Guest Editorial
by Addison Fenwick, Figment of your imagination

The ink with which I connect the dots in the Sunday morning newspaper can't be more permanent, or high-inducing if that's your yardstick, than anyone else's. Still, even a relatively clueless old man at whom everybody shoots a glance whenever it is innocently wondered aloud what that smell is - hi, how ya doin'? - feels justifiable disgust by the current hysterical run on instant gratification. Now may be the time to cash in the foundations of decency (at current exchange rates, you'd be crazy not to), but for many of my fellow Americans, going so far as to letter a make an offer sign would be grossly self-flattering.

Who hasn't felt like destroying buildings full of people at least a couple of times? Not as part of a holy war, not in expression of political extremism, but just because one's mood is rank and anyone who is someone else is a fucking asshole. Even some dumbass teenager filled with lame prissy rage got it together to pull off a similar copycat stunt in Florida.

And yet, these are the times that try men's patience. The swirl of imperatives to support unconditional acceptance of the ultimate challenge now pervades every syllable of public life, to the point where the most ludicrous of propositions are welcomed into the discourse. It is a very common belief, apparently, that if you don't mouth off about terrorism, the terrorists have already won - a fitting axiom within a culture of tragedy that revolves around a network logo attached to a microphone under the chin of citizens who've just been asked the only relevant question of our times: "How does that make you feel?" And so the queue grows longer and longer - grievers, avengers, cheerleaders, counselors, posturers, armchair heroes, all of them needy and desperate for a hit off the glamour bong, the intoxicating conversion of mundane observations and regurgitated platitudes into The Valid and Real pending transmission via mass communication. Patriotism has become more trite than the stuff of high school yearbooks. The Rape of Nan King with party hats and selected lyrics by Loggins and Messina.

The quest for the gold in the I Heart USA marathon draws only the best intentions from competitors driven to unintentionally desecrate their national symbols in the name of loving one's country and mourning the loss of life. One is presumed virtuous as soon as one whores out one's personal feelings for The Spectacle, while anyone crazy enough to prefer privacy is suspected of being... well, suspicious. People who'd just as soon punch you out as even discuss flag-burning seem to have no problem leaving American flags draped over juniper bushes in the rain, or jamming dirty, shredded, plastic American flags into air conditioning vents and leaving them there for months. Though it would be the height of sarcasm to suggest laying down American flag placemats underneath dogfood bowls or re-tiling restroom floors at football stadiums with the stars and stripes, posters of the American flag depicted as a shopping bag under the legend "America: Open for Business" displayed in beauty parlors and butcher shops strikes no one as particularly blasphemous.

Which brings us to musicians, that occupation seemingly predisposed to hastily made pronouncements, ill-advised admissions, misspoken opinions, and, best of all, contrite retractions. Susceptible both to poets' delusions that any searching of the soul automatically yields treasure and actors' insatiable narcissism, flabby sincerity, and thirst for unmediated dialogue with an audience, musicians can be their own worst enemy especially when they step up to the mic and tell us how they feel. Under the headline "Attacks Called Great Art," the New York Times reported in their September 19, 2001, arts section,

The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen caused outrage in Germany when he described the terrorist attacks in the United States last week as "the greatest work of art ever," Agence France-Presse reported yesterday. Mr. Stockhausen, 73, who made the remark to journalists in Hamburg on Sunday, retracted it at once and asked that it not be reported. But two Stockhausen concerts scheduled for yesterday and today in a festival in Hamburg were canceled. "Out of feeling for the political culture of the city and the federal republic, the concerts had to be canceled," said Christina Weiss, Hamburg culture commissioner. Agence France-Presse reported that according to the news agency DPA, Mr. Stockhausen responded to a question about the attacks on the United States by saying: "What happened there is - they all have to rearrange their brains now - is the greatest work of art ever. "That characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream of, that people practice madly for ten years, completely, fanatically, for a concert and then die. That is the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos. "I could not do that. Against that, we, composers, are nothing." Mr. Stockhausen was reported to have left Hamburg in distress.

Gyorgy Ligeti's reaction appeared in Financial Times Germany:

"Stockhausen has taken the side of the terrorists. [...] If he thinks this atrocious mass
murder is an artwork, I am sorry that I have to say that he should be locked up in a
psychiatric hospital."

Within a day or two, the following messages appeared at www.stockhausen.org:

After returning from Hamburg I find false, defamatory reports in the press. I am as dismayed as everyone else about the attacks in America. At the press conference in Hamburg, I was asked if MICHAEL, EVE and LUCIFER were historical figures of the past and I answered that they exist now, for example Lucifer in New York. In my work, I have defined Lucifer as the cosmic spirit of rebellion, of anarchy. He uses his high degree of intelligence to destroy creation. He does not know love. After further questions about the events in America, I said that such a plan appeared to be Lucifer's greatest work of art. Of course I used the designation "work of art" to mean the work of destruction personified in Lucifer. In the context of my other comments this was unequivocal. I cannot find a fitting name for such a "satanic composition." In my case, it was not and is not my intention to hurt anyone. Since the beginning of the attack on I have felt solidarity with all of the human beings mourning this atrocity. Not for one moment have I thought or felt the way my words are now being interpreted in the press. The journalist in Hamburg completely ripped my statements out of a context, which he had not recorded in its entirety, to use it as a vile attack against my person and the Hamburg Music Festival. This whole situation is regrettable and I am deeply sorry if my remarks were misconstrued to offend the grieving families of the brutal terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. I will continue to keep the victims of this outrage in my prayers. --Karlheinz Stockhausen, September 19, 2001

Stockhausen's comments during the Hamburg interview were delivered in the context of a metaphoric line of questioning. He provided an allegorical answer to an allegorical question. Anyone who knows Stockhausen can tell you that he is a compassionate and thoughtful person. The journalist who spewed forth this unconscionable poison should immediately retract his untruthful reporting and publish an apology to Stockhausen. I live in the USA and we are doing our best with God's help to get through this cowardly and hateful attack on our nation by terrorists. I also serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors of a Fire Protection District. I personally am acquainted with heroic fire fighters from our area who are tirelessly laboring at Ground Zero in NYC. As a loyal and patriotic American, I can tell you that Karlheinz Stockhausen is not the kind of man to condone terrorism in ANY form. On September 13 Kathinka Pasveer sent me a thoughtful fax from Karlheinz, Suzee Stephens (who is American) and herself that said "We all follow the tragedy in the USA and pray for you all. So terrible." The reporter who wrote this rubbish for the sake of his own financial and professional gain should be condemned by the public for his sensational lies and promptly fired by his employer. -- James Stonebraker, Webmaster St. Louis, Missouri USA

Following this, Curran summed it all up with this post to the ForumHub group:

after all is said and done, I feel that we have all been had, and that these pathetic
comments clearly blown out of all proportions by the press are in truth not worth the momentary bruhaha they caused.... best, alvin c

It is somewhat pathetic, if not nauseating, that anyone even has the time, energy or inclination to care what a music composer has to say on the subject. One would think that comprehension of the sheer hideousness of what happened at the World Trade Center on September 11 would divert most people's concern away from translated, decontexualized heresay about a damn Lucifer allegory, and toward, oh, I don't know, maybe what the U.S. military has to say about it. Or toward an alternative to a life bounded by opportunities to grandstand and grind axes. Pumping one's fist and chanting "USA! USA!" at ground zero when Dubya mouths some button-pushing panacea whipped up by a speech writer is not a coping mechanism; it's what we do when Michelle Kwan does a good job at the Olympics. Apparently we are so facile at confronting wholesale grief and anxiety that we have time to kick in Swiss hotel room doors and yank Pierre Boulez out of bed for something he said about blowing up concert halls in the 1960s; and to forego questioning the veracity of comparatively insignificant comments -- even ones that are supposedly "beyond belief" -- before we denounce them as insane because they deviate from the new hand-wringing orthodoxy.