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ACROSS
1 Assuming it’s true
7 “Bloom County”
penguin
11 Jams
14 After-dinner
gathering
15 Go in different
directions
16 Service to redo
17 Spoon
19 Flight status info
20 In addition
21 “The Fault in __
Stars”: John
Green novel
22 Leader’s domain
24 Dish
28 Chatter boxes?
31 Light weight
32 It may precede
bad news
33 Beavers, e.g.
35 “Girls” channel
38 Fork
42 Icarus, to
Daedalus
43 Bar employee:
Abbr.
44 String quartet
member
45 Prefix with arch
48 Bulldozer
companion
49 Plate
53 Marx with a horn
54 Vienna’s land:
Abbr.
55 The munchies,
e.g.
59 Hairy TV cousin
60 Bowl
64 Flowery welcome
65 It’s retold often
66 Greet on the
street
67 Roadside shelter
68 “Oh, ew”
69 Fancy, and then
some

DOWN
1 New York
stadium named
for a sports great
2 __-searching
3 Tree fruit
4 Like some wells
5 One of a Chicago
duo
6 Group of like
voices

7 Purcell’s “Dido
and Aeneas,”
e.g.
8 Four score,
often?
9 Address bar
address
10 “Lie Down in
Darkness” author
11 Request before
the music starts
12 Beijing-born
action hero
13 Passport mark
18 Payable
23 “I didn’t mean
that” key
25 Bordeaux
butcher’s offering
26 Eccentric
27 Write effusively
28 Smokehouse
order
29 Coiffure style
30 ’60s-’70s variety
show host
33 Order before the
music starts
34 Colony occupant
36 Agricultural
bundle
37 Reminder to take
out the trash?

39 Big name in WWI
espionage
40 Green sci.
41 Research
46 Org. for netmen
47 Like some paper
towels
48 Underscore?
49 Some like it hot
50 Like Cheerios
51 “Frida” star
Salma

52 Prepare to
remodel, maybe
56 Poet Dove
57 Pest in a swarm
58 Where el sol rises
61 Murderers’ Row
teammate of
Babe
62 Part of a hinged-
door floor plan
symbol
63 Fish-fowl link

By Patti Varol
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/11/16

11/11/16

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Friday, November 11, 2016

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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6A — Friday, November 11, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

I

’m not really sure how to 
start. Today has been long 
and harrowing, and any-

thing I am about to write feels 
like it can’t be more than addi-
tional white noise among the 
incessant 
static of our 
collective 
catatonia.

Like 

many, I 
watched 
election 
returns 
Tuesday 
night as 
my unease 
slowly 
metamorphosed into a spell-
binding horror. I am afraid. 
A dread which had been 
unknown to me has wrapped 
its chilling grip around my 
heart, and I have many fears 
for the future — when the 
jurors of history don their 
robes, when they set us upon 
the scales of worth, what will 
their discerning eyes per-
ceive? What is the measure of 
a people? What is the weight of 
morality? When our children 
look back to find where things 
fell apart, upon whose counte-
nance will their scrutinizing 
gaze settle? Will the scars be 
indelible? Will we, ultimately, 
be found wanting?

I want to believe that Amer-

ica is fundamentally good at 
heart, but this morning, I was 
angry. I still am, but after half 
a day the numbness set in. I’m 
still afraid. But more than any-
thing, I’m tired.

I’m really tired, but I’m 

unable to sleep. It’s 7 a.m. on 
November 10, which means 
that this article is due in a little 
over 10 hours and I haven’t 
slept in 22. After everything, 
the globe still spins. And right 
now it’s my job to say some-
thing about classical music. It’s 
what’s expected of a classical 
music columnist, after all. So 
this isn’t about what just hap-
pened. This isn’t my “J’accuse.” 
It’s not about how we got here. 
We’re not really going to talk 
about this. We’re going to talk 
about music and poetry and art 
and meaning — but also this.

Let me tell you a story. I 

worked from 11 to 5 today —
with a half hour lunch break, 
which I used to sign a lease 
rather than to eat — and when I 
got off I walked across the way 
to the Diag, where there was a 
protest going on.

I walked around the periph-

ery, neither joining in nor 
really paying attention. I had 
headphones in (I was listening 
to the Benjamin Britten “War 
Requiem”) and was looking at 
the ground, where people had 
chalked messages of encour-
agement like “You Belong” or 
“Love Trumps Hate” or “This 
is Still Home,” or the more 
damning “We Let This Hap-
pen.” I felt like crying and did 
not. At around 6 p.m., I caught 
a bus to my apartment near 
North Campus, where I set 
down my bags and sat for a 
moment. I thought about eat-
ing dinner. Instead, I got up 
and went out the door, and I 
walked and walked for a few 
hours, with no particular des-
tination in mind.

It was cold and I forgot a 

jacket. I thought a lot about 

what we, as artists, can do 
about the hatred in the world, 
and worried that perhaps the 
disease had already metasta-
sized, that the sickness was 
fatal. When one wakes up to 
find that Hell is empty, and 
all the devils are here, what’s 
to be done? In terms of both 
music and words, I knew that 
I had to write — it wasn’t just 
an emotional necessity, it was 
a moral imperative. I recalled 
artists who had grappled with 
similar questions in the past, 
and by the time my wander-
ing brought me to Literati I 
already knew exactly the poem 
I had to read.

“ …Uncertain and afraid / As 

the clever hopes expire / Of a 
low dishonest decade / Waves 
of anger and fear / Circulate 
over the bright / And darkened 
lands of the earth, / Obsessing 
our private lives … Accurate 
scholarship can / Unearth the 
whole offence / From Luther 
until now / That has driven 
a culture mad, / Find what 
occurred at Linz, / What huge 
imago made / A psychopathic 
god: / I and the public know / 
What all schoolchildren learn, 
/ Those to whom evil is done / 
Do evil in return … ”

Those lines come from W.H. 

Auden’s “September 1, 1939,” 
a title which references the 
German invasion of Poland, 
and thus the beginning of the 
bloodiest conflict humanity 
has ever known. It’s uncanny 
how apt the words feel still 
— he wrote it in the few days 
following the outbreak of the 
war in Europe, before most of 
the paroxysms of violence had 
shaken the continent, but he 
could see what was to come.

While it was a far darker 

age than today’s epoch when 
Auden wrote it, there are cer-
tain similarities which bear 
consideration. When Auden 
sat down to pen his poem he 
saw a world which was red and 
bleeding, and he wept tears of 
ink, ink which formed itself 
into words and into thoughts. 
And the thoughts that came 
out were beautiful, and heart-
breaking, and accusatory, and 
fearful, and angry, and opti-
mistic and affirmational — and 
ultimately, more than anything 
else, they were deeply, emphat-
ically human.

And maybe that’s what art 

is for. Maybe it’s to remind us 
all of our own humanity, to 
hold a mirror before our face 
and say “See, this is what you 
are.” And sometimes what we 
see might be painful, and it 
might be ugly. We might find 
that we live in a “fun” house, 
and the twisted mirror shows 
us only the worst distortions of 
our character. But by contrast, 
sometimes what we see might 
be beautiful, and as artists part 
of our job is to make that beau-
ty something which is attain-
able. Our job is to bring people 
together into the oneness of 
human existence.

About a year ago, follow-

ing the terror attacks in Paris, 
there was a quote by the great 
conductor and composer Leon-
ard Bernstein which garnered 
a great deal of attention, and I 
feel that in some ways it is apt 
to mention it again now. “This 
will be our reply to violence: 
to make music more intensely, 

more beautifully, more devot-
edly than ever before.” Now, 
Bernstein was originally 
speaking a few days after the 
murder of President John F. 
Kennedy, but his advice is no 
less sage now than it was then. 
Music has the power to gather 
disparate groups together, to 
bridge ravines and to sway the 
hearts and minds of human-
kind.

Composers have been doing 

this in little ways forever — 
there are, of course, the great 
examples of pacifist works of 
the 20th century, such as Ben-
jamin Britten’s “War Requiem” 
and Ralph Vaughan Wil-
liams’s “Dona Nobis Pacem,” 
but even earlier, people were 
doing this. Verdi’s magnificent 
“Requiem” was composed in 
memory of the great Italian 
nationalist poet and novel-
ist Alessandro Manzoni, and 
to bring their young nation 
together in mourning. Chopin 
wrote an etude in solidarity 
with the Polish independence 
movement. Even Beethoven 
— deaf, angry, misanthropic, 
cynical Beethoven — strived 
in his music for peace between 
humankind, and for common 
brotherhood.

Perhaps more famous than 

any other work in the cannon, 
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from 
the 9th Symphony (now fit-
tingly the anthem of the Euro-
pean Union) is a plea for unity 
and shared humanity. Schil-
ler’s original poem takes on 
new significance through the 
music, and after living through 
the Napoleonic Wars and hav-
ing his democratic hopes shat-
tered with the failure of the 
French Revolution, Beethoven 
poured his soul and his very 
essence into this last sym-
phony, a masterwork which is 
a breathing testament to the 
endurance of the human spirit, 
one which has resounded 
through centuries.

And so, perhaps in times 

like these, when you start to 
wonder if the Bard was right, 
if life really is, after all, a tale 
told by an idiot, full of sound 
and fury and signifying noth-
ing, the most we can do is to 
cherish our art and to cherise 
one another. In Auden’s words, 
“We must love one another 
or die.” And following his 
example, and that of count-
less others, we must lend our 
voice to the chorus of light, to 
sing more powerfully than the 
noise of hate and darkness. We 
have a voice, and that must be 
enough — the rest is silence.

“All I have is a voice / To 

undo the folded lie, / The 
romantic lie in the brain / Of 
the sensual man-in-the-street 
… And no one exists alone; / 
Hunger allows no choice / To 
the citizen or the police; / We 
must love one another or die.

“Defenceless under the night 

/ Our world in stupor lies; / 
Yet, dotted everywhere, / Iron-
ic points of light / Flash out 
wherever the Just / Exchange 
their messages: / May I, com-
posed like them / Of Eros and 
of dust, / Beleaguered by the 
same / Negation and despair, / 
Show an affirming flame.”

Hare is sitting in one of the dives 

on Fifty-second street. To buy him a 

drink, email haredayt@umich.edu.

November 9, 2016

After the election, great art can still remind us of our humanity

CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMN

DAYTON 
HARE

DAILY ARTS: THE BOUGIE FIREWALL 

THAT WILL ALWAYS STAND AGAINST 

CORPORATE PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSION 

APPLY AND JOIN US!

EMAIL KATJACQU@UMICH.EDU AND 
AJTHEIS@UMICH.EDU FOR DETAILS

Seriously major spoiler alerts 

in this one.

Tuesday’s election results 

were 
unnerving, 
terrifying 

and revealing. But they weren’t 
particularly shocking. Much 
of rural, white, working class 
America, just about half of 
the voting population, found 
inspiration in President-elect 
Donald Trump, a bombastic 
billionaire from the big city. 
His talk of closing borders and 
ending trade deals, preventing 
an onslaught of unwanted glo-
balism, was acutely appealing 
to a wide segment of the popu-
lation weary from structural 
job losses over the last decades.

But the story of 2016 is not 

Trump’s grip on the rust belt, 
nor is it Democratic presiden-
tial nominee Hillary Clinton’s 
declining appeal to her base. 
The most fundamental story 
from this tumultuous election 
will be the established media 
elite and its growing discon-
nect to the average people.

In Joel and Ethan Coen’s 

brilliant 
1991 
film 
“Barton 

Fink,” the titular character, 
a successful New York play-
wright, moves to Los Angeles 
after securing a Hollywood 
screenwriting job. Barton made 
his name by writing a play that 
depicts the “common man” and 
he’s worried that the move to 
Hollywood will remove him 
from his subjects.

He gets it wrong. After Bar-

ton checks into the Hotel Earle, 
a decrepit establishment with 
wallpaper that slides off to 
reveal slime-covered walls, he 
meets his neighbor, Charlie 
Meadows, by calling the front 
desk to complain about Mead-
ows’s noise. Charlie, angered, 
knocks on Barton’s door and 
the two begin to talk. Charlie, 
an insurance salesman, appears 
delighted to learn that Barton is 
a writer of “the common man.” 
Barton’s fascination is “the life 

of the mind,” he tells Charlie. “I 
could tell you some stories,” the 
jovial giant proclaims, before 
Barton interrupts him: “I’m 
sure you could. And that’s the 
point.”

Silenced, Charlie remains 

close to Barton, but strange 
things start to happen. Barton 
develops writer’s block and 
can’t wrap his head around how 
to write a “wrestling picture.” 
He meets a famous novelist 
and falls for his assistant (and 
mistress), Audrey. After Audrey 
and Barton sleep together, he 
finds himself covered in her 
blood: she’s been murdered. 
Charlie, Barton discovers, is 
not a simple, common man.

Known by the name of “Mad-

man Mundt,” Charlie is a homi-
cidal maniac who shoots and 
decapitates his victims. Charlie 
returns to the hotel as Barton 
is locked to his chair by police 
officers. The hotel hallway 
becomes engulfed in flames as 
Charlie pulls a shotgun on the 
officers and races down the 
hallway, screaming, “I’ll show 
you the life of the mind!” And 
just before Charlie tells Barton 
he paid Barton’s family a visit, 
he points the gun at the offi-
cers, says gleefully, “Heil Hit-
ler,” and pulls the trigger.

This is all exaggeration. Only 

a small (but vocal) minority of 
Trump supporters is anti-Semit-
ic or has a penchant for violence, 
and certainly few if any are serial 
killers. But Charlie’s vengeance 
toward Barton, an elitist who 
silences yet claims to speak for 
the common man, should not go 

unnoticed. There is strong dis-
dain for the elite, those who have 
“made it,” who do not know the 
struggle of day labor, of losing 
their job to competition, of hav-
ing limited skills beyond physi-
cal strength and patience, yet 
who feel free to tell the common 
man what is happening, what is 
true. “The economy is improv-
ing under the Obama admin-
istration,” the media tells the 
modern-day common man (an 
objectively true claim), but he 
doesn’t feel this improvement. 
Their lives are not markedly 
better. And their government 
doesn’t care.

It’s no wonder Clinton won the 

vote of the college educated and 
of the young, who have grown up 
in and rightfully accepted a pro-
foundly changing economy. But 
the older folks, from Wisconsin 
and Ohio and Pennsylvania and 
right here in Michigan, who are 
desperately clinging on to their 
livelihoods as their years slip by, 
have exercised their power. And, 
boy, do they have power.

This is not to say that Trump 

is in the right, or that the “com-
mon” men and women crippled 
by economic anxiety have no 
faults of their own. Often, their 
reactions to immigrants, espe-
cially Latino and Muslim, are 
horrendously 
virulent 
and 

should be rejected on face. But 
this is a nation of coalitions — 
especially the Democratic Party, 
established by the New Deal as a 
melding of populism and elitism. 
That populism has been steadily 
leaving the party since the 1960s 
and it has all but vanished.

Endless ink will be spent 

writing about the 2016 election, 
about how it broke every rule 
in the political theory book and 
yet confirmed what many social 
psychologists believed. But intel-
lectuals and the media, in their 
ivory towers and glass-plated 
skyscrapers, will need to pay 
more attention to our forgotten 
states and people if America is to 
ever survive this catastrophe of 
an election. 

DANIEL HENSEL

Daily Arts Writer

The classic film shows the divide between elites and “the common man”

What ‘Barton Fink’ tells 
us about the 2016 election

REEL POLITICS

Intellectuals will 
need to pay more 
attention to our 
forgotten states.

