12/10/08

Blackberry Cobbler

(Abstruseness follows)

If I were to open a post with a brief explanation about my beat-up, 10 year-old Honda Civic, about its 30+ miles to the gallon, about its next scheduled tune up, which is sure to cost me more than the car is worth, or the fact that collision insurance costs more than my rent, you might think: Hmmm, what the hell does this have to do with music?

Well, my friends (that’s for you Sator), it might not explicitly have anything to do with music, but it has everything to do with the latest Mark Swed lead-in.

When General Motors called to ask about my "Slob service," I didn’t take it personally. Still, as a longtime Saab loyalist, I can’t say that I’m overjoyed that my tax dollars are needed to bail out the bunglers in Detroit who took over the once imaginative Swedish make a few years ago and have systematically devalued it.

That’s scarily analogous to the forgotten introduction of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

Honest Abe: On the way here, our train made a stop in a small town outside of Philadelphia. It was just long enough to catch a bite to eat at the local inn, where we had a nice roasted chicken, served to us by the owner’s wife. She was affable and, by and by, urged us to try her famous blackberry cobbler. Unfortunately for her, as a child I had a very bad experience with several blackberry bushes, which rendered the thought of eating the cobbler less than desirable.

I no longer expect to drive a new Saab on the road to a better future. I do, however, insist on a better future, like the one I saw at the EXPO Center on Saturday morning. The American dream exists if we want it and if we are not so stupid that we throw away all our money on the things that don’t work rather than fund the things that work brilliantly.

Honest Abe: Yet, the innkeeper’s wife was so polite and good-natured, I couldn’t help thinking that this is what makes America the number one-best country. If by trying her cobbler I can symbolically lift this nation toward unity, toward singular motivation, then burying the dead today fortifies my belief that no one monument is greater than one country’s enduring ideals.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground.

Real work was done, and some real Beethoven was the reward.

Honest Abe: Uh, maybe we can hallow this ground, after all.
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3 comments:

Erik Loomis said...

"If I were to open a post with a brief explanation about my beat-up, 10 year-old Honda Civic, about its 30+ miles to the gallon, about its next scheduled tune up, which is sure to cost me more than the car is worth, or the fact that collision insurance costs more than my rent."

Have you been spying on me?

Tom Strini said...

http://www.theautochannel.com/media/photos/buick/1998/98_buick_riviera.jpg

I drive a 1998 Buick Riviera. Look at the picture; isn't that one beautiful car?

The Riviera has a radio. Sometimes, music comes out of the radio. I don't recall anything by Schoenberg emanating from the excellent, GM factory-installed sound system. But if a piece by Schoenberg ever would fill the luxurious leather interior of my jet-black land shark, it might be one of the selections played so ably by members of the Ensemble for the Hothouse Preservation of Old New Music Tuesday evening at University of Wisconsin-Waukesha Library Recital Hall Tuesday evening...

--Strini
PS: I really do own a Riviera. It's ring-a-ding-ding-Ratpack cool. I love it.

Anonymous said...

Abstruseness. Good word.


Recimes: Recipes for one.