Cities of the Plain
(Sodom et Gomorrhe)
[Vol. 4 of Remembrance of Things Past (À la Recherche du temps perdu)]

“Their honour precarious, their liberty provisional, lasting only until the discovery of their crime; their position unstable, like that of the poet who one day was feasted at every table, applauded in every theatre in London, and on the next was driven from every lodging, unable to find a pillow upon which to lay his head, turning the mill like Samson and saying like him: “The two sexes shall die, each in a place apart!”; excluded even, save on the days of general disaster when the majority rally round the victim as the Jews rallied round Dreyfus, from the sympathy–at times from the society–of their fellows, in whom they inspire only disgust at seeing themselves as they are, portrayed in a mirror which, ceasing to flatter them, accentuates every blemish that they have refused to observe in themselves, and makes them understand that what they have been calling their love (a thing to which, playing upon the word, they have by association annexed all that poetry, painting, music, chivalry, asceticism have contrived to add to love) springs not from an ideal of beauty which they have chosen but from an incurable malady; like the Jews again (save some who will associate only with others of their race and have always on their lips ritual words and consecrated pleasantries), shunning one another, seeking out those who are most directly their opposite, who do not desire their company, pardoning their rebuffs, moved to ecstasy by their condescension; but also brought into the company of their own kind by the ostracism that strikes them, the opprobrium under which they have fallen, having finally been invested, by a persecution similar to that of Israel, with the physical and moral characteristics of a race, sometimes beautiful, often hideous, finding (in spite of all the mockery with which he who, more closely blended with, better assimilated to the opposing race, is relatively, in appearance, the least inverted, heaps upon him who has remained more so) a relief in frequenting the society of their kind, and even some corroboration of their own life, so much so that, while steadfastly denying that they are a race (the name of which is the vilest of insults), those who succeed in concealing the fact that they belong to it they readily unmask, with a view less to injuring them, though they have no scruple about that, than to excusing themselves; and, going in search (as a doctor seeks cases of appendicitis) of cases of inversion in history, taking pleasure in recalling that Socrates was one of themselves, as the Israelites claim that Jesus was one of them, without reflecting that there were no abnormals when homosexuality was the norm, no anti-Christians before Christ, that the disgrace alone makes the crime because it has allowed to survive only those who remained obdurate to every warning, to every example, to every punishment, by virtue of an innate disposition so peculiar that it is more repugnant to other men (even though it may be accompanied by exalted moral qualities) than certain other vices which exclude those qualities, such as theft, cruelty, breach of faith, vices better understood and so more readily excused by the generality of men; forming a freemasonry far more extensive, more powerful and less suspected than that of the Lodges, for it rests upon an identity of tastes, needs, habits, dangers, apprenticeship, knowledge, traffic, glossary, and one in which the members themselves, who intend not to know one another, recognise one another immediately by natural or conventional, involuntary or deliberate signs which indicate one of his congeners to the beggar in the street, in the great nobleman whose carriage door he is shutting, to the father in the suitor for his daughter’s hand, to him who has sought healing, absolution, defence, in the doctor, the priest, the barrister to whom he has had recourse; all of them obliged to protect their own secret but having their part in a secret shared with the others, which the rest of humanity does not suspect and which means that to them the most wildly improbable tales of adventure seem true, for in this romantic, anachronistic life the ambassador is a bosom friend of the felon, the prince, with a certain independence of action with which his aristocratic breeding has furnished him, and which the trembling little cit would lack, on leaving the duchess’s party goes off to confer in private with the hooligan; a reprobate part of the human whole, but an important part, suspected where it does not exist, flaunting itself, insolent and unpunished, where its existence is never guessed; numbering its adherents everywhere, among the people, in the army, in the church, in the prison, on the throne; living, in short, at least to a great extent, in a playful and perilous intimacy with the men of the other race, provoking them, playing with them by speaking of its vice as of something alien to it; a game that is rendered easy by the blindness or duplicity of the others, a game that may be kept up for years until the day of the scandal, on which these lion-tamers are devoured; until then, obliged to make a secret of their lives, to turn away their eyes from the things on which they would naturally fasten them, to fasten them upon those from which they would naturally turn away, to change the gender of many of the words in their vocabulary, a social constraint, slight in comparison with the inward constraint which their vice, or what is improperly so called, imposes upon them with regard not so much now to others as to themselves, and in such a way that to themselves it does not appear a vice.”

Yankee hater that I am, I’m glad I got to go to see a few games there, but really don’t see what’s so great about that stadium as it currently stands. Sure, its history gives it an aura similar to what I wrote about Tiger Stadium above, even surpassing it, but that aura is tough to see through the haze of captivity. The Yankees, frankly, are Microsoft, and are now being run by a cretin who had the temerity to suggest that the National League was destroying the game by not adopting the DH.

I recently went to see the Newark Bears, of the Independent League, play a Friday night game at their nice little ballpark. An interesting experience; looking at the rosters, most of the guys in this league are veritable Moonlight Grahams, having had a cup of coffee in the big leagues, and, for some reason, not stuck. The game was played at a high level, and the stadium was about half-full. Between each half-inning, a guy went into the crowd with a mic to quiz fans with Jersey trivia, led potato-sack races on the field and other novelty games, and hurled repeated insults at the Governor. It was annoying — though no where near as bad as what we see in the majors — and reflective of the point Ryan is making above that it’s just nearly impossible for baseball front offices to let fans sit in peace and take in the beauty of the park.

I’ll note here, also… the Tigers are climbing up the AL Central.

And, here’s more on the death of Tiger Stadium from my favorite blogfather.

I wonder what the new Yankee stadium will be like, because while so much of what you talk about was always in evidence at the greatest stadium in the world, I would be interested in seeing how the design of the new park changes the dynamic of seeing and reading the game.

Oddly enough, I discovered this post right after watching the first two episodes of Season 3 of The Wire, the first one shows Camden Yard and Jimmy’s wife with a lawyer dude with expensive seats behind home plate –how does class work into this new ballpark with all the special seating arrangements and corporate boxes? While watching it I really wanted to go to a game, but as I read this I tend to agree that sometimes watching it on the TV is far less annoying. The public spaces have become truly assaulting, and the idea of a ballgame that doesn’t cost one a couple of hundred dollars for a family, no less the endless intake of corporate messages, is, indeed, depressing. The public has surrendered any sense of dignity in its shared public experiences, so much so that we even go through those moments alone (echoing Ryan’s point here). We can’t help but sell everything, and the idea of design, advertising real estate, and the decline of all that is holy in America’s favorite pastime is yet another foreboding sign that we, to quote Jay-Z’s Lucifer, “gotta get our soul right!”

Although you’re careful in this post to acknowledge that, in the old Tiger Stadium, “there were hawkers and ads and plenty of consumption,” I think it’s worthwhile to point out that the ties between baseball and advertising run so deep that they might well be inseparable. Here are a few links to check out:

AMNH: “Enterprise and Opportunity”
BERA: “The Business of Basball”
ESPN: “The tangled Web of Sports and Advertising”

Now, I’m not arguing with your contention that recent changes in technology (and new stadiums) have intensified the advertising “pitch” at the ballpark. But I would say that the purity of which you speak was only made possible by an earlier form of information filtering that was much stronger than you remember it to be.

Anyone else hungry for a Reggie bar?

Curtis Mayfield, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Stevie Wonder– each of their musics had a particular political center, ranging from social criticism to collectivism to black nationalism to even, at times, hedonism, and they each produced both welcoming and politically-challenging, moment-transcendent music. And, frankly, I think the world would be a lot better if everyone were pleasant to one another; so why isn’t that a viable political stance?

Now, anyone who is looking solely to music for their politics is, in my view, casting the net too narrowly, but soundtracks are important and motivational and can help give (some) shape to a movement. Whatever gets you going, and gets other folks on-board, far’s I’m concerned. Punk, funk, or polka.

On that note, here’s a link to Darando’s “Let My People Go.” Great line: “Man build a rocket ship, take it to the moon; million dollar mission, just to bring back a piece of rock. We got starvation, panic over the land, and here’s a fool in a rocketship, trying to be Superman”.

Initially I wanted to write about how I disagree with your take on punk. How I think punk philosophy as applied to education, beyond DIY, can be more transformative because it is harder to tamethan, lets’ say “funk/soul type of approach to ethics/politics/culture.How it may very well be that punk connotes chaos and rejectionist ethos, but that very refusal often leads to critical and purposeful creation, a meaningful transformation. Punk seems to me much more politically useful: more challenging, serious, ready for confrontation. Less pleasant? Sure. Pleasantness should not be criteria for a political stance, or a movement, or a philosophy (even if that’s philosophy of teaching we are talking about)…

I could say that since punk was more explicitly a political movement it is hard to compare it to funk. There is certainly a political aspect to soul/funk as an expression of hope and pain from an oppressed community, but the music itself is not focused on political message nearly as much as punk, so they have very different relationships to political interpretation.But none of these movements are monolithic. It drastically changes the definition of what punk means if you are using Sex Pistols, Fugazi, or Green Day as the example of punk. Using punk in the “edu punk” label might turn some people off but that’s the drawback with any cultural reference. I don’t think people will immediately think of Sid Vicious teaching first graders.

But then I thought, what is the use of debating labels… What’s behind them is what matters. Labels stick or don’t, whether or not they fit. Maybe labels are not so important since, in music at least, it seems many artists hate them, but can do nothing about them. Gram Parsons hated the term “Country Rock” and Tricky/Portishead/Massive attack hated being identified as the Bristol sound. Here is an interesting article about a similar critique of a label using the term ‘punk’ : the idea to replace Cyperpunk with Ribofunk in the late 90’s.All in all, if edupunk label sticks and it becomes associated with radical, DIY educational movement with a heavy dose of creativity (even if that is a very simplistic understanding of EP) , that’s be good, no?

BTW, you know what would be even better? EduPolka or EduBluegrass☺