By Daniel Rigney
If Washington, Jefferson and Madison could see us now, what would they think of our 21st-century corporatocracy?
It’s twilight in Texas this July 4, 2012. We’re on our way to Hermann Park to hear the Houston Symphony perform the 1812 Overture, complete with faux cannon blasts and fireworks to follow, an event sponsored by carbon-based corporate life form ExxonMobil.
Tchaikovsky wrote the Overture in 1880 to commemorate Russia’s 1812 military victory over the armies of Napolean’s France, and the piece was first performed at the consecration of a cathedral in Moscow in 1882 to symbolize the unity of Orthodox church and Tsarist state.
Tonight, orchestras in Houston and other American cities are repurposing the classic in celebration of the nation’s independence from the political and religious domination of England. The historical analogy to Russia in 1812 is strained if not strange, but playing the Overture at Fourth of July events has oddly become an American custom.
Neither Houston nor Texas existed in 1812. The ground we stand on tonight was previously a part of Mexico, which was previously Spanish, which was previously populated by Native Americans, who were previously Siberian. Now here we are in 2012, in a metropolitan area of six million, a diverse, multi-hued and multi-accented crowd, assembling peacefully together in the cooling heat (but it’s a moist heat) of a summer evening in Houston.
We’ll be hearing Russian music and watching Chinese fireworks as the American flag – our national patchwork quilt – hangs on display.
This is not the only concert and fireworks display in town tonight. A few miles away is an even larger “Freedom Over Texas” concert and flag show sponsored by Southwest Airlines (“you’re free to move about the cabin”) and Reliant energy (“the power to change lives”). The concert features two country music performers billed as superstars.
We could have chosen the country music tonight, but that would have meant fighting Houston’s infamously sprawling urban traffic to get there, and then fighting again for parking. Instead, we’ve chosen Tchaikovsky, performed in a spacious pine-treed city park on Houston’s lone Metro line, a sleek light rail that gets us to the concert without our having to drive an inch. In Houston, not driving is the key to happiness.
Soon after we arrive at the park’s outdoor theater, I take take a picture of the sixteen cannons lined up off of stage left – eight guns above, eight below – poised to go off at the Overture’s climax.
The musical program opens with a mix of military, ragtime and pop tunes from the great American songbook, with selections from Sousa, Scott Joplin, and Simon and Garfunkel.
“Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio.? The nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” Boy, does it ever.
The conductor banters between numbers, apologizing facetiously for including one Redcoat in the program (Elgar, “Pomp and Circumstance”), but assuring his nationalist audience that he hopes the United States “wins every medal” in the coming Olympics. (Really? Every medal?) Applause. One upraised fist.
Later the conductor announces the winner of a “largest symphony donor” contest. This year’s winner gets to conduct a tune with the orchestra tonight. And the winner is … Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a congenitally wealthy Houston “energy and investments” businessman, politician and arts patron who is (coincidentally) appearing before us in the run-up to a Republican run-off in which he is vying for a well-upholstered seat in the United States Senate.
Dewhurst steps to the front of the stage, not once but twice during the program, to smile big and wave to the crowd: first to take the baton as a guest conductor, and later to be honored as a veteran of the armed services. (He is a former Air Force and CIA officer.)
Dewhurst is contributing $10 million dollars of his $200 million fortune to his own Senate campaign. As of mid-May, he’s already spent 6.8 million of his war chest on advertising, making this by far the most expensive air game in U.S. Congressional politics – more than double the ad expenditure of Dewhurst’s nearest spending rival, and about four times higher than the highest-spending Democrat, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Between Dewhurst and corporate sponsor ExxonMobil, there sure is a lot of music-loving oil money here tonight. If I were more cynical, I’d suspect that Dewhurst’s (and Exxon’s) symphony engagements are politically motivated. God bless extreme concentrations of wealth and corporate power, God bless Citizens United, God bless public relations, and God bless America.
The Founders would be proud. Wouldn't they?
Dewhurst finally leaves the stage, and the symphony launches into its spirited rendering of Tchaikovsky's patriotic Russian war anthem, culminating famously in some serious and explosive percussion celebrating the glories of military victory in war.
Sixteen cannons stand at the ready. I've counted them beforehand. As the Overture nears its end, the guns (shooting blanks) start sounding off. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. Five booms. Then ten more. By my count, there’s one cannon blast left to go. BOOM. There it is. Napolean and the Redcoats are defeated. Russian and American nationalism prevail through the smoke of battle.
Celebratory fireworks follow. Thousands of attendees, many of them young children, mill expectantly around the open theater and park grounds. I head for a long reflecting pool, from which I hope to get some good shots of bombs bursting in air overhead, my view unobstructed by the dark silhouettes of tall pines looming around us.
Suddenly, there’s a burst of light, a giant flashbulb in the sky, illuminating everything below. BOOM. And then another. BaBOOM. And then another. I’m clicking away.
The images coming up on my low-end digital Canon remind me of images from physics and astronomy. Some bursts remind me of images of subatomic particles, such as the hypothetical Higgs bozon, currently in the news. From the other end of the cosmic scale, I'm reminded of images I’ve seen of our Milky Way galaxy, in whose suburbs we all live.
I imagine even the big bang itself (photograph unavailable) as a burst of cosmic fireworks. That would put us all in the midst of an exploding universe. Don’t worry. We’re seeing the whole thing in extreme slow motion.
Here’s one image of what’s happening overhead tonight in the twilight zone of Houston 2012, in the aftermath of the Overture of 1812:
Eye in the Sky on the Fourth of July
( Houston, 2012)
I leave wondering: If Washington, Jefferson and Madison could be here now, would they be pleased with what they see? Would they admire and embrace our corporatocracy? Would they recoil in horror at what we've become? Or would they simply gape in utter incomprehension at the spectacle of our Fourth of July?
Is corporatocracy really what they had in mind? And would this be for them, as it is for me, an episode from the Twilight Zone?
If Washington, Jefferson and Madison could see us now, what would they think of our 21st-century corporatocracy?
It’s twilight in Texas this July 4, 2012. We’re on our way to Hermann Park to hear the Houston Symphony perform the 1812 Overture, complete with faux cannon blasts and fireworks to follow, an event sponsored by carbon-based corporate life form ExxonMobil.
Tchaikovsky wrote the Overture in 1880 to commemorate Russia’s 1812 military victory over the armies of Napolean’s France, and the piece was first performed at the consecration of a cathedral in Moscow in 1882 to symbolize the unity of Orthodox church and Tsarist state.
Tonight, orchestras in Houston and other American cities are repurposing the classic in celebration of the nation’s independence from the political and religious domination of England. The historical analogy to Russia in 1812 is strained if not strange, but playing the Overture at Fourth of July events has oddly become an American custom.
Neither Houston nor Texas existed in 1812. The ground we stand on tonight was previously a part of Mexico, which was previously Spanish, which was previously populated by Native Americans, who were previously Siberian. Now here we are in 2012, in a metropolitan area of six million, a diverse, multi-hued and multi-accented crowd, assembling peacefully together in the cooling heat (but it’s a moist heat) of a summer evening in Houston.
We’ll be hearing Russian music and watching Chinese fireworks as the American flag – our national patchwork quilt – hangs on display.
This is not the only concert and fireworks display in town tonight. A few miles away is an even larger “Freedom Over Texas” concert and flag show sponsored by Southwest Airlines (“you’re free to move about the cabin”) and Reliant energy (“the power to change lives”). The concert features two country music performers billed as superstars.
We could have chosen the country music tonight, but that would have meant fighting Houston’s infamously sprawling urban traffic to get there, and then fighting again for parking. Instead, we’ve chosen Tchaikovsky, performed in a spacious pine-treed city park on Houston’s lone Metro line, a sleek light rail that gets us to the concert without our having to drive an inch. In Houston, not driving is the key to happiness.
Soon after we arrive at the park’s outdoor theater, I take take a picture of the sixteen cannons lined up off of stage left – eight guns above, eight below – poised to go off at the Overture’s climax.
The musical program opens with a mix of military, ragtime and pop tunes from the great American songbook, with selections from Sousa, Scott Joplin, and Simon and Garfunkel.
“Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio.? The nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” Boy, does it ever.
The conductor banters between numbers, apologizing facetiously for including one Redcoat in the program (Elgar, “Pomp and Circumstance”), but assuring his nationalist audience that he hopes the United States “wins every medal” in the coming Olympics. (Really? Every medal?) Applause. One upraised fist.
Later the conductor announces the winner of a “largest symphony donor” contest. This year’s winner gets to conduct a tune with the orchestra tonight. And the winner is … Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a congenitally wealthy Houston “energy and investments” businessman, politician and arts patron who is (coincidentally) appearing before us in the run-up to a Republican run-off in which he is vying for a well-upholstered seat in the United States Senate.
Dewhurst steps to the front of the stage, not once but twice during the program, to smile big and wave to the crowd: first to take the baton as a guest conductor, and later to be honored as a veteran of the armed services. (He is a former Air Force and CIA officer.)
Dewhurst is contributing $10 million dollars of his $200 million fortune to his own Senate campaign. As of mid-May, he’s already spent 6.8 million of his war chest on advertising, making this by far the most expensive air game in U.S. Congressional politics – more than double the ad expenditure of Dewhurst’s nearest spending rival, and about four times higher than the highest-spending Democrat, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Between Dewhurst and corporate sponsor ExxonMobil, there sure is a lot of music-loving oil money here tonight. If I were more cynical, I’d suspect that Dewhurst’s (and Exxon’s) symphony engagements are politically motivated. God bless extreme concentrations of wealth and corporate power, God bless Citizens United, God bless public relations, and God bless America.
The Founders would be proud. Wouldn't they?
Dewhurst finally leaves the stage, and the symphony launches into its spirited rendering of Tchaikovsky's patriotic Russian war anthem, culminating famously in some serious and explosive percussion celebrating the glories of military victory in war.
Sixteen cannons stand at the ready. I've counted them beforehand. As the Overture nears its end, the guns (shooting blanks) start sounding off. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. Five booms. Then ten more. By my count, there’s one cannon blast left to go. BOOM. There it is. Napolean and the Redcoats are defeated. Russian and American nationalism prevail through the smoke of battle.
Celebratory fireworks follow. Thousands of attendees, many of them young children, mill expectantly around the open theater and park grounds. I head for a long reflecting pool, from which I hope to get some good shots of bombs bursting in air overhead, my view unobstructed by the dark silhouettes of tall pines looming around us.
Suddenly, there’s a burst of light, a giant flashbulb in the sky, illuminating everything below. BOOM. And then another. BaBOOM. And then another. I’m clicking away.
The images coming up on my low-end digital Canon remind me of images from physics and astronomy. Some bursts remind me of images of subatomic particles, such as the hypothetical Higgs bozon, currently in the news. From the other end of the cosmic scale, I'm reminded of images I’ve seen of our Milky Way galaxy, in whose suburbs we all live.
I imagine even the big bang itself (photograph unavailable) as a burst of cosmic fireworks. That would put us all in the midst of an exploding universe. Don’t worry. We’re seeing the whole thing in extreme slow motion.
Here’s one image of what’s happening overhead tonight in the twilight zone of Houston 2012, in the aftermath of the Overture of 1812:
Eye in the Sky on the Fourth of July
( Houston, 2012)
I leave wondering: If Washington, Jefferson and Madison could be here now, would they be pleased with what they see? Would they admire and embrace our corporatocracy? Would they recoil in horror at what we've become? Or would they simply gape in utter incomprehension at the spectacle of our Fourth of July?
Is corporatocracy really what they had in mind? And would this be for them, as it is for me, an episode from the Twilight Zone?
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