“Our Line’s Been Changed Again” (Joe Glazer)

“Communists devout” protest the Party “line” that alliances be made with “bourgeois groups” and even, ugh, Socialists. No coherence to such “kaleidoscopic” politics, and, meanwhile, what happens to the Revolution? “It can wait.” But, in truth, it hasn’t arrived, yet, and such brinksmanship risks what Mangabeira Unger calls “the dangerous limiting case of transformative politics.” The empty purity of the hard line.

 

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“Holy Ghost” (The Bar-Kays)

Staged as an alternative Pentecostal worship service, with the lover’s love (as language) containing the Holy Ghost. Perhaps it’s more a question of how such love can be transformative. It certainly has to do with voices/voicing, phrasing, and articulation–see the bass’ varied attacks and effects. It’s also about translation: a love that puts a “tremble” in the singer’s “talk.” (There’s no glossolalia or xenoglossy here. While we’re at it, there’s also no sense of baptism in the strict sense: there’s no “experience” of the lover/god, only their effects. And no trinity; only two multiplied by all potential listeners.) The lover “ought to be ashamed” of his/her power, but there’s no “in itself” here. Love/listening is between and referred, and nothing outside of this.

 

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