Remember, Remember (the January 6th edition)

Gori the Grey

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Over on the “January 6 Commission” thread, Aiken Drumn asked

How should we celebrate the anniversary of J6 when it comes?

I have an answer to that question, but additionally, it occurred to me that the date should have a “Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November”-style jingle. In both cases, there was an attack on the national legislative body; in both cases the worst possible outcome was averted, but the threat should be kept in the national consciousness. I volunteered to try my hand at composing such a jingle, and the response to that offer was positive.

I set to work. My purpose was to create an equivalent to that well-known four-line commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot. I’ve made eight attempts (then an extra three). More about that in a moment.

First, a little more about prosody than you probably want to know. The meter of the model is fairly simple and straightforward, but with one interesting dimension I had not noticed before I set about trying to imitate it. The odd lines are four-beat, the even lines are three-beat. Mostly it’s in triple meter (two unstressed syllables separating each stressed syllable). But the final line is in duple meter; you could call it iambic trimeter. Because of this indifference regarding unstressed syllables, the jingle is best treated as stress-meter, than syllable-stress meter (so terms like “iambic trimeter” are actually inappropriate).

In that case, unstressed syllables at the beginning or end of a line (and even within the line) can be included or omitted without fundamentally altering the rhythm. So, for example, the first line of “Remember, Remember” starts and ends with an unstressed syllable. The second line omits that in both places. The third line omits it at the beginning. And, again, the final line omits one unstressed syllable in every foot—if that’s how you want to say it; the easier way to say it is that the only regularity the poem observes concerns the number of stresses in a line, not the number of syllables.

I allow myself this same latitude in my own compositions. What that will mean is that certain of my offerings won’t feel as though they exactly fit the sound-contour that “Remember, Remember” has fixed in your mind. Nevertheless, I am observing the poem’s basic meter. One has to allow each of my poems to realize that meter in its own fashion. That doesn’t require anything more than observing the normal stress level of each word in delivering each jingle.

The word “January” went right out the window. It doesn’t rhyme with anything and it doesn’t fit the predominantly triple meter. One could technically use it in that final line, if one observes the double meter of that line, but one would want to follow with “sixth” and that doesn’t rhyme with anything.

Here’s what I came up with. The reason I’ve written eight (plus three) is that it only gradually occurred to me what poetic qualities in “Remember, Remember,” I was seeking to duplicate--mostly its simplicity and directness, and various of my early attempts failed to achieve that simplicity. Even the one I’m happiest with fails fully to do so. I’m not sure I can do better on that count, for reasons I will indicate. Usually, when I write verse, I’m trying to be clever, but “Remember, Remember” isn’t clever, so as I worked, I had to discipline myself out of my usual mode. Still, along the way, I got a clearer and clearer sense of what I was aiming for, so I share my compositional process.


1) Remember the mob, the flag used as a pike,​
To grab what the vote didn’t give.​
Remember the Sixth for as long as you’d like​
Democracy to live.​


This one’s actually okay. From it I realized that I wanted my jingle to have the same two dimensions as the original: an evocation of what was wrong about the attack, and an exhortation to keep the event in mind.


2) Remember the Sixth, the noose and the stack,​
The mob and its stoking, remember.​
One party has yet to condemn the attack--​
Remember that every November.​


This one is one of those that is too clever by half. As I said, the word “January” never gets used, because it doesn’t fit the meter, but here I find a way plausibly to work “November” into my poem about January 6, and that amused me.


3) Remember the Sixth: the man and the mob​
Who refused to abide by our choice.​
Eighty one million of us they would rob,​
Their violence throttle our voice.​



It was with this one that I came to realize an important difference between “Remember, Remember” and any jingle commemorating January 6th. “Remember, Remember” is addressed to all Englishmen, and it presupposes that all will enthusiastically join in condemning Guy Fawkes. One would like it to be the case that all Americans would condemn what happened in January 6th. But in fact that is not the case. In our present political circumstances, one can unfortunately only realistically hope that half the nation will enthusiastically join one in voicing the jingle. This one explicitly only assumes that audience; “the us” is only half (well 81/154ths) of the nation. However, I can’t give up wishing that everyone would join in condemning what happened on January 6th. So the next two try framing the event in terms that should horrify every American.



4) Remember the mob, though the cops tried to stem it,​
How it trampled and smashed and it smote.​
If someone seeks office who doesn’t condemn it,​
Never give them your vote.​


That one and the next, then, were my attempt to appeal to all right-thinking Americans: that what happened is wrong, should without reservation be condemned, and that if a political candidate won’t condemn such a horrific thing, a voter of either party should be appalled.


5) Remember! When one won’t concede and stokes doubts,​
To grasp power provokes insurrection,​
It isn’t the vote he just lost that he flouts​
But the very idea of election.​


This one has the same aim: to kind of spell out the threat in terms that could conceivably appeal even to the right. But it moves me into a kind of lecturing mode that isn’t at all in accord with the full-throated vehemence of the original, and that tells particularly in the doesn’t-roll-off-the-tongue second line.


6) Remember that rage, that fury, that ire.​
From those who desire to defend it​
Democracy needs as much passion and fire,​
As burns in those who would end it.​


This is better on that count. It does invite right-thinking members of the right into its assumed audience (those would like to consider themselves defenders of democracy), but it isn’t as lecturey. Here the evocation is just one line and the exhortation is three, so the main transition of the poem is between lines one and two rather than between two and three; it doesn’t have the naturalness of structure that “Remember, Remember” does. By the way, in every case, I am trying (more or less directly) to spell out what was wrong about January 6th. “Remember, Remember” doesn’t need to do that. The author there could just happily assume that his or her entire audience would regard blowing up Parliament as a self-evidently bad thing. I, by contrast, never get away from a certain degree of editorializing.


7) Remember the Sixth! That upheaval remember!​
Until it’s condemned every day,​
Without reservation, by every House member,​
It is still underway.​


Here too, the poem splits 1-3, rather than 2-2. One has to remember that in one’s delivery (longish pause after first line; remaining three delivered as a unit of thought). One thing that came in with this one was a specific imperative for remembering: namely, that the threat represented by the January 6th attack isn’t over, and so we can’t afford to let ourselves forget it. That also marks the eighth effort:


8) Remember the Sixth, like a lit match to gas.​
Falsehoods, incitement and plot.​
Never allow your revulsion to pass​
Because the threat has not.​


So this one was based on the closing idea of the last one: that there is a reason for keeping it in mind and that reason is that the threat is ongoing. But I like it that the second line parallels the model. If there’s a three syllable word with the same accentuation pattern as “reVULsion” but meaning anger, it could be slotted in instead (though I like the “re” in “re-vulsion”).

So there you go. Tell me what you think. By all means try your own, but I will be as merciless with you as I am with myself regarding metrical matters; almost all there is to the poem is its rhythm; that has to be preserved.



I’ll probably keep diddling (in fact, see three extras below; thinking I was done freed me to try new directions), but I’ve come to the conclusion that one can’t match the straightforwardness of the original because one can’t assume consensus in one’s audience regarding the event in question. The author of “Remember, Remember” could count on “Gunpowder, treason and plot” to be universally condemned, whereas I’m always half trying to say “hey, you idiots over there, can’t you see what’s wrong with this thing?” This eighth one goes back to giving them up. This is the chant for people who were and are outraged by what happened on the Sixth of January, to keep that outrage fixed in their minds; the speaker of it is a member of and spokesman for that body.

The extras:


9) The Sixth can elicit revulsion or fear;​
Your response can mix anger and grief,​
But this man and his motives and methods are clear;​
Don’t let it include disbelief.​
10) Though one’s loath to recall with what Vandal-like glee,​
As they meet any barrier, they break it,​
Our resolve to retain our republic must be​
As untiring as theirs is to take it.​
11) Remember he’ll gladly use fraud or use force.​
Remember what you witnessed then.​
Remember he’s never shown any remorse.​
Remember he’d try it again.​


That last one does have its own kind of effectiveness. But it comes at the cost of putting all the focus on Trump, where the others have tried to stress the shared responsibility of Trump and Trumpists.
 
Wonderful!
 
Those are fun! I'm realizing I can't do this, either rhyming or beat. But it makes the people who can without being Seussian more interesting to read. I like your 1).
 
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Add a bodhran, flute, and bagpipe, compose a melody, and you've got a decent song! Bonus points for singing it around a fire. :goodjob:
 
Brilliant writing.

As to what to call the day itself, I've long thought "Insurrection Day" but a small bit of my brain that goes off on weird psychological tangents is fond of "Trump Appreciation Day" but I'm not sure if it's spreading the irony too thick.
 
I doubt anyone would care a couple of presidential elections down the line (remembering the actual date, moreover, is clearly unrealistic; the month would do, deducing it from the timeframe, the aftermath of an election).
Well, other than the families of those who died that day.

Likewise, not many would know the specific date that Gore gave up trying to claim he should be president instead of Bush.
 
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I doubt anyone would care a couple of presidential elections down the line (remembering the actual date, moreover, is clearly unrealistic; the month would do, deducing it from the timeframe, the aftermath of an election).
Well, other than the families of those who died that day.

Likewise, not many would know the specific date that Gore gave up trying to claim he should be president instead of Bush.
You'd be surprised what people remember. Already the "Freedumb Convoy" (truckers' occupation of Ottawa) is being referred to by some as "Canada's January 6th".
 
I doubt anyone would care a couple of presidential elections down the line
I suspect you'll prove to be incorrect. It will get marked every year on news commentary programs. America has a couple of dates that it remembers as dates for the thing that happened on them: July 4th, December 7th, 9/11. This will join that group, not least because there is a striking visual to play on TV, and a civics lesson to be learned.

Besides, once one of mine catches on, there's going to be a little jingle reminding people of the date.
 
I suspect you'll prove to be incorrect. It will get marked every year on news commentary programs. America has a couple of dates that it remembers as dates for the thing that happened on them: July 4th, December 7th, 9/11. This will join that group, not least because there is a striking visual to play on TV, and a civics lesson to be learned.

Besides, once one of mine catches on, there's going to be a little jingle reminding people of the date.
Your poem is nice and all, but there's no comparison between those dates and what happened in January 6.
Let alone outside the US; I had to google the date which was about Pearl Harbor.
 
Your poem is nice and all, but there's no comparison between those dates and what happened in January 6.
Let alone outside the US; I had to google the date which was about Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor... the date the Americans showed up 2 years late to WWII.
 
I doubt anyone would care a couple of presidential elections down the line (remembering the actual date, moreover, is clearly unrealistic; the month would do, deducing it from the timeframe, the aftermath of an election).
Jan 6 is an American event and will be noted in US history and politics. The fact that you and perhaps other foreigners don't care, doesn't matter. No one expects you to care. You are not the audience. Having set of verses makes it easy for folks to pass it along.


Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”
etc.
 
When Jan 6th 2023 rolls around I probably won't remember it. If I do it's because I'm using it as an opportunity to laugh at the people that still care about it.
Agreed.
Ultimately, it is ridiculous to expect people to be aware of the date, enough years from now. Afaik most Usians (and not just Usians, nor do I find this itself to be negative, mind) aren't even aware of their own historically important dates (assuming there was already agreement on which were important), so that should seal it.
 
When Jan 6th 2023 rolls around I probably won't remember it. If I do it's because I'm using it as an opportunity to laugh at the people that still care about it.
Welcome to Off topic!
 
When Jan 6th 2023 rolls around I probably won't remember it. If I do it's because I'm using it as an opportunity to laugh at the people that still care about it.
So the fact that a bunch of people tried to occupy your country's capital is something to laugh about?

This spawned a copycat attempt in Canada, with a truckers' convoy parked on Parliament Hill and another blocking the international border at Coutts, Alberta. The ones in Coutts included anarchists who had killing RCMP on their to-do list. Some of those in Ottawa had in mind to either oust or even kill our Prime Minister. The leaders of both the federal conservative party (CPC) and the party currently governing my province (UCP) actually support these truckers, who are basically no better than domestic terrorists.

It really isn't funny.
 
I hope that 100 years later, someone makes a Scary-Movie-esque parody called "A for Agenda" where all the Fawkes masks are Trump masks where he's pronouncing the word "huge."
 
Agreed.
Ultimately, it is ridiculous to expect people to be aware of the date, enough years from now. Afaik most Usians (and not just Usians, nor do I find this itself to be negative, mind) aren't even aware of their own historically important dates (assuming there was already agreement on which were important), so that should seal it.
Which is funny, because Bonfire Night is a big thing here in the UK and everyone grows up knowing about it.
 
Welcome to Off topic!
Thanks for the welcome. Don't expect to see too much of me though. I very rarely post on CFC.
So the fact that a bunch of people tried to occupy your country's capital is something to laugh about?

This spawned a copycat attempt in Canada, with a truckers' convoy parked on Parliament Hill and another blocking the international border at Coutts, Alberta. The ones in Coutts included anarchists who had killing RCMP on their to-do list. Some of those in Ottawa had in mind to either oust or even kill our Prime Minister. The leaders of both the federal conservative party (CPC) and the party currently governing my province (UCP) actually support these truckers, who are basically no better than domestic terrorists.

It really isn't funny.
I'm roughly a thousand miles from DC so it's easy for me to point and laugh from afar. I would not be so amused if it happened closer to me.
 
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