Nice Overarching Interview with Van Dyke Parks

[Julia]

'Muslims all harbor evil thoughts (as mike just did)' - I literally didn't say that.

How much personal experience do you have interacting with Muslims..?  Any..?  I lived in Birmingham for 15 years and I've got Muslim friends and colleagues.  I know how a lot of them think inc. the nice ones - you'd be surprised.

^You implied it. Which is what I said. If that's not what you meant then why don't you tell us what you were getting at with that comment.

[rab2591]

Your ad-hominem attacks are about as useful to your arguments as your sweeping generalizations are. And they both also point out a striking lack of consistency in your stance that you're supposedly arguing for (if we're "pushing back" against the dehumanization of people, perhaps start with your very own vitriolic sweeping statements - it's not just bombs and bullets that tear people down, it's words, too). And yeah, some topics need far more space than a tweet allows, and I'd add to that a post on a message forum allows, in order for those topics to be fully understood.

[rab2591]

Since you're apparently so well-versed on the situation, feel free to share your immense knowledge with the rest of us so that we may improve ourselves and see the light. I'm perfectly willing to admit I'm wrong and eat crow...if the other person actually has anything to say.

I'm not going to pretend that I can write out my thoughts about the situation in 5 paragraphs on a message board. I just think your, I'll say rude, generalizations show a complete lack of understanding on your part. I am not going to go line-by-line about it, anyone reading your posts will know what I'm talking about (whether they agree with you or not). I just think such unfair overviews will never get anyone to the point of actually understanding this situation (if that is your goal). This is 8,000 years of conflict, politics, economics, struggle, friendship, war, relationships that you're trying to boil down with completely unfair statements and diatribes against certain groups of people.

[Julia]

Your ad-hominem attacks are about as useful to your arguments as your sweeping generalizations are. And they both also point out a striking lack of consistency in your stance that you're supposedly arguing for (if we're "pushing back" against the dehumanization of people, perhaps start with your very own vitriolic sweeping statements - it's not just bombs and bullets that tear people down, it's words, too). And yeah, some topics need far more space than a tweet allows, and I'd add to that a post on a message forum allows, in order for those topics to be fully understood.

I agree, words tear people down. That's kind of my point, saying things that are dehumanizing to a group of people is bad. That's my position. (I don't think I said anything that would dehumanize Jewish people/culture here in turn, at least that wasn't my intent. My beef isn't with Jewish people or the religion or anyone but Zionists and that's only because I believe one person/group's rights end where another's begin. That and I just want nuance when discussing delicate situations--I detest binary positions and think there's been way too much of that lately.)

As far as geopolitics go, it'd be nice if we could all be a multinational world alliance and go full Star Trek. Or, barring that, Wilson's 14 points and all governments agree to carve out a space for every group in the world to have their own place. But, as the Epstein files prove, we are governed by sadistic evil people who get off on suffering. As far as Israel/Palestine goes, there's really no good solution on the table anymore. It's absolutely understandable why neither side trusts or likes the other and no one else wants to take the Palestinians in. This situation was foreseeable and inevitable when certain people decided the suffering of others was a worthy tradeoff for a land acquisition. The Israelis aren't alone in making such a brutal calculation--America, Europeans and Muslims have done the same throughout history. It was wrong then and it's wrong now, but I wasn't alive to be in a position to speak out when the Muslims drove the Zoroastrians out of their homeland. I'm alive now though and I think the cycle of violence has to end somewhere, with someone being the bigger person and saying "this ends with me, I will not perpetuate that which has been inflicted on me."

Anyway yeah, words hurt. Evidently I've hurt you and I don't mind admitting your words hurt me too sometimes. Maybe think about that yourself and I'll do the same. We can model the outcome we'd like to see elsewhere here in our own space.

[rab2591]

Thanks, Julia, I very much agree with that.

[mike s]

You can't have paece with someone who wants to kill you.

Julia Have you ever wondered why the Egyptians - Sunni Muslims - have built a great fortress wall between themselves and the Gazans - also Sunni Muslims..?  Their own people.

[BJL]

I was going to make a comment about how we should really all be talking about how Van Dyke Parks feels about the modern Middle East, not ourselves, given the section of the forum we're in...

But then I realized that this kind of conversation, however heated and ugly in moments, is something I used to see online *all the time* but haven't really witnessed in years. When an algorithm is resorting people's comments in real time and showing different things to different people, it's impossible to go back and forth like this. Odd. Never would have thought I'd miss something like this. But however much the board may be dying, I really do prefer these backwaters of the internet that haven't changed since the early 2010s.

On topic, I just want to say two things:

First, I think the way Van Dyke Parks talks about Palestine is telling. Connecting it to his childhood idolization of Winston Churchill, then moving immediately to Big Oil and the extinction crisis. It's a sort of associative way of thinking that I don't think is very common, and that is also reflected in much of Park's music. (And the environmental causes Parks pivots too were, of course, also where the Beach Boys could find common ground politically in the early 70s, the place where "square" Mike and Al could fully align themselves with the hippies. No coincidence that Mike and Dennis's greatest cowrite was on the subject! (depending on how you feel about Only with You, I suppose, but I've always thought it was a little slight, albeit gorgeous and certainly better than any song I've ever written! But Pacific Ocean Blue is one of those oddly singular songs that most bands come up with one or two of in their careers and the Beach Boys came up with so often that they didn't both to release them half the time!))

This paragraph from Parks's interview also really struck me:

I think that it’s important to remember that I was employed by the grace of Brian Wilson‘s conviction that I could do something to help him reinvent himself in his work. I did my best, and knowing that sustains me in my late age. But the reason that I am here, it’s all within the compass of the golden rule. I believe mankind was invented for the purpose to demonstrate reciprocity, empathy and goodwill. I always felt that Brian Wilson deserved the best that I could bring him, whether he knew it or not. The lyrics were also highly abstract, only as a result of music that was highly segmented, anecdotal, and of a higher spiritual plane. I felt as bewildered as anyone could be about the abstract nature of the music, but I found it to be quite beautiful and it turns out freestanding creativity, not dependent on the lyrics at all.

This strikes me as humble, observant, and the words of someone who cares a lot about this music, and has spent a lot of time thinking, and probably hurting, over what happened in those few months in the mid-60s. It's not going to help us solve the puzzle of Smile, of course, but it's still a pretty incisive comment from a principle, all these years later. And I do think it's true that all the different moods and ideas Van Dyke Parks brought to the table did, in fact, reflect the incredible richness and variety of Brian's music, which was and is saying many, and many contradictory, things at once.

[zaval80]

'Palestine' was a region where everybody lived - NOT an Arab state.  The Romans came up with the name as an insult.

Arabs came and conquered and the local population mingled with them. Now it's Palestinian Arabs. Different from Saudi Arabia Arabs, or Mauritania Arabs, or Arabs of any other Arab country. 

[mike s]

'Palestine' was a region where everybody lived - NOT an Arab state.  The Romans came up with the name as an insult.

Arabs came and conquered and the local population mingled with them. Now it's Palestinian Arabs. Different from Saudi Arabia Arabs, or Mauritania Arabs, or Arabs of any other Arab country. 

Yep - Muslims marauded and took over - eventually conerting the whole aree to Islam.  So they did colonise it but more by osmosis than just bulk replacement of pop.