Energetic, Cheerful, & Blue

October, a dozen years ago:

     Me & Marz ^ jumping at an apple orchard, 2013 (photo by bink)
 

I. Can you be both cheerful and deep?

My mother doubted it, and she was my first teacher, 
So I've struggled with this, but ultimately I say, 
Yes! 

It seems to be in my nature, but I also choose it...
I take heart from Cornell West who says he is a cheerful person with a sad soul.

Where did I hear him say that?
Ok... here, in a talk with Toni Morrison. 
Wow, it was published here in  2004, twenty-one years ago!

"The Nobel Prize-winning author and the Princeton professor sat down to discuss blues, love, and politics:
 ‘We Better Do Something’: Toni Morrison and Cornel West in Conversation", The Nation, May 4, 2004, thenation.com/article/archive/toni-morrison-cornel-west-politics.

It's a good, longish article, and I'll put part of their beginning exchange here. Boldface mine.

> > > Boldface mine.

Toni Morisson: 
I feel two things at the same time: terrified and melancholy... 

...The melancholy that I feel now is about a country like this with the best shot in the world, that a country like this with a certain kind of plenitude and intelligence and ambition and generosity and some history from which to learn, could, indeed, throw it all away 
and become the worst parts of its own self. 

Cornel, I see you sitting here nodding and frowning, but what is curious to me is that whenever I read you, as well as talk to you, and as clear-sighted as you are and as aware as you are of these difficulties, you always seem to be something I used to be but no longer am, optimistic. 

And since I’m rapidly losing that quality, maybe just because of age, I wanted to ask you why.

Cornel West:
 I’ve always viewed myself as a person with a deeply sad soul but a cheerful disposition. 
So that when you say you feel terrified and melancholic, that describes my situation too, but it’s just that I always believe that struggle and the unleashing of moral energy in the form of moral outrage can make a difference no matter what the situation is. 

And it may have something to do with just having a blues sensibility, a tragic orientation, a sense that no matter how mendacious elites may be, they can never extinguish the forces for good in the world. 
And if that’s true, then they’re mighty but not almighty.
....

You've got a blues sensibility, don't you?

Toni Morrison:
A very complicated sense of blues... for me it’s a question of not whining. 

The blues is about some loss, some pain and some other things. 
But it doesn’t whine; even when it’s begging to be understood in the lyrics, the music contradicts that feeling of being a complete victim and completely taken over. 

There’s a sense of agency, even when someone has broken your heart. The process of having the freedom to have made that choice is what surfaces in blues. 
I don’t see it as a crying music.

--END, clip of conversation between Morisson & West.
__________________ 

That's it:
the expression of grief and outrage, and claiming your agency.

__________________

ii. Blues Eyes, with Agency

The girlettes are about seeing with different eyes, for me.
They are sprites---in our world, but not of it.
So they look at Lucretia, who in the myth has stabbed herself because she's been raped--
and they see someone who has spilled strawberry jam on her nightgown.
[Their re-creation of Rembrandt's painting.]

NOW,  of course, the story is more complicated than that, so... it makes me wonder... 
what all is going on with this story?

And I looked up Livy, the Roman writer who tells Lucretia's story.

I'm not going to get all into it, but the thing is,
Lucretia IS USING HER AGENCY, such as it is, as a Roman woman in a world where overt political power is male---she uses what choices she has to exact revenge upon her rapist--Tarquin.
And it works:
her husband and father start a revolution that overthrows Tarquin's father, the king, and sets up the Roman Republic. 

It takes some doing to look through the veil of this story that looks like nothing but a misogynistic story that romanticizes women's victimhood.
It takes some doing to retain the horror, but also to see honor in her choice (it was a choice)--and while we may not agree with her, the challenge is to see it through her eyes...

She's got those Blues eyes... 

Lucretia looks at Penny Cooper looking at her.
What do you see, leap-frogging across the centuries?


III. Energy and Cheer

Cheerful: "that which promotes good spirits" is from late 14c., "elevating the spirits" is from mid-15c.

'Cheerful' is the opposite of the mood of many people around me, who are rightfully concerned about our country, the world...

But when I read that the incoming Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, wants her government to be "energetic and cheerful"--[via NPR]
. . . (well, honestly, my first instinct was that that was creepy and fake, like a robotic Margaret Thatcher (whom Takaichi admires, which might give one pause), 

 

...or like Hegseth telling the generals to shape up), 
but...
 my second reaction was, on a personal level, THAT SOUNDS GREAT!

I want to channel energy and cheer--the cheer might seem surfacey, might indeed be surafacey, but it is in connection with The Spirits.

The surface is a place that touches the outer world, 
while energy draws deep on our resources.

I don't know what this means for me, but...

 "We better do something."
Something. Really, . . anything!