Some thoughts on masculinity, strength and some damn good music

"I don't care much about music.  What I like is sounds."

Dizzy Gillespie

 A couple weeks ago I saw this youngster (in the video clip below) play Beethoven's violin concerto, one of the greats although this one, Tchaikovsky's is my favorite, er, with the Mendelssohn.  As I watched him I thought about my life and having spent it in the blue collar male world.  I have made my living pretty much as a ditch digger, that's what we called ourselves. Although on coming to the US, I became a plumber of sorts as I worked for a water district, eventually getting a job as an equipment operator where the machine did the digging.

Any time you get more money and your physical activity decreases, that's progress.  I was tired of shovels. Back in Britain I worked with Irish immigrants laying sewer pipe throughout the countryside in Oxfordshire. Poverty stricken, they would come to England to earn a living as there was no work in Ireland. Back then, they were literally peasants  having never left their villages some of them, they were the butt of racist jokes by the media, and many native English, and they were abused by Irish contractors like the Murphy brothers who imported them.  The Irish were very similar to many of the Mexican and other Latino immigrants here, a source of cheap, and for the most part, unorganized labor.

I worked in factories for a while, truly grueling work as our life activity is controlled by that damn belt speed.  You can see why belt speed was such an important issue for the auto workers when they fought the bastards at GM and Ford to get a union.  And to think the auto workers have been denigrated and attacked as we public sector workers are now.  Generations of US workers in that industry helped make a better life for all of us and a few other thousand other people very rich.

But I am digressing.  The point I wanted to make was that the youngster playing is not what you'd call a masculine type. He's only young and I first saw him when he was 11. He has a high pitched voice and very delicate appearance.  As I watched him play I thought of how society judges us, how men, women, young girls and young boys are supposed to behave. Male is strong, decisive, powerful.  Woman is weak, nurturing but needs to be cared for herself.  That's the man's job. You get my drift.

Of course, anyone that's fought in a Union or on the job (or has a mother)  knows that this is a "load of bollocks" to put it mildly.  In the workplace, the Union hall, the college, the streets, and in history, women have shown their mettle; they have in the factories of Bangladesh and the streets of Cairo.  They have had to do this while being primarily responsible for the the maintenance of the family also, all unpaid labor power.

Get to the point man!

OK, so, as my buddy and I watched this rather delicate young man tear up the violin and Pyotr Illych's  old concerto. I saw the intense concentration, the eye movements, the speed and accuracy of the hands and fingers as he went up and down that neck I thought that in class society, the issue of class, gender, race, plays such an important role in determining what we can or cannot do.

But what I dwelled on most was gender roles.  In society as a whole but the blue collar construction type world in particular the lack of what they determine is masculinity in a young boy can bring ridicule, teasing and all sorts of bullying. My first job was pulling a weed called Ragwort in Port Meadow in Oxford.  I can't really remember but I think I was 16.  The first day, the contractor and a couple of employees held me down and put axle grease from the tractor around my crown jewels as an initiation in to the masculine world of work. "That''ll make a man of yer." one of them said patting me on the back as I got up trying not to get axle grease on my pants.

But as I watched the violinist play I turned to my buddy and said, "You know Jon, some macho guy might make a little fun of this kid, what a weakling he is, but to play like that you have to posses a couple of things.  You have to have soul, and you have to have some damn determination and strength. That kid is a tough kid."

Strength comes in all sorts of ways. Capitalism doesn't develop these qualities in us, to play music like this; you generally have to have money and a home environment that nurtures it. My dad driving the car through the front door after too much whiskey or seeing him  throw Whiskey in my mom's face or beating my ass wasn't the best, and it is an environment many of us have to cope with. A lot of sexual abuse takes place in the privacy and safety of the family, that oh so capitalist institution.  Music is a commodity like anything else.  Music, art, it is all a means to making money for those that want to posses it for themselves and determine its substance,  We have to change that and develop the potential, the music in all of us.  We all have potential if we have the resources and the environment to nurture it.

Meanwhile, enjoy the 13 year old.