It’s all just more overheated air from the age of grievance.
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Grievance seems awfully infectious at the moment, particularly among the restive bands of irksome politicians infesting the globe and billionaires whose grip on the world’s wealth has caused many of them to lose hold on anything the rest of us might deem worthwhile.
The current inhabitant of the White House – the world’s chief grievance merchant – is the embodiment of both appalling politician and billionaire, with no discernible joy in whatever passes for his heart.
We won’t write about him, either, beyond quoting the US poet Elayne Griffin Baker who wrote in 2020, during the first term of the current president: “There’s no literature or poetry in the White House. No music.”
Made famous when it was spoken by Bruce Springsteen, who has music in his veins, the lament continues: “There are no pets in this White House. No loyal man’s best friend. No Socks the family cat. No kids’ science fairs.”
Probably best there is neither puppy nor moggy to kick around. The Trump family lost a reported $1.6 billion in this week’s cryptocurrency bath. How unfortunate.
Crowds enjoy Carol of the Bells in Paris. Videos of the performance have gone viral.Credit: SOURCE: Julien Cohen/YouTube
In desperate search of a more engaging subject, I took to doomscrolling and came across one of those lovely videos featuring a flash mob bringing glorious music to unsuspecting citizens.
This one was from Paris.
Crowds attending the Christmas lights ceremony on the very glamorous Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore were treated, in the video, to more than 100 choristers and musicians performing an orchestral version of Carol of the Bells.
The music for this mesmerising Christmas chant/carol was written in 1916 by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych.
Western audiences first embraced the carol, known as Shchedryk (“Bountiful”), when the Ukrainian National Chorus undertook a concert tour of Europe in 1919.
And here’s a piece of orchestral history for those who might yearn to stick it to those who lack music in their hearts and who currently hold cold-blooded sway over Ukraine’s future.
That 1919 tour was undertaken to generate European support for the brand new independent nation of Ukraine, which the Bolshevik government in Moscow refused to recognise.
Choristers sing from windows as the crowd enjoys the Carol of the Bells flash mob in Paris.Credit: Source: Julien Cohen/YouTube
A more fitting musical moment than a 100-strong flash mob performing the Carol of the Bells in the City of Light could barely be imagined these 106 brutal years later, as Ukraine rests its last hopes on the goodwill of European neighbours.
It got me reminiscing about music’s power to confront the madness of the world, particularly as Christmas approaches.
Years ago I wrote a play, Strange Incarceration, based on an Italian prisoner-of-war camp that once stood in the Ovens Valley outside the north-east Victorian town of Myrtleford during World War II.
While undertaking research, I interviewed several long-term residents of the area.
They were mainly women. When the Italian camp operated, many of the Australian men of the valley were away fighting in North Africa or Greece and later New Guinea or were inhabiting Japanese POW camps themselves, leaving their wives and daughters to run the family farms.
The Myrtleford POW camp sat in a beautiful natural amphitheatre. The camp was for officers, men of culture.
Several women told me that on long lonely evenings, they sat on the verandahs of their farmhouses listening to the Italian prisoners singing, their voices echoing off the hills.
At Christmas, the Italians sang carols in their own language – O Come, All Ye Faithful was rendered as Adeste Fideles, and Silent Night was Astro del Ciel.
It was so beautiful, one of the women told me, that tears spilled into the night and the war seemed impossibly far away.
It brought to mind stories of the Christmas Eve of 1914 during the earlier war, when German soldiers in their trenches on the Western Front began singing Stille Nacht, to be met by British troops singing Silent Night.
A poster depicts the 1914 Christmas truce.
Both sides, moved by a beloved carol in different languages, emerged to mingle in No Man’s Land, exchanging gifts of cigarettes and food before returning to their posts to resume the killing, which didn’t stop until November 11, 1918.
So here’s a thought for this column without a subject: could a bit more music relieve, at least temporarily, the most soul-destroying elements of the current age of grievance? Please?
