Nobama

OK, time to lay my cards on the table. Politically, I'm left-leaning, or 'liberal', as the common parlance here would put it. So I'm very happy that Barack Obama is the president, and I think that George W Bush was (and still is) an embarrassment who caused untold harm to the world.

In most contexts with which I'm familiar, saying that would hardly be controversial; in fact it would pretty much be assumed. But here in Oklahoma, it's a minority position. Actually, Oklahoma City itself is probably reasonably well-balanced, and certainly during the election last year (see 'Anti-family', 6 October) I saw at least as many yard signs and bumper stickers for Obama-Biden as I did for McCain-Palin; and I've since spoken to a number of people who seem supportive of the new President. But the fact remains that Oklahoma was the only state in the US in which every single county voted for McCain ('Oklahoma facts', 17 December), and there is definitely a very well-entrenched conservative streak here, particularly among the churches.

I wrote a few posts ago ('Organs and Churches', 15 June) about Bill, who told me that 'it's a bit like the Federal Government at the moment - you may not like what they're doing, but you just have to accept it'. Last Sunday there were two other small events which served as jolting realisations of the political culture here. As I drove out of the church parking lot after playing the organ, there was an enormous SUV in front of me with a sticker in the rear window which simply read 'NOBAMA'. And earlier, I had fallen into conversation with a lady who told me she was from Hawaii. 'Oh, like President Obama', I said. Her face looked pained. 'Well, you know there's no record of him having been born there', she said. Evidently there is some kind of right-wing conspiracy which seeks to persuade people that Obama's not really American, but is some kind of dangerous foreigner, and probably a Muslim and a terrorist to boot. 'And he lived in Indonesia, you know. It's like he can't make up his mind'. But she had just told me that she lived in the UK for a few years as a child.

Then you listen to Real Time with Bill Maher, as I do every week, and you become aware of a creeping frustration among liberals - which I share - that Obama's too soft and timid, that he's not going far enough, that the promise of change he brought with him is in danger of compromise. It reminds me of a similar problem I've often encountered as a composer - a piece of music can be thought rather uninteresting, unoriginal and timid when played in a concert of contemporary music, yet dangerously radical and mystifying when played to an audience of people who don't usually listen to modern music. (My friend Derek Bermel made this point very eloquently and forcefully on a recent post on his blog, which you can read here.) You can end up with a profoundly uncertain feeling about where to position yourself.