"Piano playing consists of common sense, heart, and technical resources.  Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine."

-Vladimir Horowitz

Jimi

 The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye. The story of love is hello and goodbye. Until we meet again.

—The last stanza from Hendrix's final poem, "The Story of Life"

2nd Amendment

 With "gun control" (a propaganda term for Citizen disarmament), all over social media lately I have noticed a shocking lack of English skills. So I thought I would try and help out.

The 2nd Amendment has two parts: its prefatory clause (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”) and, its operative clause, [the part that is a stand-alone sentence], (“the right of the People to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”).

The prefatory clause does two things to the sentence, it announces a purpose to the operative clause, (think of it as; 'because of this reason, this thing'), and, it identifies "the People" as the "Militia". 

Imagine if it said, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the Militia to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” Everyone would say; "who are the Militia?! Fortunately, there is no mystery, it is one clearly written English language sentence.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

As if that was not clear enough, "the People" are mentioned in five of the ten Amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, it takes a special kind of mental gymnastics to think it could mean something different in the 2nd than it does in the others. 

And lastly, the Bill of Rights overall, does one thing; limits the power of federal government. Why would it all of a sudden "limit the People" in the 2nd. (Hint: it doesn't / Reason? English.)

Self defence is a human right.

"The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever,  prohibited,  liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."

-St.  George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries 1803

We're like clouds (or waves)

“Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over (which is why you eat, of course). You are not even the same shape as you were then. The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.”

― Steve Grand, Creation: Life and How to Make It

Libertarian and Anarchist

"I don't trust anyone who doesn't have a bit of the libertarian and the anarchist within them.  Someone who says: 'I don't make the presumption that those in charge know better than I do, I also don't make the presumption that they have the right to tell me what to do, unless they repeatedly have earned that right.'"  -Christopher Hitchens

More Debussy...

“Those around me persist in not understanding that I have never been able to live in a real world of people and things.” -Debussy

Save Opera!

Ring on DVD

https://mostlyopera.blogspot.com/2009/01/nibelungen-ring-on-dvd.html

Wow.

https://www.operanorth.co.uk/the-ring-cycle/

Debussy and I share the same "Religion"

"I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, … and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. … To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer."

-Claude Debussy

Bertrand Russell

"Always the skeptical intellect, when I have most wished it silent, has whispered doubts to me, has cut me off from the facile enthusiasms of others, and has transported me into a desolate solitude. ... [M]y most profound feelings have remained always solitary and have found in human things no companionship. The sea, the starts, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings I love best..."

  -Bertrand Russell

"Debussy's great service to music was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities. In that, he was just as important as Beethoven, who revealed to us the possibilities of progressive form, or as Bach, who showed us the transcendent significance of counterpoint. Now, what I am always asking myself is this: is it possible to make a synthesis of these three great masters, a living synthesis that will be valid for our time?

-Bartok (1939)

The Wanderer

"The sun seems so cold here,  the blossom is withered,  life is old,  and what they say is empty words;  I am a stranger everywhere."

-Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck

Hannibal Season 03 Episode 05

"I prefer the sound and feel of the
harpsichord. The music arrives like
experience, sudden and entire. The
piano has the quality of a memory."
-Hannibal

Music

Music serves as my focus, solace, and reward.

I made a list of the pianists I most love, and/or, have most inspired me, for a music forum I am part of, but I thought I should save it here as well...

Argerich
Arrau
Ashkenazy
Bareboim
Brendel
Cherkassky
Cortot
Fischer
Gieseking
Gilels
Goode
Gould
Hamelin
Horowitz
Howard
Katchen
Katsaris
Kissin
Kempff
Kovacevich
Lipatti
Lupu
Michelangeli
Ogdon
Perahia
Pogorelich
Pollini
Richter
Rubinstein
Schnabel
Schiff
Serkin
Sherman
Sofronitsky
Sokolov
Solomon
Uchida
Volodos
Weissenberg
Yudina
Zimerman

"Mozart you have to be born with.  Beethoven you have to conquer." - Andras Schiff

"We are not just our bricks and mortar, we are not just our flesh and blood, we are not just our material components. Everything in our world has got an imaginary component. As individuals, we’re always telling people the legend of us. The same goes for our houses, our streets, our towns, our country – there is a huge imaginary component to human life and if in the interests of scientific realism you ignore that, you are not describing reality. 

"Science is a brilliant tool for analyzing our material universe, but science cannot talk about what is inside the human mind: it’s beyond the realm of proof, it’s beyond the realm of science. So I say they should be left to art and magic, which are pretty much the same thing.”

-Alan Moore

Through his peculiar style of performance, Chopin imparted a constant rocking with the most fascinating effect, thus making the melody undulate to and fro, like a skiff driven on over the bosom of tossing waves. This manner of execution, which set a seal so peculiar upon his own style of playing, was at first indicated by the term Tempo rubato, affixed to his writings : a Tempo agitated, broken, interrupted, a movement flexible, yet at the same time abrupt and languishing, and vacillating as the flame under the fluctuating breath by which it is agitated. In his later productions we no longer find this mark. He was convinced that if the performer understood them, he would divine this rule of irregularity. All his compositions should be played with this accentuated and measured swaying and balancing. It is difficult for those who have not frequently heard him play to catch this secret of their proper execution. He seemed desirous of imparting this style to his numerous pupils, particularly those of his own country. His countrymen, or rather his countrywomen, seized it with the facility with which they understand everything relating to poetry or feeling; an innate, intuitive comprehension of his meaning aided them in following all the fluctuations of his depths of aerial and spiritual blue.




 -Franz Liszt

Debussy's music can transcend reality. Scriabin thought his music could do more; he wanted to transform reality.

"Yes, Chopin must be called a genius in the fullest meaning of the term; he is not merely a virtuoso, he is also a poet; he can bring to life for us the poetry of his soul; he is a tone poet, and nothing equals the enjoyment he gives us when he sits at the piano and improvises. Then he is not a Pole, a Frenchman or a German, he betrays a far loftier origin; one then notices that he is from the land of Mozart, Raphael, Goethe; his fatherland is the dreamland of poetry."

-Heinrich Heine

We all have ways of coping; I use sex and awesomeness.

From the blackberry.

"Wicked" is wicked good.

When I took "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" out from the library I didn't really know what to expect, but I definitely did not expect to get what I got.

It is written in an elegant, eloquent prose, and the basis of the book alone struck me as a stroke of genius.

I mean here is this character, "The Wicked Witch", that the entire free world knows, and has known. And yet what do we really know about her? How did she become 'wicked'? Was she born that way? Did she turn 'wicked'? What makes/made her 'wicked'.

What we get is a novel filled with complex political maneuverings that follows the entire life (and death) of a woman who herself is contemplating the nature of evil.

Loved it.