About thirty years ago, someone moved through our neighborhood, presumable after dark, and selected a concrete pillar on the railroad bridge, the pillar nearest the Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, about 175 steps away from its front door, and likely in the dimness of the closest streetlight painted in just a few thick black strokes a cartoonish image taken from the most well-known and most violent repertoire of American racist history, and in case anyone missed the point, which the church-goers in the AME congregation were not likely to do, the graffiti artist stayed on a moment longer to scrawl in bold black letters "GOOD OLD DAYS" just to the side of the brutal cartoon. If you've taken a guess at what the image portrayed and you know some southern and Indiana history, you've probably guessed correctly. For many years the image has slumbered beneath one coat and then another and another of the city's gray paint.#
John le Carré recalled secret and not-so-secret government pressures on writers and film-makers early in his career:#
“One shouldn’t underrate these networks of influence that flow out of enormous intelligence agencies like the CIA. There are guys sitting on certain floors of certain buildings whose sole job is to massage opinion. And in those days, the CIA was financing magazines, it was financing movies of its own . . . “#
At the end of a long article about his family having hidden away, living in a chicken coop during World War II, in an effort to escape the Nazi persecution that killed millions, Max Heppner reflects on trying to escape the naming others place on victims:#
“It’s been a lifelong challenge not to see myself as a victim. The Dutch word for victim is ‘slachtoffer’ — which is the word for the animals taken to the temple to be slaughtered as an offering to God. I don’t want to see myself as that, as a victim. I’d prefer to see myself as a storyteller.”#
The word feels static, imposed, thoughtless, fatalistic, implying powerlessness. Heppner is right to push back. If he experiences storytelling as one countermeasure to the naming society places on him or on his people, that makes sense. A good story can make something visible, bring something up for reflection, that might otherwise go unnoticed amidst the din of rote language and thoughtless "common sense" of tradition. Even individual words do some of that damaging work.#
Stories, too, can do little more than to reinforce those thoughtless meanings being passed down in a society, like the word victim in Dutch, as he describes it here, implying appeasement to God, a grim vision. But stories can disrupt the senseless common sense of a society too. How do they do that? -- a great question. #
You hear about native American groups in the West who associate places in their home landscape with events that took place there--historical events and even events before the firm remembering of historical time, perhaps mythological events, perhaps versions of old events that have been smoothed into poetry and vision through retelling. You could see these old stories tied to place as lessons to be memorized, as ways to pin oneself to unchanging knowledge and tradition, I suppose, but maybe they have equal power as points of example and deliberation. Reflect on these touchstones of story, a lively humane cultural tradition might say to its young people. These stories offer you something, if you open yourself to their richness. Not meant for memorizing, I'd guess, but meditating. #
About thirty years ago, someone moved through our neighborhood, presumable after dark, and selected a concrete pillar on the railroad bridge, the pillar nearest the Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, about 175 steps away from its front door, and likely in the dimness of the closest streetlight painted in just a few thick black strokes a cartoonish image taken from the most well-known and most violent repertoire of American racist history, and in case anyone missed the point, which the church-goers in the AME congregation were not likely to do, the graffiti artist stayed on a moment longer to scrawl in bold black letters "GOOD OLD DAYS" just to the side of the brutal cartoon. If you've taken a guess at what the image portrayed and you know some southern and Indiana history, you've probably guessed correctly. For many years the image has slumbered beneath one coat and then another and another of the city's gray paint.#
John le Carré recalled secret and not-so-secret government pressures on writers and film-makers early in his career:#
“One shouldn’t underrate these networks of influence that flow out of enormous intelligence agencies like the CIA. There are guys sitting on certain floors of certain buildings whose sole job is to massage opinion. And in those days, the CIA was financing magazines, it was financing movies of its own . . . “#
At the end of a long article about his family having hidden away, living in a chicken coop during World War II, in an effort to escape the Nazi persecution that killed millions, Max Heppner reflects on trying to escape the naming others place on victims:#
“It’s been a lifelong challenge not to see myself as a victim. The Dutch word for victim is ‘slachtoffer’ — which is the word for the animals taken to the temple to be slaughtered as an offering to God. I don’t want to see myself as that, as a victim. I’d prefer to see myself as a storyteller.”#
The word feels static, imposed, thoughtless, fatalistic, implying powerlessness. Heppner is right to push back. If he experiences storytelling as one countermeasure to the naming society places on him or on his people, that makes sense. A good story can make something visible, bring something up for reflection, that might otherwise go unnoticed amidst the din of rote language and thoughtless "common sense" of tradition. Even individual words do some of that damaging work.#
Stories, too, can do little more than to reinforce those thoughtless meanings being passed down in a society, like the word victim in Dutch, as he describes it here, implying appeasement to God, a grim vision. But stories can disrupt the senseless common sense of a society too. How do they do that? -- a great question. #
You hear about native American groups in the West who associate places in their home landscape with events that took place there--historical events and even events before the firm remembering of historical time, perhaps mythological events, perhaps versions of old events that have been smoothed into poetry and vision through retelling. You could see these old stories tied to place as lessons to be memorized, as ways to pin oneself to unchanging knowledge and tradition, I suppose, but maybe they have equal power as points of example and deliberation. Reflect on these touchstones of story, a lively humane cultural tradition might say to its young people. These stories offer you something, if you open yourself to their richness. Not meant for memorizing, I'd guess, but meditating. #