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In all of today’s excitement, I almost forgot that today is the first anniversary of this Web site. In my first post, there was reflection on the significance of this date in our national life. Little could I have imagined then what would happen on this date in 2009. The national mood is so much different from what it was then.

As someone whose view of American history is very much centered on the Virginia origins of our best founding traditions, I nevertheless today cherish the kind of testimony that could hardly have occurred to Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, George Mason, and the Lees, but which I’m convinced they would have appreciated by using the same wisdom that produced their far-seeing founding documents. It comes from a man between their time and ours, who was both of African descent and politically and sexually suspect — but was a poet of authentically American voice:

I, Too, Sing America

by Langston Hughes

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed–

I, too, am America.

While it is not, strictly speaking, a musical observation, can one forbear to be moved by the sight of an Israeli-American, an African-American, a man born in France of Chinese parents, and a woman who is a product of Venezuela’s great Sistema that has brought art from poverty, all playing John Williams’s new composition in unprecedented national circumstances? Surely not.

As Andrew Sullivan has already written a few minutes ago, it looks like the America we love.

Brava diva!

Beginning with the first thing I ever heard her sing, with her eminent colleague Dame Joan Sutherland — her cultivated ability for ensemble-singing being among her many memorable accomplishments:

And you can see and hear much more of this great artist and dear lady here.

Neither my best friends nor my worst enemies expect me to keep up with the Hit Parade. But this mashup of Billboard‘s top hits from 2008 is pretty amazing. (At the very least, they must have used digital transposition to get all the pieces in the same key?)

Who can predict the future of music with possibilities like this? (I especially like the person who commented on YouTube that he/she hated all the songs involved but loved the amalgam. Hmm.)

We’re always being surprised by time.

“It seems like only yesterday.”

“Where has the time gone?”

“It seemed like an eternity.”

Science has recently been wrestling with the complicated fact that half an hour spent in the dentist’s chair is actually not the same amount of time as a half hour in a lover’s arms. Einstein’s theories thus seem to have a more homely equivalent.

Since time is the water that music swims in, you may find particularly interesting these meditations on music and time by one of our more thoughtful performers.

Evolutionary biologists have gone so far as to say that music is a necessity for humans, since no human society has been without it. Some (Darwin among them) have said that it’s important to life, but only for reproductive purposes, since — as everyone knows — musicians are the sexiest of mortals.

But some say it meets a need that it has itself created — like cheesecake.

Read up on the state of thought on this, in an article in The Economist.

I find myself in serious conversation, all too often, with musicians who have been ignored or slightingly treated by the press. Today’s New York Times obituary of the great Harold Pinter has this passage that I will probably often refer them to in future:

The Pinters, who were temporarily unemployed and desperately poor, had an offer to act in Birmingham, and Ms. Merchant wanted to accept it. But Mr. Pinter said: “I have this play opening in London. I think I must stay. Something’s going to happen.” She replied, “What makes you think so?”

They turned down the acting offer. “The Birthday Party” opened in the West End in 1958 and received disastrous reviews. Then, prodded by the theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay, Harold Hobson, the eminent critic of The Sunday Times of London, came to see it at a matinee. What he wrote turned out to be a life-changing review.

… “Mr. Pinter, on the evidence of this work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London.”

It sometimes takes only one favorable, perceptive notice to turn the tide.

Blogging this year, instead of just reading the blogs of others, has been a revelation — as have been the ping-backs and other statistics that have grown far beyond what I expected. As the practice moves out of the realm of novelty into that of normal social behavior, this evolving way of relating to a wide and unpredictable public only becomes more fascinating. As millions of us use such phenomena as the increasingly venturesome YouTube and Google to make the season bright, I want to take the opportunity offered by my page, on the first Christmas of RogerEvansOnline to wish the best to all you friends, colleagues, and other readers of this little site.