Chris Banyas
Editor-in-Chief
Take a good look at that face.
Not exactly the visual rival of a Sid Viscious type right? You’d probably be surprised to learn that he got hooked on heroin, killed his girlfriend and was portrayed by Gary Oldman in a biopic…and rightly so, as all of that is untrue.
What is true is that face belongs to one Dmitri Shostakovich, a man who refused to be beaten by a system which insisted upon repeatedly beating him down in an attempt to exert complete control over artistic expression.
What does this have to do with Idaho State University?
Before I go into what makes Shostakovich one of my heroes, and a figure that I feel should be emulated, I would like to begin with a definition of terms.
Subversion: the act of subverting: the state of being subverted; especially: a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system by persons working secretly from within.
(Insert the four-letter dreaded curse known simply as “the F word” here): usually obscene – sometimes used interjectionally with an object (as a personal or reflexive pronoun) to express anger, contempt, or disgust.
For the duration of this editorial, please mentally replace the use of the word “kitten” with the above mentioned expletive.
Having someone tell you to go kitten yourself is universal. You’ve never not understood what they meant, thought they wanted to be your friend or picked up some other buried signal within the message.
On the same page, the extended middle finger is just as unmistakable.
Unfortunately for those of us currently alive, these two methods of expression have largely replaced any artistic method of subversion.
Throughout history there has been a long tradition of artists composing works with buried messages, indeed risking life and limb to express certain ideas that were outlawed. Whether this art was in the form of poetry, song, painting, sculpture, music, dance, or what have you, the idea behind it was the same: create something that burned so brightly in opposition but that was also complex enough to not come off as a giant middle finger resulting in your horrible end.
I think there are many aspects of ISU that are simply kittened.
Dmitri Shostakovich began his career as a concert pianist and composer in the former USSR, and spent much of his life surviving under the reign of Joseph Stalin.
Here is a simple roadmap: Shostakovich composed music that garnered him favor with the government, only to follow up with something that reversed everything up to that point, and nearly got him killed.
This happened many times over the course of his career with a variance of punishments being handed down upon him embodying everything from his family members being arrested or killed to a loss of income.
The charge leveled against Dmitri on numerous occasions was that of Formalism, essentially creating art that was perceived to be anti-Russian, anti-Communism, or simply too similar to western musical archetypes.
Think about that for a minute.
Artists were imprisoned, persecuted and killed because someone perceived their creations to not be what they should, in Shostakovich’s case, because his creations didn’t sound right.
Stalin is directly linked with something in the neighborhood of 34 to 49 million deaths in the USSR during this time frame, and Shostakovich was very nearly included.
I would like you to now stop reading this and pull up YouTube. Search for “Dmitri Shostakovich – Waltz No. 2. There’s that face again. Come back when you’ve listened.
Dmitri Shostakovich was nearly executed because someone else commented that his kittening music didn’t kittening sound like they thought it should, that it didn’t sound “Russian” enough.
The only times I’ve come close to having an out of body experience have been thanks to classical composers.
I am afraid of hard drugs, but am consistently fascinated by their promise of “religious experiences.”
I take Verdi as an upper, Bach’s “Come, Sweet Death” as a downer, Tchaikovsky when I want to party, and Rachmaninoff when I’m feeling pensive.
Dr. Gonzo I’m not, but I have been able to climb around in different head-spaces.
And the headspace evoked by Waltz No. 2 is such a very unique one.
“If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.”
From hells heart.
The headspace I am transported by that waltz is not unlike how I feel when I try to wrap my mind around a messianic figure being crucified. It makes me cry.
I do not identify as religious.
Allow me to explain: the willingness to race to destruction, the willingness to put something more important before your individual self, the willingness to sacrifice everything in defiance, fighting for something that you deem worthy of your efforts.
Slightly more to that than telling someone to kitten off, to get kittened, or that they are a kittening idiot.
Later in life Shostakovich was diagnosed with polio, but refused to give up drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes. Eventually, due to several traumatic falls, his body began to break down, but his spirit remained.
In a letter written in 1967 Shostakovich stated, “Target achieved so far: 75 percent (right leg broken, left leg broken, right hand defective). All I need to do now is wreck the left hand and then 100 percent of my extremities will be out of order.”
I can’t help but feel that our newspaper has been treated in much the same fashion over the last several years.
Yet through all of that, he continued to compose.
I think that it is kittened up how blatantly the arts are being suffocated, at ISU and across the country. In Roman times individuals were sometimes executed by public strangulation, and this is more or less what is going on today.
At ISU the executioner is the person managing the money. Don’t believe me? Start asking questions. Ask how much money is going where, what the various departments and colleges do with the money, and why they are or aren’t getting it.
People must be held accountable for their actions. This has largely not been the case at ISU, and until that happens, things will continue to be kittened.
In my opinion, enjoying a drink and maybe getting punk in drublic every so often doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on a person.
What reflects poorly on a person is when they, say, are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each year and proceed to shit all over the hopes and dreams of employees and students.
Remember the proposed presidential residence facility? Kitten that. Kitten the very idea of it. I refuse to let that simply slide away into obscurity like it never happened. Accountability.
Go back and look at the list of individuals who were “elected” to be on that committee. Very nearly all of them were well-to-do members of the community, nearly all of whom probably make more than six figures. And someone had the gall to tell me that group was representative of ISU.
Kitten you, and the horse you rode in on.
As long as I have a mouthpiece, I’m going to spit fire through it, especially when my intelligence is insulted by a rich old white person clearly talking down to me, the pleb they feel doesn’t understand a kittening thing they are saying, and won’t/can’t do anything to them.
There you have an example of how the students and community around ISU can impact policy and hold the administration accountable. Any time there is a significant disturbance in the force, things happen.
Nothing is more insulting than someone else treating you like they are allowing you to converse with them.
Whatever the form a verbal nail bomb would take, I would like to insert it in their voice mailbox.
Thing is, you aren’t obligated to die for a cause, but what value is there in living if you don’t leave a mark?
One of the most insulting things is to be told that your music doesn’t sound like it should.
What can you do but soldier on, until you reach the critical mass of 100 percent out of order?
