Not all holidays are created equally, but there is a ubiquity about them. It is necessary, for example, to have a bright spot in the bleak midwinter and some sort of festival atmosphere as Spring dawns, so for most folks in the Western World, Christmas and Easter serve these needs, but there are equivalent holy days for different religions as well. While no one can deny the appeal of Christmas, Easter has always been my favorite. No matter where I’ve lived, the weather has always been gorgeous and it has special religious significance to me as well.
I celebrate holidays usually with a piece of art. For Easter, I might watch a documentary or film about Christ; for Christmas, we have scores of films, television specials, and music to fill our eyes, ears, and hearts. But I have traditions of my own for other holidays as well. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I inevitably listen to James Taylor’s “Shed a Little Light,” often posting it on social media. This year, you’ve already seen my appreciation of the musical 1776 on Independence Day. I am a flag collector, so while I don’t have any traditions for it, Flag Day is even kind of special.
We are, of course, coming up on Halloween and I’ve never seen so much pre-decoration. There is apparently a new phenomenon called “Augtober,” where people anxious for Fall start Halloween decoration in the month with no legitimate holidays. Prior to that however, we have what has become the most controversial federal holiday: Columbus Day.
In this age of historical purgation, rabid ideology, and fruitless attempts to make the past palatable, we have seen statues of Columbus thrown into the sea and the typical image of the man desecrated and ridiculed. Certainly, looking over his biography, one can see why people would choose to try and throw the man off their backs (a rather different matter than the lunacy that drove some to desecrate statues of Lincoln a few years ago). Obsessively ideologically possessed academics want the whole notion of a day celebrating the “discovery” of the New World jettisoned and replaced with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which is celebrated on the same day. More moderate and, therefore, most often, academically-rigorous ones see a complicated man of his own time who cannot be judged any differently than most of the people of his time—along the lines of Richard Wagner, Thomas Jefferson, and a few other historical figures I’ve discussed on the blog.
So, do I have any Columbus Day traditions? Well, yes, oddly enough. While no world was ever exactly “discovered” and Columbus was late to the party in terms of Leif Erikson, his stamp on the continents on this side of the world can be seen everywhere. He brought the laws, the (often) savage justice, and the imperialism of the Old World here, marks of which can still be seen today (this, Lief never did). He made contact (and did several other awful things) with our Indigenous populations, and his name is stamped into the names of many cities, including our capital. Why we are not the United States of Columbia I’ve never figured out. Score one for Vespucci. Regardless, one can’t deny Columbus made a mark in addition to his crimes and excesses.
In 1992, my friend David Henry Hwang, whose 2007 Obie Award-winner Yellow Face is currently having its Broadway premiere, had his grand opera debut as the librettist of Philip Glass’ The Voyage. The opera was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera for the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ “discovery.” Glass and Hwang, true to both their styles, chose to write an opera more generally about discovery than about Columbus himself, although he does play a role in it. Having a rather wild production design in what seems from contemporaneous reviews as a neon spectacular, The Voyage largely sank despite a beautifully written libretto and some rare instances of humor from Glass. It was not until the work was revived in the twenty-first century when a recording was made, and I typically listen to it on Columbus Day. The following excerpt from Glass’ liner notes and a snippet of Hwang’s libretto gives you some idea of why the concept of what Columbus did, rather than the man he was, is a reason to celebrate:
"Now, Christopher Columbus was a dynamic, fascinating man. In most ways he was a man of his time—no better and probably no worse. He was remarkable for the force and dedication that he brought to his dreams. And this, above all, is what sets him apart and makes him compelling for us today—a half a millennium later."-Philip Glass
"From the first amoeba
Who fought to break free of itself
To Ulysses, to Ibn Battuta, to Marco Polo
To Einstein, and beyond
All that we seek to know
Is to know ourselves
To reduce the darkness
By some small degree
To light a candle, jump a stream
That the sum of human ignorance
Might dwindle just a bit
And the deeds done in darkness
May wither one day perhaps even
Expire
And if our human voyages
Are riddled sometimes with horrors
With pride, with vanity
With the mother's milk of cruelty...
Yet finally human evil
Does not deny the good
Of knowledge
Of light
Of revelation
Of the hope that lo one day
Exploration will make obsolete
Even the sins of the explorer"
-Epilogue, The Voyage (text by David Henry Hwang)
In the end, I choose to think of the day as commemorating the spirit of discovery which I hope humans never give up on. While some of the things Columbus did are squalid and barbaric compared to today’s standards, without him, and the thousand other horrors since, we wouldn’t have the experiment called America. We inherit on our backs a lot of blood, it’s true, but we must move forward now—discovering more. We can’t do it as the divided nation we are. Perhaps something will bring us back together and the petty bickering over what happened in yesteryear will pale in comparison to what could be the glories of our future.
留言