This day

[womzilla]

Aleister Cooke, December, 2001:

The most touching card I had was a postcard of the band of the Coldstream Guards. On the other side a note from an old actor friend whose very signature reminded me that he was the son of a very famous English actor indeed, notable in his day for imperious good looks, a fatally hypnotic effect on comely females and a voice that sounded like the organ reverberating through St Paul's Cathedral.

This son - himself, so help me, now ageing - wrote simply to say that in all the sad and shattering scenes since that Tuesday in September only one brought him to tears.

Now this is an actor who can shed a tear on cue. And as the very old Churchill said, whenever anyone said a kind thing to him: "I tend these days to blubber."

John Gielgud blubbered all the time even when nothing kind or unkind was being said.

I stress this mechanical, heartless gift of tears because it's part of an actor's craft and you'd expect they'd be more susceptible than most at grievous occasions in real life.

But this old actor implied that while he could withstand all the horrors of Ground Zero, the only time he gave in was the morning he went down to stand outside Buckingham Palace and watched and listened to the Coldstream Guards playing in the forecourt for the first time in history, he says, the American national anthem. He wept.

That night on our television I saw it and it was too much for me too.

. . .

Well probably most Americans assume, like any other people, that at the sudden approach of a national crisis the national anthem will break out everywhere.

But no, on September 11 and the following days and weeks, at the terrible site itself, at the first funeral services, most memorably at that candlelight vigil of senators and congressmen on the steps of the Capitol, it was God Bless America.

. . .

Now why God Bless America should have sprung to life everywhere across the country four months ago is a mystery that lies hidden deep in the national psyche.

It's a namby pamby tune. It tells God that America is so beautiful from the mountains to the prairie that he therefore should bless it.

. . .

However, on 7 December in commemoration of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, President Bush did what he ought to have done on 11 September, he proclaimed that the national anthem should be played at all military naval and airforce stations and in every state capital in the Union.

And so for the first time we heard the Star Spangled Banner.

Missing it so strangely and for no given reason maybe you can see now why hearing it that first day and played in London should have been so singularly poignant.

I don't know whose idea it was to have the Coldstream play in Buckingham Palace but it came over to us as an act of inspired good manners.

Comments

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

GBA is not an especially good song - I'll sing the national anthem at the ballpark, and of course "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", but not that. It's musically uninteresting.

You're aware that Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as a retort to GBA, right?

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

And this moves me near to tears.

I respectfully disagree with Aleister Cooke; I don't think "God Bless America" is a namby-pamby song, and frankly I like it better than "The Star-Spangled Banner." It's less martial; it celebrates the diverse beauty and strength of our country, and asks the blessing of God to maintain that diversity, strength, and beauty. I can understand why it was suddenly so popular after the events of September 11, 2001 -- I perceive it as a prayer, not a demand, for God's grace.

I can't speak to whether "God Bless America" is "musically uninteresting"; I don't have the training to address that question and will defer to bugsybanana. I can say that I enjoy singing it, even though I'm mostly Pagan. I just mentally add an "s" to the end of "god".

I can also respect the point of view (not yet offered here, but I can anticipate) of atheists, agnostics, non-theists, and members of religions other than Judaism and those descended from it or related to it, that "God Bless America" is annoying because it calls on a god whose existence they do not recognize or in whom they do not believe. That latter is the main reason why I do not fall into the group that thinks "God Bless America" would be a better national anthem than "The Star-Spangled Banner."

(No, I didn't know that's why Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land"! I like that song, too.)