How Long Can A Bird Sing?

Douglas Valentine and Jeremiah Day

Jeremiah Days work No Words For You, Springfield chronicles the Blasket Island
storytellers who lived for centuries on a small island off the coast of Ireland and became
famous for their oral-narrative tradition. The island is now deserted and their way of life
is gone. Many of the islanders emigrated to Springfield, an industrial center outside of
Boston in the US, where their storytelling tradition did not continue. Springfield itself is a
major victim of deindustrialization and has been in decline for decades.
Douglas Valentine is an author currently writing from Longmeadow, a suburb of
Springfield. He is a regular contributor to Counterpunch magazine and the author of
several books on political history, including the definitive study on the C.I.A.s Phoenix
Program in Vietnam, and The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of the War
Against Drugs. In the late stages of completing No Words For You, Springfield Day
discovered that Valentine was writing from the area and approached him to engage in a
dialogue around the project.

Jeremiah Day:
I used to teach elementary school in Los Angeles, and one day I realized how
many of my students were from Central America El Salvador and Guatemala in
particular. A large portion of these childrens parents had fled to the United States to
avoid the chaos and violence of those countries civil wars, but ironically had fled to the
country largely responsible for those wars, as the United States had basically initiated
and managed them.
It was one of those rare moments when I could feel how I lived in a landscape
that was alive with the consequences of what are usually abstract political ideas, and
where the underlying causes of my daily condition were clear.
In light of your work on broader historical and political questions, do you ever see
your local situation in this way? How does Springfield seem to you, when viewed
through the prism of the repressed chapters of American history so you have pursued?
Douglas Valentine:
Most of the people I meet around here are from here, while I was born in
Pleasantville, New York, and lived in a lot of other places before I got here 15 years ago.
It's not my hometown and I do not have a lot in common with the hometowners. They
have extended families here and friends from school. Their brothers are cops. The cops
are basically the first line of defence against the Puerto Ricans and Blacks. The Italians
(80 families came from one village in Italy) in the Little Italy part of Springfield resent the
encroachment into their decaying neighbourhood. There was a Mafia murder here about
four years ago right across from the Italian deli I go to every Saturday. The local TV
station interviewed me about the murder because they knew about my book Strength of
the Wolf. I said that Al Bruno, the Mafia boss that got killed, was probably an FBI
informant. The next day, some people at the gym I go to wouldn't talk to me. Comments
were made. Al Bruno's son goes to my club. The daughters of Mafia bosses marry cops
in town. About ten years ago a guy at the club was, by coincidence, the son of a
narcotics police captain in Springfield. We became pals and would shoot pool and drink

beer at bars together. One day he told me a secret his father had told him, that the cops
in Springfield allowed the Mafia bosses to bring drugs into town and, in exchange, the
Mafia bosses told the cops the names of the Puerto Rican and Black distributors they
sold the dope to. That way the cops could keep making busts and keep the pressure on
the minority community. Eight ball in the side pocket.
There's a big law firm in town: Ferriter & Scobbo. The Irish I know in town know
nothing about Blasket Island. I have Irish citizenship because my wife's father came
from Ireland. My own Scottish ancestors came from Donegal, near Blasket Island.
Strange.
Springfield seems to me like normal hometown America. The people here like it.
It's their home. There's a big air force base, Westover, on the north side of town. Smith
and Wesson has a factory here. The people understand why we're in Iraq and
Afghanistan and they support the troops. They support Israel and think Palestinians and
Arabs are sub-human. If we talk politics, it gets heated.
Living here in Longmeadow, next to Springfield, I feel like a Martian. I write about
the CIA and the DEA. When my work comes up, mouths drop open. There are a few
radicals who would like to know what's in my head, but even they eventually realize my
experience is a wild story of cast away sailors in distant strange lands they have no way
of confirming or denying. I exist here in a state of suspended anticipation of the next
epiphany.
JD:
What we know of the poetic tradition of the Blasket Islands comes to us largely
through the efforts of the English linguist George Thompson. In the story telling of the
Blaskets, Thompson felt hed found a link with the pre-Socratic tradition of Greek epic
poetry, where spiritual, personal, political and practical subjects were integrated, and
thus the boundary between art and life could be said not to exist at all. The Blaskets
had poetry in the sense understood by Martin Heidegger - "Poetry proper is never
merely a higher mode of everyday language. It is rather the reverse: everyday language
is a forgotten and therefore used-up poem, from which there hardly resounds a call any
longer." And this everyday speech, infused with song and meaning the anti-thesis of
the dis-enchantment of the modern world explains the appeal and resonance of the
books which are artifacts of this tradition.
By the time it was decided to evacuate the Blasketers in the 1950s, one islander
said there were more Blasketers in Springfield than on the island. The cause for
immigrating to Springfield among other places has been theorized by one transplant as
like when one bird settles on wire, and then another and then the whole flock comes
over to join. - Even in this description is contained the echo of the poetic imaginary of
the Blaskets, and in my mind their enchantment seems to pervade my thoughts of
Springfield. But I wonder do you find any such magic there? Can you feel any embers
of that poetic tradition that was transplanted and then lost?
DV:
There may still be embers of that tradition in Springfield. The Portuguese
immigrants have it in Ludlow. At their annual fair, a group of about 50--60 men break
away and go across a field under a big oak tree and, in the middle of the circular mob,
two or three or four men sing to--at each other; the singers change places but the song

is constant, a kind of rap music in which the guys poke fun at each other in verse, truly
amazing, impromptu jazz. I'm not involved with any Irish groups in Springfield so I don't
know about them. Personally, I find the magic everywhere because I am that tradition.
People here are attracted to me, despite my being an outsider, because I speak
poetically and have strange stories to tell about a world outside theirs. I spoke recently
at a Unitarian church about my books. The people were enthralled. People ask me
questions all the time; they come to me like they go to a movie theatre. Other times I
project total disdain for this parochial place and people find me odd and off-putting. I
don't care. As part of the poetic tradition, it doesn't matter to me where I am - be it
Springfield, Saigon, Paris or Caracas. The dolmens, cairns and runes of my forefathers
are embedded in my brain cells. I would be outside anywhere but in the forest. A piper
in a Highland glen.
JD:
Springfield and the Blaskets have some things in common it could be said both
have been left behind by progress. The demise of the Blasket tradition was due to the
islanders desire for access to modern life. Perhaps entering the modern world of
factory jobs and political bosses need not have ended their poetic tradition, but in this
case it seems it did. And the Islands themselves are now only home to ruins of a lost
way of living.
Similarly Springfield is often said to have been left behind. Once a major
center during the height of the industrial revolution, Springfield seems to have led
American cities into post-industrial decline, even sooner then rust-belt cities like
Pittsburgh and Detroit. Springfield has been increasingly poor and shunned by its
neighbours since the Second World War, when many of the larger skilled manufacturers
moved away. From your vantage point in Springfield, how do you see the progress of
the rest of the United States? Particularly in rock music there is a sense of the old
industrial cities as a kind of golden age of high wages and full employment, which are
compared to the precariousness of contemporary service jobs. Does some of your
vantage as writer and essentially a critic of contemporary American life stem from your
local context?
DV:
"Pity that poor monster manunkind, not.
Progress is a comfortable disease."
- E.E. Cumings
There used to be great rock bands here, playing the clubs downtown, then the
club owners realized it was cheaper to spin disks and the bands vanished. That was ten
years ago. The musicians got service jobs or moved to Northampton or Boston.
America to me is a tractor trailer truck, a convoy of tractor trailer trucks, hurtling
along the interstates, in the rain and snow, the heat of summer, at night, always
delivering the consumer goods and you'd better get out of the way. Springfield is
another stop along the materialistic road to heaven. Remember, the Simpsons live in
Springfield. It's the same here without the conscious parody. To me, it's pantomime.
Springfield, as a metaphor of America, keeps me honest and hopeful, depressed
and out of control. I'm an orphan of America like the old beat poets.

JD:
Do you see your own role as a kind of storyteller? Your work could be said to
seek to reveal hidden truths, to explain the causes for our condition. Given that there is
no longer such an oral tradition available to you (I imagine), do you see that your work
might still have a call, in Heideggers words?
DV:
Yes that's how I see myself, and maybe yes to the second part, as there is an
oral tradition in America, but I don't know Heideggers meaning of call. I hear the call
every minute. And for someone like me, the call doesn't come from an audience. It's just
something I have to do, like a cat chases birds. Like the old blues song goes: "How long
can a bird sing? As long as he knows his song. And that's just how long a fool can go
wrong."