They’ve been on my mind as of late. Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to Mac Miller’s album Circles, or because I just read an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson called Circles. Maybe it’s because there was just an election and it seems as though there are some people within my circle and some outside of it. Then again, maybe it’s the circular movements around me — the changing of the seasons or the cycling of the moon. Whatever the reason, I hope you read on and find something you’d like to circle and add to your list of things to check out.
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. (…) Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning
It made me think about circle stories I’ve read or seen, where the ending circles back around to the beginning, like in the movie 12 Monkeys. I recently learned that 12 Monkeys was based on the 1962 French film La Jetée, a minimalist 28-minute movie consisting of nothing more than 422 photos, a voiceover, and a score. This video provides a beautiful analysis of the film that doesn’t move (yet still moves in a circle):
You can also draw circles around circles, and zoom in and out on them. I thought about how Prezi allows you to do this and it led me to compare Joni Mitchell’s song “Both Sides Now” with something Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass:
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Mitchell zooms out to find differing perspectives while Whitman zooms in to also find differing perspectives. Whether you zoom in or out, life is still complex.
My dear friend Matt Neely introduced me to David Berman in the fall of 2003. Matt and I attended grad school together and one day he lent me his CD of the album Bright Flight, by Berman’s band Silver Jews. Their current Spotify bio describes them as “a beautiful mess of indie rock, country-rock and lo-fi with lyrics both witty and profound.” After a few listens I was hooked. Beyond the scratchy guitar rifts and straightforward, yet often fractured folk-rock melodies, I really connected with Berman’s songwriting and shaky vocals. He was a lyricist who could turn a phrase like no other. His crackly deadpan delivery only added to his effectiveness as a storyteller.
One of my favorite lyrics of Berman’s comes from his song “Time Will Break The World.” I repeat it to myself each year when winter grows long and I grow tired of yet another snowfall:
The snow falls down so beautiful and stupid
Couple this with Phil Connor’s prediction from Groundhog Day and you have perfectly summarized the late-winter, early-spring feels of Wisconsin.
Berman struggled with depression and drug addiction throughout his life. Tragically, he died by suicide in August of 2019, just one month after having released his first new music in a decade, under the new moniker Purple Mountains. A close listen to the self-titled album reveals a version of David Berman who was still very much struggling with his demons.
I had been planning on seeing Berman perform live for the first time later that summer. The news of his death shook me, as it did so many others. His impact was widespread, among fans and fellow musicians alike, and an outpouring of love and heartfelt condolence seemed to flow from every corner during the weeks to follow. In an article entitled “David Berman Changed the Way So Many of Us See the World,” Mark Richardson writes:
It feels important to note that his lyrics, which seemed to be beamed in from another dimension, were used in service of songs that were generally sturdy and sounded good wherever they were needed.
Still, though, those words. Jazz critic Gary Giddins, writing about the work of Ornette Coleman, once noted ‘the music hits me in unprotected areas of the brain, areas that remain raw and impressionable,’ and Berman’s words functioned like that too. He had a gift for writing that, ironically, and in a very Berman-esque way, is hard to talk about. His use of language is so specific, it’s hard to find some of your own to describe it in a way that doesn’t diminish what you’re trying to convey. ‘The meaning of the world lies outside the world’ is how he put a related idea, in another context, in his song ‘People.’ But the way I’m describing it now makes it sound like something heady and tangled and complicated. It was the opposite. Berman had a knack for representing what was right in front of you in a way that made you see it as if for the first time.
I find myself relating to Richardson’s words, as I try to find the right words, to describe David Berman’s words. You’re better off just accessing his music directly. Even if Berman’s suffering was clearly expressed through his songs, he conveyed it in a tone that was both warm and oftentimes comical. There was a therapeutic lightness toward life’s difficulties that he wove into the fabric of his songs. It was a quality that I think genuinely helped a lot of people.
In another song touching on winter’s theme, “Snow Is Falling in Manhattan,” he writes the ghost of himself into the very song, allowing for visitors to gather round and warm themselves by the fire he creates:
Songs build little rooms in time And housed within the song’s design Is the ghost the host has left behind To greet and sweep the guest inside Stoke the fire and sing his lines
The song builds a room, presumably within a house, where the songwriter continues to live, and hosts whichever guest might appear with a need for warmth and companionship.
Berman wrote a book of poetry called Actual Air, originally released in 1999, but reissued in 2019, also just weeks before his death. As is the case with his songs, Berman’s witty insights about life, in all its wonder and bleakness, can be found in this brilliant collection of poems.
One of my favorites is “The Homeowner’s Prayer.” It’s a poem that considers the circular and linear nature of time. We move through the stages of life on a path toward our imminent demise, as the seasons continue to circle back around, obscuring the fact that one day they no longer will, at least not for us. And the time they take to come around seems to get ever faster as we get older. This is a sad poem about a man’s untaken opportunities and unlived experiences that are eventually lost to him. They were never really his to begin with because he did not live them. Time, as it were, passed him by.
But this poem reminds me that we ought to think of “home” as the people more so than the place. The title seemed incongruent to me at first, but maybe that is the prayer — let me value people above place. I have moved enough in my life to understand that my true home is the people I get to experience life with. Everything loses its flavor when you take away the people for whom you care about the most. We often confuse this simple truth in a modern society that confuses simple facts. What if, as a “homeowner,” the first thing that came to mind were the people who inhabit my heart, rather than the house I inhabit? Berman’s poem helps me to be mindful of the moments I get to spend with my people and to value the immaterial over the material.
I think David Berman knew that home was more than a place. He saw his own songs as a home, not just for him to live in, but also for any guest who would enter them to listen. Here is the poem in its entirety:
The Homeowner’s Prayer – by David Berman
The moment held two facets in his mind. The sound of lawns cut late in the evening and the memory of a push-up regimen he had abandoned.
It was Halloween.
An alumni newsletter lay on the hall table but he would not/could not read it, for his hands were the same emotional structures in 1987 as they had been in 1942.
Nothing had changed. He had retained his tendency to fall in love with supporting actresses renowned for their near miss with beauty
and coffee still caused the toy ideas he used to try out on the morning carpools, a sweeping reorganization of the company softball leagues, or how to remove algae from the windows of a houseboat.
He remembered a morning when the carpool had been discussing how they’d like to die. The best way to go.
He said, why are you talking about this. Just because everyone has died so far, doesn’t mean that we’re going to die.
But he had waited too long to speak. They were already in the parking garage. And now two of them had passed away.
It was Halloween.
Another Pennsylvania sunset backed down the local mountain
spraying the colors of a streetfighter’s face onto the narrative wallpaper of a boy’s bedroom.
Once he thought all he would ever need was a house with time and circumstance.
He slowly made his way into the kitchen and filled a bowl with apples and raisins.
The clock was learning to be 6:34.
The willows bent to within decimals of the lawn.
It was Halloween.
The years go round and round. Halloween just passed and soon it will again. The 52 weeks that make up a year bring us back to this same spot pretty quickly. Add up a life’s worth and you only get 4,000 weeks, on average. How will you spend the time?
Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti album cover on a towel, gifted to me by some very thoughtful students
When I was in college, I took a semester-long class on the history of Puerto Rico. It was fascinating — such a rich and nuanced history, filled with the ongoing struggle of living through colonialism’s legacy, but also with the pride of overcoming it in the celebration of life as a “Boricua,” or Puerto Rican.
Last week’s newsletter included the following with respect to Puerto Rico:
You may have heard what the comedian said about Puerto Rico at the Trump rally that took place in Madison Square Garden on October 27. I wanted to share some resources that say otherwise. Puerto Rico Strong is a “comics anthology that explores what it means to be Puerto Rican and the diversity that exists within that concept, from today’s most exciting Puerto Rican comics creators.” Since Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, all sales of the book have gone to support ongoing relief efforts. La Brega is a podcast from WNYC Studios that looks at the history and music of Puerto Rico. There are both English and Spanish versions of each episode. From the website:
There’s no direct translation of “la brega” in English, but for Puerto Ricans, it’s a way of life. To bregar means to struggle, to hustle, to find a way to get by and get around an imbalance of power. It’s got a creative edge, a bit of swagger; as Puerto Rican scholar Arcadio Diaz has observed, it’s a word that belongs to the underdog.
A good example of “la brega” comes from Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, who released El Apagón – Aquí Vive Gente(click on CC for English subtitles) — part music video, addressing the challenge of constant power outages while celebrating the pride of being Puerto Rican, and part documentary, addressing the dual problems of foreign real estate investments on the island and the reduction of public beach access. For further reading on the beautiful complexities of Puerto Rico, as often revealed through Bad Bunny’s music, check out The Bad Bunny Syllabus.
Anyone can see that we are living in a politically divided country — so divided, in fact, that it often feels like we inhabit two alternate realities. As each side gets more and more entrenched in its own camp, I wonder how we will find a way forward. Can the United States of America become united once more? Was it ever?
I used to teach US government to adult immigrants and refugees who were learning English while studying to earn their high school equivalency degree. It was a fun subject to teach because there were so many visual representations of government that I could incorporate into the class to support concepts and reduce language demands. I remember showing them a basic diagram of the political spectrum, much like this one:
The US government, I would explain, is made up of two primary parties that are both needed to keep us somewhere in the center of the spectrum — the sweet spot. If you swing too far left or too far right, bad things happen. I’ve seen variations of the political spectrum, for example, that label the center as “life” and either end as “death,” or the center as “freedom” and either end as “oppression.” I wanted my students to understand that democracy in the US depended on both parties working together in an ongoing cycle of give and take. While each side of the spectrum — left and right — represents a separate ideology and offers a different vision of how government should be enacted, both balance each other out in an effort to solve problems common to all of us. I would talk about how our founders developed a pretty incredible system and my students were eager to learn about it.
Today, it seems that our system is in the danger zone. We are increasingly more polarized and less prone to engage in productive civic discourse with those on the other side of the spectrum. While technology has given us an incredible amount of access to information and connects us to different parts of the globe, it has also made us more isolated and insular in our worldview, susceptible to the algorithms and echo chambers that prevent us from engaging with diverse perspectives. The very nature of our virtual discourse can distance us from those personal interactions that allow us to truly understand someone else’s story. What’s more is that truth is constantly being undermined through the spreading of falsehoods and conspiracy theories, to which greater portions of our population are falling victim.
It’s difficult to find the space to genuinely listen to each other in the midst of so much noise. We often discuss the right to free speech, but in an article on the right to listen, author Astra Taylor writes:
We’ve been slow to see that, if democracy is to function well, listening must also be supported and defended—especially at a moment when technological developments are making meaningful listening harder.
Whenever I struggle to find my place or direction in life (or become disillusioned by politics), I find it’s best to simplify — to cut out the distractions and narrow in on the basics. Like with my students, visuals can help. Here’s a more detailed view of the US political spectrum:
I like this visual because one of the first things you notice is the many ways in which the left and right preserve a balance in our government. The left, for example, looks to the future, while the right looks to the past. If I remove myself, for a moment, from my own political beliefs on specific issues, I can see how each orientation might be useful in certain situations. It makes sense. I think this idea of momentarily “stepping out” of your belief system is important.
In his TED Talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives, psychologist Jonathan Haidt proposes the idea that we are not born with a blank moral slate. Rather, we each possess five foundations that make up the “first draft” of our moral mind. Liberals and conservatives modify these first drafts in different ways as they experience life and go on to develop divergent manifestations of these same moral ingredients, illustrated here:
Liberals value care and fairness above all else while challenging the foundations of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Conservatives, on the other hand, value all five foundations, but more so authority, sanctity, and loyalty, at the expense of the others. To have a healthy and stable world, Haidt argues, we need them both — the change towards a more just society that liberals seek to obtain and the stability of our establishments that conservatives seek to preserve. But he highlights a problem — our moral values unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth. In other words, the value system we develop predisposes us towards division, a fact that our current use of technology is only exacerbating.
To overcome this division, Haidt proposes moral humility — the ability to suspend judgement and extend empathy towards those who are outside of our group. He refers to it as “stepping out of the moral matrix.”
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worse disease.
This is no easy task. We all have things we are for or against, and many of us will defend or reject them passionately. Opening ourselves up to hear another perspective is an act of moral humility that combats the pride that blinds us. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes:
As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
C.S. Lewis is talking about a top-down positionality between God and humanity. We might also apply this idea to left-right positionality between liberals and conservatives. Just as the proud individual is blinded to the God above them, so might the proud liberal be blinded to the conservative on the right, or the proud conservative to the liberal on the left.
I think part of the solution lies in turning towards one another — in opening our eyes and seeing each other. In doing so, we might find a common ground to stand on. Any time I have overcome a blindspot in my life, it has been through getting proximal to the person I was blinded to and learning from their experience. We cannot show someone empathy if we do not see them.
In the video below, Brené Brown eloquently explains the process of extending empathy to others. She talks about the impact empathy has on those who are struggling as we come alongside them and identify with their struggle. It’s interesting to view this video with a political lens. How can we come alongside someone from an opposing political perspective who is simply looking for the government to help resolve an issue they observe, be it personal or societal? Maybe it’s the same issue we ourselves care about.
The effects of entering these personal spaces in a tangible manner are indeed powerful. This past summer, a group of students from the University of Pennsylvania participated in a traveling Political Empathy Lab (PEL) that put their empathy skills into practice through connecting across political difference. The students themselves represented diverse political leanings and the mutual understanding they cultivated with folks leaning opposite of them reveals the impact of empathy:
Research shows that people’s attitudes towards the opposite political party gets better if they perceive they are being genuinely listened to by a member of the other party.
One student discusses three important aspects of relating to others — belief, behavior, and belonging. Typically, if a group of people share a belief, they will also share a sense of belonging. In the absence of a shared belief, however, you can instead focus on your behavior to create a sense of belonging. The Political Empathy Lab showed that behaving in an empathetic way can foster a sense of belonging across differing political beliefs.
Showing someone empathy may even go so far as to persuade them. In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini writes about the reciprocity principle, which states that if someone receives a gift from someone else, it is human nature for the person receiving the gift to feel an obligation to repay the person who gave it to them. He goes on to describe many areas of life where this principle applies, including politics. Cialdini provides a great example of how Lyndon Johnson used the reciprocity principle to effectively gain support across party lines during his presidency. He writes:
Political experts were amazed at Lyndon Johnson’s success in getting so many of his programs through Congress during his early administration; even members of Congress who were thought to be strongly opposed to the programs were voting for them. Close examination by analysts, such as Robert Caro in his influential biography of Johnson (Caro, 2012), has found the cause to be not so much Johnson’s political savvy as the large score of favors he had been able to provide to other legislators during his many years of power in the US House and Senate. As president, he was able to produce a truly remarkable amount of legislation in a short time by calling in those favors. It is interesting that this same process may account for the problems some subsequent presidents—Carter, Clinton, Obama, Trump—had in getting their programs through Congress. They came to the presidency from outside the Capitol Hill establishment and campaigned on their outside-Washington identities, saying that they were indebted to no one in Washington. Much of their early legislative difficulties may be traced to the fact that no one there was indebted to them.
I would wager that extending political empathy to our adversaries could do the same — showing empathy to someone and receiving it right back as a response. Living in a world with more empathy would not be that bad.
In fact, I recently learned about the Apple TV+ series Dark Matter, inspired by the book of the same name, which involves the main character entering a black box that contains doors to alternate realities. An opinion piece on media literacy and empathy describes one of the episodes from the series:
During one episode, he opens a door to find an idyllic world. People are living in harmony, technology is highly advanced and problems like poverty, war and pollution seem to have been solved. When he asks a person living in that reality how all this was accomplished, she lists three concepts: people agreeing on basic facts, committing to use technology in a way that does not destroy the environment or humanity, and valuing empathy.
We obviously have many problems facing our nation, and there are many avenues available for us to fight our way forward toward a better day. Yet I would suggest, as I did to my US government students way back when, that cooperating with one another is another avenue, one that we are taking less and less as our elected leaders and We the People become more divided.
I think we are misguided if we paint any one group as being composed of the same individuals. As with any group, there’s a great deal of variation. I can step outside of my moral matrix, as hard as it is, to know that there are good people who voted for Trump — family members, coworkers, neighbors, community members. There are people within my circle and outside of my political camp to whom I should try and show empathy, even as I should join the fight to stand up for those who will be negatively impacted by extreme right-wing policies. It seems a contradiction, but that’s what makes our system work. It’s the contradiction of the US system. We fight and we cooperate. If we remembered this, maybe we’d get more done, maybe we’d come back to the center, and maybe we’d find the balance that we all need.
In last week’s newsletter, I suggested some scary shorts from the page and from the screen:
One of my favorite times to be a teacher is during Halloween. I love incorporating eery music and stories into my classroom. I’ve played the music video for the song, “Drácula, Calígula, Tarántula,” by the Chilean sitcom, 31 Minutos (similar in content and esthetic to The Muppets). It’s a total vibe that you’ll pick up on even if you don’t speak Spanish. I will also use movies without any narration or dialogue in class, like Almaand Úlfur, and then work with students to build language around the story. Alma is a creepy animated short involving children and dolls, neither of which is creepy, right? Úlfur is another animated short that confuses the line between dream and reality in a circular fashion, reminiscent of two of my favorite short stories from Argentinian author, Julio Cortázar. Continuidad de los parques (English version) and La noche boca arriba (English version) were both introduced to me during my college days as a Spanish student. Both are well worth the read. Cortázar was a master of confusing what’s real and what’s fiction — perfect for Halloween!
Of course, we miss Cal and the fun of being around the hood tonight to hand out candy and play terrifying tunes for all the children. Angie and I are still planning on watching a scary movie or two though, be it tonight or tomorrow night. Studying is the horror consuming most of the time around here these days. Movies currently in the running are:
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
Coraline (2009)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Last but not least, I was finally able to put together a Halloween playlist for 2024, just in the nick of time! You can listen to it here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Wenninger is an educator and writer. He teaches language and culture and writes about his travels through thought and space here.
