Fire!

 

Fire burns. Destroys. It also offers warmth in very cold places and can be the difference between sure death and survival. It’s a mark of civilization, its discovery (said to be) a turning point in the history of our species, is associated with hell and indeed is a visible and felt marker of war, genocidal attacks, plunder and annihilation of all kinds. Across time. Now. As I write.

Last night the word came up in a discussion on books that spoke of the history of Latin America. ‘Fire from the Mountain,’ by Omar Cabezas, first published in 1985, is the author’s account of his association with the Nicaraguan Revolution and covers the time he spent in the northern mountains of his country with the Sandinistas, being trained and engaging in guerrilla warfare.

It’s a fascinating read. ‘Fire’ was a metaphor of course and referred to resistance and rebellion, a symbol of light and hope in a fight to overthrow tyranny.

From there the flame thus lit flitted to other fire-references. First, naturally perhaps, Prometheus, unloved and punished by the gods for stealing fire. He was supposed to have been bound to a rock and condemned to have his liver devoured by an eagle only for it to grow back overnight and then once again eaten the following day.  

Fire was the preserve of divinity apparently, and Prometheus, by the fact of theft, defied, overturned and thereby compromised the god-human structure of dependency. Revolutionary, certainly. The heavens could not suffer it. Neither could they overturn the new normal related to the loss of monopoly. So they punished Prometheus. An example. A warning. ‘Defy us at your peril!’

That’s not only about heaven and earth, gods and humans. It’s quite basic and common to any unequal relationship. Across time and space.

That’s essentially what Billy Joel says in his song ‘We didn’t start the fire.’ The story goes that when Joel was around 40 years of age, a much younger man had complained about the state of the world. This was in 1989. He had simply jotted down all the ‘fires’ over the previous four decades, implying that pyromaniacs, so to speak, and fires aren’t anomalies but pretty common stuff. The song was featured in his album ‘Storm Front.’

Of course this does not mean that setting fire to things (or bombing countries or cities or villages off maps) is justified and should be allowed to pass without comment or protest. Joel doesn’t really advocate fire extinguishing or ‘fighting fire with fire.’ He states facts and leaves them at that. Interesting observation, but incomplete nevertheless.

The Promethean myth is about retribution. Crime, supposed, and punishment. Bob Marley and the Wailers spoke of it in fiery terms. The song: ‘Catch a fire.’ Released in 1973 in the fifth album by the Wailers and featured as the title-song, it was the title of what is considered the definitive biography of Bob Marley, written by Timothy White.

‘Catch a fire’ is an accusation and prediction of retribution. It addresses slavery. Slave drivers are told that tables have turned (have they, though?) and that they will ‘catch a fire,’ meaning ‘will burn in hell.’

And then, 'The fire next time,' by James Baldwin, a brilliant book on race relations in the USA in the 1960s. How many 'next times' have we had since and how many more to come? 

And so, as I moved from historical moment to song and singer and back to history again, I remembered the flame in the Nataraja or the classic depiction of the ‘Dance of Shiva.’ In one hand, the god who never forgives or forgets, holds a flame and in another, a drum. The at-a-glance message is, ‘one (flame) depicts death/destruction and the other (drum) denotes life.

Another interpretation doesn’t stop with the immediate ‘message’ of destruction and death (as part of the human condition, let’s say). There’s also transformation and dissolution, the burning of ego and illusion, which, cosmologically speaking is not necessarily a bad thing. That which is irrelevant is done away with so something new (and better, perhaps) can have space to take root, grow and flourish. Brings to mind the line from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem on the death of the mythical King Arthur (More d’Arthur):

‘And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world…..”’

There’s swidden agriculture, a term used to describe shifting cultivation or the innocuous and even misleading descriptive ‘slash and burn.’ ‘Swidden’ comes from the Old Norse word svíða meaning ‘singe’ or ‘burn’ and was coined by the Swedish anthropologist Karl Gustav Izikowitz to describe agricultural techniques in Southeast Asia in the 1930s. A fine example of crass caricaturing which can even influence policy-making.

Fire burns both ways, then. During the Watts Riots in Los Angeles in 1965, rioters and crowds used the slogan ‘burn baby burn,’ borrowed from a catchphrase coined by an LA radio DJ, Nathaniel ‘Magnificent’ Montague. Fires raged across the neighbourhood. And later it was a slogan for urban unrest. Fighting fire with fire. Weapons of the powerful used against the oppressor by the oppressed. Double-edged flames.

Fire. So many songs. So many meanings. Slants. Metaphor-reservoir. From mountain top and across plains where rebellion ferments and explodes. From lyric to song and slogan. As always, usable and ‘abusable.’

Endless.

But this exercise has limitations. Finitude. I must stop.  

But before that, the traditional oil lamp. Light. Dispelling darkness. A soft Promethean flush; rebellions warm and poetic. Let us not quench such flames and let us not look away if and when pyromaniacs with ill-intent seek to douse the spirit, the hope and the determination to re-create the world in less intrusive and humiliating colours.