I will want to write a full review of this album, but on the
day when Michael Gove has made headlines for comments made about what he sees
as a left-wing and artistic [a tautology in his warped mind] appropriation of
the public’s view of the First World War, I will let another artist speak
honestly and meaningfully about war through a single song from the album.
I’ve had mixed personal responses, though always negative,
to Gove’s expressed views throughout the day. As I dislike him intensely for a
wide variety of reasons, I have my immediate prejudices. I also initially reacted
to a report on what Gove had said, and then the rebut from his political Education
counterpart and the academic historian Tristram Hunt in today’s Observer. I have subsequently read other
commentaries as well as Gove’s original observations in The Mail titled Why does the
Left insist on belittling true British heroes?
Then I happened to listen to Springsteen’s The Wall from his latest album High Hopes, officially released on the
14th. The song’s lyric was
written in 1997 after Springsteen had visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Washington DC, and it refers to Walter Cichon, the leader of a rock band the
Motifs with whom Springsteen had grown up and who also had inspired him as a musician. Cichon was
drafted to Vietnam in 1967 and reported as missing in action in 1968.
It is a lyric that works because it is honest. It is neither
melodramatic nor maudlin. It seems misplaced in one sense to comment on the
music, but it is perhaps the strongest track on the album because it is so
simple and straightforward, a plaintive ballad sung in Springsteen’s inimitable
drawl that exudes realism and thus that honesty of believable reflection and
commentary. The poignant line And apology
and forgiveness have no place here at all answers, to a degree, the rather
false argument that Gove has tried to present, false because his motives are so
suspect.
Gove’s polemic, or diatribe really, gets off to an appalling
start where his premise seems to be that as young people are turning to and
enjoying the study of History in school – the tacit reason being his reforms to
the curriculum – they now need to be enthused by only the right [no pun intended] History. Apart from the implicit self-aggrandisement
of the assertion, what follows is perhaps the best [meaning worst] example of
rewriting History as Gove attacks the ‘prism of dramas’ that have represented
the First World War in popular culture – naming Oh What a Lovely War and Blackadder
- demonstrating whilst he does so a
complete lack of appreciation for the meaning and purpose of satire, or more
generally the intention of art to
interpret and reflect. It isn’t a prism that distorts: it is another glass or perhaps
mirror through which to observe or to reflect with a view. But I’ll have to
stop this analysis [which has been additional to my initial writing] as the
Springsteen lyric is being moved further and further down the page!
Of course there is and must be a place for critical and
philosophical reflection, debate and analysis of The First World War as all
others, but it wasn’t Gove’s intention to promote this as an alternative to
what he attacks as an unacceptable and erroneous approach. It was more to take
a pathetic swipe at an ‘artistic’ reflection, debate and argument about a war,
a creative impulse and methodology he simply cannot comprehend – unless it is
Shakespeare, presumably, affirming an English and therefore righteous ‘victory’
[and thus Gove ignoring Shakespeare’s other more philosophical, and poetic, reflections
on war and death].
The Wall
Cigarettes and a
bottle of beer
This poem that I wrote
for you
This black stone and
these hard tears
Are all I’ve got left now
of you
I remember you in your
Marine uniform, laughing
Laughing that you’re
shipping out probably
I read Robert McNamara
says he’s sorry
Your high boots and strap
t-shirt
Ah Billy you looked so
bad
Yeah, you and your
rock and roll band
They were the best
thing this shit-town ever had
Now the men who put
you here
Eat with their
families in rich dining halls
And apology and
forgiveness have no place here at all
At the wall
I’m sorry I missed you
last year
Couldn’t find no one
to drive me
If your eyes could cut
through that black stone
Tell me would they
recognise me?
For the living time that
must be served
As the day goes on
Cigarettes and a
bottle of beer
Skin on black stone
On the ground dog-tags
and wreaths of flowers
With the ribbons red
as the blood
Red as the blood you
spilled
In the Central
Highlands mud
Limousines rush down
Pennsylvania Boulevard
Rustling the leaves as
they fall
And apology and forgiveness
have no place at all
And this lyric is more about sentiment and ideas than poetry: it is in the performance as a song with Springsteen's delivery that it forms the 'artistic' commentary on an aspect of war.
