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Jan Swafford's Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music, is chatty and fun — a presto series of scherzos, short chapters of biography and anecdotes (including some too naughty to quote here!) plus commentary and recommendations for listening-learning. As Swafford summarizes it all in "Conclusions":
So, there's our tour of Western music from eons back to a few years ago. How do I, as a composer and writer, add all this up? Music is here to enjoy, to love, to be fascinated and moved and instructed and amused and scared and exalted by. I believe that a composer's job is to provide those experiences for us. If and when audiences for classical music are ready to be moved by myriad voices and languages, when audiences are as excited about hearing something new as they were in Mozart's day — then music will thrive. The works being composed today are part of an ongoing experiment in that direction. To finish, I want again to take note of the stupendous scope of the music l've talked about. One of the great virtues of Western music is not only its enormous technical journey from monody to polyphony to homophony, from evolving tonality to evolving atonality, triads to tone clusters, simplicity to complexity, a small palette of colors to an enormous palette, austere to impassioned, calculated to crazed. It has also shown an ability to absorb into itself ideas and voices from around the world, and from popular music and jazz, while still remaining itself. For me the incomparable breadth of reference and style over the past millennium may be the most remarkable aspect of Western classical music. Of course, we haven't seen the end of that evolution and never will. What do I foresee in the future? I decline to speculate. A recent study found that when it comes to prognostication, there's no difference between prophecies of the future and random outcomes. Whatever happens, it will not be what anybody predicted, unless by accident. What we can say is that the human spirit is endlessly creative, and musicians like all artists will keep doing what they do. In the process they will continue to reveal beautiful, sublime, enchanting, provoking, frightening, fascinating, exalted, comic, rude, marvelous things. Whether presented in terms of sounds, strings, brass, stone, wood, canvas, film, paint, or what have you, in the end art is all made of the same inexhaustible material as the human spirit.
Along the way the delightful stories make for a fast and pleasant voyage across centuries of musical discovery.
(cf Buechner Magic (2000-12-27), Music Library (2001-04-18), Music Master (2001-06-04), Musical Values (2001-11-03), Mantra - Notice the Music (2014-12-06), Winter's Tale on Music Everywhere (2014-12-23), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-23
- Wednesday, October 23, 2024 at 20:53:04 (EDT)
From the "Modern Love" New York Times series, a list by editor Daniel Jones of "Seven Ways to Love Better":
(cf This Is How It Always Is (2018-02-02), Closeness Generation Questions (2021-07-20), Partner Change and Changing (2022-04-28), Mantra - Sit with the Void (2023-10-27), Zhiji (2024-09-20), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-13
- Sunday, October 13, 2024 at 13:33:48 (EDT)
Tangential speech and other symptoms of mental decline, as sketched in a recent New York Times article about a public figure:
Scary stuff – worth watching for and (if possible!) avoiding or at least delaying ...
(cf Hypomania (2012-10-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-09
- Wednesday, October 09, 2024 at 19:07:24 (EDT)
A lovely essay by Damien Cave — New York Times staffer who opened that newspaper's Australia bureau in 2017, and who now is moving on to open a bureau in Vietnam. Cave's message appears in the NYT "Australia Letter" #373 (4 October 2024). It's titled "A Rest, a Reset and a Thanks for the Banter". Among the best bits:
In my experience, Australians tend to be a generous and rambunctious bunch. It’s a big part of what led me to write a book about my family learning to be more Australian, and I leave with gratitude for all the times that someone threw their arm around me and dragged my gaze in a new direction. With the exception of many politicians, who have yet to figure out what to do with The Times in this still too-secretive country, I feel like my time here has been filled with versions of: “Mate, over here, you’ll want to see this.” I am thinking of the small-town community leader who passed me a little blue book with the mobile numbers of everyone who lived there; the old and young couples who stopped to check on me when I had a flat tire; the billionaire who pulled back the curtain on a few of his peers; the scholars who shared research from decades ago that are still relevant today. I could list 100 more examples. But rather than go through all of those, or traipse through old newsletters or stories and offer up my favorites, let me just say what journalists probably do not say often enough to those who help shape our work: Thank you. Thank you for it all, the trust, the help, the open-mindedness, the feedback good and bad.
Yes! – the spirit of optimism, friendship, and adventure — so important wherever one is, in the Universe and in Life ...
(Cave is the author of Parenting Like an Australian: One Family's Quest to Fight Fear and Dive into a Better, Braver Life — cf No Worries, Mate (2012-11-24), Mantra - She'll Be Right (2017-02-21), Mantra - Give More Praise (2019-07-28), ...) - ^z - 2024-10-04
- Friday, October 04, 2024 at 08:22:09 (EDT)
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths (2016) is a fast, insightful book about technical tools for thinking better. Chapter titles summarize key themes:
Without (too many) equations, the authors explain how to apply a wide variety of mathematical discoveries to issues of everyday life. Good stuff, all!
(cf unfinished draft "Think Better" — and other notes-to-self ...) - ^z - 2024-10-03
- Thursday, October 03, 2024 at 10:27:38 (EDT)
Another recent death of another quietly thoughtful person, with two essays in his memory this week:
A O Scott notes:
The characteristic Jamesonian sentence is stubbornly resistant to quotation — a long, intricate play of subordinate clauses and rhetorical reversals, sweeping generalizations and granular examples, embedded in a paragraph of baroque complexity, romantic grandeur and classical coherence — but there is one, just two words long, that I’ve always thought would make a great inspirational forearm tattoo.“Always historicize!” Those are the opening words of “The Political Unconscious,” Jameson’s 1981 book on “narrative as a socially symbolic act.” He identifies “this slogan” as “the one absolute and we may even say ‘transhistorical’ imperative of all dialectical thought.”The first page of the preface, and we’re already deep in the weeds! ...
Jacob Brogan shares:
... “The history of thought is the history of its models,” he wrote in the opening sentence of The Prison-House of Language (1972).Yet the pithy precision of such phrases often belied the real difficulty of his work, which asked his readers to follow him through the bramble thickets of the whole history of thought without catching yourself on the thorns of one model or another. ...
Brogan ends his encomium with:
... Jameson argues, “To be influenced by somebody is not to write like him or her; rather, someone’s work suddenly opens up new possibilities that you never thought of before.” He’s speaking there about Faulkner and Sartre, but he could have just as easily been bragging about himself. Jameson affected others by showing them that more was possible in theory and criticism. He told no one what to think. He merely showed us what thinking is, how vital and vibratory it can be.
| R.I.P. Frederic Jameson 1934-2024 |
(for a dense sample of Jameson's writing about detective novelist Raymond Chandler see "Real Qualities of the Microcosm: Raymond Chandler in Los Angeles, USA") - ^z - 2024-09-28
- Saturday, September 28, 2024 at 07:38:47 (EDT)
"Malcolm Gladwell Holds His Ideas Loosely. He Thinks You Should, Too.", an interview with Gladwell by Emma Goldberg, brilliantly puts its key point in the title. Other excellent comments along the way:
(see New York Times gift-link to the interview, and here cf Science vs Stamp Collecting (2000-06-20), Retrospective History (2003-03-07), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-26
- Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 10:54:25 (EDT)
"I Wanted to Crave Him, Not Have Him", a New York Times essay by Lei Wang, pirouettes around a wonderful Chinese word: zhiji, written zhī jǐ with tones, or 知己 in characters. It literally means "know yourself". Wang begins:
One of the most intimate relations in Chinese culture is known as the “zhiji” — the “know-self,” one who knows you like you know yourself. This is a connection outside of any social role, something beyond even best-friendship, like a platonic soul mate. The Chinese describe the feeling a know-self inspires as different from friendly, romantic or familial feelings: It is considered a fourth kind of feeling.
It is friendship with a certain spark, but not quite romance — the ideal spiritual relationship.
It's a "Modern Love" essay, and Wang goes on to tell her own know-self friend-forever story, plus confessional-commentary on other relationships. She shares delightful philosophical asides, e.g.: "What we call platonic now was actually the highest rung of Plato’s Ladder of Love, which ran from lowly love of the earthly to love of the celestial — love in its most spiritual form."
Bottom line in one word: invariable. Like the North Star (see Shakespeare's Sonnet 116) or the compass-point circle-center (see John Donne's Valediction: Forbidding Mourning). People who are always there, and always here, for each other. One.
(cf Mantra - We Are One (2017-04-18), Other Significant Others (2024-05-07), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-20
- Friday, September 20, 2024 at 13:46:34 (EDT)
"The Sentinel" by Casey Cep is a beautiful profile of Ron Walters, civil servant, head of the National Cemetery Administration. It's long, inspirational, kind, and thoughtful. A sample from near the end:
… “He would’ve made a great priest,” Rosemary Williams, a lifelong Catholic, told me. “There are people like Ron who work in the federal government, and you can tell they’ve answered a call. Ron always makes me want to be a better person.”
… “People who come into contact with him are inspired, and, to me, that’s the mark of a great leader.” I experienced it, too, leaving every interview with him wanting to be the Ron Walters of my writing, the Ron Walters of my exercise regimen, the Ron Walters of my marriage.
Who among us doesn’t want to be better at everything? Not just our work, however momentous or mundane it might be, but every aspect of our life: relationships, friendships, health, hobbies, community, stewardship of the earth, everything. Most of us, thankfully, aren’t terrible at what we do. We’re okay or pretty good. But Walters reminds us: Why not be better? Why not be the best? It isn’t impossible; it simply demands our constant devotion. Perpetual care, it turns out, is not just for cemeteries.
(see Washington Post gift-link for "The Sentinel"; see "The Canary", another Post profile of an amazing civil servant, via this gift-link — and here, cf Among the Missing (2001-10-20), Memorial Day (2002-05-28), Mantra - We're the Best (2017-11-26), 2020-08-26 - Haiti Cemetery (2020-09-09), Fifth Risk (2024-09-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-19
- Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 08:00:45 (EDT)
Michael Lewis's 2018 book The Fifth Risk is well-written, thoughtful, and important. It's all about good government: how, thanks to dedicated civil servants, extraordinarily valuable services and products are delivered to the citizens of the United States. Unappreciated, patient people in the bureaucracy do amazing, creative things. Lewis tells their story beautifully, as he did for a single person (Chris Mark, Department of Labor) in his 2024 Washington Post profile-essay "The Canary". Powerful writing, meticulous research, excellent explanations, vital results.
And "The Fifth Risk" of the title? It's Project Management — and the risk is that ignorant, selfish individuals (and private organizations) will subvert the political process, break the mechanisms of competent government, waste or steal national resources, and ultimately kill people. It's scary, and it has happened in many societies, including the USA, throughout history ...
(see this gift-link for "The Canary"; cf MoneyBall (2004-06-07, Big Short (2011-04-24), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-18
- Wednesday, September 18, 2024 at 15:53:41 (EDT)
from How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis, Chapter 6: "... your home is an inanimate object .... it doesn't deserve to be cared for. You are a person. You deserve to be cared for. ..."
| tomo sina li ijo moli tomo sina li wile ala olin sina jan sina wile olin a! |
(semi-literally: "Your home is a dead thing. Your home does not need love. You are a person. You need love!") - ^z - 2024-09-10
- Tuesday, September 10, 2024 at 16:23:34 (EDT)
| "You have to be smart, but not too smart, to put in the years!" |
(or more literally, "In the context of your working for a long time, you want to be smart, but you don't want to be hugely smart!")
sina pali e tenpo suli la sina wile sona
taso sina wile ala sona suli
(Chris Mark, as quoted by Michael Lewis in "The Canary") - ^z - 2024-09-09
- Monday, September 09, 2024 at 21:42:21 (EDT)
🥚
I am only an egg.
| mi sike mama taso |
(from Robert A Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land; cf Hurry Patiently (2008-12-14), Waiting Is (2011-01-17), Brightly, Brightly, and with Beauty (2012-06-25), Pure Waiting (2023-06-23), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-06
- Friday, September 06, 2024 at 08:08:42 (EDT)
| There are two ways to feel rich. Have more. Want less. |
| pilin sina li jo e mani mute la nasin tu li lon o jo e mute o wile e lili |
(cf More Fun Less Stuff (2002-10-01), ...) - ^z - 2024-09-04
- Wednesday, September 04, 2024 at 11:28:13 (EDT)
"Rest is a Right,
not a Reward!"
If you need Rest, then Rest
Others may not take that away
Rest is good
sina wile lape la o lape
jan ante li ken ala weka e ni
lape li pona
(cf Chapter 24 of How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis) - ^z - 2024-09-02
- Tuesday, September 03, 2024 at 13:56:52 (EDT)
🌱
🌱
| The Smallest Good Is as Good as the Greatest Good |
🌱
| pona lili li pona suli pona suli li pona sewi |
(cf How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis, Chapter 22: "Good enough is perfect.") - ^z - 2024-08-30
- Friday, August 30, 2024 at 07:33:36 (EDT)
💕
| Things don't have meaning. People have meaning. |
💕
| ijo li jo ala e kon jan li jo e kon |
(cf How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis, Chapter 5: "... care tasks are morally neutral, mess has no inherent meaning. ... Dishes cannot make meaning—only people can.") - ^z - 2024-08-29
- Thursday, August 29, 2024 at 09:56:05 (EDT)
💖
| o pana e pona tawa sina pi tenpo kama |
💖
| Be Kind to Your Future Self! |
(cf Chapter 2 of How to Keep House while Drowning by KC Davis) - ^z - 2024-08-28
- Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at 08:09:41 (EDT)
| o olin sina |
Love thyself! — or perhaps, as said by KC Davis in How to Keep House While Drowning: "Self-compassion is key"!
^z - 2024-08-27
- Tuesday, August 27, 2024 at 08:37:47 (EDT)
| lawa open kulupu |
An enigmatic mantra from the Insight Dice — perhaps suggesting:
... that last possibility echoes an observation by Michael Kimmelman (NY Times music critic, in Creative Devices): "Bach, whose music has the most rules, also gives the most freedom, a paradoxical quality of creativity."
^z - 2024-08-26
- Monday, August 26, 2024 at 16:18:01 (EDT)
Feeling deep sympathy
— without taking in pain
Serving one another
— without anything in return
Helping the needy
— without removing responsibility
Forgiving the guilty
— without approving the sin
🙌
(cf Carrying Our Own Stuff (2017-01-17), ...) - ^z - 2024-08-23
- Saturday, August 24, 2024 at 05:51:05 (EDT)
Mind your heart.
Spend time with friends.
Know that you are loved!
or in Toki Pona:
💖
o lukin tawa pilin sina
o awen lon jan pona sina
o sona e olin tawa sina
(with special thanks to Dr 🌙 !) - ^z - 2024-08-22
- Thursday, August 22, 2024 at 08:32:55 (EDT)
When a bell stops ringing
At the moment a door closes
Between night and day
In the space between thoughts
Breathe
(cf Between (2009-12-10), ...) - ^z - 2024-08-13
- Wednesday, August 14, 2024 at 15:53:50 (EDT)
A nation named not for a person,
Not for a tribe, but for a concept — unity
Like a partnership, a marriage
A mathematical set, a team
Together
One
^z - 2024-08-12
- Tuesday, August 13, 2024 at 08:04:46 (EDT)
Because — just because
Everything has a cause
And that cause has a cause before it
Back to the very beginning —
Or if there's a loop without a beginning,
Then the cause applies to the whole loop
Why?
Because — just because
^z - 2024-08-11
- Monday, August 12, 2024 at 10:17:59 (EDT)
🙉
Illusion or delusion?
Is there any choice?
Compulsion or decision?
Oh shush, Inner Voice!
^z - 2024-08-09
- Sunday, August 11, 2024 at 12:59:56 (EDT)
All that is:
Future, past
Outside, within
Tiny, vast
Glacial-slow
Atomic-fast
Below, above
First and last!
^z - 2024-08-08
- Friday, August 09, 2024 at 08:55:37 (EDT)
🪺
Invisible bands
Together we run
Hands take hands
Two become one
^z - 2024-08-07
- Thursday, August 08, 2024 at 09:33:37 (EDT)
Pure seeing
Perfect hearing
Sensing what is
Without labels
Without judgment
Without choice
Only present
(cf Attention, Attention, Attention (2015-03-03), Bare Attention (2016-06-20), Attention Means Attention (2019-09-18), ...) - ^z - 2024-08-05
- Wednesday, August 07, 2024 at 10:08:35 (EDT)
Invisible ropes
Bind us together
Hold us back
Pull us forward
Rescue us when we fall
Carry words between us
Lead us through darkness
Until the day we
Cut the ropes
And go solo
^z - 2024-08-04
- Monday, August 05, 2024 at 07:51:09 (EDT)
For back issues of the ^zhurnal see Volumes v.01 (April-May 1999), v.02 (May-July 1999), v.03 (July-September 1999), v.04 (September-November 1999), v.05 (November 1999 - January 2000), v.06 (January-March 2000), v.07 (March-May 2000), v.08 (May-June 2000), v.09 (June-July 2000), v.10 (August-October 2000), v.11 (October-December 2000), v.12 (December 2000 - February 2001), v.13 (February-April 2001), v.14 (April-June 2001), 0.15 (June-August 2001), 0.16 (August-September 2001), 0.17 (September-November 2001), 0.18 (November-December 2001), 0.19 (December 2001 - February 2002), 0.20 (February-April 2002), 0.21 (April-May 2002), 0.22 (May-July 2002), 0.23 (July-September 2002), 0.24 (September-October 2002), 0.25 (October-November 2002), 0.26 (November 2002 - January 2003), 0.27 (January-February 2003), 0.28 (February-April 2003), 0.29 (April-June 2003), 0.30 (June-July 2003), 0.31 (July-September 2003), 0.32 (September-October 2003), 0.33 (October-November 2003), 0.34 (November 2003 - January 2004), 0.35 (January-February 2004), 0.36 (February-March 2004), 0.37 (March-April 2004), 0.38 (April-June 2004), 0.39 (June-July 2004), 0.40 (July-August 2004), 0.41 (August-September 2004), 0.42 (September-November 2004), 0.43 (November-December 2004), 0.44 (December 2004 - February 2005), 0.45 (February-March 2005), 0.46 (March-May 2005), 0.47 (May-June 2005), 0.48 (June-August 2005), 0.49 (August-September 2005), 0.50 (September-November 2005), 0.51 (November 2005 - January 2006), 0.52 (January-February 2006), 0.53 (February-April 2006), 0.54 (April-June 2006), 0.55 (June-July 2006), 0.56 (July-September 2006), 0.57 (September-November 2006), 0.58 (November-December 2006), 0.59 (December 2006 - February 2007), 0.60 (February-May 2007), 0.61 (April-May 2007), 0.62 (May-July 2007), 0.63 (July-September 2007), 0.64 (September-November 2007), 0.65 (November 2007 - January 2008), 0.66 (January-March 2008), 0.67 (March-April 2008), 0.68 (April-June 2008), 0.69 (July-August 2008), 0.70 (August-September 2008), 0.71 (September-October 2008), 0.72 (October-November 2008), 0.73 (November 2008 - January 2009), 0.74 (January-February 2009), 0.75 (February-April 2009), 0.76 (April-June 2009), 0.77 (June-August 2009), 0.78 (August-September 2009), 0.79 (September-November 2009), 0.80 (November-December 2009), 0.81 (December 2009 - February 2010), 0.82 (February-April 2010), 0.83 (April-May 2010), 0.84 (May-July 2010), 0.85 (July-September 2010), 0.86 (September-October 2010), 0.87 (October-December 2010), 0.88 (December 2010 - February 2011), 0.89 (February-April 2011), 0.90 (April-June 2011), 0.91 (June-August 2011), 0.92 (August-October 2011), 0.93 (October-December 2011), 0.94 (December 2011-January 2012), 0.95 (January-March 2012), 0.96 (March-April 2012), 0.97 (April-June 2012), 0.98 (June-September 2012), 0.99 (September-November 2012), 0.9901 (November-December 2012), 0.9902 (December 2012-February 2013), 0.9903 (February-March 2013), 0.9904 (March-May 2013), 0.9905 (May-July 2013), 0.9906 (July-September 2013), 0.9907 (September-October 2013), 0.9908 (October-December 2013), 0.9909 (December 2013-February 2014), 0.9910 (February-May 2014), 0.9911 (May-July 2014), 0.9912 (July-August 2014), 0.9913 (August-October 2014), 0.9914 (November 2014-January 2015), 0.9915 (January-April 2015), 0.9916 (April-July 2015), 0.9917 (July-September 2015), 0.9918 (September-November 2015), 0.9919 (November 2015-January 2016), 0.9920 (January-April 2016), 0.9921 (April-June 2016), 0.9922 (June-July 2016), 0.9923 (July-September 2016), 0.9924 (October-December 2016), 0.9925 (January-February 2017), 0.9926 (March-April 2017), 0.9927 (May-June 2017), 0.9928 (June-October 2017), 0.9929 (October-December 2017), 0.9930 (December 2017-March 2018), 0.9931 (March-April 2018), 0.9932 (May-July 2018), 0.9933 (July-September 2018), 0.9934 (September-December 2018), 0.9935 (December 2018-February 2019), 0.9936 (February-April 2019), 0.9937 (April-July 2019), 0.9938 (July-August 2019), 0.9939 (August-November 2019), 0.9940 (November 2019-February 2020), 0.9941 (February-June 2020), 0.9942 (June-August 2020), 0.9943 (August-November 2020), 0.9944 (November 2020-March 2021), 0.9945 (March-July 2021), 0.9946 (July-September 2021), 0.9947 (September 2021-January 2022), 0.9948 (December 2021-August 2022), 0.9949 (August 2022-April 2023), 0.9950 (April-August 2023), 0.9951 (August-November 2023), 0.9952 (November 2023-August 2024), ... Current Volume. Send comments and suggestions to z (at) his.com. Thank you! (Copyright © 1999-2023 by Mark Zimmermann.)