How could I bear to be human if humans were not also writers and riddle solvers and redeemers of chance.
Friedrich Nietzsche
**********************
Hello Ernie
Hello Jubail
Hello Doha
Hello Ile-de-France
Hello Istanbul
Hello Herdon
Hello Kalamazoo
Hello Rochester
(Just a few of the 13 who aren't watching the Olympics all the time and took the trouble to check in with the Vagabond.)
****************************
"Watchman, tell us of the night."
Who's watching the day?
*******************************
I enjoy the Olympic sports, but I'm most interested in the track and field events. The first Olympic mete back in ancient Greece was a 200 meter foot race. These days runners compete in the 100 meter and 500 meter races and longer. 200 meter races are rarely held. But years ago the Olympic committee was trying to decide what events they could cut out since the number of them was getting very large. Someone suggested eliminating the 200 meter since it wasn't a popular distance. Then they realized it was the original race, so they kept it.
One of the most important things that the world's citizens need to do if we are to survive is to take better care of our young people.
When I was in high school I was lazy about sports. I never played football, I was no good at baseball because of myopia, so I played basketball which I really didn't like. Then one year the school offered track and field. I ran around the track a few times. I strained my arm trying to throw the javelin. I didn't have enough beef on me to put the shot. I was basically flunking out of Phys Ed. But then the sky opened up, angels came down and twirled around my head and the heavenly trumpets blared. I discovered the discus.
The first time a flung it people stopped and looked. With a little advice from the coach I was soon a competing discus thrower and I was a winner.
So then I went off to college as a music major with a meager $200 scholarship based on a song I had written. I was a poor student because I had to work. I had an all night job in law enforcement, a week end job as a janitor and some hours during the week in the library. I had a faculty adviser who was so absent minded he couldn't remember what college his sone was in. This circumstance lasted for a year and a half until I realized I was in the wrong school and the financial burden was destroying any possible joy at being there. So I quit and began my vagabond life. At about the same time producers started hiring me as an actor and that became my career, all hope of being a musician faded.
The reason for this autobiography is that years later, by accident, I discovered that there are excellent universities in this country that offer full scholarships to discus throwers. I was good enough. I would have qualified.
If I had known that such a thing was even possible I would have gone looking for it. But I had no guidance, from anyone. It's one of the major regrets of my life. But I don't think about it much. I don't regret my life as an entertainer. It has been an adventurous, exciting, satisfying and fulfilling career. But I rue that I didn't learn music at the time.
By all means ask young people what they think and what they want. And respect their wisdom to the extent they have any. Offer your suggestions and advice whether they take it or not. The positive things you do for young people will have a far reaching effect for all of us the world over. The negative things you do, or the things you don't do, may have the opposite effect.
I'm an educated man even with no college degree. I've taught myself a lot of things. I read history, philosophy, psychology and religion. Now I'm also a writer and a painter, and I'm learning music in between times. I wish I had some sort of a musical instrument. My ideal home, when I get there, will have a piano.
DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
******************
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The Unfamiliar
Somebody must always be doing something new, or life would get very dull.
Ninette de Valois
*******************
Hello Val
*******************
Years ago there was a TV commercial for a company that offered classical music recordings. You join a club and once every month or two they send you a record containing some great music. Except, in the middle of the commercial the announcer said "We've taken out all the unfamiliar music."
I threw my shoe at the TV screen, Fortunately it was just a slipper so it did no damage. I was as much outraged as I was amused. What is the point of listening to the same pieces over and over again, no matter how good they are, and not discover the vast amount of music in the world of great music, to learn to appreciate it and make it familiar?
Imagine going into you local art museum and seeing the same 20 paintings every time you go there. Pretty soon you would stop going and the museum would close. We've taken out all the unfamiliar music.
I knew a man who whenever he went to an Italian Restaurant always ordered pasta fagioli, nothing else. If I took my mother out for Chinese food it was chicken chow mein. That was it. My agent told me that his uncle came all the way down from northern Vermont to visit. They took him out to one of New York's finest restaurants. Much to their dismay he ordered Vermont fried chicken, We've taken out all the unfamiliar music.
There are conservatives who won't read a liberal newspaper and vice versa. There's the CEO of a large company who proclaims that he has never given a dollar to any cultural cause and never will and is proud of it. And there's the theatre director who would only direct "Saint Joan" by George Bernard Shaw because none of the other Shaw plays are worthy doing. We've taken out all the unfamiliar music.
A closed mind is one of the worst catastrophes on the face of humanity. It ensures ignorance and denies freedom of expression. It discourages experimentation, puts a lid on personal progress and makes a very dull life.
Listen to the unfamiliar music. You're in for some delightful surprises.
DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
************************
Ninette de Valois
*******************
Hello Val
*******************
Years ago there was a TV commercial for a company that offered classical music recordings. You join a club and once every month or two they send you a record containing some great music. Except, in the middle of the commercial the announcer said "We've taken out all the unfamiliar music."
I threw my shoe at the TV screen, Fortunately it was just a slipper so it did no damage. I was as much outraged as I was amused. What is the point of listening to the same pieces over and over again, no matter how good they are, and not discover the vast amount of music in the world of great music, to learn to appreciate it and make it familiar?
Imagine going into you local art museum and seeing the same 20 paintings every time you go there. Pretty soon you would stop going and the museum would close. We've taken out all the unfamiliar music.
I knew a man who whenever he went to an Italian Restaurant always ordered pasta fagioli, nothing else. If I took my mother out for Chinese food it was chicken chow mein. That was it. My agent told me that his uncle came all the way down from northern Vermont to visit. They took him out to one of New York's finest restaurants. Much to their dismay he ordered Vermont fried chicken, We've taken out all the unfamiliar music.
There are conservatives who won't read a liberal newspaper and vice versa. There's the CEO of a large company who proclaims that he has never given a dollar to any cultural cause and never will and is proud of it. And there's the theatre director who would only direct "Saint Joan" by George Bernard Shaw because none of the other Shaw plays are worthy doing. We've taken out all the unfamiliar music.
A closed mind is one of the worst catastrophes on the face of humanity. It ensures ignorance and denies freedom of expression. It discourages experimentation, puts a lid on personal progress and makes a very dull life.
Listen to the unfamiliar music. You're in for some delightful surprises.
DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
************************
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Love It
I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see.
Jose Saramago
***********************
Hello Arlene
***********************
There are three ways of looking at something. With the eyes, with the mind and with love. Most of us ignore the second two most of the time.
Yesterday afternoon when I went down for the mail I sat for a while on the porch outside my apartment to enjoy some sunshine. I had been reading some articles on sight and as I looked around I began to really notice some things: the chair I was sitting in, the porch with its railing, the steps down to the ground level, the car parked in front of the building, another car passing with music coming from it, the mail box, the mail.
Who was it who first designed the folding chair? I don't know, but what a great invention, easily transported and stacked and yet opens out to provide a comfortable place for a person to sit.
Then there was the porch, an ample space outside my kitchen door with a railing for me to stand next to and rest my arms on and also to protect me so I won't fall off the porch to the hard ground below. Then the wide staircase to the lower level. The architect didn't just design a stairway to my door but a nice porch in front of it. I will never know that architect or the carpenter who built them.
I observed the parked car and saw a machine that enables someone to transport themselves quickly, safely and comfortably. A lot of design and careful manufacture went into that.
I admired the fact that a person can drive and listen to the music the like at the same time through a car radio or cd player.
I descended the stairs and walked down the alley where there was my mail box. Someone had attached it years ago. I will never know who that was. Inside was my mail. Some anonymous person from the postal service had put it in my box. I thought about how great it is that we have a postal service. We drop a letter in the mail box and it may go thousands of miles to its destination and we hardly ever think about it. It's still the best deal in America.
My mail was a magazine with articles to help me be a better writer (don't you dare say I need it, I know I do). And a postcard from Beth and Ken, somewhere along Route 66, Beth's favorite highway.
When I got back to my apartment I put on a Bach violin concerto, while I checked out Beth's card.
I admire the love behind the workmanship that gave me a comfortable chair to sit in on a pleasant porch.
I admire the love behind automotive manufacturing with all the safety features and beauty of design.
I admire the love of the singers and bands that provide the music that is meaningful and important to people's lives and the companies that record it..
I note the love that motivates the earnestness of the postal workers and mail carriers.
My magazine was written, edited and published so that others can improve their writing skills and through the love of words and communication speak through them to many other people.
I appreciate the love from Beth and Ken for their friends to take the time to send us cards during their 66 adventures.
And I admire the genius, J. S. Bach, who a few centuries ago loved his music enough to write it down and leave it for the musicians today who also love it, play it and record it so that I may enjoy it in my own humble home.
We do take things for granted. We should stop that. There is a lot of ugliness and hate in the world. I prefer to look for the beauty and the love.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*******************************
Jose Saramago
***********************
Hello Arlene
***********************
There are three ways of looking at something. With the eyes, with the mind and with love. Most of us ignore the second two most of the time.
Yesterday afternoon when I went down for the mail I sat for a while on the porch outside my apartment to enjoy some sunshine. I had been reading some articles on sight and as I looked around I began to really notice some things: the chair I was sitting in, the porch with its railing, the steps down to the ground level, the car parked in front of the building, another car passing with music coming from it, the mail box, the mail.
Who was it who first designed the folding chair? I don't know, but what a great invention, easily transported and stacked and yet opens out to provide a comfortable place for a person to sit.
Then there was the porch, an ample space outside my kitchen door with a railing for me to stand next to and rest my arms on and also to protect me so I won't fall off the porch to the hard ground below. Then the wide staircase to the lower level. The architect didn't just design a stairway to my door but a nice porch in front of it. I will never know that architect or the carpenter who built them.
I observed the parked car and saw a machine that enables someone to transport themselves quickly, safely and comfortably. A lot of design and careful manufacture went into that.
I admired the fact that a person can drive and listen to the music the like at the same time through a car radio or cd player.
I descended the stairs and walked down the alley where there was my mail box. Someone had attached it years ago. I will never know who that was. Inside was my mail. Some anonymous person from the postal service had put it in my box. I thought about how great it is that we have a postal service. We drop a letter in the mail box and it may go thousands of miles to its destination and we hardly ever think about it. It's still the best deal in America.
My mail was a magazine with articles to help me be a better writer (don't you dare say I need it, I know I do). And a postcard from Beth and Ken, somewhere along Route 66, Beth's favorite highway.
When I got back to my apartment I put on a Bach violin concerto, while I checked out Beth's card.
I admire the love behind the workmanship that gave me a comfortable chair to sit in on a pleasant porch.
I admire the love behind automotive manufacturing with all the safety features and beauty of design.
I admire the love of the singers and bands that provide the music that is meaningful and important to people's lives and the companies that record it..
I note the love that motivates the earnestness of the postal workers and mail carriers.
My magazine was written, edited and published so that others can improve their writing skills and through the love of words and communication speak through them to many other people.
I appreciate the love from Beth and Ken for their friends to take the time to send us cards during their 66 adventures.
And I admire the genius, J. S. Bach, who a few centuries ago loved his music enough to write it down and leave it for the musicians today who also love it, play it and record it so that I may enjoy it in my own humble home.
We do take things for granted. We should stop that. There is a lot of ugliness and hate in the world. I prefer to look for the beauty and the love.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*******************************
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Hills Are Alive
There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.
Edward Elgar
*******************
Hello Bruce
********************
One year I took a college geology course. The professor was excellent and got me fascinated with rocks. I would walk down the street analyzing rocks where ever I saw them: stone walls, stone buildings, any stone structure, even pebbles on the beach. I would try to determine what they were, what they were made of and how they were formed. For a year I was a rock fanatic. It greatly improved my observation skills.
Another year I spent taking a music course called ear training, where you learned how to recognize intervals and chords by only listening to them and not reading the notes from a score. It was very difficult at first, but was an interesting exercise and improved my listening ability very much.
I began to listen to all kinds of sounds, the birds, running water, cars and trucks passing, people talking. I realized how many different sounds there were in a single sound. Some of those sounds were tones of a scale while others were toneless. I began to hear sounds where I didn't expect them. Buildings. Buildings have sounds. My building emits a quiet, high pitched trill.
There are sounds in the air. They're there if you listen for them. They are quite harmonious sounds as a matter of fact. This giant rock we stand on is filled with sounds. They say there are even sounds in outer space. Though no human ear has ever heard them , as far as we know, sensitive recording devices have picked up some of them.
As there is with rhythm, there is music everywhere. More than we could ever require.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
**********************
Edward Elgar
*******************
Hello Bruce
********************
One year I took a college geology course. The professor was excellent and got me fascinated with rocks. I would walk down the street analyzing rocks where ever I saw them: stone walls, stone buildings, any stone structure, even pebbles on the beach. I would try to determine what they were, what they were made of and how they were formed. For a year I was a rock fanatic. It greatly improved my observation skills.
Another year I spent taking a music course called ear training, where you learned how to recognize intervals and chords by only listening to them and not reading the notes from a score. It was very difficult at first, but was an interesting exercise and improved my listening ability very much.
I began to listen to all kinds of sounds, the birds, running water, cars and trucks passing, people talking. I realized how many different sounds there were in a single sound. Some of those sounds were tones of a scale while others were toneless. I began to hear sounds where I didn't expect them. Buildings. Buildings have sounds. My building emits a quiet, high pitched trill.
There are sounds in the air. They're there if you listen for them. They are quite harmonious sounds as a matter of fact. This giant rock we stand on is filled with sounds. They say there are even sounds in outer space. Though no human ear has ever heard them , as far as we know, sensitive recording devices have picked up some of them.
As there is with rhythm, there is music everywhere. More than we could ever require.
DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
**********************
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Sit Up And Take Notice
Music never repeats itself.
Daniel Barenboim
******************
Hello Holly
******************
Just as in nature it is almost impossible to find pure symmetry. Perhaps it can be found in a bubble, or can be seen in butterfly wings. But even in the repetitious scales of some reptiles the pattern changes with the changing anatomy and movements of the animal. So in art there are many things that have the appearance of repeating patterns and symmetry.
I have a photograph of a brick path. Along both sides of the path there are small trees in pots evenly spaced to provide an edge to the path. Though all the trees are the same height, no matter how much shaping and pruning the gardener does he cannot make them identical. To the casual observer they may all look alike, but to the careful eye of someone else, each tree takes on its own personality and beauty.
"Music never repeats itself." The musical notes on the page are always the same for any printed piece of music. But when it is put in front of a musician it will become even more alive than those trees. And whether he plays it ill or well its life is momentary. Every time he plays it the experience will be different. Even a piece of music that is recorded will have a different experience for the listener every time it's heard. You may even hear a difference when it is played on a different record player. And when the same piece is played by another musician the experience is new and different even though the notes on the page haven't changed. You may have a favorite recording of some music that you love and have taken for granted. One day you will stop and listen again because you suddenly heard something different you didn't know was there, some movement of a muscle in the music you thought you'd never heard before.
These things happen because music is the most basic human art form there is. There is a direct link between music and human thoughts and emotions.
But one can also have the same sit up and pay attention with art and poetry.
I have a favorite painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Whenever I went to the museum, for whatever reason, I always made it a point to go and spend some time with that picture, and whenever I did it had more to say to me, like an endless conversation that picked up where it left off even if a year had intervened. You may have such a picture hanging on your wall from which one day something will emerge that you never paid attention to before, that you thought you never saw.
I like to say that I don't read books, I eat them. I love going back over the same great literature I've read before simply because even though the words on the page, like the notes in a musical score, haven't changed, somehow it's a brand new book. Once through the book or poem is an adventure. The next time through is a different adventure.
The endless, ever changing life of great art is one of the joys of human existence.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
(never give up)
*****************************
Daniel Barenboim
******************
Hello Holly
******************
Just as in nature it is almost impossible to find pure symmetry. Perhaps it can be found in a bubble, or can be seen in butterfly wings. But even in the repetitious scales of some reptiles the pattern changes with the changing anatomy and movements of the animal. So in art there are many things that have the appearance of repeating patterns and symmetry.
I have a photograph of a brick path. Along both sides of the path there are small trees in pots evenly spaced to provide an edge to the path. Though all the trees are the same height, no matter how much shaping and pruning the gardener does he cannot make them identical. To the casual observer they may all look alike, but to the careful eye of someone else, each tree takes on its own personality and beauty.
"Music never repeats itself." The musical notes on the page are always the same for any printed piece of music. But when it is put in front of a musician it will become even more alive than those trees. And whether he plays it ill or well its life is momentary. Every time he plays it the experience will be different. Even a piece of music that is recorded will have a different experience for the listener every time it's heard. You may even hear a difference when it is played on a different record player. And when the same piece is played by another musician the experience is new and different even though the notes on the page haven't changed. You may have a favorite recording of some music that you love and have taken for granted. One day you will stop and listen again because you suddenly heard something different you didn't know was there, some movement of a muscle in the music you thought you'd never heard before.
These things happen because music is the most basic human art form there is. There is a direct link between music and human thoughts and emotions.
But one can also have the same sit up and pay attention with art and poetry.
I have a favorite painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Whenever I went to the museum, for whatever reason, I always made it a point to go and spend some time with that picture, and whenever I did it had more to say to me, like an endless conversation that picked up where it left off even if a year had intervened. You may have such a picture hanging on your wall from which one day something will emerge that you never paid attention to before, that you thought you never saw.
I like to say that I don't read books, I eat them. I love going back over the same great literature I've read before simply because even though the words on the page, like the notes in a musical score, haven't changed, somehow it's a brand new book. Once through the book or poem is an adventure. The next time through is a different adventure.
The endless, ever changing life of great art is one of the joys of human existence.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
(never give up)
*****************************
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Rocks And Bones
We see nothing truly till we understand it.
John Constable
***************
Hello Anlong Veng, Cambodia
******************************
"He undressed me with his eyes" she said.
I took a basic geology course in college. I always enjoyed looking at nature, including mountains, rocks and pebbles on the beach. But until I found out something about them I didn't really know what I was looking at. Once I learned about igneous, stratified and metamorphosed rock, inclusions and erosiaon, I began looking at rocks in a new way, analyzing the stone walls I walked past and tried to imagine what was happening under the ground of chunks of rock that were sticking out of it. I made a special trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York to look at the moon rock.
I always loved good music and had an ear for it but it wasn't until I studied it and learned about intervals, (two tones sounding together or one after the other), triads, (three notes sounding together) plus other tones added on to make complex chords, rules of harmony ad counterpoint, forms, (fugues, sonatas, theme and variations, etc.) and instrumentation, that I really began to hear and appreciate music.
It was the same with art. When I first tried to draw the human figure I couldn't see past the skin. I was being instructed to look for certain structures of the body, cranium, rib cage, pelvis. It took me many months before I finally began to see them and could then begin to understand other outcroppings of the figure, the shoulder, arm, hand. hip joint, leg, knee and foot. I learned about the bones and how the muscles attached to them and how they functioned. I learned it so well I could tell where those structures were even if a person was dressed. The she could really say "He undressed me with his eyes." But I wasn't doing it in the way she might think. I could see how an artist could paint a dressed figure and make it look realistic, because the human figure was there for the clothing to embrace.
So what is the most difficult thing to see, to understand? Us. The human being. It's because we aren't igneous, stratified or metamorphosed rock. We aren't tones, intervals and triads. Instead of cranium, rib cage and pelvis we are a complex of thoughts, feelings and actions. It would be a simple matter to know ourselves if we were as easy to analyze as a bunch of rocs. (Some people think other people are.) But when you look in the mirror what do you see, a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth? If you're a woman you might fuss with your hair. Some men do that too. But you know what you're looking at isn't the real you or all there is to you. The real person is invisible and won't be seen until understood.
DB - The Vagabond
-------------------------
Never give up.
*********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 6 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
John Constable
***************
Hello Anlong Veng, Cambodia
******************************
"He undressed me with his eyes" she said.
I took a basic geology course in college. I always enjoyed looking at nature, including mountains, rocks and pebbles on the beach. But until I found out something about them I didn't really know what I was looking at. Once I learned about igneous, stratified and metamorphosed rock, inclusions and erosiaon, I began looking at rocks in a new way, analyzing the stone walls I walked past and tried to imagine what was happening under the ground of chunks of rock that were sticking out of it. I made a special trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York to look at the moon rock.
I always loved good music and had an ear for it but it wasn't until I studied it and learned about intervals, (two tones sounding together or one after the other), triads, (three notes sounding together) plus other tones added on to make complex chords, rules of harmony ad counterpoint, forms, (fugues, sonatas, theme and variations, etc.) and instrumentation, that I really began to hear and appreciate music.
It was the same with art. When I first tried to draw the human figure I couldn't see past the skin. I was being instructed to look for certain structures of the body, cranium, rib cage, pelvis. It took me many months before I finally began to see them and could then begin to understand other outcroppings of the figure, the shoulder, arm, hand. hip joint, leg, knee and foot. I learned about the bones and how the muscles attached to them and how they functioned. I learned it so well I could tell where those structures were even if a person was dressed. The she could really say "He undressed me with his eyes." But I wasn't doing it in the way she might think. I could see how an artist could paint a dressed figure and make it look realistic, because the human figure was there for the clothing to embrace.
So what is the most difficult thing to see, to understand? Us. The human being. It's because we aren't igneous, stratified or metamorphosed rock. We aren't tones, intervals and triads. Instead of cranium, rib cage and pelvis we are a complex of thoughts, feelings and actions. It would be a simple matter to know ourselves if we were as easy to analyze as a bunch of rocs. (Some people think other people are.) But when you look in the mirror what do you see, a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth? If you're a woman you might fuss with your hair. Some men do that too. But you know what you're looking at isn't the real you or all there is to you. The real person is invisible and won't be seen until understood.
DB - The Vagabond
-------------------------
Never give up.
*********************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 6 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Drink To Me
Every obnoxious act is a cry for help.
Zig Ziglar
*****************
Hello Brazzaville, Congo
****************
I climb the wooden steel reinforced steps of the school. My footsteps echo down the empty halls. I reach the third floor and enter the room. The dreaded Mrs. Thompson is waiting for me. There is no greeting from her but a nasty word or two of instructions. Mrs. Thompson is an overweight widow. At the door, as she is leaving, she gives me a smile and rebukes me for something I forgot to do yesterday. She likes to think she's my boss, but she isn't. We both work for the same man. We never see him. Mrs. Thompson and I try to pretend that we are friends, that we like each other, but we don't. She wears tennis shoes. One can't hear her going. Or coming.
After she leaves I take off my outer shirt and hang it up. I start the water going in the big sink, get the instant coffee down from the shelf, and the sugar. I put the kettle on and take down a mug, I take a spoon from the draining board, spoon some coffee and sugar into the mug.
The big sink is half full so I turn the water off and wait for the kettle to boil. I go to the window and look out. It's a dark late afternoon sky and it looks like rain.
When the kettle begins to whistle I listen to it for a few moments. It's the sound of quietly frenzied winds. Flutes and oboes calling out, crying in the night. I turn it off and pour the water into the mug.
The large pots are the first things to get cleaned. I thrust my arms elbow deep into the hot soapy water and start scrubbing. I turn the water on again and it cascades into the sink with a crash.
When all the pots are done I set them aside to dry and begin on the utensils. I hear them ring and jingle with each other as they get cleaned one by one and set aside. It has begun to rain, a soft rain but a drumming rain amplified by the metal roof and overhanging ledges outside the window.
The plates large and small are next. I pause, drink my coffee and listen to the percussion of the rain. I think about all the music that I love and want to share with people, so many uninterested people, so many musicless people, Mrs. Thompson. Why is she so unpleasant, so unhappy, I wonder.
After the plates, cups, saucers and mugs are clean I carefully start on the glasses. These are what she was objecting to. There were spots on them, she said. So I am extra careful to get them as clean as possible. When I finish them I take a goblet which is still wet and ran my fingers around the rim making that sweet ringing sound which seems to fill the room.
That is my music, not the percussion of the rain or the jingling of the forks and spoons. And not the crying out of the kettle. It is my music. And I am composing it on the rim of a drinking goblet. And tomorrow someone will drink from that goblet and my music will touch their lips. Maybe Mrs. Thompson's.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
Never Give Up
********************
Weekend Contest
In your opinion, when he is finished digging up President Obama's school records, what's the next conspiracy Donald Trump will find?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Winner gets the Vagabond Seal Of Approval.
Good luck
DB
*****************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
6 answers so far
I eagerly await your answer.
DB
******************
Zig Ziglar
*****************
Hello Brazzaville, Congo
****************
I climb the wooden steel reinforced steps of the school. My footsteps echo down the empty halls. I reach the third floor and enter the room. The dreaded Mrs. Thompson is waiting for me. There is no greeting from her but a nasty word or two of instructions. Mrs. Thompson is an overweight widow. At the door, as she is leaving, she gives me a smile and rebukes me for something I forgot to do yesterday. She likes to think she's my boss, but she isn't. We both work for the same man. We never see him. Mrs. Thompson and I try to pretend that we are friends, that we like each other, but we don't. She wears tennis shoes. One can't hear her going. Or coming.
After she leaves I take off my outer shirt and hang it up. I start the water going in the big sink, get the instant coffee down from the shelf, and the sugar. I put the kettle on and take down a mug, I take a spoon from the draining board, spoon some coffee and sugar into the mug.
The big sink is half full so I turn the water off and wait for the kettle to boil. I go to the window and look out. It's a dark late afternoon sky and it looks like rain.
When the kettle begins to whistle I listen to it for a few moments. It's the sound of quietly frenzied winds. Flutes and oboes calling out, crying in the night. I turn it off and pour the water into the mug.
The large pots are the first things to get cleaned. I thrust my arms elbow deep into the hot soapy water and start scrubbing. I turn the water on again and it cascades into the sink with a crash.
When all the pots are done I set them aside to dry and begin on the utensils. I hear them ring and jingle with each other as they get cleaned one by one and set aside. It has begun to rain, a soft rain but a drumming rain amplified by the metal roof and overhanging ledges outside the window.
The plates large and small are next. I pause, drink my coffee and listen to the percussion of the rain. I think about all the music that I love and want to share with people, so many uninterested people, so many musicless people, Mrs. Thompson. Why is she so unpleasant, so unhappy, I wonder.
After the plates, cups, saucers and mugs are clean I carefully start on the glasses. These are what she was objecting to. There were spots on them, she said. So I am extra careful to get them as clean as possible. When I finish them I take a goblet which is still wet and ran my fingers around the rim making that sweet ringing sound which seems to fill the room.
That is my music, not the percussion of the rain or the jingling of the forks and spoons. And not the crying out of the kettle. It is my music. And I am composing it on the rim of a drinking goblet. And tomorrow someone will drink from that goblet and my music will touch their lips. Maybe Mrs. Thompson's.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
Never Give Up
********************
Weekend Contest
In your opinion, when he is finished digging up President Obama's school records, what's the next conspiracy Donald Trump will find?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Winner gets the Vagabond Seal Of Approval.
Good luck
DB
*****************
SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.
Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?
dbdacoba@aol.com
6 answers so far
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
******************************
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Sing Me Your Song
Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good.
John Zorn
********************
I love music. It is probably the most important thing in my life. My love of music goes back to my childhood. No one in my house listened to music although my sister was a singer and a reasonably good pianist. But there was no music in the home except for an $11 plastic AM radio, which was my constant companion.
I wanted to become a musician. I bought books on musical composition, some of which I still have, Someone gave me a violin and I tried to learn how to play it. I studied voice and piano. But I finally had to admit that I had no talent for music. So I became an actor instead.
Years later I found that I might have made a fairly good clarinetist when I had the occasion to play one. Some day I may buy a clarinet if I can, and find out.
One of the most amazing things I've discovered over the years is that there is music in everything. Trees and buildings sing their songs and we can hear them if we only listen. A flower has a silent song which we can hear with our minds if we listen.
Music has been called the universal language. On a basic level that means a violinist from Japan and a pianist from Sweden who don't speak each other's languages can share a profound life experience by playing a Mozart violin and piano sonata together. Nationality and cultural differences don't get in the way.
But there's more to it. All music, even the most modernly dissonant is speaking directly to the human sensitivity, the human heart and mind. Thus any human being on earth can appreciate and respond to it. Experience and taste dictate what one is likely to listen to but it is all available, silent or otherwise, to the human consciousness.
There can be no doubt about there being music in outer space and one day it will be recorded and heard if it hasn't been already by some curious scientist.
Music is melody, harmony and rhythm, the cranium, rib cage and pelvis, the thought, feeling and action, the root, stem and blossom of life.
One day a coworker heard me singing a Donovan song and, knowing I was an expert in classical music, wondered why I knew it. I said that I knew all kinds of songs, because I listen to all kinds of music. A music lover will. I love classical music. I also love jazz, blues, rock, country, blue grass, salsa, folk from all over the world. While some of the snobs around me were turning up their noses at Liberace, Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo, I was hearing them and finding something good in all of it.
A melody will make the emotions sing, the intricacies of harmonic progressions will fascinate the mind and rhythm will energize the spirit. Music is the language of life. It's the one true metalanguage. I love music.
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
AUTUMN QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?
Only 8 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
************************
John Zorn
********************
I love music. It is probably the most important thing in my life. My love of music goes back to my childhood. No one in my house listened to music although my sister was a singer and a reasonably good pianist. But there was no music in the home except for an $11 plastic AM radio, which was my constant companion.
I wanted to become a musician. I bought books on musical composition, some of which I still have, Someone gave me a violin and I tried to learn how to play it. I studied voice and piano. But I finally had to admit that I had no talent for music. So I became an actor instead.
Years later I found that I might have made a fairly good clarinetist when I had the occasion to play one. Some day I may buy a clarinet if I can, and find out.
One of the most amazing things I've discovered over the years is that there is music in everything. Trees and buildings sing their songs and we can hear them if we only listen. A flower has a silent song which we can hear with our minds if we listen.
Music has been called the universal language. On a basic level that means a violinist from Japan and a pianist from Sweden who don't speak each other's languages can share a profound life experience by playing a Mozart violin and piano sonata together. Nationality and cultural differences don't get in the way.
But there's more to it. All music, even the most modernly dissonant is speaking directly to the human sensitivity, the human heart and mind. Thus any human being on earth can appreciate and respond to it. Experience and taste dictate what one is likely to listen to but it is all available, silent or otherwise, to the human consciousness.
There can be no doubt about there being music in outer space and one day it will be recorded and heard if it hasn't been already by some curious scientist.
Music is melody, harmony and rhythm, the cranium, rib cage and pelvis, the thought, feeling and action, the root, stem and blossom of life.
One day a coworker heard me singing a Donovan song and, knowing I was an expert in classical music, wondered why I knew it. I said that I knew all kinds of songs, because I listen to all kinds of music. A music lover will. I love classical music. I also love jazz, blues, rock, country, blue grass, salsa, folk from all over the world. While some of the snobs around me were turning up their noses at Liberace, Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo, I was hearing them and finding something good in all of it.
A melody will make the emotions sing, the intricacies of harmonic progressions will fascinate the mind and rhythm will energize the spirit. Music is the language of life. It's the one true metalanguage. I love music.
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
AUTUMN QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?
Only 8 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
************************
Friday, October 1, 2010
Follow The Music
Art occurs at the point where a form is sincerely honored by awakened spirit.
Lawrence Durrell
***********************
Years ago I did a South African play. It was a true story about a young white doctor who had been arrested for political reasons, tortured and eventually executed. I was told he was the only white man to be executed by the South African government. I played the boy's father. He was a farmer/rancher who had moved from Kenya to South Africa.
The producer of the play had acquired a brief film of the real parents at their son's funeral. Thousand s of people of all races had shown up for the funeral and the parents were amazed. In the film clip they stand there for a few moments, then turn and walk away. The director wanted the actress and I to stand in front of the film and move when the two parents did, tricky business because we couldn't see the film.
Besides the producer, director and assistant director there were a number of African actors in the show. To my knowledge I had never worked with Africans before. They were impressive. I was particularly struck by the fact that the while Africans considered themselves Africans and not anything else. They were not transplanted Englishmen. Other than a shared language and empire they had no connection with Britain or The Netherlands or the culture of any other European nation. They were born and brought up in Africa. They were Africans, first and last.
I was also impressed by the music. It's very distinctive. African music is not Western Rock, it's folk music is not like American folk music. It has a very individual and unmistakable sound. Once you know African music you will immediately recognize it as such. Africans love their music.
Pondering the problem of how to find the cue for the movement away from the film we sat and watched it over again a few times. During the scene in which the film clip occurred there was no dialogue but there was a recording of a sad folk song sung by a group in a native language. After a few times through viewing the film I realized the song ran concurrently with the visual. It was exactly the same every time. Once more and I caught the exact phrase in the song where the movement came and said "I can take it from the music." "No. You can't do that" the director said. "It's too repetitive." "Let me try" I said. So the actress and I stood up while they ran the film and at the precise moment in the song I turned and we walked off just as the two peopl on the film did. The director was impressed.
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
WEEKEND PUZZLE
*******************
A'S UBAW' MB IXCWUO SG ZCG BR NAKAW'
AR MXCM CAWM OWBYUX
MXOW A'NN IXCWUO MXO ZCG
MXCM A DMVYM SG DMYRR.
'ICTDO WPFPLG ZCWMD GPY
ZXOW GPY'VO BNL CWL UVCG
MXOVO'NN FO DBSO IXCWUOD SCLO MBLCG.
Good luck
DB
*****************
Reprinted from May 13, 2010
In old age we are like a batch of letters someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.
Knut Hamsun
*******************
I'm a mad man. No, there's no doubt about it, I'm completely cracked; stark, shivering crazy. I've lost it.
Shakespeare calls old age "second chilishness." It is a theory that all babies are born insane and gradually grow into sanity and wisdom as they mature. I don't remember much about my babyhood but I'm of the opinion that it might be the other way around. I think it's possible that all babies are born completely sane and knowing everything which they can't articulate except to other babies and that they gradually grow to lose it in the carriages and play pens of the world. Imagine how frustrating it must be for a baby not being able to tell anyone what you know. It's enough to make you wet yur diaper and wake up in the middle of the night crying for no apparent reason.
Not having lived a normal life has taught me that there is no such thing. Being a wanderer has taught me that the only place anyone really lives is in his own head. And being an artist has taught me to gracefully let go of the ball and chain which is generally known to the world at large as common sense.
But being mad is a good healthy way to be as far as I can determine. I do illogical things. If I am on my way to the market I stop and feel the leaves of a tree or a bush. If I pass the kitchen sink I squeeze a little soap into the sponge and wash three dishes instead of the whole sink full. If anyone lived with me they would become exasperated at my behavior or else go mad themselves.
I say things no one understands. I know that, because every time I make a statement of pure, simplified wisdom it's met with a blank, uncomprehending stare. There's a small tree in front of the house. When I refer to it as "yonder wood" no one cares to know why.
When I find conservative nonsense and liberal grunting humorous people don't get it. But when I become fascinated by some obscure news item that doesn't make the papers or the TV news every day they just think I'm off the beaten path of life. Well, I am. I'm the crazy old loon who lives by himself in the attic, harmless in his madness. He listens to Wagner operas and reads philosophy. He's a total fruitcake.
The letters have been sent and read and the attempt to summarize the contents has taught me that there are no summations (which it also says in my Profile).
So what's left for an old crackpot to do? To what have I arrived? A certain benign orneriness, acceptance and refusal, an abiding sense of humor, willingness to face the fog and walk into it. I can now change my own diapers, if I wake up in the middle of the night the only thing I want to know is what time it is. I accept the fact that I will never have all the things in my playpen that I want. I refuse to get angry at any one but myself. I refuse to do today what I can put off to tomorrow. I don't follow the Phillies. I refuse to accept everything any authority tells me. I will think for myself and not worry about it if the thoughts come from the mind of a lunatic.
I refuse to be afraid of death. If you go to England you can visit the grave of Charles Dickens, but Dickens isn't there, he's still alive. If I could live my life all over again I would change almost everything. But would I then have something to summarize? I doubt it.
Being an actor has taught me that the world is a stage and the roles keep changing, but they are all masquerades. So I will set Sir Percival spinning, wash my hands and face in the words of some other old maniac's sink, play in my pen and enjoy, as much as possible, the role in which I have somehow cast myself.
DB - The Vagabond
Lawrence Durrell
***********************
Years ago I did a South African play. It was a true story about a young white doctor who had been arrested for political reasons, tortured and eventually executed. I was told he was the only white man to be executed by the South African government. I played the boy's father. He was a farmer/rancher who had moved from Kenya to South Africa.
The producer of the play had acquired a brief film of the real parents at their son's funeral. Thousand s of people of all races had shown up for the funeral and the parents were amazed. In the film clip they stand there for a few moments, then turn and walk away. The director wanted the actress and I to stand in front of the film and move when the two parents did, tricky business because we couldn't see the film.
Besides the producer, director and assistant director there were a number of African actors in the show. To my knowledge I had never worked with Africans before. They were impressive. I was particularly struck by the fact that the while Africans considered themselves Africans and not anything else. They were not transplanted Englishmen. Other than a shared language and empire they had no connection with Britain or The Netherlands or the culture of any other European nation. They were born and brought up in Africa. They were Africans, first and last.
I was also impressed by the music. It's very distinctive. African music is not Western Rock, it's folk music is not like American folk music. It has a very individual and unmistakable sound. Once you know African music you will immediately recognize it as such. Africans love their music.
Pondering the problem of how to find the cue for the movement away from the film we sat and watched it over again a few times. During the scene in which the film clip occurred there was no dialogue but there was a recording of a sad folk song sung by a group in a native language. After a few times through viewing the film I realized the song ran concurrently with the visual. It was exactly the same every time. Once more and I caught the exact phrase in the song where the movement came and said "I can take it from the music." "No. You can't do that" the director said. "It's too repetitive." "Let me try" I said. So the actress and I stood up while they ran the film and at the precise moment in the song I turned and we walked off just as the two peopl on the film did. The director was impressed.
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
WEEKEND PUZZLE
*******************
A'S UBAW' MB IXCWUO SG ZCG BR NAKAW'
AR MXCM CAWM OWBYUX
MXOW A'NN IXCWUO MXO ZCG
MXCM A DMVYM SG DMYRR.
'ICTDO WPFPLG ZCWMD GPY
ZXOW GPY'VO BNL CWL UVCG
MXOVO'NN FO DBSO IXCWUOD SCLO MBLCG.
Good luck
DB
*****************
Reprinted from May 13, 2010
In old age we are like a batch of letters someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.
Knut Hamsun
*******************
I'm a mad man. No, there's no doubt about it, I'm completely cracked; stark, shivering crazy. I've lost it.
Shakespeare calls old age "second chilishness." It is a theory that all babies are born insane and gradually grow into sanity and wisdom as they mature. I don't remember much about my babyhood but I'm of the opinion that it might be the other way around. I think it's possible that all babies are born completely sane and knowing everything which they can't articulate except to other babies and that they gradually grow to lose it in the carriages and play pens of the world. Imagine how frustrating it must be for a baby not being able to tell anyone what you know. It's enough to make you wet yur diaper and wake up in the middle of the night crying for no apparent reason.
Not having lived a normal life has taught me that there is no such thing. Being a wanderer has taught me that the only place anyone really lives is in his own head. And being an artist has taught me to gracefully let go of the ball and chain which is generally known to the world at large as common sense.
But being mad is a good healthy way to be as far as I can determine. I do illogical things. If I am on my way to the market I stop and feel the leaves of a tree or a bush. If I pass the kitchen sink I squeeze a little soap into the sponge and wash three dishes instead of the whole sink full. If anyone lived with me they would become exasperated at my behavior or else go mad themselves.
I say things no one understands. I know that, because every time I make a statement of pure, simplified wisdom it's met with a blank, uncomprehending stare. There's a small tree in front of the house. When I refer to it as "yonder wood" no one cares to know why.
When I find conservative nonsense and liberal grunting humorous people don't get it. But when I become fascinated by some obscure news item that doesn't make the papers or the TV news every day they just think I'm off the beaten path of life. Well, I am. I'm the crazy old loon who lives by himself in the attic, harmless in his madness. He listens to Wagner operas and reads philosophy. He's a total fruitcake.
The letters have been sent and read and the attempt to summarize the contents has taught me that there are no summations (which it also says in my Profile).
So what's left for an old crackpot to do? To what have I arrived? A certain benign orneriness, acceptance and refusal, an abiding sense of humor, willingness to face the fog and walk into it. I can now change my own diapers, if I wake up in the middle of the night the only thing I want to know is what time it is. I accept the fact that I will never have all the things in my playpen that I want. I refuse to get angry at any one but myself. I refuse to do today what I can put off to tomorrow. I don't follow the Phillies. I refuse to accept everything any authority tells me. I will think for myself and not worry about it if the thoughts come from the mind of a lunatic.
I refuse to be afraid of death. If you go to England you can visit the grave of Charles Dickens, but Dickens isn't there, he's still alive. If I could live my life all over again I would change almost everything. But would I then have something to summarize? I doubt it.
Being an actor has taught me that the world is a stage and the roles keep changing, but they are all masquerades. So I will set Sir Percival spinning, wash my hands and face in the words of some other old maniac's sink, play in my pen and enjoy, as much as possible, the role in which I have somehow cast myself.
DB - The Vagabond
Saturday, September 18, 2010
By The Brook
Music owes as much to Bach as any religion does to its founder.
Robert Schumann
********************
If you want to know what nature does go into the forest, sit by a brook, watch and listen.
Most people who have ever read Vagabond Journeys are not classical music lovers. That's a shame and a condition I wish I could change. Don't mistake me. There is nothing wrong with preferring country music, folk, rock or jazz. I enjoy the best of those kinds of music myself. But I was blessed with an ear for concert music and opera when I was very young.
There are and were many inspired composers. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, Wagner (a particular favorite of mine), Strauss, Stravinsky, just to name a few, were all inspired composers.
Johann Sebastian Bach was not one of them. Bach was beyond inspiration. He was music. Music issued forth out of him like breath. Every serious music student has sat with Bach, watched and listened to him describe music effortlessly. They have analyzed his chorals and fugues. And at last the music they make is traced right back to the source.
Someone estimated that if you sat down with a ball point pen and printed music paper just to copy all the music that Bach wrote and worked at it 7 hours a day, 5 days a week it would take about 40 years. And Bach did it with an ink well, a quill pen, in a house full of kids, with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Plus he had a fill time job as choir director and organist at the cathedral.
And the music? It's astonishing. Crystal clear, beautiful, grand and never repeats itself. He was gifted, that's certain. But more than that he was a gift to the entire world.
If nothing else one should hear the opening section of the B minor mass. It's a long 4 part fugue for chorus and orchestra. It lasts 10 to 12 minutes depending on who's conducting (I suggest van Karajan). And the chorus only repeats the two opening words: Kyrie Eleison. Bach was not a Catholic and the Mass was written at various times but altogether it is a work of pure genius. If you want other suggestions, ask me.
"Bach" is the German word for "brook."
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
WEEKEND PUZZLE
Let us now praise middle names.
These are the middle names of some famous and infamous wh dwellers.
Who are they?
ABRAM
ALAN
CLARK
DAVID
EARL
GAMALIEL
HENRY
HOWARD
KNOX
RUDOLPH
SIMPSON
WALKER
WILSON
Good luck
DB
*************************
Robert Schumann
********************
If you want to know what nature does go into the forest, sit by a brook, watch and listen.
Most people who have ever read Vagabond Journeys are not classical music lovers. That's a shame and a condition I wish I could change. Don't mistake me. There is nothing wrong with preferring country music, folk, rock or jazz. I enjoy the best of those kinds of music myself. But I was blessed with an ear for concert music and opera when I was very young.
There are and were many inspired composers. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, Wagner (a particular favorite of mine), Strauss, Stravinsky, just to name a few, were all inspired composers.
Johann Sebastian Bach was not one of them. Bach was beyond inspiration. He was music. Music issued forth out of him like breath. Every serious music student has sat with Bach, watched and listened to him describe music effortlessly. They have analyzed his chorals and fugues. And at last the music they make is traced right back to the source.
Someone estimated that if you sat down with a ball point pen and printed music paper just to copy all the music that Bach wrote and worked at it 7 hours a day, 5 days a week it would take about 40 years. And Bach did it with an ink well, a quill pen, in a house full of kids, with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Plus he had a fill time job as choir director and organist at the cathedral.
And the music? It's astonishing. Crystal clear, beautiful, grand and never repeats itself. He was gifted, that's certain. But more than that he was a gift to the entire world.
If nothing else one should hear the opening section of the B minor mass. It's a long 4 part fugue for chorus and orchestra. It lasts 10 to 12 minutes depending on who's conducting (I suggest van Karajan). And the chorus only repeats the two opening words: Kyrie Eleison. Bach was not a Catholic and the Mass was written at various times but altogether it is a work of pure genius. If you want other suggestions, ask me.
"Bach" is the German word for "brook."
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
WEEKEND PUZZLE
Let us now praise middle names.
These are the middle names of some famous and infamous wh dwellers.
Who are they?
ABRAM
ALAN
CLARK
DAVID
EARL
GAMALIEL
HENRY
HOWARD
KNOX
RUDOLPH
SIMPSON
WALKER
WILSON
Good luck
DB
*************************
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Joy Of Music, The Music Of Joy
The only obstacle to realeasing joy is the unwillingness to express love for someone or something.
Arnold Patent
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I was doing a play in central Massachusetts one summer. A friend in New Hampshire, David, who had heard me on the radio but had never seen me perform on the stage drove down to see it. After the performance we went out for a beer with a few of the cast. David jokingly said "I don't know how much they're paying you but it's too much because you're having too much fun."
One of the silliest things some directors will say, at the end of the rehearsal period when there's nothing left but to perform it, is "Have fun with it." Of course, unless it's a stupid play, in which case it probably wouldn't be done, or unless the director has messed it up, we are going to have fun with it. We enjoy the work. If we didn't we wouldn't do it because it's very difficult, if it's done right.
Over the years I have tried to share my love of music and my joy in hearing it. I don't understand why people who can enjoy popular music run and hide when a concert of classical music is about to happen. I have tried, oh how I've tried, to get friends interested in opera and orchestral music. They are usually polite but unresposive.
I have a preference for classical music, of course, but that's mainly because it stretches over a period of 600 years. I started out as an opera lover, but gradually my ears and my head opened up to include all kinds of music and I soon realized that's what a true music lover does. I was a Beatles fan at the same time I was a Beethoven fan. I remember one day amazing a young woman when I started to sing "Fist there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." She was surprised that I knew about Donovan. "Of course I do" I said.
Today I enjoy jazz, rock, folk, country. I even have a distant relative who was a country music entertainer, Dr. Humphrey Bate and his Possum Hunters. Google them if you don't believe me.
It's a question of developing a taste for quality and expression. Some friends and I went to the Newport Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall one year. Some of the world's best musicians came and jammed through one song for hours. Davis, Gillespie, Mulligan, Garner (one of my favorites) A rock musician who is a master guitarist is a joy to hear. I remember seeing and hearing a duet played by George Harrison and Eric Clapton, Their differences were not apparent in their music, or maybe it was resolved in the music. I came of age during the folk music revival when there was Pete Seeger and the Weavers, Joni Mitchell, Jesse Winchester, The Dillards. Country Music was taught to me by a former girl friend and I learned to love Doc Watson, Vassar Clements. I used to live in Inwood, which is the northern tip of Manhattan Island. When I crossed Broadway I was in Little Dominica, my bank was over there. On the way there was a music store. In the good weather the owner put out a speaker on which he played Salsa music. Salsa if you don't know it is music of joy and life. I loved to stop and listen along with the local folks. The late, great Tito Puente was a graduate of Julliard School, which meant he analyzed Bach fugues, composed traditional music, learned to play percussion and to conduct before he graduated.
I have written before about one of the most exciting concerts I ever was fortunate enough to attend. It was in the band shell, Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center, New York. where I saw and heard Percy Sledge and the Uptown Brass. It was an hour of pure love and joy. I will never forget it.
So, with all this great music around why do people shy away, get tight lipped and start looking for their coats to get away from classical music, why are they intimidated by it, or why do they think it's boring and not for them? It's music after all. "I don't understand it." If you listened to the Berg Lyric Suite as often as you listen to the Rolling Stones you would come to understand it and like it. If you knew the Bach B minor Mass, Mozart's Don Giovanni, the late Beethoven String Quartets, Wagner's Parsifal, the Shostakovich Symphony No. 5, Stravinski's Rite of Spring and Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, just to name a few, you would know music like I know music.
"So much of that modern stuff just sounds like a lot of noise." It's only noise because you are not hearing what you expect to hear and so not hearing what's there. I wouldn't subject you to Webern, Berio, Stockhousen or Carter before you're ready but I can promise you once you have broken down the obstacles you have erected for yourself between you and any form of new and old music a whole world of expression, fascination, entertainment and joy will open up.
I love music, and that is one of the main sources of joy for me.
Dana Bate
The Vagabond
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?
Only 6 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
********************
Arnold Patent
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I was doing a play in central Massachusetts one summer. A friend in New Hampshire, David, who had heard me on the radio but had never seen me perform on the stage drove down to see it. After the performance we went out for a beer with a few of the cast. David jokingly said "I don't know how much they're paying you but it's too much because you're having too much fun."
One of the silliest things some directors will say, at the end of the rehearsal period when there's nothing left but to perform it, is "Have fun with it." Of course, unless it's a stupid play, in which case it probably wouldn't be done, or unless the director has messed it up, we are going to have fun with it. We enjoy the work. If we didn't we wouldn't do it because it's very difficult, if it's done right.
Over the years I have tried to share my love of music and my joy in hearing it. I don't understand why people who can enjoy popular music run and hide when a concert of classical music is about to happen. I have tried, oh how I've tried, to get friends interested in opera and orchestral music. They are usually polite but unresposive.
I have a preference for classical music, of course, but that's mainly because it stretches over a period of 600 years. I started out as an opera lover, but gradually my ears and my head opened up to include all kinds of music and I soon realized that's what a true music lover does. I was a Beatles fan at the same time I was a Beethoven fan. I remember one day amazing a young woman when I started to sing "Fist there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." She was surprised that I knew about Donovan. "Of course I do" I said.
Today I enjoy jazz, rock, folk, country. I even have a distant relative who was a country music entertainer, Dr. Humphrey Bate and his Possum Hunters. Google them if you don't believe me.
It's a question of developing a taste for quality and expression. Some friends and I went to the Newport Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall one year. Some of the world's best musicians came and jammed through one song for hours. Davis, Gillespie, Mulligan, Garner (one of my favorites) A rock musician who is a master guitarist is a joy to hear. I remember seeing and hearing a duet played by George Harrison and Eric Clapton, Their differences were not apparent in their music, or maybe it was resolved in the music. I came of age during the folk music revival when there was Pete Seeger and the Weavers, Joni Mitchell, Jesse Winchester, The Dillards. Country Music was taught to me by a former girl friend and I learned to love Doc Watson, Vassar Clements. I used to live in Inwood, which is the northern tip of Manhattan Island. When I crossed Broadway I was in Little Dominica, my bank was over there. On the way there was a music store. In the good weather the owner put out a speaker on which he played Salsa music. Salsa if you don't know it is music of joy and life. I loved to stop and listen along with the local folks. The late, great Tito Puente was a graduate of Julliard School, which meant he analyzed Bach fugues, composed traditional music, learned to play percussion and to conduct before he graduated.
I have written before about one of the most exciting concerts I ever was fortunate enough to attend. It was in the band shell, Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center, New York. where I saw and heard Percy Sledge and the Uptown Brass. It was an hour of pure love and joy. I will never forget it.
So, with all this great music around why do people shy away, get tight lipped and start looking for their coats to get away from classical music, why are they intimidated by it, or why do they think it's boring and not for them? It's music after all. "I don't understand it." If you listened to the Berg Lyric Suite as often as you listen to the Rolling Stones you would come to understand it and like it. If you knew the Bach B minor Mass, Mozart's Don Giovanni, the late Beethoven String Quartets, Wagner's Parsifal, the Shostakovich Symphony No. 5, Stravinski's Rite of Spring and Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht, just to name a few, you would know music like I know music.
"So much of that modern stuff just sounds like a lot of noise." It's only noise because you are not hearing what you expect to hear and so not hearing what's there. I wouldn't subject you to Webern, Berio, Stockhousen or Carter before you're ready but I can promise you once you have broken down the obstacles you have erected for yourself between you and any form of new and old music a whole world of expression, fascination, entertainment and joy will open up.
I love music, and that is one of the main sources of joy for me.
Dana Bate
The Vagabond
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?
Only 6 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
********************
Monday, December 28, 2009
Mind's Halftime
There is an unlimited universe of mentality about which most of us know almost nothing.
DB - The Vagabond
******************
One day, years ago, I was talking with a commercial airline pilot. He spoke of the difficulties of piloting a plane, particularly a large commercial jet. He said that the taking off and landing procedures were tricky maneuvers, especially landing. I asked him why landing was more difficult than taking off or flying. He explained that the aircraft was designed to fly. Flying is something it does very well. When you land it you are coaxing it to do something it wasn't necessarily designed to do.
It was in the 40's here today. For the first time in many days I could open the window and let some fresh air into my apartment. Relieving my stuffy apartment reminded me at how stuffed up my mind can get sometimes. My mind was designed to think, not to stop thinking. But sometimes I want to blow the whistle and say "Time out. Halftime. Stop!"
In the intellectual race between the tortoise and the hare I am definitely the tortoise. I admire people who can quickly grasp a concept and start applying it. That's not me. I plod through books as if they were written in a language I only vaguely understand. I don't read books. I eat them.
But while digesting the morsels of information contained in the wide variety of literature I read I now and then come across something that could be called knowledge. "Ay, there's the rub." Whenever that happens my own mind kicks in and I start thinking (heaven forbid).
Knowledge comes to us in two ways. Most of us know what we know because it was passed along to us by those who received it from someone else, and so on. And the further back that passing comes from the more venerated that knowledge is. It is known as "wisdom." But is it? Every once in a while someone will kick that "received wisdom" in the butt and come up with a more enlightened understanding of the information, and thus obtain more information, more knowledge.
In the case of music, for example, Mozart and Beethoven both bit their thumbs at the conventional modes of composing, and thank goodness they did. That same irreverence has happened in all areas of life and on all continents. But then it becomes received wisdom which then must be passed along in it's turn. We study harmony and counterpoint not to learn how to write music but to learn how music has been written up to the moment.
What is it that allows, prompts someone to turn away from this hand-me-down knowledge and find a newer understanding of things? It's inspiration. Inspiration doesn't come from books or teaching. Those things can inspire us to seek out what has been uncovered in our own thoughts. But it isn't until those things are articulated by us that they have any reality or existence except as microchips of the brain, a nice gift tucked away on the shelf. When they are articulated a channel begins to open up for more understanding, more inspiration, more wisdom. When you get to the point where you are wondering where all this "good stuff" is coming from you are on the door step of realizing the infinity of mentality. The middle men of books, teachers, Internet search programs and received knowledge are dispensed with or take an appropriate seat at the back. When you reach that state of enlightenment do what the sages do. Take a break. But not a long one. Halftime only. Absorb what you've done, what's happened to you, what it means, and then go back to work.
DB -The Vagabond
DB - The Vagabond
******************
One day, years ago, I was talking with a commercial airline pilot. He spoke of the difficulties of piloting a plane, particularly a large commercial jet. He said that the taking off and landing procedures were tricky maneuvers, especially landing. I asked him why landing was more difficult than taking off or flying. He explained that the aircraft was designed to fly. Flying is something it does very well. When you land it you are coaxing it to do something it wasn't necessarily designed to do.
It was in the 40's here today. For the first time in many days I could open the window and let some fresh air into my apartment. Relieving my stuffy apartment reminded me at how stuffed up my mind can get sometimes. My mind was designed to think, not to stop thinking. But sometimes I want to blow the whistle and say "Time out. Halftime. Stop!"
In the intellectual race between the tortoise and the hare I am definitely the tortoise. I admire people who can quickly grasp a concept and start applying it. That's not me. I plod through books as if they were written in a language I only vaguely understand. I don't read books. I eat them.
But while digesting the morsels of information contained in the wide variety of literature I read I now and then come across something that could be called knowledge. "Ay, there's the rub." Whenever that happens my own mind kicks in and I start thinking (heaven forbid).
Knowledge comes to us in two ways. Most of us know what we know because it was passed along to us by those who received it from someone else, and so on. And the further back that passing comes from the more venerated that knowledge is. It is known as "wisdom." But is it? Every once in a while someone will kick that "received wisdom" in the butt and come up with a more enlightened understanding of the information, and thus obtain more information, more knowledge.
In the case of music, for example, Mozart and Beethoven both bit their thumbs at the conventional modes of composing, and thank goodness they did. That same irreverence has happened in all areas of life and on all continents. But then it becomes received wisdom which then must be passed along in it's turn. We study harmony and counterpoint not to learn how to write music but to learn how music has been written up to the moment.
What is it that allows, prompts someone to turn away from this hand-me-down knowledge and find a newer understanding of things? It's inspiration. Inspiration doesn't come from books or teaching. Those things can inspire us to seek out what has been uncovered in our own thoughts. But it isn't until those things are articulated by us that they have any reality or existence except as microchips of the brain, a nice gift tucked away on the shelf. When they are articulated a channel begins to open up for more understanding, more inspiration, more wisdom. When you get to the point where you are wondering where all this "good stuff" is coming from you are on the door step of realizing the infinity of mentality. The middle men of books, teachers, Internet search programs and received knowledge are dispensed with or take an appropriate seat at the back. When you reach that state of enlightenment do what the sages do. Take a break. But not a long one. Halftime only. Absorb what you've done, what's happened to you, what it means, and then go back to work.
DB -The Vagabond
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Xenophilic Xylograph 11/11/08
Music is a fantastic peace keeper of the world.
Xun Zi
# # # # # # # # #
Everywhere you go in the world there is music. It is almost as ubiquitous as water and just as necessary. Symphony Orchestras play everywhere, even in the Arctic, there are opera companies all over the world, string quartets are playing somewhere right now. There are jazz bands, rock bands, club singers, country singers, folk singers. There's a kid somewhere right now learning to play his violin, his trumpet or his guitar. There's an Indian playing his sitar, and African playing his flute, a Scotsman playing his pipes, a church organist learning a new piece.
Even if two people can't understand each other's languages or enjoy each other's food they can make music together. There is a large but finite number of tones that the human ear can hear. There is a constantly evolving amount of sounds that can be made from those tones. And there's an endless number of ways that compositions can be made and played. I would wager my tuba (if I had one) that if we ever do discover a planer with a civilization of "alien" creatures on it, they will have music.
The daft thing is that there is so much music in the world we tend to take it for granted. As a music lover I have always been astonished at it. Even if I can't hear the tones, just siting and reading a musical score is an adventure,
There are many ways to declare peace in the world. Music is not the only one. But it is definitely one of them if governments would start giving it the respect it deserves.
DB
Xun Zi
# # # # # # # # #
Everywhere you go in the world there is music. It is almost as ubiquitous as water and just as necessary. Symphony Orchestras play everywhere, even in the Arctic, there are opera companies all over the world, string quartets are playing somewhere right now. There are jazz bands, rock bands, club singers, country singers, folk singers. There's a kid somewhere right now learning to play his violin, his trumpet or his guitar. There's an Indian playing his sitar, and African playing his flute, a Scotsman playing his pipes, a church organist learning a new piece.
Even if two people can't understand each other's languages or enjoy each other's food they can make music together. There is a large but finite number of tones that the human ear can hear. There is a constantly evolving amount of sounds that can be made from those tones. And there's an endless number of ways that compositions can be made and played. I would wager my tuba (if I had one) that if we ever do discover a planer with a civilization of "alien" creatures on it, they will have music.
The daft thing is that there is so much music in the world we tend to take it for granted. As a music lover I have always been astonished at it. Even if I can't hear the tones, just siting and reading a musical score is an adventure,
There are many ways to declare peace in the world. Music is not the only one. But it is definitely one of them if governments would start giving it the respect it deserves.
DB
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