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Divine Madness:
The Oratorio
The Characters
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809) was an English-born American Founding Father, political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he helped to inspire the colonial era patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.
“This poem presents the man whose vision of democracy turned the tide of the Revolution and inspired those who had been unsure to embrace an ideal that could not wait or be denied. It is an irony that the son of corset makers in the old world could liberate a nascent society in the new world. That irony is eclipsed by the refusal of that society to accept his visionary call for civil conscience to replace the ideologies of religious authority. He believed that the elaborate design of the universe pointed to a transcendent intelligence to be revered, free of institutional agendas— in consequence of which he was shunned and refused burial in holy ground. Hence, the refrain of the poem: ‘we never know what to do/with one who appears from nowhere/ to change our hearts.’” – Paul Pines
“This poem presents the man whose vision of democracy turned the tide of the Revolution and inspired those who had been unsure to embrace an ideal that could not wait or be denied. It is an irony that the son of corset makers in the old world could liberate a nascent society in the new world. That irony is eclipsed by the refusal of that society to accept his visionary call for civil conscience to replace the ideologies of religious authority. He believed that the elaborate design of the universe pointed to a transcendent intelligence to be revered, free of institutional agendas— in consequence of which he was shunned and refused burial in holy ground. Hence, the refrain of the poem: ‘we never know what to do/with one who appears from nowhere/ to change our hearts.’” – Paul Pines
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) was a German-born Jewish theoretical physicist who is one of the most influential scientists of all time. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics, and was thus a central figure in the reshaping of modern physics.
“Both men (Heisenberg & Einstein) of vision whose ‘thought-experiments’ led to the laws of Relativity and Uncertainty which today govern our physics, yet play back to us with a startling conundrum that reflects the great mystery of consciousness, its very nature an open question. Is light a particle or a wave, and how do we understand the emotional intelligence of pain in all its forms, the relationship of feeling to the laws that connect the behavior of atoms to the stars, and the observation that they operate together more like mind than machine?” - Paul Pines
“Both men (Heisenberg & Einstein) of vision whose ‘thought-experiments’ led to the laws of Relativity and Uncertainty which today govern our physics, yet play back to us with a startling conundrum that reflects the great mystery of consciousness, its very nature an open question. Is light a particle or a wave, and how do we understand the emotional intelligence of pain in all its forms, the relationship of feeling to the laws that connect the behavior of atoms to the stars, and the observation that they operate together more like mind than machine?” - Paul Pines
Werner Karl Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901 – 1976) was a German theoretical physicist, one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics, and a principal scientist in the Nazi nuclear weapons program during World War II.
“Both men (Heisenberg & Einstein) of vision whose ‘thought-experiments’ led to the laws of Relativity and Uncertainty which today govern our physics, yet play back to us with a startling conundrum that reflects the great mystery of consciousness, its very nature an open question. Is light a particle or a wave, and how do we understand the emotional intelligence of pain in all its forms, the relationship of feeling to the laws that connect the behavior of atoms to the stars, and the observation that they operate together more like mind than machine?” - Paul Pines
“Both men (Heisenberg & Einstein) of vision whose ‘thought-experiments’ led to the laws of Relativity and Uncertainty which today govern our physics, yet play back to us with a startling conundrum that reflects the great mystery of consciousness, its very nature an open question. Is light a particle or a wave, and how do we understand the emotional intelligence of pain in all its forms, the relationship of feeling to the laws that connect the behavior of atoms to the stars, and the observation that they operate together more like mind than machine?” - Paul Pines
John Winthrop
John Winthrop (1588 – 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and a leading figure in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of colonists from England in 1630 and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan "city upon a hill" dominated New England colonial development.
“This early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony brought to bear questions of moral behavior that have persisted in our cultural psyche from the beginning. He struggled to reconcile the two kinds of freedom— instinct-driven natural desires vs the freedom of conscience which allows us to do what is right even if it means reining in the passions that drive us. His desire was to shape a society in which what we want is what is right. He also observed the cruelty in Nature and the shadow in our own, and found that the tension between these sustains conscience, indeed, is preferable to an order that numbs it. For us the question is very much alive today in tension between security versus civil liberties.”
- Paul Pines
“This early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony brought to bear questions of moral behavior that have persisted in our cultural psyche from the beginning. He struggled to reconcile the two kinds of freedom— instinct-driven natural desires vs the freedom of conscience which allows us to do what is right even if it means reining in the passions that drive us. His desire was to shape a society in which what we want is what is right. He also observed the cruelty in Nature and the shadow in our own, and found that the tension between these sustains conscience, indeed, is preferable to an order that numbs it. For us the question is very much alive today in tension between security versus civil liberties.”
- Paul Pines
Vincent Willem van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853 – 1890) was a Dutch Post Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life.
His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterized by bold colors and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was beginning to gain critical attention before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot at age 37. During his lifetime, only one of Van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.
“The painter is the quintessential example of a man consumed by divine madness. In that mode, he lived on the edge of what a human might contain. His unspoken embrace of the way yellow suffused nature is an effect of the anti-depressant he chewed, foxglove/digitalis, like his early apprehension of matter as energy in the flow of light, allowed him to teach the world to see as he saw, and like so many of those who change our lives, to pay the price for it.”
- Paul Pines
His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterized by bold colors and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was beginning to gain critical attention before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot at age 37. During his lifetime, only one of Van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.
“The painter is the quintessential example of a man consumed by divine madness. In that mode, he lived on the edge of what a human might contain. His unspoken embrace of the way yellow suffused nature is an effect of the anti-depressant he chewed, foxglove/digitalis, like his early apprehension of matter as energy in the flow of light, allowed him to teach the world to see as he saw, and like so many of those who change our lives, to pay the price for it.”
- Paul Pines
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein (1918 – 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim.
“The musician who heard in a way that brought him into the
musical moment of his time. In many ways Bernstein established the range of the American musical idiom by marrying high and popular culture as no one had before, and while he was acclaimed for this, the message of the poem finds something ‘abandoned at its boiling point,’ some depth of musical potential unrealized even in the lionization of old age, seen in ‘the darkness /of a Holocaust/ the silent cries of children/ etched in aging face.’ A moment in which he listens for it, ‘the symphony unwritten.’” - Paul Pines
“The musician who heard in a way that brought him into the
musical moment of his time. In many ways Bernstein established the range of the American musical idiom by marrying high and popular culture as no one had before, and while he was acclaimed for this, the message of the poem finds something ‘abandoned at its boiling point,’ some depth of musical potential unrealized even in the lionization of old age, seen in ‘the darkness /of a Holocaust/ the silent cries of children/ etched in aging face.’ A moment in which he listens for it, ‘the symphony unwritten.’” - Paul Pines
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506) was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean, as well as Central and South America.
“The one drawn to the unknown, who sets off in response to an inner compulsion with the tools at hand. In this composition, Columbus goes to sea in search of something that will fulfill the unmet call of destiny. He observes the sights and behaviors he sees, and endures the company of others hostile to him, an Italian, and quite possibly of Jewish descent, among Spaniards. He hears voices at one point calling him, and when he washes up, his boat wrecked beyond repair in Venezuela, he mistakes the confluence of rivers for those surrounding Eden, and wonders if he hasn’t been in search of the Father who calls from that garden all along. The voice he hears outside of himself is also inside, a divine madness that possessed him to push the boundaries of the known world from the first.”
- Paul Pines
“The one drawn to the unknown, who sets off in response to an inner compulsion with the tools at hand. In this composition, Columbus goes to sea in search of something that will fulfill the unmet call of destiny. He observes the sights and behaviors he sees, and endures the company of others hostile to him, an Italian, and quite possibly of Jewish descent, among Spaniards. He hears voices at one point calling him, and when he washes up, his boat wrecked beyond repair in Venezuela, he mistakes the confluence of rivers for those surrounding Eden, and wonders if he hasn’t been in search of the Father who calls from that garden all along. The voice he hears outside of himself is also inside, a divine madness that possessed him to push the boundaries of the known world from the first.”
- Paul Pines
Telemachus
Telemachus, in Greek mythology, is the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and the central character in Homer's The Odyssey. When Telemachus reached manhood, he visited Pylos and Sparta in search of his wandering father. On his return to Ithaca, he found that Odysseus had reached home before him. Then father and son slew the suitors who had gathered around Penelope.
“The boy in search of the absent father rides his bike in the early autumn morning through a mill town like those that line the rivers of the USA, largely depressed, abandoned like the children. His connection to the world is through the earpiece attached to a radio over which he hears music, and the whispering of the ancestors—among them the heroic father of his imagination, the one coming back to give him a blessing, the two searching for one another in early hour of a new day. This, too, is the deep metaphor for our culture and what drives the heart of it.” - Paul Pines
“The boy in search of the absent father rides his bike in the early autumn morning through a mill town like those that line the rivers of the USA, largely depressed, abandoned like the children. His connection to the world is through the earpiece attached to a radio over which he hears music, and the whispering of the ancestors—among them the heroic father of his imagination, the one coming back to give him a blessing, the two searching for one another in early hour of a new day. This, too, is the deep metaphor for our culture and what drives the heart of it.” - Paul Pines
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