Watch It Fall: A Lament

“How long until there’s nothing left at all?”

This is the season, this is the time of lamentation.

I suspect that bluegrass, perhaps along with just the plain old blues, might be the only two musical genres fit to express the sentiments of the remnant of the healthy and the sane, we who are left to be nostalgic.

How precious–indeed, how fragile–was the whole edifice of Western Civilization and all we enjoyed about it?

Science–and I mean actual science. Natural law. Respect for the individual and the freedom that followed from it. Consent. Art that expressed some beauty and meaning. A reverence for the human person as a person, made in the image of God. No one equated the other to a leper, or some infectious, monstrous automaton. That is, no one did that when the principles of Western Civilization were followed and revered. There was awe. Where has awe gone? When you are left to wonder, encouraged to contemplate the beauty of the earth, the majesty of the heavens–mirth fills the soul.

Now, we are faced with the discontents that follow the abandonment of civilization. The arguments for consequentialism verses a deontological justification for liberty appear frivolous; the lines have become so unimportant and blurred. When love of the other, love that naturally leads to an undying respect for his dignity and freedom; when that love is extinguished, we are living with the effects of rebelling against who we are, who we were made to be.

For centuries, because of the best of the classics and the best of the Middle Ages, that treasure of civilization remained resilient. It was resilient against the worst of ideas, the worst of people, the worst of what demons could throw at it. Nihilism. Puritanism. War. Despair. Real plagues. Communism. Atheism. But, at present, fear and laziness of thought–“mass formation psychosis”–seems to be the wooden stake, the silver bullet to the good, the true, and the beautiful–at least as we have always enjoyed it.

We are left to remember, that is, lament and remember.

Lament and nostalgia are the life bloods of bluegrass, and bluegrass has a Mozart at the moment. His name is Billy Strings. That is his stage name, but I prefer his real name–William Apostol. Close enough.

Here is the video for one of his many masterpieces; lyrics follow:

Well, it’s not so easy now though it never was back then
We still can’t seem to work this out but we can still pretend
And these tattered walls and burnin’ bridges just quickly start to fall

How long until there’s nothin’ left at all?

I’ve been to California man, I’ve seen them city lights
Been stranded in the desert, scorching days and freezing nights
I’ll never understand why people try to walk so tall
How long until there’s nothin’ left at all?

Don’t you love what you got used to
Where we used to feel so free?
Won’t you wait a while in silence love
Watch it fall with me

Well, the old man said the great big apple’s rotten to the core
With wall street skimming from the till while no one minds the store
And how could someone get so low in a building so damn tall?
How long until there’s nothin left at all?

While chunks the size of Delaware are falling off the poles
Our heads are buried in the sand, our leaders dug the holes
Like junkies hooked on fossil fuels heading for withdrawal

How long until there’s nothin left at all?

Don’t you love what you got used to
Where we used to feel so free?
Come and wait a while in silence love
And watch it fall with me

Now the answer’s in our heads to the question that were asked
It boils up from underground and leads us to the past
To a place that’s long forgotten when we had enough for all
How long until there’s nothin’ left at all?

Don’t you love what you got used to
Where we tried to make our stand?
The hourglass is growing empty now
Just to leave a pile of sand

Watch it fall.

Now aside from the insipid global warming alarmism, that song hits me. Also, don’t you love it when you hear a song you instantly love and then view the official video, and the video shows what was in your mind’s eye as you listened to the music? There’s something so beautiful when you see industry in the foreground and nature in the back. There’s something so Western about that: God empowered us to cooperate with Him to improve upon His temporal creation for the advancement of our neighbors. He demands we celebrate and act in agency, in freedom.

Beyond the masterful, superhuman guitar picking, there is a brilliance in that song that is hard to compare.

The truth is: I loved what I got used to. I loved working my hands to the dirty bone and getting paid well for it. I loved making people happy with my work. I loved drinking a portion of my checks away near friends and unknown foes alike. I loved taking my kids on a roller coaster to see them scream in elation and see others scream with them. I loved getting the sense that, even though there were cheats and thieves and hypocrites and posers out there; well, that hardly mattered because they could be avoided. They did not rule. And, the good and the witty could denounce their sinister, boring duplicity.

Sadly now, we live in the reich of the cheats, the thieves, the hypocrites, and the posers. They think nothing of you. They destroy. They put masks on kids. Then, they admit what we already knew–the goddamn masks don’t do shit. Their god is an idol of themselves and their superstitious virtue signaling. The Hebrew word for mask (מסכה), after all, is the same word for idol.

Speaking of the Hebrew and pace Mr. Apostol, David is the lamenter par excellence.

Here’s Psalm 10:

Why, O Lord, hast thou retired afar off? Why dost thou slight us in our wants, in the time of trouble?

Whilst the wicked man is proud, the poor is set on fire: they are caught in the counsels which they devise.

For the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul: and the unjust man is blessed. The sinner hath provoked the Lord according to the multitude of his wrath he will not seek him: God is not before his eyes: his ways are filthy at all times. Thy judgments are removed from his sight: he shall rule over all his enemies.

For he hath said in his heart: I shall not be moved from generation to generation, and shall be without evil. His mouth is full of cursing, and of bitterness, and of deceit: under his tongue are labour and sorrow. He sitteth in ambush with the rich in private places, that he may kill the innocent. His eyes are upon the poor man: He lieth in wait in secret like a lion in his den. He lieth in ambush that he may catch the poor man: to catch the poor, whilst he draweth him to him. In his net he will bring him down, he will crouch and fall, when he shall have power over the poor.

For he hath said in his heart: God hath forgotten, he hath turned away his face not to see to the end.

That last line above should hit you like a sledgehammer: “God hath forgotten”, or so it seems.

Note though: “God hath forgotten”, is from the vantage point of the besieged believer, the just man.

So, as with all laments, there is a faint, a dim, perhaps the slightest sliver of hope. There has to be because the lamenter is lamenting to someone, and that someone in the Psalmist’s case is He Who cannot forget. Lamentations are meant to be heard, as Origen said eighteen centuries ago.

Our lamentations are heard. Will we hear the response?

I suspect it will entail less compliance and complacency and much, much more agency.

We have to rise from our sleep before there’s nothing left at all.