Lou Harrison
From Philosopedia
Harrison, Lou (14 May 1917 - 2 February 2003)
A composer and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Harrison was a student of Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg. Also, he was music critic of the New York Herald Tribune. Harrison taught at San Jose State University in California and at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii.
On the subject of humanism he wrote to Warren Allen Smith:
- I have been called a “card carrying humanist” for a number of years and in ways possible to me have tried to aid the movement. As to my position in the sequence which is presented, the seven categories [your editor suggested humanism, ancient humanism, classical humanism, theistic humanism, atheistic humanism, communistic humanism, and naturalistic (or scientific) humanism], I am unsure. However, I am personally certain, like my father before me, that “when you’re dead you’re dead,” and simply turned off—all systems down. I have studied at some length and intensity what remains of Epicurus (and even given a short lecture on his ideas to a local humanist group) as well as Lucretius.
- I have also seriously studied congenial forms of Buddhism, and especially the presentation of basic material in A. J. Bahm’s remarkable book, The Philosophy of the Buddha. Both Epicurus’ Ataraxia and the Buddhist Nirvana seem to me to be conditions of equanimity in which one is fully “with it” all the time and can no longer be “shook up.” Such a personal condition would be enormously difficult to achieve and I’m not sure that I’d want to, or could. Socially I am continually shocked by our human cruelty—it seems to have no limits and indeed seems a fundamental part of our kind, alas.
- I am enormously opposed to organized religion and feel that the Christians and Muslims are responsible for uncountable human and other beings’ miseries. I continuously read in such science journals as I am able as a layman to understand. With the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti I am for the dismantling of the Industrial Revolution, which I believe to be humankind’s worst and probably last mistake. As humans we have lots of dirty habits, but I think that the filthiest of all is politics. I grew up in the “liberal thirties’ and have lived in dismay during these last two administrations. Surely goodwill and overt love could be enlisted to temper the human suicidal drift. Anyway, I keep contributing as I’m able, and with the determination to do so as honestly and sharply as possible.
In 1992, Harrison’s openly gay Joys and Perplexities, Selected Poems of Lou Harrison was published. He and William Colvig, a contractor and member of an electricians’ union, have lived together in Aptos, California, since 1967.
In 1997, Harrison was named the American Humanist Association’s Humanist Arts Awardee. In a biography, Lou Harrison: Composing a World (1998) by Leta E. Miller and Fredric Liebermann, Harrison’s visits to composer Henry Cowell are described. Cowell, who went to jail for four years on a morals charge of homosexuality, was visited regularly by Harrison, who ferried musical scores back and forth.
Correspondence
Harrison wrote Warren Allen Smith about humanism:
