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Torture and Gram Parsons

Almost certainly this effort is doomed to failure, but let me explain: Our friends at Rhino have begun selling previously uncirculated portraits of Gram Parsons on their website today. They have ten images available from the photographer Andee Nathanson, though I can claim no familiarity with his/her other work. Having once been co-owner of the failed Vox Populi Gallery back in Seattle, I can report to you that their $400 price for 11x14 prints in an open-ended edition is probably fair.
They wanted us to mention it on our website, as people often do.
Normally I resist such temptations for all kinds of ethical reasons, but it's interesting to me that Rhino wants to sell photographs, and I've pretty well established the fact that I don't particularly worship at the altar of Gram Parsons. So I'd planned to take some time this morning to think aloud about what all that meant.
But then yesterday's Lexington Herald fell open as I stopped to clean the kitchen. On the bottom of the front page is a headline reading: "Bush tries to ease America's concerns over war in Iraq." Inside, on page three, is the headline that stopped me dead: "'Water boarding' a 'no-brainer' in tererorism fight, Cheney says."
I quote from the article: "Water-boarding means holding a person's head under water or pouring water on cloth or cellophane placed over the nose and mouth to simulate drowning until the subject agrees to talk or confess."
This practice, we are told, is both acceptable and necessary to prevent terrorism.

They are nice photographs of Gram Parsons, young and slender on the beach, I suppose out in California somewhere. In black and white.

What would the United States government think if our opponents in some conflict -- any conflict -- water-boarded our soldiers, or our civilians? What would you think?
Does it matter that some number of those men housed at Guantanamo Bay have been returned to their lives and families, several years after their removal to that far-away place? Deemed innocent, in the end; how will they report our treatment to their neighbors?
Do the ends REALLY justify the means?
Are things that desperate, already?

I still think Gram Parsons is of continuing interest because his most important collaborator, Emmylou Harris, has proved not only to be a serious artist, but irreplaceable.
But I cannot focus on photographs of Gram Parsons. I cannot think straight, not with this story on my desk. And I can imagine of no music which will change my mood, though Nine Inch Nails seems tempting just now.
We will give away great dollops of our freedom in heedless fear because it might -- MIGHT -- in some form or fashion deter terrorism.
Despite the fact that no small number of interrogators are highly dubious about the results gained from water-boarding and other extra-legal practices.
I know that most of you would rather read about Gram Parsons than water-boarding. But if Gram spoke for anything it was for the glories and perils of freedom, American-style. And, yes, for the dangers of hedonism and the joys of country music.
Our country will be destroyed by this kind of behavior, by a culture that comfortably embraces the water-boarding of people who are denied even the most rudimentary rights. And the music won't matter.
This isn't about electoral politics.
It's about our souls.

Posted by grant on October 27, 2006 11:32 AM | Permalink

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