'three songs for ghosts' - nationalism, fascism and death

for a long time the horrors of the twentieth century's fascination with nationalism, fascism and the nation state have haunted my work. from works based on the documentary 'night and fog' through discussions of anti-semitism, the concept of the nation state, the shoah and the kristallnacht these themes have always been present in my work.

i was trying to find a way to compose a longer work, a single album, discussing the nature and processes by which a nation succumbs to the evils of fascism, the narrative thread that unifies all movements based upon notions taken from romantic nationalism, but was having trouble finding a structure which was not didactic and a formal method which was not insulting to the memories of those who died.

reading yvonne sherratt's 'hitler's philosophers' i came across a passage from walter benjaman's 'berlin childhood around 1900' which included the sentence 'the child that stands behind the doorway curtain himself becomes something white which flutters, a ghost' which reminded me of the words of jacob bronowski in 'the assent of man':

There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit. The assertion of dogma closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilization into a regiment of ghosts. Obedient ghosts. Or Tortured ghosts.

the two quotes helped form bookends for an album which, again, i planed to be a lengthy one. after improvising two pieces based around these quotes i realised that, in the end, all the people slaughtered in nationalist and fascist purges in the 20th century could be described using the term that the nazi party used 'undesirables'

in stalin's russia they where undesirables, in rwanda they where undesirables, in the former yugoslavia they where 'undesirables' everywhere they are undesirables.

the process of forming a national or political identity must always result in the process freud described as 'foreclosure' whereby that which is counted as the 'in' group can only be defined by creating an 'out' group.

the out group are always 'undesirables' and are always, at best, disposable. at worst they need to be destroyed.

this album is for all the undesirables who have been and who will come into being in the future. the cycle of violence always begins again.