The following was a spontaneous reaction to the tragedy of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the loss of Flight 93.

(in progress)

Before the world blows up there’s just one thing I want to say:

I never liked the song “Georgia On My Mind.”

In fact, I can’t stand that song!

Had to get it off my chest.

Also.

“White Bird” by Its a Beautiful Day. Hated it.

I never liked The Rolling Stones. At all.

Also, “The Way We Were”
performed by Streisand was a blight on the music landscape. So were disco BeeGees.

Also:

The Theme From Mash. Godawful.

Hey this feels good.

While I’m listing the songs I hate, I’m making room for the idea that it really is time to abolish nuclear weapons- and I believe it is now possible. It must be.

Boz Scaggs’ “Lido.” I want to scream. But I do feel better.

“Wonderful Tonight” by EC. Oh hell no.

“Bat Out of Hell”- Meatloaf. I may push the button myself. Awful. But I want to live. With all the beautiful bugs and flowers.

“Inagaddadavida” -Glorious. Play it again! Before they drop the Big One.

Essay. Great Wall of Trump

“Parts of Speech: Words TV Memories and Kafka on the special occasion of a presidential address.”

Americans,

…is it a great “Great Wall’? Or The “Great Great Wall’?

Or just a really great, great wall? But why only two “greats”? It should be “The Great Great Great Wall!” Then he could say “the totally Great Great Great Wall” -so its greatness would be completely beyond dispute.

Because someone in the press would certainly write, and a kazillion people would tweet, that the wall is not that great, really. And make the wall look tiny.

The ‘really Great Wall’ line reminds me of when, in early days of TV, the famous Ed Sullivan would open his variety show with a monologue of patter and he would always say “We have a really great ‘shoe’ tonight” -he would elide the syllable of the word ‘show’ and it was a laugh line for impressionists. Not the painters, but the show biz imitators of famous voices. Oh, they don’t do that any more. Ok.

Ed Sullivan was famous for introducing new performers to the American audience. He introduced Elvis on his TV debut, but there was an uproar about his dance moves, his “gyrations”. I know, in America, Land of the Free.

Ed Sullivan also introduced the Beatles but eventually there was an uproar over them too. One of the Beatles noted, correctly, that they were more famous than, well, you know who (Jesus Christ) and again Americans freaked out.

Americans freaked out about the Beatles and built a bonfire of Beatles records and teen magazines and figurines and stuff- an example of freedom of speech. The signs said:”Beatles Go Home!”

Also featured on the Ed Sullivan Show was the mouse puppet Topo Gigio.

Topo would perch on Ed Sullivan’s shoulder and say “Eddie, Keesa me goo’ night!”

Everyone knew those lines from Ed Sullivan , just like SNL today.

So last night, when the president said “we’re going to build a great great wall” he must’ve known it sounded like Ed Sullivan. Which is funny.

And of course there already is a Great Wall, which doesn’t relate to the American imagination at all, so somebody might get confused. And that wall was like China’s Big Dig. It symbolizes a project that takes a long time and a lot of effort and resources. Perhaps a million people dropped dead making that particular wall, they think. Not sure the speech writers really thought this through.

The writer Franz Kafka- not a great American- wrote a story called The Great Wall of China, in which he lays out the tremendous challenge the construction would present. From childhood the workers were indoctrinated, thus:

“I still remember very well how as small children who could hardly walk we stood in our teacher’s little garden and had to construct a sort of wall out of pebbles, and how the teacher gathered up his coat and ran against the wall, naturally making everything collapse, and then scolded us so much for the weakness of our construction that we ran off in all directions howling to our parents. A tiny incident, but an indication of the spirit of the times.”

The work of Franz Kafka can inform in this context, in an era of authoritarian fervor, in which the policy of torture is openly proposed and promoted and promulgated, and incidents of antisemitism in the US are increasing. Though he died in 1924, Kafka’s writings of torture machinery and hunger and desperation and cruel humor prefigured the horrors to come in World War ll, and the Holocaust, and the almost insurmountable challenge to the Human Spirit, if there is such a thing.

…Of course, there is the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant in Chinatown, so if you google the presidential Great Wall you might end up there. You’d get stuck on Yelp again though -which really is the Enemy of the People, in my opinion.

So does a great wall preserve an open society, or just make things impossibly confusing, philosophically? Should the wall last for centuries or merely exist as an idea and a cultural artifact? Should it be visible from space? Does the Wall destroy the freedom it is meant to protect?

We could turn to Jean Paul Sartre- not a great American- whose novel The Wall may inform our current dilemma…

jk 3/1/17