Somewhere
up and over the Bering Straights just now. There is a television screen in front of me broadcasting
Americans having predictable complications. To the right and the left is the same projection. If my eyes gaze upward to the
left I’m drawn in to another representation of dental-surgery Americans sharing
trite things passionately. I can
train my eyes to the packets of darkness that are not occupied by the cathode
projection, but in every periphery a screen draws you off.
Flying in economy is OK. This, if the two middle seats on a row of four are open. All the better if the
gent on the other end is a mate. No, you're not offered cheap champagne as you sit waiting to depart, and it'll be some stewed meat rather than a fillet but other than this there is nothing else you’d
really want to secure in business class if you had this much space. I’m overdue for some sleep and
this particular entry process may only go so far.
Flying about I’m usually on Air China and have ample room to make
fun of their in-flight entertainment on shanzhai
Candid Camera and Mr. Bean programming. I
never listen but am always forced to watch whatever’s broadcast. Right now I’m am compelled to watch,
(while Ali Akbarh Khan plays beautifully in my ears), a show about tropical
fish. Mind you, I actually think
tropical fish are interesting. What
is odd though is that I have found
my eyes being pulled to a nonsense tier-two infotainment and my mind assumed I
was on Air China. Yes, it was so
bad it had an Air China quality to it, and I had to pause and consider that
this was the best that American soft power could project. Crayfish are settling now in the tank.
Enough of these men on the electric organ. I’ve got Shirley Scott keeping thing
sweltering with the 1963 release “Great Scott” and the song of the moment: “The
Scott” It is a very rich and flat
attack that Ms. Scott lays out. I
wonder if there is any live footage of her playing like this. (There is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqJ_ho8hvLE ) How hard it must
have been for women to be taken seriously in any jazz context other than
vocal. She poaches the sound till
it settles down soft, on this later tune, “Nothing Ever Changes My Love.” I’ve got to look up just who this lady
is. (Philly born) Good for her.
On the inescapable screen omphalus that United swears is
entertainment, people are reintroducing sea turtles into the ocean. There is a crowd. It is as if some remarkable extra
terrestrial is being baptized. Everyone in this perky silent experience feels so good about themselves. We’re serious about saving
animals. That is absolutely
clear. It’s a sea turtle! That's right. They are, as a group, endangered. There is danger. If you save mosquito from peril you are
an idiot. But help a sea turtle to
bury its eggs and then carry it back down to the ocean? That’s rectifying something in danger. Who decided upon this broadcast?
Shirley Soctt sounds very assertive. I like it. The paired down accompaniment is perfect. It’s just her and a drummer. The TV now has people walking in
to a room aggressively. They live
an apartment that is so big as to be unbelievable, for anyone who isn’t living
in down town Oklahoma City. It’s
coming up the mid-time moments of this flight. Perhaps I should stroll to the back and see if they have a
bowl of bananas out there. They don't. "would you like the water or the water?"
I had meant to bring one book on this flight, but wound up
bringing another. I’ve got a
classic old collection of Sinology essays. This is a collection I’ve read before. On Amazon I found a second hand version
of a book, which I used to own: “The Chairman’s New Clothes,” which is largely a collection
of essays about the Cultural Revolution.
Simon Leys is confrontational sharp in his monthly journal-like examination that collective
insanity from which so many suffered.
Here is Simon Leys’ real-time view into the maelstrom, as 天崩地裂[1] without the repose of an historian's distance:
“Certain Western commentators
insist on taking the official title literally, basing their understanding of a
revolution in Chinese culture or Chinese civilization the Chinese term wen hua permits this double
interpretation. In the context of
such an inspiring theme, any attempt to reduce this remarkable to the mean and
trivial dimension of a “power struggle” rings painfully, if not slanderously in
a Western maoists ears. Chinese
maoists are less squeamish: the
definition of the “Cultural Revolution” as a “power struggle” (chuan li tou cheng) was in fact not
dreamed up by the regime’s enemies, it was the official definition used by
Peiking, and was constantly repeated in the editorials of the People’s Daily, The Liberation Army Daily,
and the Red Flag from the beginning
of 1967, when the movement was sufficiently advanced to be able to do away with
the protection of the cultural smokescreen behind which it had first set out.
One immediately gets a sense of Leys’ courage to state what
is now rather obvious but that the time, writing in France in 1967 must have
been like kerosene at a campfire. I’m thinking back to what is now I suppose,
fifteen years ago, when I read these for the first time. I can remember feeling like I was in
the presence of greatness. Here
was someone who’s writing was so grounded, and effortless and his critique so
piercing. How could I have been
reading about all this as long as I had and never heard of Simon Leys? That's what I'd thought then. Where is the contemporary version of this
sort of brave, informed, contrarian reporting today?
[1] tiānbēngdìliè:
heaven falls and earth rends (idiom); rocked by a major disaster / fig. violent
revolution / major social upheaval
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