A couple of nights ago, I was buried in my two ass-wide couch, surrounded by swollen, off-white cushions. I happened to be listening to the NY Philharmonic, featuring the Juilliard String Quartet, playing Aaron Copeland’s Lincoln Portrait, conducted by him. I don’t know how many of you ever listened to Copeland, but I’d describe his music as American Classical. It is our music, just like Gospel, the Blues and Jazz, with far more complicated orchestration, yet it somehow sounds like the best in us. It is proud and bold, filled with promise.
In the midst of this immense music, the voice of one of our treasures, Carl Sandburg, poet and Lincoln biographer, recites some of Abraham Lincoln’s words and it was stunning to me. I was enveloped by the idea of Lincoln and even remembered as a kid that I was forced to memorize the entire Gettysburg Address, that starts with “ Fourscore and seven years ago…..” I think he felt it was his job to inspire us to be better. He makes you feel good about being American. However, he took on our dark side and it killed him.
We can write poetry soaring to the heavens and in the next breath, rip out the beating heart of a child and eat it. Denying this eternal duality is a mistake many of us make, but it is a bitch to confront. We have evolved over time, just like the rest of the sentient beings on the planet. Darwin focused his attention on how every living entity adjusted to their changing surroundings. They kind of got better at what they were good at and seemed to arrive at a point where they were perfectly suited for their environment at the time.
Lost in the elegance of Lincoln’s words, embedded in a soundtrack of aspiration, I had a Darwinian moment. Here’s the deal, we have been evolving physically, ever since the first cell slid out of the ooze. Humans are the most complicated species on earth. We’ve got more going on in a given mili-second than any living being before us. However, I am not sure about our brain and what we got might be as good as it’s gonna get. In other words, tomorrow’s genius might not be any smarter than yesterday’s and the same goes for all aspects of our consciousness.
It takes thousands upon thousands of years for any living thing to mutate as it continues to adjust to its life on Earth. We are talking about chunks of time that are hard for us to imagine. Socrates and the rest of the men tooling around in togas were pretty damn smart and we are certainly no more evolved today.
Have to go off course for just a second: Where have all the brilliantly, gifted women been and why have men denied their extraordinary contributions? I’ll bet the Greeks stole the toga idea from women, because they do have a better fashion sense. OK, I’m back, even though I am vibing the potential for a full on revolution to finally set the record straight on our forever equality. Goddamnit!
So, there I was thinkin’ about Lincoln and I immediately thought about the level of discourse in this country and pretty much around the world. As ugly as the language is, it is like a child’s prayer in comparison the indescribable brutality inflicted on our brothers and sisters, in places you never even knew existed, not to mention right down the road.
For many, many lifetimes to come, we are stuck wrestling with this painful duality of saint and sinner. We simply cannot rise above ourselves. My pal, the Buddha, taught that all living beings, from our endless past to the infinite future, are connected. When any human being suffers, we all suffer and the road to our private salvation travels right through this understanding. Donald Trump is not a Martian, he is one of our own, metaphorically sent to remind us of one of the Buddha’s Four Vows: “Greed, hatred and ignorance rise endlessly. I vow to abandon them”.
I think we all need to set our own personal compasses and figure out how to navigate our complicated nature. Until now, we seem destined to keep repeating the monumentally, stupid behavior of all Empires, studies in vanity, the absence of all compassion, with no idea of consequence nor concern for the future. Throughout time, there have always been people, who wanted and expected more from their brothers and sisters. We are stuck in this horrible dance, while our family and our planet suffer unspeakable abuse and that’s the truth of it all.
Lincoln was here only 150 years ago and he will be back and so it goes. We can hope for a biblical mutation to change our well trodden course or we can aspire to be more, simply for its own sake. After all, Lincoln was one of us, you know.
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