James Crystal |
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Isn't life funny, when it comes to music? From the first burst of sound that strikes any newborn's ears until the last sound heard, this SPAN is worthy of consideration. I saw a student with a sweatshirt with this on it---"If you were a violin I'd pluck you". You KNOW that made me quiver in joy! The impetus for this blog is Sir Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations, number ten. If you haven't taken the time to 'master' this, shame on you! I can, however, relate. Maybe music is like food. How would we expand the "Do you live to eat or eat to live?" query to music? How about "Do you live to enjoy music or do you listen to music to live?" Yes. Fluctuating waves pluck our 'violins', always. Right now I'm awash in Bruckner's symphony number six---from which, "There's a place, somewhere" (from West Side Story), was stolen by the gay Leonard Bernstein. Ah, what a contrast there is between the 'thick' Bruckner and the 'elegant' Elgar! As one who needed to continue growing by ecstatically wading through so much music that was, at first, only a mishmash of clashing sounds, I have to say that, presently, Elgar is one of the wonders of my world. What an understated mystery! THE 'heaviest' possible guy, Wagner, addicted me when I was just out of high school, when I bought a record of music---without singing---from "Tristan und Isolde": the Prelude and the Love Death were quite enough to shock me into many replays, until I got it. Ah, I can still remember how incoherent it all sounded the first---what, ten, twenty---times I heard it! Well, now, in my ever open-eared older age, the same thing has happened with Elgar and Bruckner. I recall how bland Elgar seemed the first few times I heard him, AND, how dense and incomprehensible Bruckner was. However, repeat, repeat, repeat! Perhaps it helped to read the liner notes about what I was hearing. One of Elgar's symphonies was composed right after so many Englishmen were surprisingly slaughtered in WW I, and it is one of the most sad things ever written, musically. Oh, yes. We must all---at least those of us my age---take into account his "Pomp and Circumstance" march that that was played at our graduation, which certainly had to color---to colour--- our Elgar prejudice! Even so, as my time flows away, after 'graduating' from Beethoven, it has been a happily blissful surprise to find so much powerful joy in the much more astringent Elgar. It's as if each note doesn't need to shout. On the other hand, there's Bruckner---and Shostokovich! Did you know that Bruckner was much loved in Japan? Yes, the putative 'next' B, after Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, has quite a following in that country. Any way, I can't emphasize enough the beauty of Elgar's Enigma Variation number ten, all two minutes plus of it. I dare anyone to listen to it in a loop ten times, say. Aha! It took ME many plays of "Tristan und Isolde" to get it, but any fool's 'mind' could get Elgar's trip much more quickly.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Today I had almost more excitement than I could handle. At a high school with mostly conservative students, I got to 'play' in front of three 85 minute American Studies classes, each of which was stuffed with polite, eager and bright sophomores---more like upper classmen, at this time of year, though. Talk about a set-up! Each class was about Vietnam, and there I was a real Vietnam vet, in danger of blowing my cover as a hard-line Conservative in front of kids whose regular teacher is the prototypical 55-year-old left-winger----it was easy to discern THAT, since he had a special calendar with a misspoken sentence by GWB for each day. Before the first class started, I pondered about how much I should let rip. After reading the teacher's answers to a slug of very specific questions, my righteous dander was up, so I knew I would be unable to avoid 'correcting' the history they were being brainwashed with. The question that really did it had to do with drug use by soldiers in Nam. It was okay to note that a lot of marijuana was smoked, but when another answer was that 30% were ADDICTED to heroine and/or opium, why, momma, I lost it. That has to be SOOOO stupidly WRONG! Three out of ten American warriors were ADDICTED to those hard core drugs?! Believe me, I let them know how impossible that was, in heartfelt righteous angry tones! The first class did have a Bush-hating girl, who professed this before I'd taken over the 'show', but the next two classes were 'accelerated', and welcomed my personal and educated input. The last one, which just ended about an hour ago, after only a few minutes with me were like a tied-down slave released, even to the point where I got to hear "We wish you were our teacher". They expressed their unhappiness at having to put up with such a "RED" teacher for a whole year. It was so sweet to deconstruct all the BS having to do with the Tet Offensive---I had a personal experience about that!---but the most blissful climaxing moment came after 'correcting' the handout, when I asked if the US had 'lost' the Vietnam War, and all of them said, "YES". Just before this, there were a couple of questions, the answers to which actually proved we had NOT. First, they found out that the last American left Nam in 1973, and then that the North beat the South in 1975! The USA wasn't even THERE when the war was lost! It was a DRAW in 1973. Of course, this inevitably sparked me to lay the blame where it really belonged---on the DEMOCRAT Congress for failing to keep up the aid Nixon had promised the South! It was so much fun to explain that it was a proxy war between the USSR and the USA, even after we pulled out. No doubt about it, getting to set the record straight with such an engaged bunch of 16-year-olds was a totally unlikely event. In all my long experience subbing, never have I been more impressed by so many students eager to listen! It did help that the classes we relatively small, from 21 to 15, or so. But, jeez---who would have expected sophomores to be so interested and knowledgeable about the Vietnam War? All in all, a most remarkable day. I just wish I could be a fly on the wall when the regular teacher gets feedback. One student did say that he was open for them to get another view---well, they got it today! Oh yes. I asked his age, and they said he was 55, and so, he told them he was too young to have served in that war. Only when the second class started did I do the math---he would have been 19 in 1969, so honey, he LIED! There were FOUR long years more of that war during which he was eligible for the draft! There you have a PERSONAL story about the left-wing programming going on in America---right in the middle of a most conservative area!
Thursday, May 05, 2005
After the recent 'hot' news storm about how wonderful it is to be fat, the crisis sprung into action by giving a perfect opportunity for Michael Fumento to expose the sheer stupidity of IT-ALL. Check out some fuming truth "Obesity myths? Fat chance", by Michael Fumento on townhall.com smokes! Then, the strangely entitled column, "Cigarette smoker's revenge", by Larry Elder, here made my bodily day. The trinity? Fat people are smoking something in the noosphere. Before long we'll have cancer patients extolling the bliss of PAIN. I especially love Larry Elder's extension of smokers to Democrats. His statistics are devastating! However, patting-myself-on-the-back, what he reports merely confirms my over-riding Realization wrt CW politics--- Leftists are unhappy losers. They use psycho-physical accoutrements to assuage their pain, plain and simple. Why am I taking "Michael Kinsley" to the anti-infinity of MSM-dom?
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Wlady Pleszczynski's take, here, on the Laura Bush debacle, cut through all the happy talk exhibited on even Fox's 'fair and balanced' shows. No doubt about it--- the milking-a-male-horse joke will go down in history as one of the most tasteless attempts to play to the crowd, ever. Especially egregious, coming from a first family with the task of bringing CLASS back to the office of the presidency, after Clinton! David Hackett Fischer has a new book, "Washington's Crossing (Pivotal Moments in American History)". I caught him on C-span promoting it, recently. The strikingly unforgettable thing I received was that Washington was an excellent LISTENER. It may well be that the American 'tavern gathering' tradition flowed over into battle decisions, and was the key factor in beating the British. Apparently, Cornwallis never took into account any of the wise advice of his underlings. There you have a wonderful one-two punch! Well, as time rolls along, I fear this may explain a lot of what's happening on Bush's watch. Could it be that he has the right ideas, but when it comes to domestic issues, he has a political tin ear, and he's being badly served by those he must listen to? And, au contraire, in the foreign dimension, since he's surrounded himself with mostly wise and hardheaded heroes, the tin cup is mostly FULL---of listening? Face it. Bush has already sealed a lot of his future by having NEVER vetoed anything. If ever there was a blatant case of not listening---to history---this is it. What did the Peter Principle tell us, ages ago? People tend to rise to the level of their mediocrity? I'm afraid that's what GWB is proving, right before our lying-in-wait eyes. Remember the competing clichés, 'Familiarity breeds contempt' and 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'? At least for me, the former is gaining more and more cachet, as Bush morphs more and more into a caretaker president, in my sad view. The disconnect between his words and his deeds evokes Marlon Brando's "I could'a been a contender!" plaint, only in W's case, the system isn't keeping him down---however you want to psychoanalyze him, bringing into it all his whole extended spoon-in-the-mouthing family, the results are pretty clear, so far. If 'hope isn't a strategy', what's the best thing to hope for? The exigencies of NOW preclude the need?, the want?, the possibility?, the joy?, the bite?, the breath?, the you-name-it?, of saving for the THEN. Want an in-explicable proof of our flowing and always at-home pudding of a life? While we humans at once enjoy AND suffer the fools atop the political heap exhibiting the best/worst system, what's passing for democracy, nowadays in the USA, each one of us in-exorably experiences a life passing through space-time, which also passes through us, paradoxically. You could say we each eat space-time, which spits us out, each exhausting instant. After all, waste is virtuous. As a physical aside---a famously stupid waste of time is to watch paint dry. The History Channel had a recent program about paint, and when they went into deep detail about it all, the spear of IT-ALL shattered another of my own sheaths: paint really DOES dry! After being attached to a wall, say, the passage of space-time is expressed by the evaporation of actual WATER rejoining its 'mother', the atmosphere! See---IT-ALL DOES flow! Maybe I've lurched into the best way to FLOW with what's going down on the American populace in DC---politicians are paint drying! So, it could be that 'Life is waiting to die' is equivalent to 'Life is waiting to dry'. Therefore, the art of politics could be said to be the art of living to fight and dry, another day. In this sense, then, harking back to Heidegger may bear sweet fruit for this current screed. Two of his major determinants of Dasein, or 'being human', are CARE and living in the NOW, by always using the Zukunft, the FUTURE, to guide one. A good boy scout is ALWAYS prepared, which essentially means that each NOW is, in action and thought, all about consciously controlling the FUTURE---why do this? Why not let it BE? In order to stay in homeostatic order, Dasein MUST take CARE of the FUTURE! Chaos is always crawling on our 'skin', and inside us, shooting us through and through no less completely than the way millions of neutrinos pass through our body without 'touching' any material 'thing'. With all of the above in mind, let me end by returning to the beginning---Laura Bush's disorderly conduct last Saturday, recorded, by C-Span, for all the FUTURE to CARE about. Allow me to conflate Janet Jackson exposing her nipple and the First Lady's naked verbal play. Can't you see how chaos is winning in the public sphere? Here's another conflation-conflagration to keep in mind---a fish rots from the head down, AND the chaos-Corleone is ever placing the decapitated head of orderly horses in our bed! Don't expect the outrage to wane. We are born to be banned to a time of bane people! Bush being a CARE-TAKER president is isomorphic to us all as TAKERS of CARE. Write you later. TAKE CARE. Wait; I can't end there. I am powerfully drawn---and quartered?---to wonder: This 'CARE'? Where can anyone TAKE her? At least the Jewish college student I knew, named CARE, was always taking herself---seriously---somewhere!
Sunday, May 01, 2005
We live in and AS a material world, physically. Shorn of all CW mystery, that is, the meta-material unseen realities that some people believe in, I was wondering, the other late night, about the simple basic FORMS 'of' MATTER: 1.) Solid; 2.) Liquid; and 3.) Gas. Ignore all the multifarious arabesques at the end of our whipping consciousness, our human cutting edge living picture that we all love to wallow within. Haven't you ever wondered about the Earth in these terms? And, allowing fractal-like discoveries to permeate this wonder---for example, the way the measurement of the coast of England can vary, widely, depending on the length of the measuring rod, and, in fact, as this rod gets smaller and smaller, it can go to infinity---where, exactly, do you draw the bright LINE that contains said 'Earth'? Many years ago, as I was imbibing my first refreshing 'drinks' of Zen, and all that, via Alan Watts' brilliant writings, the living boundary of any entity was seen, in an enlightened manner, leading to the prime example, that with ever rolling waves, any ocean CAN'T be defined! Just as the egoic personality is an assumption, so is the name of any THING! I roll along as a WAVING good bye, and hello Being, as do you! The conventional scientific play that has won out against varying beliefs, is that the Earth is the 'stuff' on its crust, and below that crust, which is almost completely made of SOLID and LIQUID elements. Usually, the GASEOUS atmosphere is assumed to be detached from the Earth, as in the saying: "The Earth 'HAS' an atmosphere, whereas the Moon does NOT." Of course, all boundaries are NOT bright, so even in the atmosphere there exist swirling SOLID and LIQUID matter, plus, on and in the Earth, GAS finds places to be at home---like in Hitler's digestive system! However, my nightly fascination was more primeval. Why is Earth about one fourth LAND and three-fourths WATER? And, what about that mostly GASEOUS atmosphere---why is it of such a size and extent? Now, I 'know' the answer is understood in terms of the laws of physics, especially gravity. But, what, exactly, is gravity? Not only THAT, but an even more expansive wonderment requires lifting one's eyes heavenward, and acknowledging that that the entire solar system is filled with stuff, so that the solar wind, as well as the photons of LIGHT that keep humanity LIT UP and alive, must be understood to be no different, in essence, than any LIQUID flowing river on Earth! The old wise saying, "As below, so above" can be, thus, easily taken to be at once true, and Transcended. Directional CW 'tools' that are derived from the sheer three dimensions of our spatial palatial full plate physical reality must be Transcended, at last, and it is best to be always living in the 'at last' Realization. Coursing through the "OF" and "AS" bubbling UP and DOWN, IN and OUT, etc, physical dance, then, resembles an unwanted barking dog. Just like listening to some old rock and roll songs when lubricated with booze can, for a while, provide salve for the passing of time wound, it's also a bleeding edge blissful event when they are turned off, and silence pervades the aural dimension. You know---it feels so good when you stop beating your head against the SOLID wall! Ouch! What do the Big Bang and the housing bubble---if it exists--have in common? Well, I'd have to say there's a whole lot of BEATING going on! If it's physically true that the entire measurable universe blew up from a wrapped-up 'present' of space-time about the size of a proton-in-2005, what else can be understood, besides realizing that IT-ALL came from almost nowhere-no time to BEAT IT-ALL to the punch? AS the bowling 'drink' that flows in SOLID, LIQUID and GASEOUS forms. Too, any physical housing 'bubble' closely resembles the Big Bang! Does any of this make 'sense'? Who would decide? When any un-well defined lasting-through-time entity--- which is never actually an 'entity', but is always an ACTION--- finds space and time to contemplate any of the arising 'THIS', what's the unstoppable true BRIGHT LINE? Any 'ONE' must be awake, be aware, be conscious---that is, just as the floor is consciousness, so is he or she. Consciousness ONLY is the boundless TRUTH! Anyway, AS always, I am conscious of the fun available when thoughts and FEELINGS of the miraculous dance of SOLIDS, LIQUIDS, and GASES come up with the physical arising---perhaps a fancy dancing non-physical connection, guaranteed to tee one off their benighted assumptions.
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