For all the dreams we’ve dreamed, and all the songs we’ve sung…

I had a friend once who was a scholar studying Ancient Rome. One day, over a cup of five dollar coffee, he declared in a very resolute, yet soft voice, “What does America really have to offer to humanity? None of the great art, the great poetry, or anything of cultural value was ever produced here.”

Yes, he was an American.

And, yes, I realized then and now that his statement was a bastardized version of something either Victor Hugo or Oscar Wilde had once said.

But, no, I didn’t agree with him at the time and I still don’t. I suppose that’s the nature of any conversation about literature or art, though. Everyone has an opinion, and to some degree everyone is right.

For example, I’ve seen the Mona Lisa, and really, I was not impressed. It’s a painting of a lady. It doesn’t say much to me other than people will stand in line for anything. But, people wrote songs about her, you know, so I guess there’s something there?

Despair is a transforming process, integral to creation, in my opinion. And, yet, the greatest art can also be the articulation of hope. The art that appeals to me is the kind that walks the fine line between these two. A little despair, a little hope, that’s art to me. Actually, that’s life.

So in my opinion, our artists and writers have competed quite well in the international arena. America is not short on despair. Nor on hope.

This piece came to my mind immediately after that statement about a lack of cultural contribution. And it still does.

Let America Be America Again, Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Posted by Faiqa on February 1, 2010 8:14 pm • Those Who Cannot Learn From History Are Probably Really Good At Math • 37 comments

37 Comments »

Avitable Said,

February 1, 2010 @ 8:24 pm

Plus, Jersey Shore.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:09 am
@Avitable, And don’t forget 16 and Pregnant. Awwwyeah.

[Reply]
Dave2 Said,

February 1, 2010 @ 8:33 pm

I too used to thing that we were “lacking significant culture” when the opposite is probably more true… our country is an amalgam of the many cultures that make up our people. With that in mind, Shakespeare is our culture because we came from Britain. Michelangelo is our culture because we came from Italy. Tolstoy is our culture because we came from Russia. It goes on and on… we are a young country yet. Give us time!

But in the end, it’s all subjective. I feel there are plenty of writers, artists, poets, and thinkers that have made notable contributions to humanity that have been Americans.

McDonalds and MTV didn’t appear out of thin air ya know!

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:10 am
@Dave2, I think MTV in its infancy made quite the cultural contribution, actually.

[Reply]
Sybil Law Said,

February 1, 2010 @ 9:41 pm

I hate that freaking pretentious attitude people get when talking about art, literature, etc. There’s been plenty of artists, writers, musicians and the like who could give any European a run for the money. Or any other better way of putting it (dude, I am so, so tired tonight!)!
Here’s another Langston Hughes quote I love:
“Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-”

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:11 am
@Sybil Law, Diamond-jade. Swoon. Plus, he was really handsome. Have you ever seen a photo of him? Rawr.

[Reply]
Hockeymandad Said,

February 1, 2010 @ 10:01 pm

It’s funny how our nations politics can tarnish some people’s views of our American culture. Aside from all the things Hollywood has made, we have great writers and artists all over. How about Jazz? Born in America. Like it or not, you gotta respect that.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:13 am
@Hockeymandad, Whoa. I had a sentence (that I deleted) in this post that said almost the same thing as the first line of your comment. Get out of my brain. My friend’s statement was actually uttered after a terribly long and painful conversation regarding the politics of the time. Weird.

Didn’t we come up with the Blues, too? Or is that the same thing as Jazz?

[Reply]
Kailyn Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:01 am
@Faiqa, I would say that blues is probably more closely related to country. And country has its roots in folk music of Europe. I have got to stop watching the History Channel.

[Reply]
Sybil Law Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:05 pm
@Kailyn, I had to jump in! The blues is more related to African American slavery. Which of course was brought over from Europe, but not eh more common blues that we know….
I’m going to shut up before my own music nerdery comes out.

[Reply]
Kailyn Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:26 pm
@Sybil Law, No worries. I tend to link blues and country in my mind as they both arose in the same area of the country at the same time.

Yes, blues started off as something that was based on African music but modern blues also incorpoates some European influences.

I say let’s just agree that because it is a blending of various forms into something new that it is an American creation. I think this is a great example of what other commenters have said that American culture is all about.

[Reply]
Shane Said,

February 1, 2010 @ 11:03 pm

Great Gatsby, Beloved, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Things They Carried.

Ramona the Pest!

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:13 am
@Shane, Ramona the Pest!! YES! Great Gatsby? My fave.

[Reply]
Kimberly Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 12:10 am

As usual, Avitable cracks me up!
We have great artists in America, but what the other countries have going for them is time. Visiting other countries where the art is thousands of years old is hard to beat. Traveling through CA, we’re lucky to find something that is a hundred years old and still standing. It’s not to stay that our great artists won’t still be great in a thousand yeas, but to many I think we’re still too young to deserve the respect for our work.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:15 am
@Kimberly, Hmmm. I think only the old think you need to have time put in to engender respect.

[Reply]
Nanna Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 12:45 am

Pshaw. Beauty is beauty, from wherever and whenever it comes. Beauty means different things to different people, which is a good thing,but can be found in the music, the writings, the strivings of people every day.

And…uh…I ramble.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:15 am
@Nanna, You ramble the truth.

[Reply]
RW Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 1:12 am

I’ll see his Hugo and Wilde and raise him my Dale Chihuly, Mark Twain, Aaron Copland, Bob Dylan, Nikki Giovanni, Ernest Hemingway, Georgia O’Keefe, H.L. Mencken, e e cummings, John Dos Passos, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, Emily Dickenson, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, Scott Joplin, Gertrude Stien, John Cage, Andy Warhol, Steven Spielberg, Buster Keaton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Frost, Samuel Barber, Mohja Kahf, Andrew Wyeth, Duke Ellington, Ansel Adams, Edgar Allen Poe, Jhumpa Lahiri, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville, Ezra Pound, Jack Kerouac, George Gershwin, Daniel Burnham and Elbert Hubbard (Roycroft) and I’m not even showing all my cards.

Faiqa… your friend is a boob.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:17 am
@RW, Well. Actually, he said something boob-ish, but as people go, he’s a pretty righteous guy. I don’t know why I just channeled 60/70s surfer vernacular with that adjective. I think it was your list up there.

[Reply]
Marla Hansen Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 2:34 am

Your friend, the American, asked the question, “What does America really have to offer to humanity?

The better question, in my mind anyway, is this: “What do you, my fellow American friend, have to offer to humanity?”

This is the question I ask myself daily.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:18 am
@Marla Hansen, If more people asked that question, we’d have a lot less problems.

[Reply]
Kailyn Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 2:55 am

Me? I’ve always Bern partial to my crazy Soitherners — all mentioned by RW except for Wliam Faulkner.

Thank you for sharing this poem. It has been one of my favorites for years. Reading it here almost brought tears to my eyes — almost because I’m too cold hearted to actually cry.

Jazz is the only purely American form of music but country and rock have been hugely shaped by the American experience as well.

At the turn of the century, there was that list of the 100 greatest American books. You could just about count the number of books written by people of color on one hand. My stepmother questioned this and I mentioned Chinua Achebe and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Non-Americans. Maybe if the early part of the 20th century had been different… But I have faith that the list at the end of this century will show greater diversity because we have grown and now allow a variety of voices be heard. Or at least that’s what iike to believe.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:20 am
@Kailyn, Do you mean at the turn of this most recent century? As in 1999? Only a handful? REALLY?

And why the hell am I still surprised over crap like this?!

[Reply]
Kailyn Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:58 am
@Faiqa, Yes, seriously the most recent turn of the century. I know the list is still online somewhere.

[Reply]
SciFi Dad Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 8:30 am

I was going to mention jazz as a purely American contribution to the musical consciousness, but Kailyn beat me to it.

But yeah: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Salinger…

[Reply]
Kailyn Reply:
February 2nd, 2010 at 9:46 am
@SciFi Dad, Actually Hockeymandad mentioned jazz first.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:20 am
@SciFi Dad, People love jazz around here.

[Reply]
Finn Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 10:46 am

Seriously, someone had a cranio-rectal inversion. Music, movies… Mark Twain, for crap’s sake, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman (speaking of pioneers).

Blue jeans, people. Blue jeans.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:22 am
@Finn, Blue jeans, really? I thought the British came up with blue jeans and then decided they were just too damned casual…

[Reply]
Kailyn Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:56 am
@Faiqa, Blue jeans were created by Levi Strauss during the California Gold Rush with fabric he had originally bought to make tents. The story goes that the miners needed pants that wouldn’t rip easily. They then complained that the pockets ripped from the weight of the gold so Levi added the rivets. Supposedly there had been rivets along the crotch seam as well but they weren’t comfortable when one is trying to warm one’s self by the campfire.

OK. I am such a nerd.

[Reply]
Finn Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:36 am
@Faiqa, So yeah, what Kailyn said.

Except for the nerd part.

[Reply]
Elizabeth Kaylene Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 1:30 pm

We do have culture — it’s an amalgam of other cultures and a little of our own thrown in! This is what makes us so special. I’m proud to be a part of this culture.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:23 am
@Elizabeth Kaylene, Interestingly, even the parts of our culture that aren’t influenced by other cultures are pretty, well, cool.

[Reply]
Elizabeth Kaylene Reply:
February 4th, 2010 at 3:34 am
@Faiqa, We have Sims! It doesn’t get any cooler than Sims.

[Reply]
Kate Said,

February 2, 2010 @ 5:14 pm

Nothing of cultural value, eh? We both know that’s untrue, so I’ll write nothing more except that most Americans are descended from people in countries where all the great art, poetry and other cultural gems were produced.

[Reply]
Faiqa Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:25 am
@Kate, And there were lots of things that were simply produced here, too. Like… I think we came up with hot dogs! And, you know, a lot of interesting and well written books and stuff.

[Reply]
Kimberly Said,

February 3, 2010 @ 1:56 am

I agree with you, but I think that’s partly where that mentality comes from. And by the way, I’m appalled at all my typos in my previous comment.

[Reply]