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Friday, 09 December 2005 06:33 |
| Seamus McNerney
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One of my favorite holiday discs is Vince Guaraldi??s ?®A Charlie Brown Christmas.?∆ It is remarkable because of its multidimensionality. Smooth, jazzy, mournful and always dignified. It is what the holiday season should be, but is not. When overtaken by the desperate expectations of family and others, we have a tendency to neglect reflection and find escape through quick-fix media. If you allow the innocence of this disc into your musical home, the home in the soul and mind, you will find bliss.
His music is unabashedly wistful and nostalgic, although after 25 years of listening I have never really satisfied myself with any explanation of where the nostalgia is heading. Early jazz? Early American symphonic music? I am taken away from these concerns when I listen to Guaraldi??s right hand ?? it glides like a fine ice-skater, never overly athletic and always with a view of small but impressive musical insight. And we have to consider the context of this wonderful music ?? Charlie Brown.
Growing up, I was never a fan of the Peanuts. There is a white-bread
safety to the world of Charles Schulz, something I find as dull and
uninteresting as Garrison Keillor??s deliberately simple and frequently
sophomoric observations born from his home in Lake Woebegone (how
cute). But in this music I find innocence, not safety. There is nothing
safe about being innocent. This is not to be confused with naivete.
Innocence is dangerous precisely because it is a living condition, a
condition characterized by vulnerability. And it is this vulnerability
that characterizes us during this holiday season. We should remain
innocent, or, at least, nostalgize our innocence of former lives. This
is Christmas ?? innocence, and the ability to empathize with the
innocence of others. Safety consists in shelving innocence. The
holidays are about vulnerability (a positive thing) and innocence, free
of naivete. This music embodies the spirit of this notion.
After all, who is more innocent than Charlie Brown? Again, I never
liked Peanuts, but I appreciated Schroder and his drooling praise of
Beethoven. Not to mention Pigpen, the arch-prototypical hippy set
against the backdrop of suburban monotony. It is no accident that one
of the Grateful Dead??s keyboardists was named Pigpen. Pigpen and
Schroder ?? the two outsiders, the two Ur-phenomenon of self-creating
outsiders. Pigpen defies the norm, Schroder defies the norm. One is
forgetful of his hygiene, the other is forgetful of his duty to Lucy.
This is suggestive of Lucy??s rage towards Charlie Brown ?±?± her devious
sudden removal of the football is emblematic of her sublimated sexual
frustration with Schroder. And of Pigpen? We can only call it ennui?Ò
And the music?ÒI never thought I would get rhapsodic about a couple of
cartoon personalities, but I am listening to the disc as I write this
and I have to go (that is, away). The gliding right hand and the
beauty of the left hand accompaniment is too much. And when the
children??s choir chimes in, it is almost too much. It is seraphic in
its innocence and simplicity ?±?± never safe, never dangerous.
?ÿ
Seamus McNerney is a lecturer in the humanities with an emphasis on
music history at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
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