[See: Carnival Culture Index]

Everybody, foot-loose!

Through the course of his many travels, the wandering {see also: ramblin’} Fool becomes wise in the ways of the world. Living amongst many tribes of men, he learns their language and customs in order to survive, and eventually becomes their friend. Through shared moments of ease and jest, he learns their songs, jokes, local traditions - what’s important to them. He empathizes with and understands his fellows, and trades tales of his own homeland and songs of his youth. In the sharing of this most simple of human fellowship, people bond and are “bound” together: they become headed for the same place, pointing all at the same target somewhere betwixt the heart and mind.

Footloose and fancy free, it seems to others like he’ll never rest, like he’ll never settle down in any one place. He sees no reason why. He is having too much fun for that. As he goes from place to place he learns and grows and comes to know something about what matters to men everywhere, something which - despite all the outward differences - makes us all the same inside. We are all humans, he sees, with the same basic struggles and victories. We have the choice of dying and living together or going it alone. The Fool, however, chooses both. He never was one to settle for easy answers and simple categorizations.

If I Can’t Dance At Your Revolution…

Poetry is the Truth set to music. The music inherent in the human voice, that most miraculous and primary of all instrument: the ability to talk about and sing about and laugh about what is important and scary and beautiful to us. The ability to share it with each other. The Fool, in his travels, learns many lessons and this is primary among them: travel with companions when you can. Laugh and sing together, play and drink together. Somewhere, in the course of these late-night tales and songs, the folk-singer takes flight, the Bluesman is born.

Seek And Ye Shall Find

In 11th through 13th century France, at the height of the Middle Ages, a local breed of Fool took to the stage of world history under the name of the Troubadour, or the Trouvere. They sang songs of chivalric quests and war, of Courtly Romances and dramatic love affairs, the epic histoires of Old France, the chanson de geste. In other countries, they took on names like Bard or Minstrel, or Minnesang, or Scop. All seem to have meant roughly the same thing, an itinerant performer who transmitted oral histories and cultural traditions.

In modern parlance, “busking” means playing music and singing on a street corner (usually accepting, if not necessarily soliciting, monetary donations). The word comes from the Spanish “buscar” which means, “to seek.” Both “Troubadour” and “Trouvere” mean the same thing in Southern and Northen French dialects (langue d’oc and langue d’oil, respectively). What then, were they seeking?

Was it just money? Were ancient bards and troubadours merely singing for their supper (basic economics: value-added services in exchange for hard goods)? Maybe we should turn to the Griots for inspiration in this area:

a West African poet, praise singer, and wandering musician, considered a repository of oral tradition. As such they are sometimes also called bards. According to Paul Oliver in his book “Savannah Syncopators”, “Though [the griot] has to know many traditional songs without error, he must also have the ability to extemporize on current events, chance incidents and the passing scene. His wit can be devastating and his knowledge of local history formidable.” Although they are popularly known as ‘praise singers’, griots may also use their vocal expertise for gossip, satire, or political comment.

And Shakespeare, as you may recall, is often refered to as “The Bard.”

The word is a loanword from descendant languages of Proto-Celtic *bardos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gwerh2: “to raise the voice; praise”. The first recorded example is in 1449 from the Scottish Gaelic language into Lowland Scots, denoting an itinerant musician, usually with a contemptuous connotation. A Scots ordinance of ca. 1500 orders that ‘All vagabundis, fulis, bardis, scudlaris, and siclike idill pepill, sall be brint on the cheek’.[citation needed] The word subsequently entered the English language via Scottish English.

Secondly, in medieval Gaelic and Welsh society, a bard (Scottish and Irish Gaelic) or bardd (Welsh) was a professional poet, employed to compose eulogies for his lord (see planxty). If the employer failed to pay the proper amount, the bard would then compose a satire. (c. f. fili, fáith). In other European societies, the same function was fulfilled by skalds, rhapsodes, minstrels and scops, among others.

Bards or filid were those who sang the songs recalling the tribal warriors’ deeds of bravery as well as the genealogies and family histories of the ruling strata among Celtic societies. The pre-Christian Celtic peoples recorded no written histories; however, Celtic peoples did maintain an intricate oral history committed to memory and transmitted by bards and filid. Bards facilitated the memorization of such materials by the use of poetic meter and rhyme.

Praise Is For Raise

The Folksinger, then, is he who raises his voice, who uplifts it from ordinary every day speech, who embellishes, beautifies and performs spontaneous celebrations, praises and exaltations of beauty. The Folksinger is literally inspired, “breathed into,” by the Logos, the Word of God described in the opening passage of the Gospel of John. Though scholars can’t seem to agree on details (when, incidentally, have scholars EVER been able to agree on anything?), there is evidence which connects the French Troubadour tradition (if not the Celtic and Germanic counterparts), to the transcontinental trade routes set up by Crusading Knights, who under the spell of religious symbolism were enthralled by the lure of mystic Muslim and Sufi poetry, which sung Romantic, Devotional, and sometimes Lustful praises toward God.

In Europe, this tradition morphed into the Codes & Ethics of Chivalry (literally, “horsemanship”), the rules of conduct which ennobled a man to knighthood. Europe found a container for all this dangerous Devotional libido in the image of a knight’s absolute utter devotion to his Lady, a pure and perfect love which sometimes chaste, but often not. The Catholic Church eventually managed to symbolically channel this powerful energy into Virgin Mary cults. Figures like Maid Marian, and her Merry Men are mythic bridges between these folklore realms of a knight’s devotion to his Lady, and Virgin Mary sightings which occur all over the world even today. The symbolic clothing which human longing takes on determines the characteristics of its expression and of the person who expresses it.

Song Sung Blue

That is, all the Folksingers of the world who have ever sung sad songs belong to one guild, all the Great Lovers to another. To another still those who wrote chansons for Men Who Fought And Died For Something™ Most Folksingers belong to all. It’s inevitable as life sends you its songs, and asks to sing through you if you’re willing to hear it. The Folksinger prays aloud with others, “Make of me an instrument, O Lord.”

The Folksinger is the MC, the Master of Ceremonies, the man with something to say at any occasion. The person around whom at parties people throng because he’s hilarious and engaging. He’s got the best stories and the funniest jokes, knows lots of weird sayings and can usually drink and smoke unlike anything most people have ever seen. For he has seen things with his own eyes, touched them with his own hands, and drank of pleasures with his own lips that most people don’t even know exist, because they have sat at home on their hands, sleeping upside-down with the television on, the sound of laughter and clapping in the background.

The Folksinger is he who seeks, and if he seeks long enough and can stay alive, he eventually finds. It is inevitable. The first step, that of becoming (again and again) the Fool is the hardest part. Everything after that is just momentum, and wisdom and contentment begin to accrue and to stick to he who makes himself ready for it, who makes of himself an empty vessel. The Grateful Dead were thankful because they were done with suffering and clinging to bullshit. They saw and sang out and spoke up about what was important to them. They took a generation up in their arms, and cradled them. Same thing with the luminaries of punk, just look: it came across in everything they did on every level.

“I Will Be Your Preacher Teacher”

The Grateful Dead are just one of many handy examples. They were the Shouters of their generation, leading great flocks of people regularly in and out of the desert.

Shouters may be the literal translation of the Hebrew term Neb’im (See Abraham Joshua Heschel The Prophets for a critique of this view). The term appears in the Books of Samuel where it describes a group of individuals who roam around playing music and acting in an ecstatic fashion. In many English translations of the Bible they are simply described as prophets.

Many Folksingers take on this role of unofficial prophet. Bob Dylan Springs to mind…

Johnny Cash stands looming in the distance upon a small mountain. Other Folksingers often become much more official prophets: dynamic and regal leaders like The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, Slain-Black Panther Fred Hampton, Che Guevara, The Reverend Billy Graham, Jerry Rubin, Paul Simon, Bobby Kennedy, John Lennon… there are too many to name.

Hitler, they even say, was a failed painter (we could also, arguably, get into Charles Manson here, but I’ll leave it out in honor of the other great men above). Whatever evil lurked in him is self-evident, but the man knew how to whip a crowd to action with dramatic gestures and persuasive speech and surrounded himself with men even more diabolical than himself. This, and nothing else, is what makes men leaders: their words make things happen because that capture the essence of Truth somewhere deeply felt within the human condition. Fools-turned-Folksingers (and beyond) of all stripes and persuasions often become unwitting leaders of their generation (and are almost as often destroyed by it), but it is - in all cases unremittingly - on account of their being able to understand the songs, prayers, and lamentations of their fellows. They see others suffering and want to make them laugh and dance and be happy and fulfilled - though they may not always have the best of motivations for it.

And this Root regard, this deep empathy, this righteous Caritas (um, scratch Hitler from that list for a second), is what sets the durn Fool, this ramblin Bluesman, country highwayman, this folksinger poet, itinerant historian, preacher and rapper. He sees and he feels and he is seen and is felt by others, often quite profoundly. He is a public man. He gives something of himself: most often all.

As Hitler displays though, the Folksinger, the Piano Man, the Entertainer, is not universally lauded. A prophet, they say, is never welcome in his own land. His image is distorted and caricatured to extremes, in order to be made an example of to others not to venture into such risky shark-infested waters.

But the Clown that he is, the Foolish Folksinger just laughs, and doesn’t skip a beat.

The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You

Whether others choose to pay, feed and enjoy, hate and deride him, he knows that is not up to him in the end; that decision rests in the hands of the audience. He cannot control them, he can only reflect them - which in turn, motivates them to reflect him. Soft control. Good management, the Eternal Way of the Tao. Theologically, Enthousiasmos:

It might be well to look at the etymology of the word “enthusiasm.” The word enthousiasmou does not occur in scripture. It does occur in ancient secular writings. Democritus, for example, said he wrote from divine inspiration: “met’ enthousiasmou kai hieroupneumatos.” 1 En theos, the root of the Greek enthousiasmos is “to be inspired by a god” or “having a god within.” 2 Pagans have long believed that one can take in or ingest something of the substance of a god, and that that god thereby possesses or deeply affects her or him. If it’s the wine god Bacchus, or the sex god Eros you’ve taken in, you become controlled by that god, indwelt by that god for a period of time. These gods will have certain effects upon your person, and this is the origin of the term “enthusiasm.”

He can do nothing of himself to retain this state. It is the State of Grace. All the Fool can do is work to perfect and to purify himself as vessel. All he can do is Stick to the Truth™, because that’s the deal he made with the Devil when he sold his soul, come midnight at the cross-roads. He knows he can’t go it alone. In the literature of psychology, this transcendant state is perhaps more comparable to Levi-Bruhl’s participation mystique, the term used to describe so-called “primitive” states:

In a state of `participation mystique’ the individual identifies with the external reality and is transported beyond him or her self. In the modern example the person participates in sport or politics as a sort of divine drama and is lost to her or himself and the blandness of everyday life for a while, fighting for `the Truth’ and against the (evil?) other.

That interpretation seems to fit quite well with drama for the stage, the world of the theatre, the theatrics of politics {See also: threatening theatrics, hat tricks, the burning of the Reichstag, and other classics}, and by extension the realm of the modern media. I remember after 9/11, reading a news article about the government sitting down with major film execs to “figure out what Al Qaeda might do next so they could prepare for it.”

Wait, what? I thought were were talking about MC’s and Folksingers and other such movers and fifth chakra shakers. We are, writ large on the world stage. This is the vision the Folksinger ultimately is given. It is not his alone; it is given in union, in communion. Others give it to him, and he gives it tenfold back to others: the Great Amplificator, the Great Emancipator, the Oracle Orator Diplomat Statesman, the Public Defender against evil, deception and lack. Merry Christmas to All, and to All A Good Night

Happy early Saint Nicholaus day (I just couldn’t wait)! Wait, wasn’t Lincoln killed in a *theatre* by an actor?

From the Greek name Νικολαος (Nikolaos) which meant “victory of the people” from Greek νικη (nike) “victory” and λαος (laos) “people”. Saint Nicholas was a 4th-century bishop from Anatolia who, according to legend, saved the daughters of a poor man from lives of prostitution. He is also known as Santa Claus (from Dutch Sinterklaas), the bringer of Christmas presents. He is the patron saint of children, sailors and merchants, and Greece and Russia.

Also pawnbrokers, according to Catholic Online. What is a pawnbroker but a person who pays value for something, who turns coal into gold {See also: Antiques Roadshow}. Jung might have called it projection, an emptying of archetypal contents onto some exterior person, event of object. This may be what the Trouveres, the Finders, the Questers, the Crusaders were really seeking after, themselves, the Face of God Reflected In The Waters™

In other words, whatever images are registered by a person in dreams or visions, these images may automatically, without the intention of the person, be understood by consciousness as “reality.” This does not imply truth or falsity. Because there are a multitude of inner images as well as bodily sensations, these can easily be “projected” onto other persons, making these other persons “special” in the extreme.

Thus, the origin - so hard to live up to - of Romantic Love as we know it, that everlasting act of near-impossible perfection: Devotion, the undying song of praise and upliftment of the human voice resounding through the ages at the touch of Grace.

[[Dedicated to my Father, who gave me life, and who sang songs of praise as long as I can remember.]]

where does a tag go when it dies?