Describing machines and complex systems...

"They are alive, she thought, but their souls operate them from remote control.  Their soul is in every man who has the capacity to equal this achievement. Should the soul vanish from this earth, the motors would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going - not the oil under the floor, the oil that would become primeval ooze again - not the steel cylinders that would become stains of rust on the walls of the caves of shivering savages - the power of a living mind - the power of thought and choice and purpose."

Dagny Taggert, from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?

The violin concertos, represent for me one of the most passionate mediums for musical expression.  Here are a few of my favorite.

Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto

Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto

Max Bruch's Violin Concerto

Johann Brahm's Violin Conerto

Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto

Ludwig Van Beethoven's Violin Concerto

Camus' The Stranger

"Well, so I am going to die."  Sooner than other people will, obviously.  But everybody knows that life isn't worth living.  Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn't much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living - and for thousands of years.  In fact, nothing could be clearer.  Whether it was now or twenty years from now, I would still be the one dying.  At that point, what would disturb my train of thought was the terrifying leap I would feel my heart take at the idea of having twenty more years of life ahead of me.  But I simply had to stifle it by imagining what I'd be thinking in twenty years when it would all come down to the same thing anyway.  Since we are all going to die, it's obvious that when and how doesn't really matter.

My Favorite Symphonies

"A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything" - Gustav Mahler


Here is a list of my favorite symphonies, try listening to all or some of them.  There's the uplifting and emotional symphonies by Beethoven;  Shostakovich's haunting and macbre Soviet era Symphony No. 5.  Dvorak wrote his ninth symphony based on American folk music.  Haydn is considered the father of the symphony with over one-hundred beautiful compositions.  The boy genius, Mozart, started writing symphonies when he was still in single digits.  And Beethoven wrote his magus opus, the Ninth, when he was 100% deaf.   Try Rachmaninoff's 2nd, it contains some of the most beautiful and innate music you have ever heard!

Enjoy!!


Shostakovich
Symphony No. 5

Mahler
Symphony No. 1 (Titian)
Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 6

Mozart
Symphony No. 40
Symphony No. 41 (Jupiter)

Beethoven
Symphony No. 3 (Eroica)
Symphony No. 5 (Fate)
Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral)
Symphony No. 7
Symphony No. 9 (Choral / Ode to Joy)

Debussy
La Mer

Rachmaninoff
Symphony No. 2

Brahms
Symphony No. 3
Symphony No. 4

Dvorak
Symphony No. 9 (The New World Symp.)

Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique)

Haydn
Symphony 94 (Surprise)
Symphony 95

Next month:
Favorite Piano Concertos!!

Do you believe in all this?
The opera we draft and stage everyday,
just to hide the absurdity of it all.

I tell you don't reason or query,
but embrace and love it.
For it is what it is -
absurd and meaningless,
humorously sublime, and curiously hedonisitic.
With no heaven or hell, no right and wrong,
no history or epics.

I beg you don't worry about eternal itineraries,
or deathbed contemplations of living "a good life,"
for this whisp of being isn't recorded or matters.
Whether you be forgotten in a year or decade,
or be you a Caesar or a Christ, in years a thousand,
what will matter in a millennia will not be us.

Interview with Gore Vidal

Q:  "Why do you think people so desperately want there to be a purpose for humankind?"

Answer by Gore Vidal:  "They don't want to be extinct.  They think if there's a purpose, somebody as wonderful as they is going to be preserved.  I haven't met many people worth preservation, you know, much less their hopes and fears.  They have my sympathy but no more.  I've been close to death a few times.  You do start to think about being snuffed out like a candle but if you're in pain or a more deadly subject, boredom, you can accept it pretty easily."

From an interview with Gore Vidal in this month's "The Humanist" magazine.

Written in the 19th century and oh so apropos today . . .

It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor Americans pursue prosperity.  Ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it.  They cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach as if they expected to stop living before they had relished them.  Death steps in, in the end, and stops them before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them.

- Alexis De Tocqueville "Democracy in America"

Drink up

Why if dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton build on Trent?  (Burton is a brewery)
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried halfway home or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Than the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely much I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Than I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad

Saying Good Bye to the Consumer Driven Holidays

". . . in the mass and variety of our purchases, in the sheer plenitude those crowded bags suggested, the weight and size and number, the familiar package designs and vivid lettering, the giant sizes, the family bargain packs with Day-Glo sale stickers, in the sense of replenishment we felt, the sense of well-being, the security and contentment these products brought to some snug home in our souls - it seemed we had achieved a fullness of being that is not known to people who need less, expect less, who plan their lives around lonely walks in the evening."

Don Delillo "White Noise"