No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an unchartered land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
Helen Keller
*****************
Hello Sue
*****************
"Aw, give it up. It'll never work . You'll never get there. Don't even try."
"You'll never raise enough money to do a lame brained idea like that."
"This is the stupidest piece of legislation I've ever seen. Be assured we will vote it down."
"Load it all on the donkey and walk. You don't need wheels."
"Come on. The Earth is flat, anyone can see that. You'll fall off the edge."
"Knock it off Orville. God did not intend for us to fly."
"Man can never go to the moon."
Some people just automatically develop an ornery attitude to any new idea. Can you imagine what our lives would be like if the pessimists and nihilists ruled the world?
I'm an artist, which means I'm an optimist. I have to be. Every work of art whether it's a painting, a song or a poem is like water onto a thirsty earth. Sometimes it's a big splash like the Mona Lisa or a Beethoven symphony. But no matter how small the droplet is it is a bit of refreshment and possible inspiration for the human spirit.
As an artist I roam through the world with a different eye and ear I love music and I hear it strange places. I hear horns in the passing trucks, strings playing through the branches of the trees on a windy day and drums and cymbals in the crashing waves. I once knew a playwright who cold write a play about anything. Give her a mathematical formula and out would come a play about it, with characters and drama. In one remarkable case I knew a high school senior who joined the Marine Corp to learn explosives and then worked doing special effects for Hollywood films.
In every case where an optimist has accomplished the impossible nobody dared say it couldn't be. It was. It is. Because somebody had the courage to know it was possible way back when no one thought about it.
We are discovering the secrets of the stars, finding unchartered lands and opening up new heavens for the human spirit.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
****************************
Showing posts with label beethoven. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beethoven. Show all posts
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
The Great Way
Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.
Charles deGaulle
**********************
Hello Linda
**********************
"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night is hard to see.
---------------------------------"
The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see."
Those who are given the opportunity and freedom to follow a line of study as far as it can take them are blessed with the possibility of discovering areas of unrevealed knowledge and understanding, places no one has ever encountered before, where no one has ever been. Mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, those practicing on the esoteric edges of science, anthropologists, architects, composers of music and, yes, also poets, when engaged to their utmost, may reach the end of the traveled path, step into an unknown territory of discovery, put down a marker for the future and try to describe what they find.
I don't know much about science, but I know something about art. Every time I see "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse I am taken gently by the hand and led into a world of painting I know next to nothing about. That is even more true of Van Gogh's "Starry Night."
I have heard Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" for string quartet many times and it is still a mystery. What was it that Beethoven saw in his deafness and what was he trying to tell us about it? In what far off land was Schoenberg when he composed "Verklarte Nacht"?
On what obscure mountain top was Shakespeare when he wrote "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things."? And what was he saying when he wrote to lead us there "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weight their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be." ?
Do not make the mistake of thinking that life hasn't equipped you with the right and obligation to venture into your own sacred areas of discovery. There is no way of knowing how far the path leads or how important it will be to others of what you find there. But it's your adventure to have and it's your discovery to make, and if you don't make it who will?
The air is thin and hard to breathe, the way is treacherous and the terrain frustratingly difficult to describe but though we may be standing on the shoulders of the great ones who went before us the experience of our own genius can only be won by moving off of the shoulders and placing a foot carefully but steadily down onto a step we cannot see.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
Charles deGaulle
**********************
Hello Linda
**********************
"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night is hard to see.
---------------------------------"
The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see."
Those who are given the opportunity and freedom to follow a line of study as far as it can take them are blessed with the possibility of discovering areas of unrevealed knowledge and understanding, places no one has ever encountered before, where no one has ever been. Mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, those practicing on the esoteric edges of science, anthropologists, architects, composers of music and, yes, also poets, when engaged to their utmost, may reach the end of the traveled path, step into an unknown territory of discovery, put down a marker for the future and try to describe what they find.
I don't know much about science, but I know something about art. Every time I see "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse I am taken gently by the hand and led into a world of painting I know next to nothing about. That is even more true of Van Gogh's "Starry Night."
I have heard Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" for string quartet many times and it is still a mystery. What was it that Beethoven saw in his deafness and what was he trying to tell us about it? In what far off land was Schoenberg when he composed "Verklarte Nacht"?
On what obscure mountain top was Shakespeare when he wrote "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things."? And what was he saying when he wrote to lead us there "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weight their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be." ?
Do not make the mistake of thinking that life hasn't equipped you with the right and obligation to venture into your own sacred areas of discovery. There is no way of knowing how far the path leads or how important it will be to others of what you find there. But it's your adventure to have and it's your discovery to make, and if you don't make it who will?
The air is thin and hard to breathe, the way is treacherous and the terrain frustratingly difficult to describe but though we may be standing on the shoulders of the great ones who went before us the experience of our own genius can only be won by moving off of the shoulders and placing a foot carefully but steadily down onto a step we cannot see.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Old Timers
Old folks are people who have been young longer than young folks.
Dana Bate
****************
Hello Stuart
***************
When I was younger I frequently played characters who were much older than myself because of my imposing voice and presence. I tried in my acting to approximate what I thought old and late middle age was like. I feel slightly embarrassed about that now. At my current age of 73 I realize now how youthful those men actually were. I would like to go back and play some of those characters again, and do it right. It's a great mistake of the younger generation to assume and ascribe to men and women of advanced years necessary decrepitude, loss of strength and abilities, memory failure and even disgusting attitudes about life and the young. "He's just an old curmudgeon." I'm fond of iterating that the reason old folks can't remember things is because there are things old folks don't want to remember.
I knew an actor about my age who, when we reached our 40's, began describing all the things that would go wrong with me. Soon this would start giving out, after a while I would be losing that and eventually I would have to have the other thing done to me. I completely rejected the whole theory from my own thinking. I saw him again years later and he was suffering from all the things he had described. I wonder what he thought when he saw that I wasn't.
A few years ago two younger people I know decided that the next logical step for me was to sign myself over to the soft featherbed of assisted living/nursing home, to put myself into the hands of the doctors, obtain my wheelchair and sit around preparing to die. One of them even said I would be bed ridden in six months. I laugh "Yes, I'm bed ridden every night and when the sun comes up in the morning, I'm healed."
Many artists, writers and thinkers have accomplished their greatest and most important work at the tender ages of 80 or 90. That's a fact of life, don't waste your time doubting it. Age may be pasted on to the basic model but the man and woman underneath is also still the boy and the girl.
There is no reason to stop and capitulate to anyone's idea of old age, even your own. Even though he went deaf Beethoven continued to compose some of the world's greatest music. As George Washington wrote "It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing." And that's why I say -
Never Give Up
DB, and the Magical Vagabond Journeys
************************
SUMMER QUESTION
I recently received a peck on the cheek from two members of the female persuasion. Besides those I haven't experienced a real kiss in many, many years. I have no flowers. There is nothing growing outside, no trees, no bushes, no flowers, just a few pathetic weeds here and there. That, thankfully, does a lot to discourage the mosquito population, but it doesn't give me much in the way of flora. So I pose this question for those of you who have more experience in these matters.
-------------------------------------------------
Which is more important, a flower or a kiss? Why?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
Dana Bate
****************
Hello Stuart
***************
When I was younger I frequently played characters who were much older than myself because of my imposing voice and presence. I tried in my acting to approximate what I thought old and late middle age was like. I feel slightly embarrassed about that now. At my current age of 73 I realize now how youthful those men actually were. I would like to go back and play some of those characters again, and do it right. It's a great mistake of the younger generation to assume and ascribe to men and women of advanced years necessary decrepitude, loss of strength and abilities, memory failure and even disgusting attitudes about life and the young. "He's just an old curmudgeon." I'm fond of iterating that the reason old folks can't remember things is because there are things old folks don't want to remember.
I knew an actor about my age who, when we reached our 40's, began describing all the things that would go wrong with me. Soon this would start giving out, after a while I would be losing that and eventually I would have to have the other thing done to me. I completely rejected the whole theory from my own thinking. I saw him again years later and he was suffering from all the things he had described. I wonder what he thought when he saw that I wasn't.
A few years ago two younger people I know decided that the next logical step for me was to sign myself over to the soft featherbed of assisted living/nursing home, to put myself into the hands of the doctors, obtain my wheelchair and sit around preparing to die. One of them even said I would be bed ridden in six months. I laugh "Yes, I'm bed ridden every night and when the sun comes up in the morning, I'm healed."
Many artists, writers and thinkers have accomplished their greatest and most important work at the tender ages of 80 or 90. That's a fact of life, don't waste your time doubting it. Age may be pasted on to the basic model but the man and woman underneath is also still the boy and the girl.
There is no reason to stop and capitulate to anyone's idea of old age, even your own. Even though he went deaf Beethoven continued to compose some of the world's greatest music. As George Washington wrote "It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing." And that's why I say -
Never Give Up
DB, and the Magical Vagabond Journeys
************************
SUMMER QUESTION
I recently received a peck on the cheek from two members of the female persuasion. Besides those I haven't experienced a real kiss in many, many years. I have no flowers. There is nothing growing outside, no trees, no bushes, no flowers, just a few pathetic weeds here and there. That, thankfully, does a lot to discourage the mosquito population, but it doesn't give me much in the way of flora. So I pose this question for those of you who have more experience in these matters.
-------------------------------------------------
Which is more important, a flower or a kiss? Why?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Ideas
A great idea can't be expressed too often or in too many ways.
Dana Bate
**********************
Hello Ken
**********************
It's a question of approach and acceptance. We are all individuals and therefore different from each other in spite of our similarities. Babies are born not knowing everything, although I claim they probably know more than we imagine they do, they are after all thinking creatures. As time goes by they accumulate knowledge and ways to articulate what they see, feel and think. Some sort of language is developed. At last the spoken language becomes writing and other forms of communication.
Along with other developments of a human being come preferences, ways that define our character and impulses that move us in the directions of our lives.
The great ideas of the world exist in many forms but all of them are not ideas themselves but the trail markers along the pathways. Great writers reach into the bottomless well of words to describe what lives in their minds in it's purest form. One may not learn from the written word to seek the true ideas behind them. That is a matter of preference.
A painter has in his hand a brush with which he can stroke the formless truth of things and point the way to its understanding. My favorite painting is "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse. One person may look at it and see the triangles and curls. another will see the tensions of life when the conflict of need, desire and fulfillment cross each other.
Music is another, and perhaps the greatest, communicator of ideas. The poetry that accompanies the melody of a song or the grand interlocking levels of an orchestra will bring a listener on to the trail that the music is pointing toward, the trail that leads to where the music leaves off and the lush forest of pure thought is found.
How we approach literature and works of art determines how close we get to understanding the great ideas that foster them. But it is also important to know that the ideas are there seemingly hidden behind the words. Knowing that means that someday at some time the idea will open up itself and the illumination of one's thinking will happen.
It is important, therefore, to make the right choices. Suppose you go out to buy a chair, You go to the furniture store and look over all the chairs. You sit in a few. The chairs all perform the same function, but one is the right one for your room. One of them provides the looks and the comfort you want. You take it home and it becomes a part of your life.
Suppose you decide to buy a work of art, a painting let's say. You will exercise the same or more care in making a choice about that. That painting will probably be with you the rest of your life, speaking to you every day, leading you to where the trail begins.
Then let's say you go to buy a Beethoven symphony. Now it's not only the music itself but the degree of enlightenment of the conductor and the members of the orchestra who perform the music that determines how much and how true the experience is to the ideas of the genius who was on the trail to them.
It is the nature of Truth to reveal itself. Being aware and observing the world around us in all of its articulations surprises happen and treasures are revealed. And when they open up a door or light up a trail marker the voyage to a better understanding of ourselves as individuals continues and the destination becomes closer.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
*******************************
Look here. I am about to close down this invitation if I get no more offerings.
This is an invitation for anyone and everyone to post an entry of their own on my journal, Vagabond Journeys http://vagabondjourneys.blogspot.com/.
The end of the year is upon us and since it is a time for celebrations, remembrances, resolutions and plans for the future I think people have things to say.
Not to take away from the postings on your own journals, but to add to the joy of my own is why I invite you to write for mine.
I want to read what your thoughts are about this magical time of the year. This invitation is open to everyone: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, Agnostics, Atheists and the Uncertain.
Tell me your thoughts on Chanukah, Christmas, Ashura, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice, New Years Eve. or any subject you wish or associate with this holiday season.
There are no limits in regard to length. The only limitation is that, for reasons so far unexplained to me, my blog does not take photographs, animations, videos or pictures of any kind. I deal in words.
Please accept my invitation. Send your entry to my email address dbdacoba@aol.com I will copy and paste it into my journal and it will be displayed promptly. You may sign your name or not as you wish, and you may leave a link to your blog or your email or not, as you wish. I will do NO editing or censoring. Eloquence is not necessary, mind or heart or both is all.
I have 10 Guest Authors so far. Check them out.
All are welcome. Admission is free.
DB
***************************
Dana Bate
**********************
Hello Ken
**********************
It's a question of approach and acceptance. We are all individuals and therefore different from each other in spite of our similarities. Babies are born not knowing everything, although I claim they probably know more than we imagine they do, they are after all thinking creatures. As time goes by they accumulate knowledge and ways to articulate what they see, feel and think. Some sort of language is developed. At last the spoken language becomes writing and other forms of communication.
Along with other developments of a human being come preferences, ways that define our character and impulses that move us in the directions of our lives.
The great ideas of the world exist in many forms but all of them are not ideas themselves but the trail markers along the pathways. Great writers reach into the bottomless well of words to describe what lives in their minds in it's purest form. One may not learn from the written word to seek the true ideas behind them. That is a matter of preference.
A painter has in his hand a brush with which he can stroke the formless truth of things and point the way to its understanding. My favorite painting is "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse. One person may look at it and see the triangles and curls. another will see the tensions of life when the conflict of need, desire and fulfillment cross each other.
Music is another, and perhaps the greatest, communicator of ideas. The poetry that accompanies the melody of a song or the grand interlocking levels of an orchestra will bring a listener on to the trail that the music is pointing toward, the trail that leads to where the music leaves off and the lush forest of pure thought is found.
How we approach literature and works of art determines how close we get to understanding the great ideas that foster them. But it is also important to know that the ideas are there seemingly hidden behind the words. Knowing that means that someday at some time the idea will open up itself and the illumination of one's thinking will happen.
It is important, therefore, to make the right choices. Suppose you go out to buy a chair, You go to the furniture store and look over all the chairs. You sit in a few. The chairs all perform the same function, but one is the right one for your room. One of them provides the looks and the comfort you want. You take it home and it becomes a part of your life.
Suppose you decide to buy a work of art, a painting let's say. You will exercise the same or more care in making a choice about that. That painting will probably be with you the rest of your life, speaking to you every day, leading you to where the trail begins.
Then let's say you go to buy a Beethoven symphony. Now it's not only the music itself but the degree of enlightenment of the conductor and the members of the orchestra who perform the music that determines how much and how true the experience is to the ideas of the genius who was on the trail to them.
It is the nature of Truth to reveal itself. Being aware and observing the world around us in all of its articulations surprises happen and treasures are revealed. And when they open up a door or light up a trail marker the voyage to a better understanding of ourselves as individuals continues and the destination becomes closer.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
*******************************
Look here. I am about to close down this invitation if I get no more offerings.
This is an invitation for anyone and everyone to post an entry of their own on my journal, Vagabond Journeys http://vagabondjourneys.blogspot.com/.
The end of the year is upon us and since it is a time for celebrations, remembrances, resolutions and plans for the future I think people have things to say.
Not to take away from the postings on your own journals, but to add to the joy of my own is why I invite you to write for mine.
I want to read what your thoughts are about this magical time of the year. This invitation is open to everyone: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, Agnostics, Atheists and the Uncertain.
Tell me your thoughts on Chanukah, Christmas, Ashura, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice, New Years Eve. or any subject you wish or associate with this holiday season.
There are no limits in regard to length. The only limitation is that, for reasons so far unexplained to me, my blog does not take photographs, animations, videos or pictures of any kind. I deal in words.
Please accept my invitation. Send your entry to my email address dbdacoba@aol.com I will copy and paste it into my journal and it will be displayed promptly. You may sign your name or not as you wish, and you may leave a link to your blog or your email or not, as you wish. I will do NO editing or censoring. Eloquence is not necessary, mind or heart or both is all.
I have 10 Guest Authors so far. Check them out.
All are welcome. Admission is free.
DB
***************************
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
dumped
Today I spent several hours writing a piece about facing the future without regrets. When I went to post it the screen went blank. Back on again the entire piece was gone. The computer took all my work away with one click. It's too late to write it over. But I will live to write another day.
In the meantime here is a reprint from the summer of 2009.
Daring Do
Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.
Charles de Gaulle
**********************
Star Trek
"The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see."
-----------------------------------------
Those who are given the opportunity and freedom to follow a line of study as far as it can take them are blessed with the possibility of discovering areas of unrevealed knowledge and understanding, what no one has ever encountered before, where no one has ever been. Mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, anthropologists, those practicing on the esoteric edges of science, architects, composers of music and, yes, also poets, when engaged to their utmost, may reach the end of the traveled path, step into an unknown territory of discovery, put down a marker for the future and try to describe what they find.
I don't know much about science, but I know something about art. The first and every time I see "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse I am taken gently by the hand and led into a world of painting I know little about yet.
I have heard Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" for string quartet many times and it is still a mystery to me. What was it that Beethoven saw in his deafness and what was he trying to tell us about it?
On what obscure mountain top was Shakespeare when he wrote "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things."? And what was he saying when he wrote to lead us there "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weigh their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be."?
The challenge has been made, the door has been left open for others to follow, for you and I to approach the mystery, to go one step beyond, to find another treasure, another magic stone on which is written a new name no one knows.
The air is thin and hard to breathe, the way is treacherous and the terrain frustratingly difficult to describe, but, though we may be standing on the shoulders of the great ones who went before us, the experience of our own genius can only be won by moving off of the shoulders and placing a foot carefully but steadily down onto a step we cannot see.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
****************************
SUMMER QUESTION
Summer is moving along, people.
It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you. Don't let the recent New York State decision rob you of your thunder.
Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 14 answers so far.
You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
************************
In the meantime here is a reprint from the summer of 2009.
Daring Do
Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.
Charles de Gaulle
**********************
Star Trek
"The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see."
-----------------------------------------
Those who are given the opportunity and freedom to follow a line of study as far as it can take them are blessed with the possibility of discovering areas of unrevealed knowledge and understanding, what no one has ever encountered before, where no one has ever been. Mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, anthropologists, those practicing on the esoteric edges of science, architects, composers of music and, yes, also poets, when engaged to their utmost, may reach the end of the traveled path, step into an unknown territory of discovery, put down a marker for the future and try to describe what they find.
I don't know much about science, but I know something about art. The first and every time I see "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse I am taken gently by the hand and led into a world of painting I know little about yet.
I have heard Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" for string quartet many times and it is still a mystery to me. What was it that Beethoven saw in his deafness and what was he trying to tell us about it?
On what obscure mountain top was Shakespeare when he wrote "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things."? And what was he saying when he wrote to lead us there "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weigh their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be."?
The challenge has been made, the door has been left open for others to follow, for you and I to approach the mystery, to go one step beyond, to find another treasure, another magic stone on which is written a new name no one knows.
The air is thin and hard to breathe, the way is treacherous and the terrain frustratingly difficult to describe, but, though we may be standing on the shoulders of the great ones who went before us, the experience of our own genius can only be won by moving off of the shoulders and placing a foot carefully but steadily down onto a step we cannot see.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
****************************
SUMMER QUESTION
Summer is moving along, people.
It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you. Don't let the recent New York State decision rob you of your thunder.
Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 14 answers so far.
You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
************************
Monday, January 10, 2011
Go Wolfgang
Everything has its own food, and music is the food of the spirit.
Nasrabadi
********************
In the former, primitive, pre transistor, pre CD days the only way to get music, if you didn't make your own, was either on a cumbersome record player with vulnerable analogue disks or through a radio with tubes. But anyone who was hungry for the songs of the day had a portable AM radio which they carried next to their ear. There were plenty of yelling top 40 DJs supplying the air with all the latest hits.
If, like myself, you were a classical music lover, the opportunities were very slim. It was a hunting game. There was the station in New York where I was growing up, but it went off the air at midnight. Switch over to another Music Till Dawn station and then another one for the Saturday afternoon opera broadcast from the Met which happened only for part of the year. It was a stuggle.
But it was a struggle that was worth it. As more and more people were discovering the classical arena of music, musical education was improving in the schools and the United States was beginning to produce great musicians of its own, not having to rely completely on the gifted artists of Europe.
I like to compare classical musicians to Grand Prix drivers. Those people can drive anything, from a tractor on up, in any kind of traffic. In a recent interview a member of the New York Philharmonic said the orchestra was so good it could play any kind of music set before it. Unfortunately there is still some prejudice against "serious" music, even from some "popular" musicians. But the prejudice doesn't usually go the other way. Real musicians can not only play any kind of music, they can also appreciate it, even simple music. Shostakovich, the great Russian composer of symphonies and string quartets, also wrote some children's songs.
Some people have their favorites, the bombast of the 1812 Overture, the grand Hallelujah Chorus, Beethoven's Fifth and so on, but they don't venture into music they don't know. And when most people think of music they think of songs, lyrics, words. In pure music there are no words, or rather, there are words and ideas expressed in a language people aren't familiar with and don't learn.
That was my big discovery as a child with my radio hugged to my ear. I heard the language of music and have been a music lover ever since. If you want to know where the truth is it's in all the music of Bach, the late Beethoven string quartets and the Mozart piano concertos.
Now here is something you must do before the year is out and the sooner the better. Even if you don't like classical music, even if you hate it, you must listen to Alfred Brendel perform the Mozart Piano Concerto number 23 in A major K. 488. Buy, borrow or steal it (no don't steal it). Don't do anything else but listen. Concentrate, hear every note and let it talk to you. Listen to it twice through, at least. Don't intellectualize about it, Climb its ladders and swim in its streams. Hear the gentle rain, hear the warm sun. It is a grand, loving, work of genius and pure spirituality. It sings, dances, weeps, laughs, swirls and jumps with joy. It is life affirming, world changing, a gift from heaven to an as yet undeserving human race. Hear it, enjoy it. That's an order.
DB - The Vagabond
****************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Nasrabadi
********************
In the former, primitive, pre transistor, pre CD days the only way to get music, if you didn't make your own, was either on a cumbersome record player with vulnerable analogue disks or through a radio with tubes. But anyone who was hungry for the songs of the day had a portable AM radio which they carried next to their ear. There were plenty of yelling top 40 DJs supplying the air with all the latest hits.
If, like myself, you were a classical music lover, the opportunities were very slim. It was a hunting game. There was the station in New York where I was growing up, but it went off the air at midnight. Switch over to another Music Till Dawn station and then another one for the Saturday afternoon opera broadcast from the Met which happened only for part of the year. It was a stuggle.
But it was a struggle that was worth it. As more and more people were discovering the classical arena of music, musical education was improving in the schools and the United States was beginning to produce great musicians of its own, not having to rely completely on the gifted artists of Europe.
I like to compare classical musicians to Grand Prix drivers. Those people can drive anything, from a tractor on up, in any kind of traffic. In a recent interview a member of the New York Philharmonic said the orchestra was so good it could play any kind of music set before it. Unfortunately there is still some prejudice against "serious" music, even from some "popular" musicians. But the prejudice doesn't usually go the other way. Real musicians can not only play any kind of music, they can also appreciate it, even simple music. Shostakovich, the great Russian composer of symphonies and string quartets, also wrote some children's songs.
Some people have their favorites, the bombast of the 1812 Overture, the grand Hallelujah Chorus, Beethoven's Fifth and so on, but they don't venture into music they don't know. And when most people think of music they think of songs, lyrics, words. In pure music there are no words, or rather, there are words and ideas expressed in a language people aren't familiar with and don't learn.
That was my big discovery as a child with my radio hugged to my ear. I heard the language of music and have been a music lover ever since. If you want to know where the truth is it's in all the music of Bach, the late Beethoven string quartets and the Mozart piano concertos.
Now here is something you must do before the year is out and the sooner the better. Even if you don't like classical music, even if you hate it, you must listen to Alfred Brendel perform the Mozart Piano Concerto number 23 in A major K. 488. Buy, borrow or steal it (no don't steal it). Don't do anything else but listen. Concentrate, hear every note and let it talk to you. Listen to it twice through, at least. Don't intellectualize about it, Climb its ladders and swim in its streams. Hear the gentle rain, hear the warm sun. It is a grand, loving, work of genius and pure spirituality. It sings, dances, weeps, laughs, swirls and jumps with joy. It is life affirming, world changing, a gift from heaven to an as yet undeserving human race. Hear it, enjoy it. That's an order.
DB - The Vagabond
****************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Monday, October 12, 2009
Daring Do 10/13/09
Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.
Charles deGaulle
**********************
Come along, don't be tardy.
_______________________
Star Trek
The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see.
Those who are given the opportunity and freedom to follow a line of study as far as it can take them are blessed with the possibility of discovering areas of unrevealed knowledge and understanding. It is what no one has ever encountered before, where no one has ever been. Mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, those practicing on the esoteric edges of science, anthropologists, architects, composers of music and, yes, also poets, when engaged to their utmost, may reach the end of the traveled path, step into an unknown territory of discovery, put down a marker for the future and try to describe what they find.
I don't know much about science, but I know something about art. The first and every time I see "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse I am taken gently by the hand and led into a world of painting I know nothing about.
I have heard Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" for string quartet many times and it is still a mystery. What was it that Beethoven saw in his deafness and what was he trying to tell us about it?
On what obscure mountain top was Shakespeare when he wrote "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things."? And what was he saying when he wrote to lead us there "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weight their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be." ?
The air is thin and hard to breathe, the way is treacherous and the terrain frustratingly difficult to describe but though we may be standing on the shoulders of the great ones who went before us the experience of our own genius can only be won by moving off of the shoulders and placing a foot carefully but steadily down onto a step we cannot see.
"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing wither he went,"
DB - Vagabond Journeys
__________________
May you find the humor in it, whatever it is.
******************
Charles deGaulle
**********************
Come along, don't be tardy.
_______________________
Star Trek
The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see.
Those who are given the opportunity and freedom to follow a line of study as far as it can take them are blessed with the possibility of discovering areas of unrevealed knowledge and understanding. It is what no one has ever encountered before, where no one has ever been. Mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, those practicing on the esoteric edges of science, anthropologists, architects, composers of music and, yes, also poets, when engaged to their utmost, may reach the end of the traveled path, step into an unknown territory of discovery, put down a marker for the future and try to describe what they find.
I don't know much about science, but I know something about art. The first and every time I see "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse I am taken gently by the hand and led into a world of painting I know nothing about.
I have heard Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" for string quartet many times and it is still a mystery. What was it that Beethoven saw in his deafness and what was he trying to tell us about it?
On what obscure mountain top was Shakespeare when he wrote "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things."? And what was he saying when he wrote to lead us there "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weight their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be." ?
The air is thin and hard to breathe, the way is treacherous and the terrain frustratingly difficult to describe but though we may be standing on the shoulders of the great ones who went before us the experience of our own genius can only be won by moving off of the shoulders and placing a foot carefully but steadily down onto a step we cannot see.
"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing wither he went,"
DB - Vagabond Journeys
__________________
May you find the humor in it, whatever it is.
******************
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Lesson Levels 9/25/09
Nothing is ever completely what it is in our understanding. The more familiar it becomes, the more we discover about it.
DB - The Vagabond
******************
There's the fridge. Help yourself.
______________________
I was interviewing a violinist who played with a world famous string quartet. We were discussing a piece the group had just recorded, a late Beethoven quartet. I noted that they had recorded the same work some years previously and asked why they wanted to do it again. He said it was because of the discoveries. He said they could play the piece 200 times and still find something new in it.
I thought about my own career and remembered that on 4 occasions I returned to a role I had played before, in some cases many years before, and each time it was like a new experience. Certain things seemed to have been hidden from me that were uncovered as a result of revisiting the part.
It wasn't that the previous performances weren't good, as good as I could make them. It was that as time went my, and I grew some, and that the experiences and ideas of the play had their gestation period in my own consciousness I awoke to a different mental scene when I picked up the script again.
I had also learned more about the art of acting in the mean time and thus could apply that skill to a better, clearer articulation of the play.
There is probably nothing more complex in the universe than a human being (in spite of how simple minded some people may seem) and therefore human relationships are among the most complicated of activities. How often have you discovered some important fact or disposition about a friend that you never knew about? Imagine 4 musicians sitting there rediscovering a Beethoven quartet and discovering themselves and each other in the process.
An astrophysicist at NASA was asked recently if it's depressing that they don't know much about the universe. He answered "No. It's exciting."
DB - Vagabond
******************
Try on a big smile. See if it fits.
_______________________
AUTUMN QUIZ
If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be and why?
You have all Fall to answer if you wish,
Reply here or at dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you
DB
DB - The Vagabond
******************
There's the fridge. Help yourself.
______________________
I was interviewing a violinist who played with a world famous string quartet. We were discussing a piece the group had just recorded, a late Beethoven quartet. I noted that they had recorded the same work some years previously and asked why they wanted to do it again. He said it was because of the discoveries. He said they could play the piece 200 times and still find something new in it.
I thought about my own career and remembered that on 4 occasions I returned to a role I had played before, in some cases many years before, and each time it was like a new experience. Certain things seemed to have been hidden from me that were uncovered as a result of revisiting the part.
It wasn't that the previous performances weren't good, as good as I could make them. It was that as time went my, and I grew some, and that the experiences and ideas of the play had their gestation period in my own consciousness I awoke to a different mental scene when I picked up the script again.
I had also learned more about the art of acting in the mean time and thus could apply that skill to a better, clearer articulation of the play.
There is probably nothing more complex in the universe than a human being (in spite of how simple minded some people may seem) and therefore human relationships are among the most complicated of activities. How often have you discovered some important fact or disposition about a friend that you never knew about? Imagine 4 musicians sitting there rediscovering a Beethoven quartet and discovering themselves and each other in the process.
An astrophysicist at NASA was asked recently if it's depressing that they don't know much about the universe. He answered "No. It's exciting."
DB - Vagabond
******************
Try on a big smile. See if it fits.
_______________________
AUTUMN QUIZ
If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be and why?
You have all Fall to answer if you wish,
Reply here or at dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you
DB
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Voracious Virtuosity 9/09/09
Depressing things are somewhere around, all the time. Look them in the face when you have to, but don't give them any rights.
DB - The Vagabond
********************
Today marks the 8th anniversary of my moving into this town and this apartment building, 2 days before the World Trade Center came down. If I hadn't moved here I would have been right underneath it when it happened.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Come sing with me.
_________________________
This is not an essay about Beethoven. It's one about Dmitry Shostakovich and about looking demoralization in the eye and staring it down. But as I was sitting here thinking about how to start this I put on a CD of Beethoven symphonies and was reminded that he began his very first symphony with an unresolved chord. It is a very quiet, modest, unassuming beginning and yet it is outlandishly revolutionary. Nobody ever began, would ever begin, a piece of music with a "dissonant" unresolved chord. And Beethoven did it in his very first symphony. "What on earth was the man thinking of?"
Beethoven was not well liked by the critics and others in his early days. He was staring into the face of a tradition of western European music. He eventually achieved success even though he went deaf, a condition which depressed him beyond what I can imagine. At the end he turned the tables on that tradition once again by introducing singers into his final symphony. But he was never threatened with arrest and imprisonment as far as I know.
Dmitry Shostakovich, 1906 - 1975, was a Russian composer who is and will always remain one of the most important voices of 20th Century music. His works were widely acclaimed and performed all over the world, and yet in Russia he was constantly in trouble with the authorities. Stalin didn't like him and the critics agreed with Stalin, of course. Dmitry lived under the constant threat of being arrested and sent off to Siberia as had happened to many of his friends. He was forced to write under very strict, imposed standards of traditional tonality and musical expression. He pushed those limits out to the very edges. And he was harshly judged for it. He was so certain of his arrest that he kept a packed suitcase under his bed in case they came fo him in the middle of the night, as they were known to do. And if he was sure they were coming for him he would take his suitcase out on the landing and wait for them so as to spare his family the humiliation of his arrest. It never happened but the threat and fear of it lasted for many years. And yet all that time he continued to compose his music. If he had made a single step into atonality, the musical aesthetic of the day, he would certainly have been hauled off in an instant. What his critics were hearing from him was a muddy mess. What the rest of the world was hearing was genius.
How many of us could continue to live and work under that kind of danger? Why wasn't Shostakovich demoralized and turned away from any further hope of recognition and accomplishment? He lived and worked under conditions more depressing than I can imagine. Why didn't he give up?
"Aw, give it up. Don't be crazy. It'll never work. You'll never be rich and famous, so why bother. Don't waste your time. Find something practical to do." I was never in danger of being arrested for my work as some actors have been. But I heard those words when I was young(er). I'll bet 90% of the artists of the world have heard the same things. They are designed to demoralize, frustrate, dissuade and depress. And a great deal of the time they come out of envy. So what do you do? Do you throw down your flute and your paint brush and quit the field? Do you keep a suitcase under your bed just in case? Or do you look all the wrinkled nihilisms in the face and say "I don't care what you think or do. Your rights do not extend over my music."
Yeah, Mama don't allow no guitar playing 'round here
Yeah, Mama don't allow no guitar playing 'round here
I don't care what mama don't allow I'll play my guitar anyhow.
(JJ Cale)
DB - The Vagabond
************************
May you find and enjoy the last rose of summer.
_____________________________
SUMMER QUIZ
This is not a contest.
A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.
Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?
You have all summer to answer if you wish.
21 responses so far.
DB
DB - The Vagabond
********************
Today marks the 8th anniversary of my moving into this town and this apartment building, 2 days before the World Trade Center came down. If I hadn't moved here I would have been right underneath it when it happened.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Come sing with me.
_________________________
This is not an essay about Beethoven. It's one about Dmitry Shostakovich and about looking demoralization in the eye and staring it down. But as I was sitting here thinking about how to start this I put on a CD of Beethoven symphonies and was reminded that he began his very first symphony with an unresolved chord. It is a very quiet, modest, unassuming beginning and yet it is outlandishly revolutionary. Nobody ever began, would ever begin, a piece of music with a "dissonant" unresolved chord. And Beethoven did it in his very first symphony. "What on earth was the man thinking of?"
Beethoven was not well liked by the critics and others in his early days. He was staring into the face of a tradition of western European music. He eventually achieved success even though he went deaf, a condition which depressed him beyond what I can imagine. At the end he turned the tables on that tradition once again by introducing singers into his final symphony. But he was never threatened with arrest and imprisonment as far as I know.
Dmitry Shostakovich, 1906 - 1975, was a Russian composer who is and will always remain one of the most important voices of 20th Century music. His works were widely acclaimed and performed all over the world, and yet in Russia he was constantly in trouble with the authorities. Stalin didn't like him and the critics agreed with Stalin, of course. Dmitry lived under the constant threat of being arrested and sent off to Siberia as had happened to many of his friends. He was forced to write under very strict, imposed standards of traditional tonality and musical expression. He pushed those limits out to the very edges. And he was harshly judged for it. He was so certain of his arrest that he kept a packed suitcase under his bed in case they came fo him in the middle of the night, as they were known to do. And if he was sure they were coming for him he would take his suitcase out on the landing and wait for them so as to spare his family the humiliation of his arrest. It never happened but the threat and fear of it lasted for many years. And yet all that time he continued to compose his music. If he had made a single step into atonality, the musical aesthetic of the day, he would certainly have been hauled off in an instant. What his critics were hearing from him was a muddy mess. What the rest of the world was hearing was genius.
How many of us could continue to live and work under that kind of danger? Why wasn't Shostakovich demoralized and turned away from any further hope of recognition and accomplishment? He lived and worked under conditions more depressing than I can imagine. Why didn't he give up?
"Aw, give it up. Don't be crazy. It'll never work. You'll never be rich and famous, so why bother. Don't waste your time. Find something practical to do." I was never in danger of being arrested for my work as some actors have been. But I heard those words when I was young(er). I'll bet 90% of the artists of the world have heard the same things. They are designed to demoralize, frustrate, dissuade and depress. And a great deal of the time they come out of envy. So what do you do? Do you throw down your flute and your paint brush and quit the field? Do you keep a suitcase under your bed just in case? Or do you look all the wrinkled nihilisms in the face and say "I don't care what you think or do. Your rights do not extend over my music."
Yeah, Mama don't allow no guitar playing 'round here
Yeah, Mama don't allow no guitar playing 'round here
I don't care what mama don't allow I'll play my guitar anyhow.
(JJ Cale)
DB - The Vagabond
************************
May you find and enjoy the last rose of summer.
_____________________________
SUMMER QUIZ
This is not a contest.
A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.
Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?
You have all summer to answer if you wish.
21 responses so far.
DB
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Reckless Rascality 5/19/09
No amount of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
Harold Rosenberg
Welcome, your table is ready.
-------------------
In Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" is the line "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." I was curious to find the meaning behind the line. In Elizabethan England, when a felon was condemned to be hanged they would drive him through town in an open cart. The spinsters and widows came out to watch and if one of them wanted to she could claim him. So instead of being executed he had to become the husband of the one who claimed him, for good or ill (usually ill). But sometimes, considering the hag who was doing the claiming, hanging would be a preferred choice, Hence a good hanging could prevent a bad marriage.
There are probably almost as many jokes about critics as there are about lawyers. The difference is that critic-humor is usually true. Show business is full of funny stories about things critics have written. I have some of my own which I will save for another day.
While it is true that a critic with a good eye, a good ear and a good sense of theatre can put a bad play out of business and keep it from climbing up onto the world's stages like poison ivy, it is also true that the same sickle has been used on a worthy piece of theatre, chopping it to death with irresponsible reviews. But, as the Bible says, there is hope of a tree that if it is chopped down in my blossom again and live.
One of the masterpieces of 20th Century play writing is Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot." When it was performed in New York the critics panned it because it didn't make any sense to them. It was also performed at San Quentin Prison and the inmates there had no trouble understanding and appreciating it. Someone suggested that maybe the critics should spend some time in prison. I don't know but that might not be a bad idea on several levels.
Then there was Beethoven. The critics found his music noisy and chaotic and rarely gave him a good review. Beethoven.
As the composer Sibelius said, No one ever constructed a statue to a critic. My advice to any critic is to show up, pay attention, then go home, report what you saw and keep your opinions to yourself. Or better yet, don't show up at all. Let us write and publish our own reviews, as Richard Wagner did for one of his early operas,
But what is even worse, in some ways, is when the critics will see a hunk of junk that should never have been produced, has no theatrical merit, no possible shelf life, a "turkey" as we refer to it in show business and then go and write a fabulous review, praising it to the sky and thus letting it loose on an unsuspecting and unprepared public. The widow has claimed the felon who should have been hung. I think all actors have experienced being in a superficial, badly written and maladjusted piece of trash that some critic has raved over. It makes one shake one's stunned head in disbelief. There is a perfect example of that running the circuits of regional and college theatres, taking up time and space, right now. It shall remain nameless,
Don't read the review then go see the show. Reverse the process and you'll be astounded. My habit as an entertainer was if I got a good review, earned or not, I copied it and mailed it out. If I got a bad one I threw it in the trash can and got on with life.
The Vagabond
______________
Have a happy surprise today.
******************
Harold Rosenberg
Welcome, your table is ready.
-------------------
In Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" is the line "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage." I was curious to find the meaning behind the line. In Elizabethan England, when a felon was condemned to be hanged they would drive him through town in an open cart. The spinsters and widows came out to watch and if one of them wanted to she could claim him. So instead of being executed he had to become the husband of the one who claimed him, for good or ill (usually ill). But sometimes, considering the hag who was doing the claiming, hanging would be a preferred choice, Hence a good hanging could prevent a bad marriage.
There are probably almost as many jokes about critics as there are about lawyers. The difference is that critic-humor is usually true. Show business is full of funny stories about things critics have written. I have some of my own which I will save for another day.
While it is true that a critic with a good eye, a good ear and a good sense of theatre can put a bad play out of business and keep it from climbing up onto the world's stages like poison ivy, it is also true that the same sickle has been used on a worthy piece of theatre, chopping it to death with irresponsible reviews. But, as the Bible says, there is hope of a tree that if it is chopped down in my blossom again and live.
One of the masterpieces of 20th Century play writing is Samuel Beckett's "Waiting For Godot." When it was performed in New York the critics panned it because it didn't make any sense to them. It was also performed at San Quentin Prison and the inmates there had no trouble understanding and appreciating it. Someone suggested that maybe the critics should spend some time in prison. I don't know but that might not be a bad idea on several levels.
Then there was Beethoven. The critics found his music noisy and chaotic and rarely gave him a good review. Beethoven.
As the composer Sibelius said, No one ever constructed a statue to a critic. My advice to any critic is to show up, pay attention, then go home, report what you saw and keep your opinions to yourself. Or better yet, don't show up at all. Let us write and publish our own reviews, as Richard Wagner did for one of his early operas,
But what is even worse, in some ways, is when the critics will see a hunk of junk that should never have been produced, has no theatrical merit, no possible shelf life, a "turkey" as we refer to it in show business and then go and write a fabulous review, praising it to the sky and thus letting it loose on an unsuspecting and unprepared public. The widow has claimed the felon who should have been hung. I think all actors have experienced being in a superficial, badly written and maladjusted piece of trash that some critic has raved over. It makes one shake one's stunned head in disbelief. There is a perfect example of that running the circuits of regional and college theatres, taking up time and space, right now. It shall remain nameless,
Don't read the review then go see the show. Reverse the process and you'll be astounded. My habit as an entertainer was if I got a good review, earned or not, I copied it and mailed it out. If I got a bad one I threw it in the trash can and got on with life.
The Vagabond
______________
Have a happy surprise today.
******************
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