I hate all these big blockbuster events. Aretha Franklin drove me a little nuts. But I love that they have an arrangement of Simple Gifts by John Williams – there is a big folk music thing going on here, it’s very strange.
And here’s Yo Yo Ma, smiling – no, grinning – fit to bust as he plays it, which is the thing that made me want to start typing, and there’s the great Itzhak Perlman with his amazing delicate eighteenth century violin, his violin that is probably coeval with the Founding Fathers of the Enlightenment, playing this plain old Quaker hymn… they used to brand Quakers.
And here comes the man himself I think – ooooh, like a little boy. That wrinkly face he made! Stumbling over his lines. Like Princess Diana at her wedding, only this is real.
And he’s the president!!!
I guess he had to thank Bush for services etc…
“To choose our better history” – a nod to Lincoln’s “better angels.”
This is the first inauguration I’ve ever watched.
“As to our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” – cut to George W Bush in audience, looking like, “wasn’t me, mate” – ha!!
“Our patchwork heritage” – good touch. Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and unbelievers – “one day the hatred will surely pass” – this speech is for the whole world – he knows who he is.
More, more, can;’t type fast enough.
“Just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages”… “the spirit of service” – sounds like my grandmother!
Every surface of every building in the long shot has a crowd of people on it – balconies, windows, roofs – as far as the eye can see, people who can’t possibly even hear him -
Oh Jesus, I didn’t cry till he mentioned Jim Crow and that distinguished old man stood up to clap – with the white woman – who is he? “Son of a man who couldn’t sit in a restaurant,” what did he say.
“In the depths of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…” the words of Tom Paine.
Hmm, I don’t think I’ll say much about Elizabeth Alexander’s poem. Poor thing having to follow that, eh.
You can read Obama’s speech here.
You can read Tom Paine here, in fact. Really one of the greats.
5:44pm – The BBC is saying the same thing I thought when he first started talking – that it was a blunt speech “the tone of it was grim resolve” – well I might not say grim, but he pretty much rolled up his sleeves and got to work! Impressive. As I say, people can’t see it but he is channeling MIllie Evans.
And I love the way Hillary looks so happy.
“A speech for Kansas and Kenya.” And here they are in the home village! There isn;t even any electricity! They’ve had to bring in a generator and a couple of big screens. The sign in the village – you can’t see it on the TV because there’s no light – says, “Barack Obama, congratulations our son.”
Nothing even remotely like this has ever happened before.
I just want them to stop showing Bush! Oh, good, it’s the traditional departure. “It’s a very powerful moment we’re looking at,” says the BBC. I’ll say.
No, but it’s nice – kissing goodbye… very professional and civilised and good. I guess.
Later – 7:14pm
Darryl Pinckney on TV, the novelist, asked what the black American community would take out of Obama’s speech, cites “an old spiritual, that says many thousands gone…” He says, “I think this day belongs to them more than to any of us.”
Jon Snow asks a young black girl: “What change do you want to see?”
“I just wanna see Obama!” she says.
“What do you want him to do”
“Everything!”
And the three African women in the peach-coloured turbans – the crazy turbans they wear on sundays – screaming and jumping, waving flags and screaming OBAMA! OBAMA! They turn out to be from Liberia. One of them is the UN ambassador from Liberia. Snow bows and says, in a different voice, “Ma’am…”
I don’t have to remind you about the history of Liberia, do I?
7.57pm
Well Jon snow said a few minutes ago and now on CNN it says Teddy Kennedy had some kind of big seizure and was driven away in an ambulance – pointless to put that on here as I’m hardly a news blog and you will all know this fromt he Beeb or somewhere, but it is so strange.
By the way, I did see Senator Kennedy in the crowd earlier – I thought he was looking good, he wasn;t the main one in the shot.
Meanwhile, not to bring the tone down, one of Mlle B’s friends has had a family crisis at the same time – slightly worrying, we’re friends with the whole family, and she is on her way here, and going to have dinner – and I’ve made seafood sauce and sh’s a vegetarian. It’s one thing after another. Can’t Obama fix it?
8 Comments
January 20, 2009 at 6:53 pm
This is the first inauguration I ever watched as well.
January 20, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Stopped everything to watch. Well worth it. Found it moving and inspiring and all those broad corny things everyone always says.
But then, in most respects, we are everyone.
The form of the whole was good, Aretha, then Perlman and Yo Yo Ma, and I thought the poem was fine, getting a lot of snapshots of ordinary life in, which is not a bad thing, a few streets and fields among the mountains. The rest of the form between the high-sounding, the ancient, the statuesque, the brisk and the folksy. That too is fine by me.
The speech was the focus of course, not so much grim as sounding all the bass notes, giving ample warning but touching the right chords in what seemed to me a perfectly convincing way. Very good speech indeed. Pretty masterful, I’d say. Speech under pressure.
Maybe more at my place later.
January 20, 2009 at 11:05 pm
I was expecting to be zapped by a few more big Phrases, but really liked the business-like tone of his speech. I loved Joseph Lowery at the end.
Am struck afresh by how we don’t do god here at all, compared to the USA. And today it felt fine that he was there.
January 20, 2009 at 11:41 pm
What they said. The first inauguration I’ve watched. This election has many firsts for me. The first US election that had me shedding tears.
Yo Yo Ma was a joy to watch. I resented BBC for talking over the music as if it didn’t matter.
Not that I do religion or anything, but I thought that preacher man was pretty cool too. Rev Joseph Echols Lowery.
January 21, 2009 at 12:08 am
Mind you, I would have shed tears over the last election had I been gifted with 20/20 foresight.
January 21, 2009 at 12:28 am
I will probably catch some of the stuff late, late tonight after I get back from class. I couldn’t watch it this morning – too busy teaching class. Got to get those juniors ready for ACT
January 21, 2009 at 1:37 am
The poem reads better than she read it. And Lowery made all the God work – he rocked that crowd, and even this atheist was saying “Amen!”
January 21, 2009 at 3:12 am
I wouldn’t watch the thing, wouldn’t bother. It’s been done already.
Whatever people call themselves, they want a saviour.