Change is essential to progress. Individuals must change to grow and develop. Society needs advocates of change, though it may reject most of their entreaties.
- No instant, he wrote, is self-contained, just as no action in a theatrical pageant nor any drop in a flowing river is self-contained. Each moment incorporates what came right after and what is coming right after. . . . There was always something more to be learned, another stroke to be gleaned from nature that would make a picture closer to perfect. [Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci, (Simon & Schuster, 2017), p. 518.]
- If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. [anonymous]
- Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. [widely attributed to Leo Tolstoy]
- The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. [attributed to Nathaniel Branden]
Change appears on this calendar only once every few years. This illustrates the point that major change – as opposed to minor change, which occurs constantly – should occur infrequently. People need stability in the everyday conduct of their lives, businesses and other affairs. Change should occur when major flaws have been revealed in the existing course of conduct, such that change is likely to improve the situation.
Major personal changes may occur several times in the lifetime of a healthy and well-adjusted person, while a robust scientific theory may endure for hundreds of years before it falls into crisis and is replaced. Thomas S. Kuhn described this phenomenon in his classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Real
True Narratives
Philosopher Isaiah Berlin authored a famous essay entitled “The Hedgehog and the Fox”. His central argument is that some people focus narrowly on one issue or set of concerns, while others cast their view more broadly. Historian Gordon S. Wood discusses this in the introduction to his book, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States. Wood observes that as a specialist on the American Revolution he is a hedgehog. Illustrating that point, here are links to his main works, in addition to the book linked above:
- The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (University of North Carolina Press, 1969).
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Knopf, 1991).
- Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (Penguin Press, 2006).
- The American Revolution: A History (Modern Library, 2002).
- Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (Penguin Press, 2017): two great figures “Beg to Differ”.
- Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford University Press, 2009).
- The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (Penguin Press, 2004).
Gene Sharp was a political theorist whose work is credited with informing grass-roots democratic uprisings in Europe and Egypt. A main point of contention in his work is that rulers have no power if the people do not obey. He has devised strategies for non-violent resistance against unpopular rulers. His works include:
- The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part 1: Power and Struggle (Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973).
- The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part 2: The Methods of Nonviolent Action (Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973).
- The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part 3: The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action (Porter Sargent Publishers, 1985).
- Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (Horizons Books, 2005).
Malcolm X changed in his personal life “from a petty criminal and drug user to a long-term prisoner to an influential minister to a separatist political activist to a humanist to a martyr” and in so doing, changed a nation.
- Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (1965).
- Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking, 2011).
On resistance to change:
- Douglas R. Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era (Bloomsbury Press, 2014): chronicling resistance to a more just society after the Civil War and to the present.
Other works on change:
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (Simon & Schuster, 2013): chronicling the progressive era in American politics when “change” was meaningful.
- William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017). “. . . it is hard to think of many figures who shaped the last half-century of world history more than he did. He put an end to the totalitarian system created by Lenin and Stalin. He freed Russians to speak their minds without fear; ended the Communist monopoly on power and held competitive elections. He paved the way for Eastern Europe to leave Moscow’s orbit, largely without violence. And he made peace with the West.”
- Ted Gioia, Music: A Subversive History (Basic Books, 2019): “. . . Gioia recounts how shamans tapped the forces of rhythm in the service of transcendence; how Sappho, the Greek lyric poet, pointed the way for singers to express their personal feelings and not merely extol powerful men and gods; how the Anglo-Saxon folk songs of the working poor defied social strictures by glorying in sex and violence; how the anguished sounds of slave singing helped shape the music of the Arab world as well as that of the West; and how, in the classical sphere, exalted figures such as Bach and Beethoven were once radical nonconformists in social as well as musical ways.”
- Kevin Boyle, The Shattering: America in the 1960s (W.W. Norton & Company, 2021): “. . . rich, layered account of the 1960s, which necessarily traces the key events of the preceding decade . . .”
On personal change:
- Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018): “’The Cost of Living’ is about how Levy escaped a suffocating marriage and, at roughly age 50, began to take herself seriously as an artist and as an individual soul. ‘What would it cost to step out of character and stop the story?’ she asks.” “There’s joy in her maneuvering through the rapids, difficult though they may be.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- Last Train Home: about the annual lunar New Year’s migration in China and the social and cultural changes it reflects
- Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness: a documentary film about the creator of Fiddler On the Roof, and how he “created an entirely new literature” using his traditional Jewish heritage as a springboard
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Seen in broad perspective, the 20th century presents an epic story of change. Ken Follett tells that story through the personal stories of five families in his “century trilogy”.
- Ken Follett, Fall of Giants (Dutton, 2010): Follett is “no Tolstoy” but the novel is “grippingly told, and readable to the end”.
- Ken Follett, Winter of the World (Dutton, 2012): “These books reel in readers with their simple talk, sharp twists and neatly nonsensical way of pairing earthshaking political events with frissons of romance.”
- Ken Follett, Edge of Eternity (Dutton, 2014): “. . . Follett created five families — Russian, English, Welsh, German and American — whose fates personalized historical events.”
Poetry
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
So desert it would have to be, so walled
By mountain ranges half in summer snow,
No one would covet it or think it worth
The pains of conquering to force change on.
Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly
Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk
Blown over and over themselves in idleness.
Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew
The babe born to the desert, the sand storm
Retard mid-waste my cowering caravans-
'There are bees in this wall.' He struck the clapboards,
Fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivoted.
We rose to go. Sunset blazed on the windows.
[Robert Frost, from “The Black Cottage” (analysis)]
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
The Beatles changed the course of popular music and culture in the turbulent 1960s. Their hairstyles, which set off a furor at the time, seem tame by later standards. They opened a door to freer styles of popular music. Their music endures, not merely because it represented changing times and rebellion but because John Lennon was and Paul McCartney is a brilliant composer of popular song. Books about The Beatles are by Philip Norman, Steven D. Stark, June Skinner Sawyers (ed.), Walter Everett, Erin Torkelson Weber, Bob Spitz, Peter Brown & Steven Gaines, Leslie Woodhead, Tim Riley, Mark Lewisohn, Mark Lewisohn, Walter Everett, and Kenneth Womack & Katie Kapurch (eds.); and an anthology. Books about John Lennon include those by Jonathan Cott, John Stevens, Robert Hilburn, John Blaney, John Wiener, Jacqueline Edmondson, Tom Stockdale, Elizabeth Partridge, and James Patterson; some of his letters have been collected in book form; Lennon was also a book author. Books about Paul McCartney are by Barry Miles, Ray Coleman, Peter Ames Carlin, Howard Sounes, and Garry McGee. Here are links to their releases, several documentary films, some performance films, interviews, and some videos. Here is a video of their appearance on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, 1964.
Compositions:
- Franz Joseph Haydn, Symphony No. 64 in A Major, Hob.I:64, "Tempora mutantur" (Times of Change) (1773) (approx. 19-21’)
- Sofia Gubaidulina, In Croce, for cello & organ (for double bass and bayan) (for cello and accordion) (1979) (approx. 14-17’) represents a crossing in the interplay of the two instruments.
- Gubaidulina, Music for Flute, Strings & Percussion (1994) (approx. 31’): a second orchestra is tuned one-quarter tone low to set up a light-and-shadow, or echo effect.
- Christopher Rouse, String Quartet No. 1 (1982) (approx. 17’); String Quartet No. 2 (1988) (approx. 21’); Compline (1996) (approx. 19’)
- Osvaldo Golijov, La Pasión según San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) (2000) (approx. 103’) is a contemporary version of the biblical gospel.
- Stefan Wolpe, String Quartet (1969) (approx. 18-20’): “ . . . disruptive”, particularly in the second movement [from the liner notes to this album]
- Daniel Burwasser, Flux for string orchestra (1999) (approx. 10’)
Albums:
- Francisco Fullana, “Through the Lens of Time” (2018) (73’) presents Vivaldi’s Four Seasons recomposed, along with other works.
- Billy Childs, “The Winds of Change” (2023) (53’): Childs observes, “. . . as you get older and observe life, the only constant is change.” However, he does not passively receive change; he creates it with his music, as a composer and performer, in both classical and jazz.
- John Coltrane, "Transition" (1965) (52’) “acts as a neat perforation mark between Coltrane's classic quartet and the cosmic explorations that would follow . . .”
- Charles Mingus, "Changes One" (1973) (45’); “Changes Two” (1974) (43’): “The ‘70s was a decade of remorseless change for Charles Mingus. It began on a high with the bassist/composer joining Columbia Records in 1970 but sadly ended with his death nine years later. In between, he enjoyed a fertile spell at Atlantic Records despite terminal illness casting an ever-darkening shadow over his musical endeavours.”
- David Bowie, "Young Americans" (1975) (41’) “represented David Bowie's dive into soul music, particularly Philly Soul. Containing the stunning funk single ‘Fame,’ the album felt like a vehicle for Bowie to address one of his favorite topics—pop stardom—from a new angle, at a moment when it seemed likely to destroy him.”
- Bob Dylan, "Bringing It All Back Home" (1965) (47’): “. . . Dylan had begun pushing past folk, and with Bringing It All Back Home, he exploded the boundaries, producing an album of boundless imagination and skill. And it's not just that he went electric, either . . . it's that he's exploding with imagination throughout the record.”
- Neil Young, "Rust Never Sleeps" (1979) (38’) “is the triumph as rock and roll adapts to the changing times and keeps striving on in the face of darkness.”
- The Who, "Who's Next" (1971) (85’): “. . . there's anger and sorrow, humor and regret, passion and tumult, all wrapped up in a blistering package where the rage is as affecting as the heartbreak. This is a retreat from the '60s, as Townshend declares the ‘Song Is Over,’ scorns the teenage wasteland, and bitterly declares that we 'Won't Get Fooled Again.'”
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Paul Simon, “Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean” (lyrics)
- Sheryl Crow, "A Change Would Do You Good" (lyrics)
- Tears for Fears, "Change" (lyrics)
Visual Arts
Max Ernst's Day and Night (1941) captures an important aspect of the creative process: the ability to move back and forth between primary mental processes such as dreams and secondary processes such as rational thought. Of this painting, he said: "So listen to the heartbeats of the earth. to yield to that fear which comets and the unknown inspire in men. To put out the sun at will. To light the searchlights of night's brain."
- Jackson Pollock, Out of the Web (1949)
- Max Ernst, The Phases of the Night (1946)
- Giorgio de Chirico, The Dream Turns (1913)
Film and Stage
- Persepolis: this autobiographical animated feature chronicles political, social and personal change through the eyes of a headstrong Iranian female, beginning with her childhood in the late 1970s and continuing into her adulthood in the 1990s. Her written autobiographical novels are among our fictional narratives.
- My Perestroika: a personal look at the changes resulting from Communism’s fall in Europe
- Room at the Top, about “cynical, disenchanted and footloose post-war youths of England” at the end of the 1950s, just before the Beatles
- Early Summer, a gentle and heavily emotional film about three generations in a changing culture