There's a different group of musicians on the stage every hour at this particular festival that we seem to attend every year. My wife and I might stand in the back and listen for a few songs but this weekend I asked if we could find a seat because a Dixieland band was on the stage and I have a strange fascination with this music, for it takes me back both to college and to my two army R&Rs in Sydney, Australia in 1970 and 1971.
So as we are sitting there in the sun, the mostly banjo ensemble plays the title song to the play and film Cabaret, and now I'm taken back to the Stephen Foster Memorial Theater on the Pitt campus in probably 1973. I wrote this in a previous post on the theme of Cabaret...."the storyline always had an unsettling effect on me. As I think back on it today it's even more unsettling, for our culture resembles a hedonist cabaret in the last days of the Weimar Republic where totalitarianism watches our antics and plans our demise.....as Lisa Minnelli's character succumbs to the death spiral of the cabaret at the end of the film she belts out the title song that I'm sure you are familiar with, some of the lyrics of which are..."
Life is a cabaret,
Old chum
Come to the cabaret.
Come taste the wine,
Come hear the band,
Time for a holiday
Start celebrating,
Right this way
Your table's waiting.
No use permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away.
The following is a post from December 22nd of 2015 and since then we have devolved as a society even further into the abyss:
No Wisdom....No Vision....No Problem
Friends, do you see now your country falling apart? Surely you must! Can you finally feel the tremors in the earth beneath your feet. Do you not often gag at the pungency penetrating both the olfactory and the mind? Has not your confidence been shaken so that you lie awake with grave concern for what tomorrow will bring to our nation?
What do you think.....would it be best to know or not to know of impending disasters? The Apostle Paul thought it better while visiting the Thessalonians to advise them of the persecution that was about to occur... even some of our more prescient politicians today go boldly in this where our ministers fear to tread.
There are a succession of scenes from David Mamet's 1999 film The Winslow Boy that show how affluence can vanish in a family's life. The film is great but its not the topic here, rather the message from the original play written by Terence Rattigan in the 1940s. Arthur Winslow's youngest son is accused of a crime and the entire play resolves around his father's accumulating legal bills for the son's defense. Furniture might disappear here or a painting there as items are sold off to support the household. See this film if you get the opportunity.
American lifestyles are about to change. Whether it be that the return of Jesus Christ is near or not, we cannot continue as we are. We are an inglorious mess here in the United States. When you have tens of millions of voters ready to vote for Hillary Clinton....you are an inglorious mess. When your colleges and universities have billion dollar endowments but not two nickels of wisdom to rub together you are an inglorious mess. (and today when you celebrate Donald Trump's tweets....you are an inglorious mess)
Our television has become an electronic replica of the Weimar cabaret where you can get anything that you want. We no longer have the will to defend ourselves anymore for there has to be some kind of unity and we don't have it. The only kind of unity that we are close to is in stupidity.
We have no vision as a people. I don't mean a vision for the future but rather vision of the present. If we did we would be sitting right now with our face in our hands, praying to God for mercy. If we did, church sanctuaries on a Sunday morning would be as quiet as a hospital intensive care unit. If we did pastors would be entering their pulpits thinking that this might be their last sermon for the congregation may refuse to let them give another with so bleak a picture of America's future.
We would be a laughing stock to all, but those who see the consequences of what we have become are far more likely to shed tears of sorrow than of laughter. God help us... for we have fallen so far. This present insanity cannot go on. Morning follows every New Year's Eve party and the reality that will face the revelers this year will be at the very least stark, the months ahead treacherous and the seasons fraught with instability.
So as we are sitting there in the sun, the mostly banjo ensemble plays the title song to the play and film Cabaret, and now I'm taken back to the Stephen Foster Memorial Theater on the Pitt campus in probably 1973. I wrote this in a previous post on the theme of Cabaret...."the storyline always had an unsettling effect on me. As I think back on it today it's even more unsettling, for our culture resembles a hedonist cabaret in the last days of the Weimar Republic where totalitarianism watches our antics and plans our demise.....as Lisa Minnelli's character succumbs to the death spiral of the cabaret at the end of the film she belts out the title song that I'm sure you are familiar with, some of the lyrics of which are..."
Life is a cabaret,
Old chum
Come to the cabaret.
Come taste the wine,
Come hear the band,
Time for a holiday
Start celebrating,
Right this way
Your table's waiting.
No use permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away.
The following is a post from December 22nd of 2015 and since then we have devolved as a society even further into the abyss:
No Wisdom....No Vision....No Problem
Friends, do you see now your country falling apart? Surely you must! Can you finally feel the tremors in the earth beneath your feet. Do you not often gag at the pungency penetrating both the olfactory and the mind? Has not your confidence been shaken so that you lie awake with grave concern for what tomorrow will bring to our nation?
What do you think.....would it be best to know or not to know of impending disasters? The Apostle Paul thought it better while visiting the Thessalonians to advise them of the persecution that was about to occur... even some of our more prescient politicians today go boldly in this where our ministers fear to tread.
There are a succession of scenes from David Mamet's 1999 film The Winslow Boy that show how affluence can vanish in a family's life. The film is great but its not the topic here, rather the message from the original play written by Terence Rattigan in the 1940s. Arthur Winslow's youngest son is accused of a crime and the entire play resolves around his father's accumulating legal bills for the son's defense. Furniture might disappear here or a painting there as items are sold off to support the household. See this film if you get the opportunity.
American lifestyles are about to change. Whether it be that the return of Jesus Christ is near or not, we cannot continue as we are. We are an inglorious mess here in the United States. When you have tens of millions of voters ready to vote for Hillary Clinton....you are an inglorious mess. When your colleges and universities have billion dollar endowments but not two nickels of wisdom to rub together you are an inglorious mess. (and today when you celebrate Donald Trump's tweets....you are an inglorious mess)
Our television has become an electronic replica of the Weimar cabaret where you can get anything that you want. We no longer have the will to defend ourselves anymore for there has to be some kind of unity and we don't have it. The only kind of unity that we are close to is in stupidity.
We have no vision as a people. I don't mean a vision for the future but rather vision of the present. If we did we would be sitting right now with our face in our hands, praying to God for mercy. If we did, church sanctuaries on a Sunday morning would be as quiet as a hospital intensive care unit. If we did pastors would be entering their pulpits thinking that this might be their last sermon for the congregation may refuse to let them give another with so bleak a picture of America's future.
We would be a laughing stock to all, but those who see the consequences of what we have become are far more likely to shed tears of sorrow than of laughter. God help us... for we have fallen so far. This present insanity cannot go on. Morning follows every New Year's Eve party and the reality that will face the revelers this year will be at the very least stark, the months ahead treacherous and the seasons fraught with instability.
