"Don’t whinge, don’t poke, don’t pick the scab of Time. / How long we’ve got, the loving gods won’t say."

Wrote Horace in Ode 11, Book 1, as liberally translated by James Parker in "An Ode to Writing Odes/When the universe gives you a gift, send a thank-you note" (The Atlantic). Parker writes a feature in The Atlantic called "The Odes."

In his ode to odes, he writes about his project:

[O]de-writing is a two-way street. The universe will disclose itself to you, it will give you occasions for odes, it will blaze with interest and appreciability, but you’ve got to be ode-ready.... Respond to the essence with your essence... [I]t gets results. Squirrels have treated me differently since I wrote an ode to squirrels: They give me the nod, those little fiends. And I see odes everywhere now. I see them boiling up from the ground where my dog squats to do his business. I see them poking down through the clouds in fingers of divine light. Your odes, too—can you see them?

From the above-linked ode to squirrels:

Stravinsky derangement syndrome.

I'm so glad I just made a "Stravinsky" tag — prompted by Spike Jones's tale of squeaky shoes —because I do have old posts that I can add it to — 5 old posts! I'm strangely proud of that. I'm not in any way suggesting I have serious musical analysis anywhere in this blog's 13-year archive, but that's not the kind of thing I've ever tried to do, so I'm not looking for pride in anything I'm not ashamed of having failed to do. It's the miscellany that amuses me. I'm going for something between the extremes of subtle and corny.

Stravinsky comes up in a September 2016 post, "Donald Trump, Sex Pistol/The punk-rock appeal of the GOP nominee." A writer in The Atlantic — James Parker — talked about "the impression Stravinsky’s 'Sacre du Printemps' made in Paris in 1913, then shifts to 1976, when The Sex Pistols went on British daytime TV live," and I wrote:

But what's Parker's point here? Is Donald Trump like The Sex Pistols because he goes on TV and talks to his interviewers in a way they're not used to and that busts up their game? Well, sort of. Parker says he's that and simultaneously the guy watching at home getting pissed off at the Pistols, because he's using a "transgressive, volatile, carnivalesque" style with respect to conservative things like "chaos in our communities" and "barbarians at the border."...

Parker says (among many other things): "Trump’s speaking style is from the future, from a time to come when human consciousness has broken down into little floating atavistic splinters of subjectivity and superstition and jokes that aren’t really jokes." Of course, Parker loathes Trump, but that reminded me of something I said about Trump as an exemplar of a new way of speaking:



I'm seeing something more positive about the speaking style of the future (and not just because I do cruel neutrality but because I think I'm speaking in the style of the future too).

I just watched that Bloggingheads clip — from a month and a half before the election — and it's quite interesting in light of Trump's actually becoming President and taking his new way of speaking to the White House.

Following the tag further back into the archive, back in 2013, it was, "Picture yourself, 100 years ago, losing your composure over this":

Samatha Bee, self-consolation, and the smug liberal problem.

CNN's "State of the Union" today began with a clip from Trump's Harrisburg rally (which took place last night, the same night as the White House Correspondents Dinner):

TRUMP: As you may know, there's another big gathering taking place tonight in Washington, D.C. Did you hear about it? A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation's capital right now.

Consoling each other. Very funny.

And then the first guest on the show is Samantha Bee, who had an alternative event last night, called "Not the White House Correspondents Association Dinner," which was... what?

JAKE TAPPER: The not -- not the -- not -- your dinner, not the other on... Not the White House Correspondents Dinner. And, more largely, what do you see as the role of comedy in the Trump era?

SAMANTHA BEE: Well, you know, I mean, listen, we -- we mostly do the show for ourselves. We just need catharsis. We need catharsis. We need a place to kind of analyze things in a different way. We need to see -- we see things through a different filter. We just need to break it down for ourselves in a way that we can understand.

Ah! In other words, you were consoling each other. Trump got it right.

Then, Tapper brought up a Ross Douthat column from last September, "Hillary Clinton's Samantha Bee Problem":

"Donald Trump, Sex Pistol/The punk-rock appeal of the GOP nominee."

A clickbait title good enough to get me — a staunch clickbait resister — to click through to The Atlantic, and I'm going to encourage you to click through because the illustration — by Diego Patiño — is really good.

The article is by James Parker, who regularly writes about music, so the Sex Pistols talk is more than just shallow goofiness. Parker begins by talking about the impression Stravinsky’s "Sacre du Printemps" made in Paris in 1913, then shifts to 1976, when The Sex Pistols went on British daytime TV live:

The beery drawl of Pistols guitarist Steve Jones filters louchely from the TV set: “You dirty fucker,” he says to the host, Bill Grundy. Then he reconsiders: “What a fucking rotter.”...

Wait. You don't need to rely on Parker's literary stylings — louchely, whatever —  to visualize the occasion. It's on YouTube:



But what's Parker's point here? Is Donald Trump like The Sex Pistols because he goes on TV and talks to his interviewers in a way they're not used to and that busts up their game? Well, sort of. Parker says he's that and simultaneously the guy watching at home getting pissed off at the Pistols, because he's using a "transgressive, volatile, carnivalesque" style with respect to conservative things like "chaos in our communities" and "barbarians at the border."

It’s as if the Sex Pistols were singing about law and order instead of anarchy, as if their chart-busting (banned) single, “God Save the Queen,” were not a foamingly sarcastic diatribe but a sincere pledge of fealty to the monarch. Electrifying!

An amusing paradox, but Parker fails to acknowledge that it's a paradox made possible by the stodgy, humorless repression of the liberal side of American political culture. Parker continues with his good if purplish descriptions: Trump has a "big marmalade face and that dainty mobster thing he does with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand." Mobster? Or was that supposed to be "lobster"? Who knows? I know what he means about that hand gesture. (And did you know that Trump said his hand gestures count as a form of exercise?)

Parker says (among many other things): "Trump’s speaking style is from the future, from a time to come when human consciousness has broken down into little floating atavistic splinters of subjectivity and superstition and jokes that aren’t really jokes." Of course, Parker loathes Trump, but that reminded me of something I said about Trump as an exemplar of a new way of speaking:



I'm seeing something more positive about the speaking style of the future (and not just because I do cruel neutrality but because I think I'm speaking in the style of the future too).