Most persons would not be ruffled in the slightest after reading a disquieting essay on the shabby state of songwriting among English-speaking citizens of the world. Distress signals of this kind, if they are read at all, are drowned out by clamor and rage or unmindfully disregarded by a habit to remain unfazed. Our poor quality of communication, however, and our glorying in it, is a symptom of the moral cancer that threatens us with a denouement which is equal to—even greater than—the last bleak pages of Orwell’s dystopia. On a regular basis I read the most perspicacious books that I can find from the long past days of hoary yore. After several drafts of this essay were completed, I happened upon the following frightening passage from some time in advance of 1829. In a book called On the English Language, Past and Present, R. C. Trench, quoting a German scholar by the name of Friedrich Schlegel, bids us to notice a baleful signpost. Therefore, mark: “The care of the national language I consider as at all times a sacred trust and a most important privilege of the higher orders of society. Every man of education should make it the object of his unceasing concern to preserve his language pure and entire; to speak it…in all its beauty and perfection…A nation whose language becomes rude and barbarous, must be on the brink of barbarism in regard to everything else. A nation which allows her language to go to ruin, is parting with the last half of her intellectual independence, and testifies her willingness to cease to exist” (p. 13.) We have, in fact, become barbarous ‘in regard to everything else.’ That is how far we are en route to utter wreck. Our barbarities are numerous. In this article we have witnessed the wretched condition of songwriting by a close look at one pop band, taken for example. But witness our loss of manners and respect, or the declining elegance in cars, architecture, and even telephones. Witness this person walking down your street, holding what looks like a brick to his ear in order to talk with somebody. And then listen to him speak in the lame, stammering English of an outlander. This person, pitifully, is not a foreigner, but a citizen from birth, of Anglo-Saxon heritage, as white as Winston Churchill, and has a master’s degree in social work. He is the average citizen of today: the decadent descendent of courtly kinsmen. Even some 19th century milkmaids and plowboys had a better grasp of the English language than 21st century educators do. If the reader thinks that ‘decadent’ denotes a positive hallmark, by the way, he suffers from the deterioration of which I speak. Not one of us is exempt. To some extent, we are all affected by illiteracy, even if we read above the level of our culture; this is the case because we must, with regularity, come into contact with simple-minded men in order to keep up with what’s going on. I would say ‘simple-minded women’ as well; but that would be sexist when my object is to be generic. We are born in sin, which is enough to damn us; and we are brought up to be less than civil, which at least coincides with the heathen’s way to perdition. I have sometimes observed that a fairly recent immigrant, fresh from the tutor, is more seamless and fluent in conversation than is a Clarke or a Grant. What must this person’s reckoning of us be? Our manner of speech and our written word have become so impaired that even what Thackeray calls ‘fashionable slipshod’ might be desired instead, so long as the slipshod could be discerned. Whatever we do, we must strive to make sense—to toil at tying our thoughts and verses together in order to bring them to a plain termination. And what if I say that in addition to this, we must convey knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, and that to do this we must not only know our times but also know how these times are judged by the word of God? We are a long way, folks, from doing any good through what we say, sing, or write. “Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek the LORD understand all” (Proverbs 28.5.)
Now, to finish I will zero in on what matters the most. In his song called Wheat Kings, Gord Downie sings about a ‘weathervane Jesus’ being pushed by ‘rusty breezes.’ That’s one of the catchiest lines in his whole repertoire, though I don’t believe in the writing or singing of it. The sound of the song is warm and tender; but to depict Jesus as being turned this way or that by a breeze is blasphemous, unless the statement is qualified by an overruling, interpretative remark, which it is not. To the author, ‘weathervane Jesus’ is nothing but the right sound and feel for a part of a song; and this is the kind of thing the word of God condemns in its command to not take his name in vain. The way we react to how Jesus is treated is a mark by which to assess the validity of our profession of faith. What we believe concerning Jesus, and how we live because of our trust in his person, life, and sacrifice, is the weathervane pointing us, either to a miserable hell, or else to felicity in heaven. The rusty breezes of this world point us in the wrong direction. Gord Downie’s music is one such rusty breeze.
No comments:
Post a Comment