The Teacup Whale

I came across this story in an old, coverless edition on the bookshelf. I understand that It has been featured in several collections, most notably Tales for Little Rebels. That being said, the short story itself is so...precious that one balks at looking deeper into it (even though it is the irresistible next step). It is about a boy who finds a whale in a puddle and who, upon noticing he is a whale, immediately takes him home and puts him first into a teacup of water, then other receptacles of varying size as the handsome little black fellow grows bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger .  Now I've done some wiki reading on Lydia Gibson, and I understand that she was quite the leftist [although I'm sure she would have reconsidered supporting the soviet communist party had she known where it would end up. Or perhaps she was simply not as well-informed as one would like to believe(?)]. She seemed more to be an appendage of that time of upheaval, rather than an actual revolutionary. That being said, her story echoes in a number of directions, some possibly unintended. For me, her little contended captive recalls several dispossessed peoples who she [possibly] wished would grow more solute, and achieve some liberation-just as the whale, having grown bigger and stronger-big enough to swim out-did. Juan tells me that I am looking too deep this puddle, but it has been my experience that often, creative persons when asked about the meaning of a piece, will say only that which is palateable, give an ill-defined shadow of its true meaning while hoping to reach those they hope to reach. Perhaps she did hold this opinion, and decided to be silent, racial tolerance being what it was in those days. This is especially considering the attitude of the boy's mother in the story. She denies the whale's whaleness (hahaha!!) untill the end of the story when he breaks that chain! Or maybe I am confusing shadows on the cave wall with reality (?). Needless to say, while it could be interpreted in this way, the story is not outrightly political, and is such fanciful nonsense and is so pleasantly written that I would recommend it as a read.









---Mono

Joni Mitchell Hits

On the previous Saturday, we did a review of Thione Seck's album 'Orientation'. In hindsight, that review was an utter failure at describing a phenomenal album and therefore has been left until another time. Joni Michell's hits is a recollection of some of her best songs from the the mid 1960s until the mid 1990s. The album stars off with 'Urge for Going', an acoustic track where she accepts that change is necessary but chides the accompanying consequences. She sings about human and animal reactions to the changing of seasons. Chelsea Morning is also another acoustic track but it should be noted that Mitchell's playing style is strumming and more rhythmic than on 'Urge for Going'. The track was inspired by her apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City. Big Yellow taxi is one of Joni's biggest hits, although personally, it isn't one of my favorites. The real highlight of this album is an epic entitled 'Woodstock' tracking a "child of God" and her traversing the midwest to reach the famed music festival. This track is a composition on an electric piano played by Joni. Another highlight is 'Help Me' in which she asks a man to end her suffering and come into her life. If you are a looking for an introduction to the folk music or just a nostalgic old-timer trying to hold back the years, this is a fantastic album all around

BOOK: Nineteen Eighty-Four

    
            Orwell seemed to truly seek that position which the artist should occupy: that of the neutral bard. With Animal farm, he warned against the perils of political revolution by alegoricizing a certain famous (and failed)  revolution of our time. From this book came the quote "All the animals on the farm are equal. Some animals are more equal than others" (or something to that effect). Growing out of this is what is probably considered his greatest work: Nineteen Eighty-Four, the anti-thesis of his views. Shockingly, I consider Orwell an optimist. He believed in socialist democracy, a system that has been fairly successful in Western Europe, but is essentially confined to flickering experiments in the New World. Flickering thanks to the economic aversion the west has to the independence of this quarter.
            It must be noted that this is a startlingly prophetic book. Ironically, not exactly in the fashion that Orwell meant. He foresaw a world completely checkmated by the political systems of the day. The inner party served as the ruling class, and the outer party members served as the middle class, [the only class most democratic societies pay any attention to, for it is from here that the politicians and rebels arise.] The poor were represented by the Proles, an element of the society supposedly so incapable of gestalt thought that they were used solely as the indolent "cattle of [the] civillisation". That he was passionate about The Party is made obvious by his definition (again paraphrased) of its divisions:

The Ministry of Love   -  Headquarters of the thought-police, which concerned itself with Torture

The Ministry of Peace  -  Which concerned itself with War matters

The Ministry of Plenty  -  Which ensured creature comforts for the members of the inner party at the
expense of the starvation of the outer Party [again the only class worth ruling]

The Ministry of Truth  -  Which concerned itself with demagogy, and creating existential entropy through "historical revisionism".


             George allegorecized awry communism/socialism as exemplified by the Soviet Union and the Nazi Party. He imagined literal controls imposed upon thought by means of the party's main control device: the thought police. This clearly recalls the intelligence branch of the KGB, the NKVD or its Nazi SS equivlent, the Sicherheitsdienst. It monitored the activities of the populace (again referring only to the Outer Party.) through the one-way mirror of the telescreen and various other means.
             The real verisimilitude in this book is in fact a paradox. While the party's rise to power followed the basic failed revolution formula explained in the book of the brotherhood (possibly a pastiche of Marx's conditions for revolution in his reply to Hegel's definition of the Right)- the middle lusts for the position of the high, convinces the low of solidarity and brotherhood to use their shear numbers, after which it assumes the position of the high- in our free world, these controls that Orwell refers to have been imposed upon us by our own choice. 
             A famous Art-Historian (I can't remember who) said that "given the pursuit of answers and the finding of them, [he would] choose the former" (again paraphrased). This defines this century's status quo and exemplifies a concept made concrete by Orwell: Doublethink-The deliberate holding of two mutually exclusive opinions which are mutually exclusive to each other, and not going mad. The denial of truth has lead to a variety of chronic social and economic ills, and the intellectual prolicising (forgive me) of non-ruling members through the propagation of weak entertainment and slanted journalism enforces this status quo as forcefully as any thought Police could.
            Julia, the protagonist's interest, worked on the novel-writing machines in the Ministry of Truth. I find it curious that even this sphere has been successfully penetrated by mediocrity-successfully insofar as the financial returns to the authors, movie adaptations etc- especially considering how much personal effort must be applied to write a book. Or at least at one time; the novel-writing machines are very much active and functioning in the corporate mechanism known as the writing assistant (or whatever) which allows anyone to write a book sparing effort or humility. It has relegated an art to a characterless subject of mass production.
           Einstein foresaw that one day our technological progress would overtake our nobility (intellectual or otherwise). The Novel-writing machines of today operate in another way as well. The absence of music programs in American schools (for years) is directly responsible for the profusion of sampled, autotuned, borderline cavemanspeak entertainment, and has resulted in the explosion of gangster culture which in turn contributes to the rising crime-rates in ever-expanding slums such as the Bronx, New York (according to juan) etc.; taking away the tutelage to self-expression that the creatively virile poorer quarters rely on forces them to adapt to simpler, more expedient means. Hence the Hustle."Artistes" literally refer to their work as "product", and subsequently hustle all of us.
            There are many, many more parallels-such is the quality of the work-but I will leave them to you to draw, if you haven't done so already (I probably am the last man on earth to read this book.). These are the things that impressed me the most, and I view them as the interpretation of a great text for our times. I finished this book some time last year, and meditated on it for a while afterward. It strikes me that we have made ourselves Proles. Society has checkmated itself, and we are living in 1984.





---Mono