Catholica: The dissonance of war. The harmony of peace. by Cliff Baxter

I don't know if you have heard the one about the man who bought a cello and sat at home playing it, all day and night. He played monotonously only one note, over and over and over again.

His wife, almost demented. said, 'Other people who play the cello do not play the same note again and again — they play the scales. And they play a MELODY full of different notes.'

'Ah. My dear,' said the man, playing the note yet again, 'they are just looking for the right note ... but I have found it!'

Remind you of any of our world leaders? Surely we have had enough of the pathological, repetitive dissonance of the world's Johnny-one-note warmongers.

Their bellicose one note booms over the screams of dying innocent civilians and the explosions of their murdering weapons.

Some musos do go to war. Leonard Cohen did in 1967 against Egypt, but the Canadian singer and composer ended up going away filled with disgust…

You met him at some temple, where
they take your clothes at the door.
He was just a numberless man in a chair
who'd just come back from the war.
And you wrap up his tired face in your hair
and he hands you the apple core.
[Master Song by Leonard Cohen]

This makes me wonder about 'When in Our Music God is Glorified' (Luke 13: 1-9)?

Such thoughts do not let me escape from the blaring TV where it is being announced, between commercials, that Israel is now going to hold an enquiry into the recent war. Over a thousand people are dead in the land where once Jesus and his Mother walked. A child lies dead next to his toys. UN peacekeepers lie dead too.

Fear not, dear readers and bloggers, the musicians and lovers of peace will triumph in the end.

I think of the peaceful songs of John Denver such as Take Me Home, Country Roads, Leaving on a Jet Plane, Thank God I'm A Country Boy and Rocky Mountain High.

When the singer-poet-humanitarian, Harry Chapin, gave a concert his raspy voice would call, "Hiya up there in the cheap seats!" Harry Chapin wasn't cheap. He donated the proceeds of half his concerts every year to alleviate the problem of hunger in this world. In fact, it was on his way to such a concert on Long Island that Harry's car was crushed by a truck, killing him at age 39! At every Harry Chapin concert, as part of the band, there was always a cello.

This leads the Curmudgeon to contemplate the most famous Cello of Peace of all. He is memorized in a new record about buskers.

Robert Fulghum tells us of Vedran Smailovic, "a member of the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra," playing his cello midst the terrible war in Bosnia which literally had been going on for centuries. What could this one man do? Probably little. "Even so, everyday for twenty-two days he ... braved sniper and artillery fire to play Albinoni's profoundly moving Adagio in G Minor."

"Is Vedran Smailovic crazy," Robert Fulghum asks? "What madness to go out alone in the streets and address the world with a wooden box and a hair-strung bow. What can a cellist do? All he knows how to. Speaking softly with his cello, one note at a time, like the Pied Piper of Hamlen, calling out the rats that infest the human spirit ... Sometimes history knocks at the most ordinary door to see if anyone is at home. Sometimes someone is."

In Sarajevo, on May 27, 1992, at 4pm, a line of starving people formed outside a bakery hoping to get bread. Without warning, a mortar shell fell in their midst killing 22 innocent men, women, and children. One man saw this from his window and knew he had to do something. But what could he do? The following day he went to the crater left by the blast and opened fire. His weapon was his cello. His ammunition was his music. For 22 days, one to honor each of those who had perished, Vedran Smailovic, the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, played his cello while bullets flew all around him.

Vedran Smailovic,May 1997, London. Photo by Deryk Houston
Courtesy: The Children's International Peace-and-Harmony Statue website
http://members.sigecom.net/jdc/bosnia.html

"Are you crazy?" The people asked him. "Playing your cello here? People are sending missiles to kill us all he said, and you call me crazy?"

He was all alone fighting a war with his harmony. The symbolism of harmony as the answer to war created a powerful image in my mind.

In an effort to call attention to the cellist, Bosnia, and the insanity of war, I set about organizing a cello concert with 21 cellists and one empty chair with a vase of 22 roses on it in honor of Mr. Smailovic and the 22 victims of the massacre. The concert took place at the University of Evansville in Indiana.

Then, on the 5th anniversary of the Breadline Massacre, I organized "Harmony in the Park" a vigil and memorial service in a local park. I made fliers and went all over town inviting people to attend — especially musicians, artists, poets, and humanitiarians who could display their creative talents and energy as an answer to the destructive energy of war. In addition, I began writing articles about Mr. Smailovic, Bosnia, multiculturalism, social justice, human rights, and the need to replace war with dialogue in the newspaper that I publish, The Informer.

In January, 1997, I wrote President Clinton to tell him my dream to send a peace statue from the children of the world to Bosnia, like France sent the United States the Statue of Liberty. The statue will honor the spirit of the Bosnian people, who refused to be defeated by ethnic hatred and who continue to welcome all ethnic and religious groups. The statue will honor the spirit of children around the world who want peace and harmony, not war and genocide, to prevail in the new millennium. Mr. Clinton wrote me an encouraging reply, and since then, I have been working hard on the Bosnia statue project.

Read more about the Bosnian Peace Statue project at: http://members.sigecom.net/jdc/bosnia.html. And while you read that I invite you to reflect on the words in Amanda McKenna's song, Believe. Use the controller below to start it playing.