Pachelbel's Canon
A Musical Interlude
When I decide to put out one of these newsletters, sometimes I come at it with a fully formed thought. Other times I just start typing what’s on my mind and let it go. On this rainy Saturday afternoon, I have various pieces of thoughts that I can’t quite put together.
Just to get a few things out of the way for context, it’s a pretty shitty time here in the United States. Armed federal police officers (the existence of which would scare the hell out of the federalists and the antifederalists equally) terrorizing cities and shooting innocent people in the face - while the administration tells us that what we can easily see on the video is not that. I guess we are now debating domestic thuggery in the dress is blue/the dress is white fashion.
We arrested/kidnapped the President of Venezuela, who is by all accounts truly awful, propped up a puppet regime that refused to be puppetted, stole a bunch of oil that even the oil companies don’t want, and threatened to annex Greenland, Cuba, and Colombia because…we can I guess.
All the while, health insurance premiums are up, home and vehicle insurance premiums are up, grocery prices are up. The only things that are down seem to be domestic manufacturing and hiring. Israel is still conducting hostile actions in and around Gaza. The Russia/Ukraine war rages on. Protesters in Iran are being gunned down in the streets.
Trump’s approval ratings sit at 56% disapprove, 39% approve, and 4% not sure. So he is 17 points underwater, which suggests a drubbing for Republicans in the Congressional midterms. Yet 39% approve. I just find that number..too high for comfort.
This brings me to my original thoughts.
Most people are familiar with the Sirens from The Odyssey. The Sirens would sing this enchanting song that sailors would follow blindly. Eventually they would become lost at sea and die never realizing that it was all a trick.
I started thinking about the song that Trump is singing and I think I have found it. Bear with me for a moment.
They say that everybody knows at least one jazz song, even people who don’t listen to jazz. You can probably picture the one that comes to mind first.
The same goes for Classical music. Everybody knows at least one, even if they don’t know the title or the composer. I bet I can guess the one you are thinking of right now.
That is from Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major. As you listen you will probably think of weddings or fancy ballrooms. Maybe that light bulb commercial from years ago.
What links these songs together is the emotion they evoke. For most people that is a sense of romantic nostalgia. A serene simplicity. A general familiarity. And, of course, neither have lyrics.
In the early 90s, a band named Blues Traveler had a brilliant idea. What if they wrote a song with a very subconsciously recognizable hook but added lyrics that were a mix of nonsense words and mocking the very people who would like the song. That song is titled “Hook,” and the premise is that what the singer is saying doesn’t matter at all. It could be lies, nonsense, the singer can even tell you right to your face that it is those things, but as long as you get those fuzzy feelings - if it strikes a chord for you, you will love it anyway.
Before you read further, listen to the song. And you will also notice that the underlying melody is….Pachelbel’s Canon.
Pretty striking, no?
I wish I had a great summary on this little throughline I have drawn but I’m not there yet. What it does for me is simplify the reason that 39% of Americans still approve of Trump despite what he says or what he does.
Like him, they are fixed on this intangible ideal that if some different place in time could just be re-created, everything would be great and some “order” could be restored. This “order,” of course, is different across individuals and various groups of people.
At some point I will write up an article about the various points in time that I think Trump is looking to and compare that to the points in time that Trump supporters are looking to. (Hint: Trump’s foreign policy is starting to look a lot like a pre-WWI world).
In the meantime, I hope this musical interlude gives you something to think about.
Darren