Subject: Re: Next
From: Nikola Chubrich <[email-masked]>
To: Ernst Meyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 11:16:19 -0700 (10/17/2019 02:16:19 PM)

Thank you Dr. Meyer, I am finally better! I'm on my way to San Francisco as we speak; back Wednesday, and perhaps I could visit that evening.

I'm still chugging along with my political project, but with a partner who is becoming increasingly remote, and who wants to change up what we're doing. My frustration is that there is really no intellectual communion between us (though there was once). I figure things out by writing; he is always thinking about how to present things (slides, two-paragraph pitches, etc.). I have trouble forcing my mind through that keyhole; I try, I give up, then I write again, knowing he will never talk to me about what I write, even while enthusiastically endorsing some of my ideas.

I was working on the same just now, and (as usual) getting stuck. It is amazing how fast my words flow when I am writing you. I wish I could figure out your secret for writing without worrying about being read and by whom. Maybe my trouble now is that I am writing something that needs to be read, but that will not be read unless it is couched in the abstract. But I feel that the country's political crisis and my own life have become deeply intertwined. I could write a sort of memoir easily (perhaps!), but then the question would be: why put myself into it, and what relevance has it got for everyone else?

The herd instinct is indeed a key part of politics----a zoological phenomenon, as you say. And that part of it cannot be ignored. We will never live an ivory tower where the ability to move crowds (which Trump has) will be irrelevant. Nevertheless, I persist in thinking that we could somehow create customs where this ability was roped to reason. Suppose instead of putting smiling applauding people behind the camera at rallies, you put other sorts of people? And the candidate said: they have examined the evidence, they have analyzed, they have thought, and they are here to keep me honest. And why could a candidate not get up and spin the most enchanting story to such a background?

A political rally is a symphonic phenomenon; unlike a symphony, it has a denotation. Therein lies the danger. The nature of art is that we can make good art on the back of bad ideas. Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia is a masterpiece, but its ideas are rotten. How easy it is to be lulled into not noticing.

And yet should we refuse then to be artful in our presentation of ideas? What a dull world that would be, supposing anyone could be persuaded to pay attention to such aridity in the first place. I think, rather, we should have a custom of verifying what we say.

Nick.

On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 8:38 PM Ernst Meyer <[email-masked]> wrote:
Dear Nick,

a) Thanks for your two e-mails.

b) Too cheap to pay to read the NY Times, I haven't had access to the 
article you mentioned, but the thesis that Die Frau ohne Schatten should 
be construed as reconciliation after WWI, for which Hofmannsthal wrote 
Austro-Hungarian propaganda tracts, seems far-fetched to me.

c) I haven't finished my homework about Die Frau ohne Schatten. I'm 
startled by the intellectual and esthetic extravagances of the plot, not 
to mention the  music, extravagances which are far removed from any 
other poetry of Hofmannsthals that I remember. In the context of my own 
libretto-dabbling, I may make more efforts to understand die Frau and 
may have more to write about her later.

d) The current political situation seems very grave to me, and if it's 
not naughty to say so, also seems very interesting. Is it wrong, bad, 
wicked, evil to step back and contemplate it as a zoological phenomenon, 
where "free will", deliberateness of action, is a delusion, as in a 
fight among dogs, cats, mice, rats, squirrels, raccoons, possums, 
skunks, snakes, eagles, hawks, vultures ... take your pick? Aristotle 
was wrong. Animals do not live in isolation. They aggregate into herds, 
flocks, schools (of fish), swarms of insects, villages, states, nations, 
political, parties - having "enemies". Fighting, eating, killing, 
conquering, imprisoning, enslaving "the enemy" is "natural", as is the 
propounding of quasi- religious theories why it is i) necessary and 
good, and/or ii) destructive and evil to do so.

I could go on like this for hours, - for days, for weeks, and if I live, 
I will, - in the next libretto which I am trying to hatch.

When you've stopped coughing and sneezing, come to see me.  Meanwhile 
best wishes for survival.

EJM

is

On 10/12/2019 05:36 PM, Nikola Chubrich wrote:
> Dear Dr. Meyer----
> 
> I haven't written in too long (once again....).
> 
> I am sitting here listening to Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. I say the 
> first theme (after the opening), is: /and what rough beast, its hour 
> come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?/
> /
> /
> I have started to become scared for my times. You'll recall my good 
> friend Lushen and I were working on.....how small it sounds.....a civics 
> thing. He wants to change gears and address the impeachment crisis. I 
> barely know what to say, and I hardly know how to say what I seem to 
> know....
> 
> It's a difficult conversation, politics, and that's /recursive/, because 
> the difficulty in politics is how to have difficult conversations among 
> many people. (What else could it be? Put off difficult conversations, 
> tension builds, and----boom! I thought politics was not about the boom 
> part: I thought it was at least about the before-boom part. But then I 
> guess I am contradicting Clausewitz (or maybe not? Is /politics /war by 
> other means? Or perhaps, is it something else entirely that merely uses 
> the /metaphors /of war, e.g. 'campaign'?))
> 
> I don't even know how to have difficult conversations with my /family/. 
> I have a difficult conversation pending with a cousin, for instance. One 
> that I'll probably pass over and let us drift apart. Kind of hard for a 
> country to act that way, though.
> 
> Yesterday, for the first time, I watched a Trump rally all the way 
> through. That man has got the theatrics of politics down to a T: he 
> knows how to entertain crowds for a /long time/. It reminds me of 
> something I used to pass over without making a note of when reading 
> history: how Hitler and Mussolini made very long speeches. I understand 
> more why you once mixed up his name with Hitler: Trump even has a very 
> particular way of making a straight face, so to speak, that is not 
> unlike Hitler's.
> 
> I suppose our saving grace is that Trump is far from being interested in 
> foreign conquest, and his scapegoating is not so specific (it is, 
> rather, indiscriminate).
> 
> Nathaniel tells me you have finished one libretto and are starting the 
> next. We ought to at least have a semi-staged reading.....
> 
> Hope you are well and sorry again for being out of touch. I'd like to 
> visit soon if I may but I am recovering from a cold.
> 
> Nick.
> 
> 
> On Tue, Sep 10, 2019 at 11:41 AM Nikola Chubrich <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> 
>     Dear Dr. Meyer---
> 
>     I hope you had a good trip to Virginia. Are you back yet? I was
>     unable to figure out my schedule more than a day or two in advance,
>     because my partner and I are in the throes of a startup. I sort of
>     froze and didn't write. I finally know that I will be in Boston
>     mostly (barring a short trip to San Francisco to look for funding).
> 
>     The good news was we had a very successful meeting in Washington
>     with a former congressman of 18 years. After that, I had hoped to go
>     down to Virginia, but a) I didn't know if my partner Lushen expected
>     me elsewhere, and finally b) I realized I needed to get some things
>     done in Boston.
> 
>     I am very sorry to have left you hanging. Sometimes, as I say, I
>     freeze when I don't know what to say. I seem to have gotten out of
>     that habit after a remarkable occasion last week, but that's a long
>     story.
> 
>     Hope you're well,
> 
>     Nick.
>