"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

28 March 2024

Undefeated.


Ibanez' RBI-sac fly is all it took.

Undefeated.

Know.


Think in the morning. 
Act in the noon. 
Eat in the evening.
Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him knows you. 
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers. 
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. 
Expect poison from the standing water. 
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. 
Listen to the fools reproach; it is a kingly title! 

William Blake

Excellent.

An excellent pickle ... 

Always.


Here we go!

Released.


Led Zeppelin released Houses of the Holy on this day in 1973.

"The Rain Song" ...

26 March 2024

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Released.


Thin Lizzy released Jailbreak on this day 1976.

"Cowboy Song" ...


Jimmy Buffett, "Mozambique"

With Emmylou ...


I love it when a cover is better than the original.

Strength.


When looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

Joseph Campbell

Done.


Done and done.

Mozart, Piano Trio in G Major, KV 564

Isabelle Faust, violin, Sol Gabetta, cello, and Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano ...

Enjoyable.


My students would call Michael Wade "Big Brain" ...
Life becomes much more enjoyable if you don't believe in or fall prey to moods. 

Choose to be in a good mood.  

More of this in the echo chamber, please.

Happy Birthday, Campbell


The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.

Joseph Campbell, born on this day in 1904, from The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Bizet, Symphony in C

Netherlands Chamber Orchestra performs, Gordan Nikolić, principal violin and director ...

Happy Birthday, Frost


ACQUAINTED with the NIGHT

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost, born on this day in 1874

25 March 2024

Released.


Triumph released Progressions of Power on this day in 1980.

"Tear the Roof Off" ...

Happy Birthday, John


Elton John was born on this day in 1947.

"Rotten Peaches" ...

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Van Morrison, "On Hyndford Street"

Early mornings when contemplation was best ...

Soon.

Hodgkin, Gull's Eggs in a Box, 1918


SPRING

The glass stems of the clouds are breaking
the gray flowers are caught up
and carried in silence to their invisible mountain
a hair of music is flying
over the line of cold lakes
from which our eyes were made
everything in the world has been lost and lost
but soon we will find it again
and understand what it told us when we loved it

W.S. Merwin

Telemann's Trio Sonata in C Minor TWV 42:C2

Tabea Debus, recorder and histrionics, Katharina Sprecklesen, oboe, Satoko Doi-Luck, clanger, and Jonathan Manson, cello, perform ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Solitude.

Chatham, Rain Sweeping Over Sweet Grass Basin, 2005


If religion is meant to save, to awe, to cleanse, to fortify, then my faith is found at the tops of mountains and in the secrecy of woods, in the cradle of rivers, and at the bottom of the sea. I find in the solitude of nature reason and purpose. I have slept with solitude for so long that I have made her my friend, my accomplice. she follows me in the fields, the woods, the rivers, faithful as a shadow.

Guy de la Valdene, from The Fragrance of Grass

Happy Birthday, O'Connor


I suppose I read Aristotle in college but not to know I was doing it; the same with Plato. I don’t have the kind of mind that can carry such beyond the actual reading, i.e., total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me. So I couldn’t make any judgment on the Summa, except to say this: I read it for about twenty minutes every night before I go to bed. If my mother were to come in during the process and say, "Turn off that light. It’s late," I with lifted finger and broad bland beatific expression, would reply, "On the contrary, I answer that the light, being eternal and limitless, cannot be turned off. Shut your eyes," or some such thing.”

I too am blessedly unburdened by my education. The university was no more than an intellectual match-making service, an instrument of exposure – to writers and a large library that permitted me to read them. I remember the reassuring thrill of knowing the campus library was open twenty-four hours a day. If I needed Tertullian, Hobbes or George Herbert at 3 a.m., they were a short walk away.

For the purposes of education, I found most fellow students an irritation to be endured, which I suppose taught me something. Even with several excellent teachers I remained, for good and ill, an autodidact but not always, I hope, a know-it-all. I was acutely aware of my ignorance but resented most intermediaries – critics, interpreters, systematizers – and felt only aversion for grand theories. To this day I like to meet a book on my terms, without a middle-man, because most of the best books teach me how to read them. My request is simple: Don’t tell me what to think; show me what you know.

Flannery O’Connor, born on this day in 1925, from a letter to “A.”, August 9, 1955

24 March 2024

Excellent.

An excellent gin ...

Read.

Except.


Pursue the authentic—decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Louise Erdrich, from "Advice to Myself"

Thanks, Jess.

Schmeltzer, Sonatae Unarum Fidium

Eva Jornet, Ganassi recorder, Lixsania Fernández, viola da gamba, and Edwin García, theorbo, perform the Sonata Seconda ...

Live.


Hannah Arendt on personal responsibility ...
Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil ...

The precondition for this kind of judging is not a highly developed intelligence or sophistication in moral matters, but rather the disposition to live together explicitly with oneself, to have intercourse with oneself, that is, to be engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself which, since Socrates and Plato, we usually call thinking. This kind of thinking, though at the root of all philosophical thought, is not technical and does not concern theoretical problems. The dividing line between those who want to think and therefore have to judge by themselves, and those who do not, strikes across all social and cultural or educational differences. In this respect, the total moral collapse of respectable society during the Hitler regime may teach us that under such circumstances those who cherish values and hold fast to moral norms and standards are not reliable: we now know that moral norms and standards can be changed overnight, and that all that then will be left is the mere habit of holding fast to something. Much more reliable will be the doubters and skeptics, not because skepticism is good or doubting wholesome, but because they are used to examine things and to make up their own minds. Best of all will be those who know only one thing for certain: that whatever else happens, as long as we live we shall have to live together with ourselves.
On preserving strength in desperation ...
But how is it with the reproach of irresponsibility leveled against these few who washed their hands of what was going on all around them? I think we shall have to admit that there exist extreme situations in which responsibility for the world, which is primarily political, cannot be assumed because political responsibility always presupposes at least a minimum of political power. Impotence or complete powerlessnes is, I think, a valid excuse. Its validity is all the stronger as it seems to require a certain moral quality even to recognize powerlessness, the good will and good faith to face realities and not to live in illusions. Moreover, it is precisely in this admission of one’s own impotence that a last remnant of strength and even power can still be preserved even under desperate conditions.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

23 March 2024

Another.


There was no way I could think it over without a second Calvados. After thinking it over, I decided that the really prudent thing was to go out and buy another bottle.

Michel Houellebecq

The Cars, "Up and Down"

K÷93, "Giving Up the Ghost"

Hooky, Geordie, and Jaz ...

Sensible.

The only sensible choice …


They have the guts to tell the truth: will you listen?

Released.


The last great album from Journey (before they were brutally castrated by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named), Departure, was released on this day in 1980.

"Where Were You" ...

Happy Birthday, Ocasek


Ric Ocasek was born on this day in 1944.

"Fix on You" ...

Rush.

Firing Line from October 16, 1989 includes Buckley's "Walter Mitty Rush," playing the clanger with the Phoenix Symphony (beginning at 17:11) ...

Laudable.

Reynolds, Samuel Johnson, 1769


Some degree of self-approbation is always the reward of diligence; and I cannot, therefore, but consider the laborious cultivation of petty pleasures, as a more happy and more virtuous disposition, than that universal contempt and haughty negligence, which is sometimes associated with powerful faculties, but is often assumed by indolence when it disowns its name, and aspires to the appellation of greatness of mind.

It has been long observed, that drollery and ridicule is the most easy kind of wit: let it be added that contempt and arrogance is the easiest philosophy. To find some objection to every thing, and to dissolve in perpetual laziness under pretense that occasions are wanting to call forth activity, to laugh at those who are ridiculously busy without setting an example of more rational industry, is no less in the power of the meanest than of the highest intellects.

Our present state has placed us at once in such different relations, that every human employment, which is not a visible and immediate act of goodness, will be in some respect or other subject to contempt; but it is true, likewise, that almost every act, which is not directly vicious, is in some respect beneficial and laudable. "I often," says Bruyere, "observe from my window, two beings of erect form and amiable countenance, endowed with the powers of reason, able to clothe their thoughts in language, and convey their notions to each other. They rise early in the morning, and are every day employed till sunset in rubbing two smooth stones together, or, in other terms, in polishing marble."

Samuel Johnson, from The Adventurer

Exposure.


Social media algorithms may be giving us a push, recommending content to us that drives “engagement”, the most surprising, outrageous and often toxic material. But we shouldn’t blame algorithms steering us away from serious and thoughtful exposure to different points of view. We are quite capable of choosing that for ourselves.

Detail.


If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.

Thomas Merton

Face.


We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.

William F. Buckley Jr., from The Jeweler's Eye

Stir.


According to the disposition of the state and the liberty allowed us, we shall either extend or contract our activities; but at all events we shall stir ourselves and not be gripped and paralyzed by fear. He indeed will prove a man who, threatened by dangers on all sides, with arms and chains clattering around him, will neither endanger nor conceal his courage: for self-preservation does not entail suppressing oneself. Truly, I believe, Curius Dentatus used to say that he preferred real death to living death; for the ultimate horror is to leave the number of the living before you die.

Seneca

Schenck, Sonata No. 1, Op. 2

Tatiana Senderowicz, theorbo, Amy Brodo and Roy Whelden, viola da gamba, performing ...

Guided.


I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. 

Patrick Henry, from his speech given before the Virginia Provincial Convention on this day in 1775.

Sleepers.