An Ode to the Ode to Joy

The Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has been played so often, in so many different guises, that we sometimes lose sight of how beautiful it is. Featured in countless films and television shows, rearranged for a thousand middle school concert bands, appropriated as the international anthem of the European Union, perhaps no other snatch of classical music has so deeply penetrated the consciousness of listeners the world over. The opening bars of Beethoven’s own Fifth Symphony are the only rival I can conceive for it, but even then I would give the crown to Ninth. Whereas that famous three-note phrase is laden with doom, the Ode to Joy is a, well, joyous expression of all that is good and noble in the human soul.

Maxim Gorky once related an anecdote about Vladimir Lenin:

“I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day… But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things and pat the heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. One can’t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. They ought to be beaten on the head, beaten mercilessly…”

Lenin could choose not to listen; he could choose not to let the attraction continue beyond the final bars. But while that music lasted, he was constrained, by the laws of his humanity, to face up to the essential beauty at the heart of humankind. So am I constrained by the laws of my humanity when I hear the Ninth. I listen to the fourth movement, about five minutes in, as the orchestra takes off into the development after the first major statement of the Ode to Joy. As the strings strain up, I am, without fail, reduced to tears. I have no more choice in the matter than does a rubber ball to feel the gravitational pull of the Earth below it.

A Critique of Western Civilization

Below the bluffs,
across the street
from the white-washed condominiums

A crumpled McDonald's cup,
slick industrial polypropylene
beside a tire-flattened Tallboy,
Keystone Light

Popping off the plastic top
reveals a Lifestyles condom--
expended,
expendable

Across the highway,
across the spine of railroad-tracks,
vanish into black walnut
and golden corn.

September 2010

Migration

Driving north on I-29

the telephone poles recede out of sight,

marching to vanishing point,

infantrymen in a ninth-grade perspective study

Waves of wheat stain orange-gold

beneath a pink-plumed sky

shortly after the Equinox

Franck’s Sonata in A,

pound out racing passages,

fly up under the wings of geese. South-flying,

they cartwheel to straining strings,

barrel-rolling

past the recapitulation into the coda,

south for the winter.

September 2010

Updating Obsolescence

(A column I wrote for the school newspaper at the University of South Dakota, the Volante. You can read the original at the Volante's website here.)

Upon returning to USD for the fall, I discovered that the library had purchased all-new computers for the Academic Commons. My first thought was, “Ooh, shiny!” However, as I began to use these new computers – my first encounter with Windows 7 – I began to have other thoughts, specifically, “How the hell do I draw a table?”

Once again, Microsoft had rearranged the toolbars for the new edition of Word, along with a myriad of other “improvements.” They did not reinvent the wheel entirely, of course. They left it in a shape familiar enough that I could still use it, but not so familiar that I could accomplish my goal without a lot of needless confusion and frustration.

This is a great example of planned obsolescence, an idea pioneered by General Motors during the 1930s. GM discovered that if they released new models every year, instead of waiting five or ten years until they had actually made substantial improvements to automotive design, they could make a lot more money. GM made so much money, in fact, that other car companies got on the planned obsolescence bandwagon, followed by the rest of the manufacturing community.

Today, planned obsolescence is an integral part of our consumer culture, from the cars we drive to the computers with which we design them. Obstinate as I am, I continue to use Microsoft Office 2003 on my laptop. However, laptop is also pre-programmed to download the latest Microsoft auto-updates, updates designed for the latest versions of program. It is at this point that the computer gets confused: “Wha-wha-what? What is this ancient software doing here? Does not compute!”

In the titanic struggle that ensues, more than one computer has been laid low (e.g., mine). In effect, you have to upgrade in order to continue using Windows, whether you (or your computer) like it or not. Obsolescence is not merely planned; it is forced.

In the JFK assassination of planned obsolescence, however, Microsoft is far from a lone gunman. For example, my iPod recently decided to go haywire on me. This would not bother me so much – sometimes technology just malfunctions, after all – if it weren’t for the fact that I bought the thing two months ago, in order to replace my last iPod, which was itself a replacement for another failed piece of hardware.

One would think that, given the technological wizards employed there (and the prices we are expected to pay for their creations), Apple could make mp3 players that function for longer than half a year. Then again, if Apple will have a new, more expensive iPhone ready to sell next quarter, why would they want the product they release today to last any longer than that?

Another, well, textbook example of the inanity of planned obsolescence is the college textbook. How much do I really gain when I have to spend a hundred dollars on the eighth edition of a research methods textbook, when the seventh edition is identical in almost every way and costs ten dollars? I have aced more than one course, all the while using the earlier, inferior, and vastly less expensive version of the book.

My complaint is with no one company, nor with any one industry. My complaint is with the culture of consumerism that undergirds the release, every two years, of yet another “upgrade” to a perfectly serviceable system. The examples above, all too familiar to the modern student, beg the question: how much is that revised introduction worth, anyway?

It makes more sense to me to wait five or ten years, until most of us have figured out how to use the wheel in the first place, until manufacturers have had time to work out the kinks and actually make meaningful, useful adjustments, before we go about reinventing it. It’s less wasteful of time, talent, and resources, not to mention less frustrating for you and me.

Then again, that’s not the point. The point is to get us, as consumers, to consume more. And consume we do indeed, as people are forever drawn by the allure of the new. It matters little whether anything is actually better than before. It’s newer; therefore, it must be better. For my part, I’m happy with Microsoft Office 2003.