nor the life of adults was meant to be ruled by such stock images.

Music recording numbers –both legal and illegal– may be on the rise in “America,” but soon there will be absolutely no music in this Evening Land. No Emersonian sounds.

For I submit that –as with the proverbial tree in the forest that falls w/o a person around– if Nancy Meyers makes another flick with Hans Zimmer, his score won’t be heard unless Marcel’s tuning in. And he won’t live much longer than I will. Not his spirit.

This is where this article was supposed to end. But, then, an encore was begged for…at the curtain call:

No, really. No one will be there. Here.

Like how The Daily Show has Naomi “Diasaster Capitalism” Klein on the show…and Harper’s makes her new book, “The Shock Doctrine,” the feature cover story…and how mainly only people who currently hold tickets for life-preservers (for the upcoming, orchestrated floods) constitute the viewers/readers.

There’s lots of nodding in agreement…as there was w Naomi’s work of recent years past (all amounting to –albeit from different angles– the same take on Globalization/Capitalism, etc.), BUT nary a change in…anything. Least of all behavior.

That doesn’t mean we all shouldn’t applaud the courageous, talented, caring woman. However, perhaps we can rise above such no-brainism. In other words, “Good, but now what?” God, have I thrust that out and about 4,000 different ways already!

That’s why I’d like to put on a show at our little vintage furnishings shop, Blossom Home, which has a layout somewhat like a tiny, itsy bitsy 16th/17th-century theatre, begging for productions in scenic perspective.

A pre-Emerson setting infused with Emersonian elements…that might help on some count. For the individual, or in a small, but significant societal sense.

A play, doing –essentially– what those musicians were doing on the sinking Titanic, looking and listening beyond the innavigable sea.

For sometimes there is Truth in a crowd. In fact, in many cases Truth only comes with a rendezvous of seekers. Contradictory vis-a-vis almost all of my writing, I can’t help but express that now.

The show must go on (soon), in spite of what they say that Emerson says, playing with themselves.