The Barkley Marathons: A Legendary Race and a Fascinating Movie

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Gary Cantrell

The Barkley Marathons, one of the world's most grueling ultramarathon trail races, takes place every spring in Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee. An award-winning documentary on the event - Barkley Marathons: The Race that Eats It's Young - was released in 2014. For the fun of it, I've bracketed some facts on the race and the movie with the words from an old Appalachian Bluegrass song. This version of I Feel Jesus was written in 1962 by Frances Reedy and recently recorded by the contemporary folk duo, Anna and Elizabeth. It very fittingly ends the film.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• Barkley Marathons was co-founded and designed by trail runner Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell in the early 1980's.
• Cantrell claims to have gotten the idea for the race when Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray famously escaped from a Tennessee maximum security prison in 1977. Ray kept searchers looking for 54 hours but only travelled eight miles.
• Cantrell gets hate mail from people thinking he is a James Earl Ray fan. Actually,  he thought Ray was a wimp for only getting eight miles. He felt participants in his race could do much better.
• One bit of the race actually follows a sewer/stream that travels under the prison.
• An "ultramarathon" is any race longer than marathon distance - 26.2 miles.
• The Barkley distance is at least 100 miles. Some think it's closer to 125. No one knows for sure and Cantrell changes the route slightly each year.
• These 100-125 miles are run through remote Tennessee woods and mountains.

It's Holy Ghost power shut up in my bones. I've got the one desire to make heaven my own.

• The race is five loops of 20-25 miles each.
• You have 60 hours to finish all five loops.
• Finishing racers run the equivalent of two ascents and two descents of Mount Everest.
• Out of 1000 competitors in 30 years, only 14 have ever finished.
• In some years, no one finishes.
• It took ten years for anyone to finish.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• The first two loops are clockwise. Depending on the circumstances, this means one is probably run in the light and the other is probably run in the dark
• The second two loops are counter-clockwise.
• The first place runner (if any) after four loops decides whether to run the last loop clockwise or counter-clockwise. The second place runner (if any) must run in the opposite direction.

Well, it'll make you happy, it'll set you free, It'll make you love your neighbor, it's a work of charity.

• In the film, Cantrell comes across as a sort of benevolent/sadistic Santa Claus figure.
• He has created a unique mechanism for entering the race. Anyone can apply by paying a $1.60 application fee. But you must also write an essay and fill out numerous forms. The criteria for selection is not transparent.
• Only 40 per year are selected.
• One of them is designated the "human sacrifice" - someone who Cantrell feels has absolutely no chance of completing even one loop, even though they might otherwise appear to be in good shape. He's always right. The "human sacrifice" shown in the movie was a Navy Seal.
• If you're chosen, you receive a "letter of condolence."
• At check in-time, you must bring a license plate and a "gift" for Cantrell. The gift has varied from a white shirt, to socks, to a flannel shirt - whatever Cantrell thinks he needs that year.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• The race has no preset start time. Rather Cantrell blows a conch shell at a surprise point within a 12 hour period. That signals that the race will begin within one hour.
• The actual race begins when Cantrell, at the start line, lights a cigarette.
• Very few even finish more than one loop.
• If you finish three loops, it's called a "fun run."
• As each competitor stops or gives up, a designated trumpeter plays "Taps."

It's resurrection power, shut up in my bones. It's got the same power to raise Jesus from the tomb.

• There is no chip timing. GPS is banned. You only have a compass and a map. Every few miles in the loop, there is a pre-placed vintage paperback in a plastic bag. You must tear a page out of each book (corresponding to your race number) to prove you have stayed on the course. After each loop you give the probably crumpled pages to Cantrell who verifies them by lining them up on a stone wall.
• The legs of most competitors are usually completely bloodied by a particularly hostile strain of Tennessee bramble.
• After each loop, you can eat, rest, tape your blisters or sleep. almost no one sleeps (if they get that far). The leading runners usually spend no more than a half hour "in camp."
• The course record, set by Brett Maune in 2011, is 52:03:08 - an average speed of approximately 2 miles per hour.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• "Barkley" is a Tennessee farmer and friend of Cantrell. He is amused that the race is named after him.
• The movie is absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend it, whether you are a running enthusiast or not. It chronicles the 2012 race in which there were three finishers - a record.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

Here are a few trailers for the film - the full version of which is currently available on Netflix - as well as a short additional video featuring the mischievously charming Cantrell discussing why no woman has ever completed the race (although a number of women do compete every year), and a YouTube audio clip of I Feel Jesus.

"I married Isis on the 5th day of May": The Last Word on Bob Dylan

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One of my go-to Bob Dylan songs is "Isis," the second track on his 1975 Desire. It's not political. It's not a protest song. I guess it would be classified as a ballad.

I just played it again for the 97th time.

What is it about? It's a tall tale set in a sort of mythical West about a grave-robbing scheme gone bad. Or something like that. But the story is framed by a a woman. She is enigmatic and perhaps unattainable even though the song begins with the narrator's marriage to her:

I married Isis on the 5th day of May
But I couldn't hold onto to her very long
So I cut off my hair and rode straight away
For the wide unknown country where I could not go wrong

There follow his adventures, which are a mix of the magical and the mundane. He comes to a  town, divided down the middle between "darkness and light" and goes into a laundry to wash his clothes.

He's taken in by a con man - "I gave him my blanket; he gave me his word" - and they go into the desert in pursuit of treasure. The narrator dreams of "diamonds and the world's biggest necklace." But he also can't get the woman out of his head:

I was thinkin' about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless
How she told me that one day we would meet up again

And things would be different the next time we wed
If I only could hang on and just be her friend
I still can't remember all the best things she said

After arriving at "the pyramid all embedded in ice," the plan goes bad. It turns out to be about a grave, but the grave ends up being that of the con man. And there is no treasure. Instead of a tomb robbery, it's a burial:

I picked up his body and I dragged him inside
Threw him down in the hole and I put back the cover
I said a quick prayer and I felt satisfied
Then I rode back to find Isis just to tell her I love her

Of course he does.

She was there in the meadow where the creek used to rise

Blinded by sleep and in need of a bed
I came in from the East with the sun in my eyes
I cursed her one time then I rode on ahead

When she questions him, the narrator insouciantly snarls out his answers. Then he melts.

She said, where ya been? I said, no place special
She said, you look different, I said, well, I guess
She said, you been gone, I said, that's only natural
She said, you gonna stay? I said, if you want me to, Yes

Unless you've heard the original album version of this song, all of this may seem a bit silly. The lyrics were apparently written in collaboration with Jacques Levy, who was, yes, an actual Literature Professor. But I'm not sure they look anything special on the page.

As I type I smile at the words because I remember Dylan's take on them. On Desire, it was perfect, especially when coupled with four instruments including a haunting acoustic piano and fiddle.

There are a few different versions on YouTube of Dylan performing the song live. They're not very good. The intonations are all wrong. It sounds hurried. This tells me that the brilliance of the song lies not in the lyrics nor even in the lyrics coupled with the melody. It wouldn't have become a classic without the particular way the song was put together on Desire by Dylan and his producer, Don DeVito. Maybe DeVito should have won a Nobel Prize.

I hope "Isis" is listened to in a hundred years. I think it will be. It certainly deserves to be. And it's an example of what makes Bob Dylan one of the greatest American musicians of the second half of the 20th century.

No, it's not literature (for the reasons given above). But that's okay. I haven't read Proust 97 times. I haven't even read any particular passages of Proust 97 times.

Okay, I haven't read Proust.

As of this writing, the reclusive Dylan still hasn't responded to the Nobel Prize committee. Actually, I think it would be fitting it he snubbed the whole thing. He doesn't need the Award. it doesn't add one atom to any of his accomplishments. The Award was a silly suck-up to counter-cultural hipsterism (or an imagined version of it) by a bunch of muddle-headed academics who couldn't carry a beat and think sharia law is the height of diversity.

It doesn't matter.

Isis, oh, Isis, you mystical child
What drives me to you is what drives me insane
I still can remember the way that you smiled

On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin' rain

Isis will endure forever. Or at least her smile will.

When a Young Robert Christgau Busted Bob Dylan's Literary Pretensions

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Bob Dylan was just awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature.

This was, of course, a category error. Literature is defined as written works, composed of letters on pages, usually grouped together into books.

Bob Dylan only composed two literary works in his life:

Tarantula - a short book of prose poetry, published illegally by an underground press in 1966, bootlegged extensively and then released officially in 1971 - received almost uniformly condemnatory reviews, and is still cited as a classic example of how the "poetry" of the song lyric mode fails to transfer to the printed page.

Chronicles: Volume One - published in 2004 as the first part of a planned three-volume memoir - got a much better reception. But I think it's fair to say that Dylan didn't get the Nobel Prize for that.

So, Dylan won the Prize for his song lyrics, or more precisely, his songs. In fairness, the Nobel Committee along with many others no doubt consider them to be poetry - sung poetry, but poetry nevertheless.

But that doesn't make Blonde on Blonde literature.

And in truth, as music critic Robert Christgau wrote in a review of Tarantula published forty-five years ago in The New York Times, song-writing isn't poetry, and Dylan, for all his pretensions, is no poet.

Christgau called him a poetaster.

Ouch.

But he would also write: "To assert that Dylan doesn't belong to the history of literature is not to dismiss him from the history of artistic communication, of language." Exactly so. Whatever you think of Dylan's politics, or the people and movements associated with him, or his somewhat eccentric later creative life, he was a fine musician. I can only second the critic's final recommendation: Buy his records.   

The answer, my friends, is still blowin' in the wind 

By Robert Christgau June 27, 1971 

The official appearance of Bob Dylan's “Tarantula” is not a literary event because Dylan is not a literary figure. Literature comes in books, and Dylan does not intend his most important work to be read. If he ever did, his withdrawal of “Tarantula” from publication five years ago indicates that he changed his mind. Of course, it's possible that he's changed his mind again—with Dylan, you never know. Most likely, however, his well‐known quest for privacy, his personal elusiveness, lies behind the unexpected availability of this book. The pursuit of the artist by his audience has been a pervasive theme of his career, and the bootleg versions of “Tarantula” hawked on the street and under the counter over the past few years by self‐appointed Dylanologists and hip rip‐off artists were simply a variation on that theme. For Dylan to permit the release of the book now (at a non‐rip‐off price, it should be noted) is to acknowledge the loss of a battle in his never‐ending war for privacy. Quite simply, his hand has been forced by his fans. He is a book‐writer now, like it or not. 

To assert that Dylan doesn't belong to the history of literature is not to dismiss him from the history of artistic communication, of language. Quite the contrary. A song writer does not use language as a poet or novelist does because he chooses his words to fit into some larger, more sensual effect; an artist who elects to work in a mass medium communicates in a different way from one who doesn't and must be judged according to his own means, purposes and referents. That much ought to be obvious. I would also argue, however, that Dylan's choices not only merit their own critical canons but must be recognized as incisive responses to modernism's cul‐de‐sac, in which all the arts, especially literature, suffer from self‐perpetuating intellectual élitism. 

What makes this all so confusing is that Dylan's fame and influence are based on his literary talents and pretensions. Just for fun, I might suggest that Dylan is no greater an artist than Chuck Berry or Hank Williams, but only Dylan could have become the culture hero of a decade of matriculating college classes. Even at first, when Dylan's best songs were mostly acute folk music genre pieces, he was thought to embody transcendent artistic virtues. The standard example was “Blowin' in the Wind,” which interspersed straightforward political questions with metaphorical ones, always concluding: “The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, the answer is Blowin' in the wind.” The song's “poetic” language, effective in its musical and emotive context even though it appears hackneyed on the page, captured listeners sympathetic to its apparent assumptions and inspired much unfortunate image‐mongering. But in retrospect we notice the ambivalence of the title—can the answer be plucked from the air? 

Dylan may not have been aware he was equivocating when he wrote the song, but that doesn't matter. Equivocation was inherent in his choice of method. Like most of his confreres in the folk movement, Dylan got his world‐view from the listless civil‐rights and ban‐the‐bomb radicalism of the late 50's but was forced to find his heroes elsewhere, among the avant‐garde artists who helped young post‐conformists define for themselves their separation from their fellow citizens. Once Dylan conceived the ambition to use those artists as his own exemplars, he had to come to terms with their characteristic perspective—namely, irony. Sure enough, in “My Back Pages” (1964) he was renouncing politics with a nice ironic flourish—“I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.” Moreover, the same song signalled his debut as a poetaster with a portentously clumsy opening line: “Crimson flames tied through my ears, growing high and mighty traps.” 

Between early 1964 and mid‐1966—a period that includes the four albums from “Another Side of Bob Dylan” to “Blonde on Blonde” and the switch from acoustic to electric music—Dylan became a superstar. Pioneers of youth bohemia seized upon his grotesque, sardonic descriptions of America as experienced by a native alien and elevated Dylan into their poet laureate. In response, professional defenders of poetry declared themselves appalled by his barbaric verbosity. Many of us, his admirers, even while we were astonished, enlightened and amused by Dylan's sporadic eloquence, knew why John Ciardi wasn't. But we didn't care, not just because Dylan's songs existed in an aural and cultural context that escaped the Ciardis, but because we sensed that the awkwardness and overstatement that marred his verse were appropriate to a populist medium. No one was explicit about this at the time, however, least of all Dylan, whose ambitions were literary as well as musical and whose relationship to his ever‐expanding audience was qualified by the fascination with an arcane élite to which his songs testified. 

“Tarantula” is a product of this period; in fact, Dylan fans who want a precise sense of what the book is about need only refer to the liner notes of “Highway 61 Revisited.” The basic technique is right there: the vague story, peopled with historical (Paul Sargent), fabulous or pseudonymous (the Cream Judge, Savage Rose) characters, punctuated with dots and dashes and seasoned with striking but enigmatic asides, all capped off with a fictitious letter having no obvious connection to what has preceded. That's all folks. 

“Tarantula” is a concatenation of such pieces. Most of them seem unconnected, although a few characters, notably someone named “aretha,” do recur. The only literary precedent that comes to mind is “Naked Lunch,” but in a more general way “Tarantula” is reminiscent of a lot of literature because it takes an effort to read it. Unless you happen to believe in Dylan, I question whether it's worth the effort, and don't call me a philistine—it was Bob Dylan who got me asking such questions in the first place. 

For the strangest aspect of Dylan's middle period is that although it was unquestionably his literary pretensions that fanaticized his admirers and transformed the craft (or art) of songwriting, Dylan's relationship to literature as a discipline was always ambivalent. In fact, to call it ambivalent is to compound the confusion—it was actually downright hostile. From “Tarantula”: “wally replies that he is on his way down a pole & asks the man if he sees any relationship between doris day & tarzan? the man says ‘no, but i have some james baldwin and hemingway books’ ‘not good enough’ says wally.” From the notes to “Bringing It All Back Home”: “my poems are written in a rhythm of unpoetic distortion.” 

Dylan borrowed techniques from literature—most prominently allusion, ambiguity, symbolism and fantasy—and he obviously loved language, but he despised the gentility with which it was supposed to be tailored. His songs do seem derivative, but (like “Tarantula”) they aren't derived from anyone in particular. Obvious parallels, or “influences”—Blake, Whitman, Rimbaud, Céline—share only his approach and identity: the Great Vulgarian, the Magnificent Phonus Balonus. Dylan wrote like a word‐drunk undergraduate who had berserked himself into genius, his only tradition the jumbled culture of the war baby—from Da Vinci to comic strips, from T. S. Eliot to Charlie Rich. His famous surrealism owes as much to Chuck Berry as to Breton or even Corso, and even though his imagery broadened the horizons of songwrit ing, it was only a background for the endless stream of epigrams—which songwriters call good lines—flowing into our language, some already clichés (“The times they are a‐changin,” “You know something's happening, but you don't know what it is”), others still the property of an extensive, self informed subculture (“Stuck in side of Mobile with the Memphis blues again,” “Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters”). Dylan may be a poor poet, but he is a first‐class wit. 

But such talk accedes to the temptation of placing Dylan's work in a page context, always a mistake. Literature may have engendered the Dylan mystique, but rock and roll nurtured it. We remember those lines because we've heard them over and over again, often not really listening, but absorbing the rhythm of unpoetic distortion just the same. “Tarantula” may contain similar gems, but we'll never know they're there, because Tarantula will never be an album. The wonderful letters, the funny bits, as well as the dreary, vaguely interesting stuff and the failed doomsday rhetoric—all will go. Aretha Franklin's continuing presence through the book is a portent, for shortly after “Tarantula” and “Blonde on Blonde” Dylan made another switch by abandoning the verbal play (and excess) of his long songs for brief, specifically pop works. For a while, it appeared that this meant a total abandonment of the complexity of his vision, but his latest album, “New Morning,” makes clear that it is only a condensation. More and more, Dylan affirms the value of the popular and the sensual over the verbal. This book will find its way into A. J. Weberman's Dylan concordance and doubtless become a cult item, but it is a throwback. Buy his records.

Sinead O'Connor: "I'm on a bridge in Chicago and I'm going to jump!"

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This is not a parody. Apparently she has been living in Chicago for the last few months.

From TMZ:

SINEAD O'CONNOR SUICIDE WATCH ON CHICAGO BRIDGES 

Cops are on the hunt for Sinead O'Connor after someone in her family told cops she's threatening to kill herself. 

Chicago PD got a call from Irish authorities saying Sinead contacted her family an hour ago and said she was suicidal and planned to jump off a bridge in the Chicago area. 

We're told cops actually spotted someone who looked like she fit the profile but it wasn't Sinead. 

TMZ obtained scanner audio from the PD giving officers the heads up. We're told there's not an active search ... but cops were told to be on the lookout. 

Sinead's been struggling with depression lately -- just last month she was reported missing and her friends and family feared suicide -- she was later found at a Chicago hotel.

From ABC7 (WLS):

CHICAGO POLICE ADVISED TO BE ON LOOKOUT FOR SINEAD O'CONNOR 

CHICAGO (WLS) -- An all-call was issued for Chicago police Thursday, urging officers in the city to be on the lookout for Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor after police in Ireland received a report that she may be suicidal and threatening to jump from a bridge. 

"Dublin, Ireland is saying that at 1530 hours, Sinead O'Connor called and said I'm on a bridge in Chicago and I'm going to jump," police said in their all-call. 

Police spokesman Officer Thomas Sweeney said Thursday there isn't an active police search for O'Connor. 

Around the same time the call went out, officers spotted someone threatening to jump from a bridge over a Chicago expressway, but it turned out to be a 54-year-old man. He was taken to a hospital. 

Last month, O'Connor disappeared from a home in Wilmette, her friends saying she rode away on a bicycle and never returned. She was found safe at a suburban hotel. 

O'Connor has used social media to call out family members overseas and it's possible she reached out to them again Thursday, leading to the call to Dublin police. Her representatives have not responded to requests for comment.

Bandit Pianist "Klavierkunst" Plays Imagine at Cox Memorial Service

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It almost looks like he's wearing a hijab.

Yes, he also played Imagine outside of the Bataclan, a few days after the massacre there.

His schtick, for which he has earned swoons from the usual circles, is that he cycles to the scenes of demonstrations, wars and murders with a piano attached to his bike.

And then he plays various hits including that well-known Khmer Rouge theme song:

Imagine there's no heaven 

Imagine there's no countries 

And no religion too 

Imagine no possessions

He wanted to go to Orlando. No doubt Milo Yiannopoulos would have splintered his grand with a Pink Pistol.

Davide Martello, aka "Klavierkunst," is a twit.

He's an ambulance chaser without the socially useful upside.

Real men shoot back. They don't plonk on people's graves.

What Alpini (Italian Mountain Troops) Song Was Pope Francis Referring To?

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He was an Alpini

Pope Francis, in a recent appearance in front of children--an appearance that is quickly becoming notorious for the many eyebrow raising things the Pope did and said--claimed that:

There is a lovely song that the Italian Alpine troops sing: in the art of rising up, victory does not lie in not falling, but in getting back up.

Now, the Italian mountain troops or Alpini, initially formed in 1872, are actually famed for their songs as well as their combat prowess. Many of these songs are explicitly Catholic. Mahound's Paradise does not necessarily doubt that the Pope was referring to a particular actual song. On the other hand, we wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the Pope was mixed-up or even slightly fibbing, as he often is or does in his "off-the-cuff" remarks. But the question is, what song was he referring to?

Here is perhaps the most famous Alpini song, Signore delle cime (Lord of the Peaks):

God of heaven,
Lord of the peaks,
You called our friend from the mountain.
We beseech thee, we beseech thee:
Up in heaven, up in heaven,
Let him go
Through thy mountains.

Holy Mary,
Lady of the Snow
Cover our friend, our brother
With a soft white blanket.
Up in heaven, up in heaven,
Let him go
Through thy mountains.

God of heaven,
The mountaineer has fallen
And rests in peace
In the breast of the mountains.
We beseech thee, we beseech thee:
Let an edelweiss
Fall from thy hands.

(The edelweiss is a Alpine flower, famously referred to, among other places, in a song from The Sound of Music. See end of post.)

This is a beautiful song. But there is no reference to falling down and getting up.

Here at Mahound's Paradise, we are of course fluent in 23 distinct languages and are conversant in at least 50 more. We are also highly knowledgeable about the history of music, including the Southern European folk tradition.

Nevertheless, to give others a chance, we will here offer an excerpt from Wikipedia, summing up the focus of the most well-known Alpini songs. Strip to a t-shirt, open your windows (if it's cold) or turn on a fan or the air-conditioner, to get the full effect:

• Aprite le Porte. An upbeat choral calling on people to open their doors and have a look at a column of advancing Alpini.
• Bersagliere Ha Cento Penne. This song begins by telling the difference between the single, long black feather which distinguishes the Alpini's cap from the Bersaglieri, who have a lot of smaller feathers on their cap. It goes on to tell why being an Alpino is harder than any other soldier's job, and says that the Alpini don't fear death because they die among the flowers of the Alps.
• Cosa Fai, Mio Bel Gin Gin. This song tells the story of a wife, who awaits the return of her husband, but is told by retreating Alpini, that her wait is in vain.
• Di qua, di là del Piave. A song about a beautiful girl.
• E Cadorna Manda A DireGeneral. Cadorna calls on the Alpini to advance and guard the frontier; alas they know they are on their way to guard the frontier for eternity.
• Era Una Notte Che Pioveva. A single soldier stands guard in the middle of a snowstorm on a mountain summit, dreaming of his beloved at home.
• Il Testamento Del Capitano. The Captain of a Company is mortally wounded and asks to see the rest of his Alpini a last time; they come, even though they have no shoes to walk. He asks them to cut his heart into five pieces: one for his homeland Italy, one for the battalion, one for his mother, one for his love and the last one for the mountains, which will surround it with roses and flowers.
• La Montanara. A song about the beauty of the Alps, very famous and often considered as the hymn of the Alps.
• La Si Taglia I Biondi Capelli. A young girl cut off her blonde hair to enlist in the army and thus able to follow her first love to the front on the Piave river.
• La Tradotta. “The railway that begins in Turin, doesn’t stop in Milan anymore, but goes directly to the Piave - cemetery of youth. In 29 we left home, only in 7 we returned, the other 22 all died in San Dona. Dear nun, I’m wounded, tomorrow I won’t see, my mother will not come; put a flower on my grave. A cross is in Nervesa, my brother is buried there, I wrote Ninetto on it, and so mother might find him.”
• La Valsugana. The dream of returning home.
• Lassù in montagna. A inspirational song about that even when alone in the mountains all of Italy stands besides the Alpini.
• Monte Canino. The Alpini arrive on the front after days of transport in railways wagons.
• Monte Cauriol. The wind brings the news to a family that their son has died on Mountain “Cauriol”.
• Monte Nero. The 3rd Alpini regiment is on its way to conquer Mount “Nero”, but the attacks ends in such a massacre, that the regiments Colonel sits amid his dead soldiers and weeps.
• Monte Pasubio. A long column of Alpini is on the way to Mount “Pasubio”, a column of those that will never return, that go to die on Mount “Pasubio”. But the Alpinis are not afraid; they will not return/ turn around. (In Italian the used verb has this double meaning)
• Quel Mazzolin Di Fiori. A young woman collects flowers she will bring to her love.
• Signore delle cime. A prayer for a man who died in the mountains. It prays God to let him climb the mountains of Paradise - this famous song is a recent song (1958) written by Bepi de Marzi, an italian composer who wrote many songs drawing inspiration from popular tradition.
• Stelutis Alpinis. In Friulian language. A dead soldier tells his beloved where he is buried: "up among the rocks" under a clearing full of Edelweisses. He tells her to come and pick one flower, and hold it when she prays for him, so he will still be with her.
• Sul Cappello Che Noi Portiamo. A hymn on the black feather that the Alpini carry on their hat.
• Sul Ponte Di Bassano. On the famous "Bridge of the Alpini" in Bassano del Grappa the Alpini say goodbye to their loved ones, before departing to the nearby front.
• Sul Ponte Di Perati. On the bridge of Perati a black flag of grief flies for the Alpinis of the Alpine Division Julia, who goes to war, goes under the earth.
• Ta - Pum! After 20 days on Mount Ortigara, the battalion descends and has no soldiers left; they are all in the cemetery by the river, where the battalions remaining soldiers will soon stop by too.

Well, no falling down and getting up in those songs either (unless it's hidden in the full lyrics).

There is only, well, falling down and never getting up...in the snow, and the cold, amidst the rocks and swirling wind, alone, presumably done in by an Austro-Hungarian or French sniper or whomever, while your beautiful love back home picks a mountain flower to remember you by...

I hope I'm not being too flippant. I find the Alpini to be heroic. But you have to admit most of the songs are a bit...melancholy.

So, I'm still curious. What song was the Pope referring to?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

If you read this far, you deserve a clip from the Sound of Music. Edelweiss.

Muhammad: Destroy all Musical Instruments

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"Sorry"

Yesterday I wrote about the Ayatollah Khomeini's negative views about fun, joy and humor.

It's tempting to dismiss this sort of thing as a manifestation of modern-day Islamic "extremism". After all, weren't Muslims in the "golden-age" of Islam trilling flutes and strumming harps, composing love-poetry and eating sherbet, while Europeans were scrambling around in the mud bashing each other with crude clubs?

We'll discuss the Islamic view of music and musical instruments shortly, but first let's backtrack for a moment and ask: How do we know what Islam itself allows or prohibits?

Well, as all faithful Muslims would agree, first you look at the Koran to see what Allah, or through him Muhammad, commanded or said. Then you look at the Hadith--accounts of what Muhammad said or did. That's pretty much it. As far as I can tell, there's no Natural Law tradition in Islam. In other words, the commands or prohibitions don't obviously have to make sense. If God said it or Muhammad said it or did it, that's good enough.

So, with reference to Muhammad. If he treated captives in a certain way--executing some, sparing others, selling still others into slavery, etc.--then your job is to figure out the pattern and imitate it. If he had this to say about how to treat political enemies, then that's how you treat them. If he liked cats, then cats are good. If he made love in this position but not that one, then guess what? If he smoked cigarettes in a cigarette holder, then you...

Okay, sorry, that was Ayn Rand, but the point stands.

Now, the question arises as to what to do if it appears that Muhammad said or did two contradictory things. If both are verified and accepted as true, then the latter one rules. Muhammad changed his mind, or circumstances changed or whatever, and you go with the last and basically ignore the first. The first one is abrogated.

And by the way, the changing one's mind thing applies to Allah himself in the Koran. Indeed, there are so many seeming instances of this that to the skeptic it gets a bit comical. Sure enough, the Koran has more than a few things to say about the phenomenon:

If We abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten, We will replace it by a better one or one similar (2:106). 

God abrogates and confirms what He pleases. His is the Decree Eternal (13:39). 

If We pleased We could take away that which We have revealed to you (17:86). 

When We change one verse for another (God knows best what He reveals), they say: "You are an impostor" (16:101).

You got that one right, Skippy.

It is this that lies at the heart of the issue of those "peaceful" versus "warlike" parts of the Koran. The peaceful ones are all chronologically earlier. Muhammad began by attempting to spread Islam in a non-coercive manner. When that didn't work, he took up the sword. It worked better. And that's where things stood when he died, and where they have stood ever since. The sword rules.

Now in the Hadith--the gathered sayings and deeds of Muhammed--there is sometimes a bit more controversy about which sayings are "verified". There are tens of thousands of the things and multiple compilers. I think it's fair to say that there's a great deal of agreement on much of the important stuff with some arguments around the edges.

So what did Muhammad have to say about musical instruments?

Bukhari, perhaps the most accepted and respected of the Hadith compilers has the Prophet saying:

From among my followers there will be some people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, the wearing of silk, the drinking of alcoholic drinks, and the use of musical instruments as lawful. And (from them), there will be some who will stay near the side of a mountain, and in the evening their shepherd will come to them with their sheep and ask them for something, but they will say to him, "Return to us tomorrow." Allah will destroy them during the night and will let the mountain fall on them, and Allah will transform the rest of them into monkeys and pigs and they will remain so till the Day of Resurrection (7:494).

Another compiler, Qudsi, relates:

The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance. Allah said that if a man took even a mouthful of wine, He would make him drink the same quantity of pus of the wounds of the people in Hell (19:5).

By the way, the pus thing is not unique. The Koran is filled with similar grotesque imagery.

It should be said that the Koran and Hadith are somewhat mixed when it comes to singing. On the weight of the overall evidence some have said that all singing is condemned, though this is hard to square with the preferred quasi-musical chanting of the Koran. The majority view, perhaps, is that while some singing is permitted, especially if for a religious or other serious motivation, in general, singing is frivolous and potentially dangerous.

It could lead to musical instruments.

In fairness, many Islamic scholars have interpreted the musical-instrument "prohibition" in a milder manner similar to the way singing is regarded. Some instruments in some contexts might be allowable as long as their purpose is not for frivolous enjoyment or entertainment. The scholar I just linked to even goes so far as to say that "the use of the drums are unequivocally permissible for festivals and weddings and joyous times." Take that, Ayatollah Sourpuss.

So, do people in Islamic countries use musical instruments? Even for entertainment? Do they do it even (close your eyes and cover your ears) just for fun?

Of course. Whatever the ruling ideology or government says, when it comes to fun, people are always trying. Perhaps it's evolutionary. Or if you prefer, God (the real God) has built the thirst for joy into our very spirit.

But when, say, ISIS in some new outrage, melts all the brass instruments of the Mosul Symphony Orchestra into war materiel, or bans whistling or cuts off the hands of twenty marimba players or whatever, and you hear or read people scolding, as you just know they will, that's not authentic Islam! Actually...

It is.

Don't blame me, man.

It all goes back to Muhammad.

A Priest, a Rabbi and an Imam Cute Violinist: Only in Israel

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"Well I've heard there was a secret chord/That David played and it pleased the Lord."

This neat video (see below) was posted on Aussie Dave's always useful Israelycool, a few hours ago.

I believe it's a priest, but I suppose it could be a monk.

The video expresses Judeo-Christian liberal civilization at it's finest.

And yes, some of the most acute expressions of Judeo-Christian civilization currently take place in Israel.

The Imam was invited but he had a stoning to go to.

As most of you know, Hallelujah was originally composed by Leonard Cohen. Most famously, the late Jeff Buckley started to cover it after hearing John Cale's version. It's a beautiful non-religious song that uses biblical imagery to great effect.