‘The Varied Carols I Hear’

Thoughts on the Fourth of July

(Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash)

This morning, I wake up with music—music in my head. I think of Marilyn Horne singing “At the River,” that great hymn (Robert Lowry). (She sings it in the Copland arrangement.) I also think of her singing “Shenandoah.”

So many songs, we have.

I think of Marian Anderson singing spirituals—“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” for example. I think of Leontyne Price singing “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” (I once wrote a piece about that song. It had come up in the 2008 presidential campaign, believe it or not.)

You have to think of Gershwin, of course—here’s André Previn in Rhapsody in Blue. Here’s Bernstein in “Hoe-Down,” from Copland’s Rodeo.

I think of Art Tatum playing “Sweet Lorraine.” I think of Lee Hoiby’s song “Lady of the Harbor,” setting the words of Emma Lazarus, adorning the Statue of Liberty.

Do you know Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915? He takes his text from James Agee. Here’s Dawn Upshaw, American as all get-out.

I think of Broadway—those great musicals, such as Oklahoma! and South Pacific. I’ve named a pair by R&H, Rodgers and Hammerstein. Let me continue a little: West Side Story, the Bernstein masterpiece. The Music Man, by Meredith Willson.

That last might be the most American musical of them all, by the way.

Oh, Grease! Yes, Grease—part of our bloodstream.

I think of James Taylor, the Jackson Five, the Beach Boys.

Then we have the written word—words that spring off the page, full of life. When I was young, I had a copy of Bolts of Melody, the Dickinson collection, on my shelf. Who placed it there, I’m not sure—but thank you.

I think of Carl Sandburg, and the fog coming in “on little cat feet.” I think of Langston Hughes and his “dream deferred.”

You of course think of Whitman: “I hear America singing.” Those four words are famous. Less frequently quoted are the five that follow: “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.”

Yes, what variety! What diversity! (It’s a pity that that word has been tarnished.) For starters, I love our American speech—its accents from New England, the South, the Midwest, and elsewhere. That is American music.

So many types, we have here: hippies, Mormons, hucksters, Rotarians. I am grateful for our little platoons, and bigger ones. Our civil society, our Tocquevillean patchwork.

They come from every corner of the earth, Americans do. Years ago, I worked at golf courses. At one of them, we often had an outing on Monday. One of my jobs was to put name cards on the golf carts. Each cart had two riders, two names.

I remarked to a co-worker, “These names are of every type.” You had “Jones,” “Wozniak,” “Garcia,” “Chung,” “Patel”—on and on. And all of those names, in a sense, were American names.

It was an amazing revolution, the one we wrought in 1776. I say “we”—I am grateful for our forebears. The revolution was both particular and universal. It was a boon to us—us Yanks—and the world at large.

The Founding Fathers started an experiment in ordered liberty.

About America, there are a million books, and I would now like to recommend one of them: Richard Brookhiser’s Give Me Liberty: A History of America’s Exceptional Idea.

Very dear to me—very dear to many of us—is what Lincoln said about Henry Clay in his eulogy of him:

Mr. Clay’s predominant sentiment, from first to last, was a deep devotion to the cause of human liberty—a strong sympathy with the oppressed everywhere, and an ardent wish for their elevation. With him, this was a primary and all-controlling passion. Subsidiary to this was the conduct of his whole life. He loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country.

Amen.

Further thinking . . .

I think of the entrepreneurs, people with ingenuity and vim, who provide goods and services (and jobs). They probably ran a lemonade stand when they were kids.

Grateful for that type.

I think of Ty Cobb, Joe Louis, Bobby Jones, Joe DiMaggio, Muhammad Ali, Jack Nicklaus, A. J. Foyt . . .

Speaking of cars (Foyt was a racing driver, as you know): I think of T-birds, Mustangs, and Corvettes.

I think of Fred Astaire, Walt Disney, Johnny Carson.

So help me, I further think of the sitcoms I grew up on—goofy shows (and now and then deep): Bewitched, Sanford and Son, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Jeffersons . . .

I once wrote a piece called “A Certain Brashness.” Here is the opening:

Some years ago, a man at Davos was singing the praises of America. He was from East Asia—I can’t remember exactly where. One thing he brought up was the matter of group photos. “In my part of the world,” he said, “everyone knows where to stand. There is a hierarchy. Everyone knows his place. In America, no one knows where to stand. They just fall in, and somebody takes the picture.”

I thought this was a very interesting observation about our country—one only a foreigner could make.

You recall what Aunt Eller says in Oklahoma!: “I don’t say I’m no better than anybody else, but I’ll be danged if I ain’t just as good!”

(I guess I was thinking of Oklahoma! back then too.)

I will continue a bit:

At naturalization ceremonies, the presiding officer—could be a judge, even a Supreme Court justice; sometimes it’s the president of the United States—often says, “You are now just as American as descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims.” (Sometimes they are more so, in outlook and appreciation; sometimes they aren’t.)

A few months ago, I landed at JFK Airport after a trip abroad. As I was making for a cab line, I saw an airport official giving a vendor a hard time. The vendor was clearly an immigrant from Africa. He said, in his accented English, “I know my rights!” Made me grin.

When it comes to looking at America, I’m from the “warts and all” school. Do not overlook the warts. At the same time, do not become so fixed on them that you forget the rest of the face.

One of my favorite comments about patriotism was uttered by Carl Schurz, the German immigrant who became a Union general, a U.S. senator, etc.: “My country, right or wrong—when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set.”

There are many things that need to be set right in America today. Wouldn’t you agree? But I think of Paul Johnson, the late British historian, with whom I discussed America, several times.

“Are you worried about America?” I asked him. He answered roughly as follows: “The day I start worrying about America is the day that people from all over the world cease wanting to go there—to join your country, to become part of your project.”

I also think of V. S. Naipaul, the late novelist, who said something like this: “The seething, ‘anti-American’ Third World masses are all united in one desire: that for a green card.”

Thank you for joining me today, my friends. Happy Independence Day. I’d like to close with a story. I told it in a speech once—a speech I wrote out. I’ll paste. Again, a very happy Fourth to you.

A few years ago, I met a man named Mark Haidar. His original name is “Mahmoud”—Mahmoud Haidar. He is a computer engineer and tech entrepreneur in Dallas. Very successful. He is affiliated with the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

His family was from Lebanon, but they had to flee in 1982, with the outbreak of war there. They went to Kuwait, where Mark was born. When he was four, they went back to Lebanon.

The family was very poor, like many. One of Mark’s sisters froze to death at five months old. The country was beset by fighting of various types.

One day, two employees of the United Nations came to Mark’s school. He told me, “This was the day that changed my life.” They brought with them two computers—by which Mark was fascinated. Obsessed. He wanted to learn everything about computers he could. Out in the world, he felt relatively helpless. Behind a computer, he felt empowered. It was the only thing in his life he could control. He explained to me, “Computers do exactly what you tell them to do.”

He found something called “Encarta.” This was an early Microsoft encyclopedia. He began reading about the United States and discovered the Declaration of Independence—which excited him. Which lit him on fire. He knew, in his core, it was true: Human beings have rights that no man or system can negate.

Thereafter, he had a tradition. Every time he got a new notebook in school—like a spiral notebook—he would write on the cover the words “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Americans may be jaded about this—we lucky native-borns—but around the world they are not. They know better. They know how precious and rare this is. And how right.