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Be ye resolved
I rarely make New Year's resolutions for the simple reason that I usually give up on them right away. This year I mainly have action categories such as things to do before February and things to do before April 15.
But a few notions sound doable:
- Complete the reading of F. Marion Crawford's oeuvre.
- Read more Anthony Trollope and George Meredith.
- Study Haydn and Hovhaness symphonies in greater depth.
- Try to compose a symphony of my own.
- Find something meaningful to say about the writings of Denis Diderot, Lawrence Stern, and Thomas Love Peacock.
- Write an essay on Herbert Spencer's metaethics.
- Find my notes on rights theory.
- Compose several radically different types of fiction.
- Learn more about salamanders; give up on using salamander as the plural as well as the singular.
You'll notice nothing like clean office and keep it clean or lose weight. Boring resolutions, and probably hopeless.
Gunshots went off. It's New Year's day, 2005.
Designations | January 1, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Sing a song of suicide
Wandering through a discount store today, I heard in 15 minutes more Country and Western music than I want to hear in a year. Perhaps if just one element were merely present, I wouldn't object. But the lackwit twang in the voice, the ever-present echo of a hangdog whine, the obsession with failed sexual relationships, and the persistent low-brow focus on the White Trash Side of Life (good title for one of those songs, actually) got to me. After just a few songs. If I worked in that store, I'd probably be suicidal in a week, if not sooner.
Several notches up the evolutionary ladder, I recently have had occasion to reacquaint myself with the music of Nirvana. I'm not a big fan, but several of the songs seem fine to me. Still, the late Mr. Cobain's voice is not one that I'd willingly spend listening to hour after hour. And the simplicity of the music was not its best feature. If you don't like motivic repetition without development, then rock is not for you.
Happily, there was a cure for all this. A kind gentleman in England sent me a gift of an unpublished recording of some music by Alan Hovhaness. So now I have heard his Opus 2, Monadnock. I have also heard something later and much more impressive, Hovhaness's Medidation on Zeami.
Call off the suicide watch; Hovhaness is back on my CD changer.
Designations | January 1, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
When I was seven
. . . I drew better than I wrote. Example:
The caption to this classic drawing is, well, a sign that pedantry can go very wrong:
The Brontosausis [sic] is the bigiest [sic] Dinosaurus peole [sic] say[,] but it's not true.
The Blue Whale is the bigiest [sic] thing on Earth. The Blue Whale is the water thing.
I confess: between wincing at the bad logic in my misguided classification attempt and at the bad spellings, I find a moment to smile at the term the water thing.
Oh, and apparently the blue whale of my imagination is not baleen. No toothless giants for me!
Designations | January 2, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Trying to take spam seriously
I've been a spam-scare skeptic from the beginning. The people on USENET and listserves who most loudly complained about spam were given to hysterical denunciation that was often more offensive than the spam, cross-posting, trolling, etc, that they objected to.
When spam became an email issue, in general, I remained skeptical. My point has been that the chief threat and danger of spam is in our reaction to it. It's an unfortunate side-effect of a neat, easy-to-use-technology, and our reaction should be to use our technology with a little more sophistication.
Of course, some aspects of the problem are vexing. I don't like it that some spammers go that extra mile and use viruses to infect ordinary users' computers and, commandeering those computers, send out more messages. This should obviously be a crime.
Of course, it is Windows users who are infected. Not old Mac users like me, not new Mac users, and not (I think) Linux users. Just Windows users. The most heinous aspect of spam is largely the result of how one company's shoddy products encourage criminal misuse.
When CAN-SPAM, the anti-spam legislation came out, I remained a skeptic. For a number of reasons. I'm afraid one is that I just don't think spam that big a deal. For instance, most people who've complained to me about spam have never done even the obvious thing of implementing a set of filters on their email. So, CAN-SPAM strikes me as on par with a federal law against burglary that was enacted after complaints from people who leave the keys to their houses under the front mat.
Perhaps I've been cavalier. The current article from the Washington Post quotes some guy as saying that the law, "as a law," is "pretty well written." Hmmmm.
Spam has increased this year despite the law, the article says. I guess so. I may notice one or two more messges per day that I must throw away. Big deal.
But then, I throw away huge chunks of non-spam email — listserve messages that I only skim for subject-line matter. I'm in the habit of throwing stuff away. (A year ago I probably read more spam than I do today. Out of curiosity. My curiosity has fallen. But hey: my deleting habits haven't changed that much. And it is as easy to select four emails to delete as it is one. It's almost as easy to delete 99 emails as it is to delete nine.)
To others, who think that everything that drops in their direction must be manna from heaven, look at their computers' trash cans and recyle bins very differently.
And perhaps if I used a Windows PC, my attitude would be a bit different. Not surprisingly, a year after CAN-SPAM, I'm still quite happy to be a Mac user.
Designations | January 3, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
The conservatives, at bottom
...are warmongers. Or at least, when attacked, lose every semblance of critical capacity and become statist patriots who want to shoot all dissenters.
That's what I felt about conservatives as a boy. I've never had any good reason to mistrust this impression. I've never trusted conservatives. American conservatives will give up any principle when attacked, and then urge, almost immediately, a move to total war. American conservatism is Roman anti-Carthaginian malice all over again. It is imperialistic at base. And it is vengeful at heart.
For this reason, when Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard preached their goofy paleolibertarianism a decade and a half ago, I was not merely unimpressed, I was disgusted. These people, I thought. They are utterly clueless about the nature of the ideology they now cavort with!
Now Lew Rockwell comes 'round nearly 180 degrees. In The Reality of Red-State Fascism, he tries to come to terms with the rabid war mentality that afflicts conservatives throughout the nation, but especially in the red states.
I think he misinterprets the Class of 1994. And the Oklahoma City bombing. The would-be revolution of 1994 was indeed a reaction to a perceived liberalism in (read: socialism lite of) Bill Clinton. But the movement itself failed because it attacked Big Government in the wrong order. It was an ordinal value problem (so to speak). In America, just as it took Nixon to go to China, it took Clinton to sanctify welfare cut-backs. The Class of 1994, on the other hand, made too much of attacking welfare, while leaving welfare for the rich unspoken of. If the Republican so-called revolutionaries had attacked the main institutions of corporate graft and subsidy, they could have gone on to bigger things. But nope. The dopes were in pocket to corporations, I suspect, or simply clueless about American opinion. And, as such, deserved to lose. Of course, Americans didn't deserve to have their anti-government sentiments so quickly betrayed by folly. As for the Oklahoma City bombing, well, anti-government rhetoric was besmirched by that. The fact that McVeigh called himself a libertarian (so I understand) meant that those who leaned libertarian certainly had to proceed cautiously! Between the Fools of 1994 and the Foolish Knave of 1995, libertarian culture had major setbacks.
It's good to see Rockwell speak against hate, and quote Mises against hate and for tolerance, and against the cultural anti-bohemianism that is part of the heart of conservative backlash. This amounts to an utter repudiation of paleo-ism, and that's fine with me. Quoting a Nation article arguing that patriotism can be less martial, Rockwell does go all the way:
Ten years ago, these were right wing sentiments; today the right regards them as treasonous. What should this teach us? It shows that those who saw the interests of liberty as being well served by the politicized proxies of free enterprise alone, family alone, Christianity alone, law and order alone, were profoundly mistaken. There is no proxy for liberty, no cause that serves as a viable substitute, and no movement by any name whose success can yield freedom in our time other than the movement of freedom itself. We need to embrace liberty and liberty only, and not be fooled by groups or parties or movements that only desire a temporary liberty to advance their pet interests.
I am basically in agreement, though I note that politics is often about the forming of alliances. Any alliance is dangerous. But in politics, without them, often nothing happens.
So: does the go-it-alone/stick-to-freedom-alone strategy simply doom us to keep liberty forever as a utopian dream, rather than a realistic alternative? The making alliances with statists seems to corrupt libertarians and forever bolster up the state. This is to be caught between a rock and the abyss.
Designations | January 4, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
A suggested amendment to the U.S. Constitution
We call our representatives to U.S. Congress our leaders, but this may have it backwards. Instead, they are our children, our wards, and we must provide them limits as guidance.
They need term limits, for one. They need to know whom there masters are. It's We, the people. Ostensibly. So why allow them to determine their own pay? Let's amend the Constitution, let's hear it for XXVIII!
1. The Senators and Representatives shall not receive any form of Compensation for their Services from the federal government of the United States. The Senators and Representatives, being representatives of the several states, shall each be paid by his or her own state, according to the laws of said states.
2. No state law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened. [Upholds the most recent amendment, number XXVII]
3. Expenses for travel, and for retirement pensions, are also the sole responsibility of each state to its own representatives, with the exception of travel in time of declared war, until truce renders such authority to compensate void.
This would do some interesting things. It would allow varying compensation for the same job, which I think is important. The representatives work for different employers, and as such equal pay for equal work does not apply, since said slogan is an unjust overstatement when applied to different organizations, each facing different demand and supply schedules (so to speak).
Most importantly, it would take their own compensation out of their hands, and limit, somewhat, a mercenary element now firmly embedded in the current system. Represenatives are said to be public servants. This amendment would reinforce the old notion.
Designations | January 5, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
E-flat horn
In band, years ago, the rare score would require me to swap out a coil of tubing for an E-flat crook on my French horn, to play music for the E-flat horn. I did this dutifully, never thinking much about it. My beloved, vexing French horn, you see, was in F.
Today I listened to Paul Hindemith's 1943 Sonata for Alto Horn and Piano. And I realized that I had no memory of the term alto horn. So I looked it up. It's a vertical horn of the tuba family, apparently. It looks like a baritone tuba, just a little smaller. I wonder if it uses the French horn's lip-killer mouthpiece. (My best references are at the office, and I'm home now.)
The recording of Hindemith's work that I listened to (entitled Paul Hindemith: Horn Chamber Music) features Hans Dullaert. The liner notes make no mention whether an actual Alto horn is used, or a French horn with an E-flat crook. (By the way, we called them crooks in band, but a better term is probably out there. Valve? Extension?) I've no idea whether I'm hearing an actual alto horn or a fake one.
Whatever it is, Paul Hindemith's music for it is quite wonderful. I rank Hindemith's Alto horn sonata as one of his best wind sonatas, right up there with the clarinet and flute sonatas. It's a masterpiece. And this recording, which includes a great sonata for four horns and the wondrous Kleine Kammermusik, is certainly a gem.
Oh, one day in grade school I dropped my horn onto the gym floor, right before a concert. Big dent. You know what that made it? Not an E-flat horn, oh, no. A Flat Horn.
Designations | January 8, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
A trilogy divided against itself
I tend to have strong opinions. About all sorts of things. Including sentence fragments.
But mostly I have strong opinions on art and politics. I note, for instance, that in neither domain is there an agreed-upon public standard to settle disputes.
So, though I have strong opinions, I hope I don't come across as a belligerant, autocratic dictator who brooks no disagreement. I hope I don't come across like this guy:
Seriously, any critic who goes into raptures over either Kill Bill movie should be banned from the profession for life . . . and that goes double if they simultaneously attack The Passion of the Christ for being ultra-violent.
Well, I guess he's into hyperbole. (Seriously being the clue that he's not being serious, or literal. Flip, figurative. Like clearly in law, which stands for I'm pulling this from out of my . . . ) But still, the sentiment behind the nonsense is that it makes no sense to praise Kill Bill but disapprove of The Passion. Which makes sense on the subject of violence, you might think . . . but the use of violence in the Gibson effort is remarkably distinct from that of Tarantino. The censoriousness is a tad overdone.
Now, I liked both films. Trouble is, as every critic and his barking dog sidekick has mentioned, it's almost impossible to criticize the movie alone. One comes to the story like an Athenian of ancient times came to a tragedy: knowing the story, but interested in seeing what was done with it, and hoping to be moved by the novelty, by the personal take, the element that binds ancient stories together.
I judged the film quite good, but oddly unmoving. We don't know this Yeshua who's being punished so harshly, so we've no context to empathize with him other than the context we bring from outside the story. And that may be to demand too much of the audience, to rely too heavily on a set opinion on the gospels. Would Sophocles have done this? (I don't know, which is why I asked the question.)
My thoughts on the film, after exiting the theater, was not that it was a bad film, but that it should have been a sequel in a two- or three-part movie sequence. Kill Jesus, Vol. 2, perhaps. Then it could have affected me more deeply. Kill Jesus, Vol. 1 could have started out with Herod meeting the astrologers from the East, and then deciding to kill the first-born under his rule. Cut to the astrologers and a young Judean couple parting, the couple and their newborn son leaving for Egypt. Cut to carnage of mass baby slaughter. Roll credits. Then do a good run-through of the gospels, with some attention to Roman and Jewish objections to (and plotting against) Jesus, culminating with the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus, and the expectation, at a Passover supper, of a coming revolution. With a concluding conversation with Judah, I mean Judas.
Actually, I thought of something like this at the time, but not as trivialized by the Kill title. A good gospel retelling would be welcome. For, as scattered and incoherent as the gospels sometime seem, they tell one of the most important and fascinating stories ever told. An Amish/Greek/Latin/Hebrew-language film dealing with those amazing, pre-Diaspora times, about a failed/transformed revolution, would be fascinating. Unfortunately, most previous versions are terrible. Were I a pious filmmaker, I'd have done a Peter Jackson, and have filmed three movies simultaneously:
- The Mission of the Christ
- The Passion of the Christ
- The Ascension of the Christ and the Descent of the Dove
The first would have been a mystery amidst violence and the threat of violence. What was Jesus up to? It is obvious, at least from the gospel of Mark, that his disciples were pretty puzzled. They understandably expecting something else. Play that angle up. The Mission would be a mystery, and end with a mystery rite, cryptically.
The second would be pretty much as Gibson made it, only now we'd know the man being tortured, and begin to understand the reasons for it. (The appearance of Satan, though brilliantly conceived, might be cut. Why? It's nowhere in gospels. Gibson, untrue to the text, takes away a comforting angel and puts in the devil. Yup, there's a literalist for you!)
The third would be one of sorrow leading to triumph. It would begin with the disciples and friends and family of Jesus in utter disarray. Then Jesus would mysteriously appear. And then ascend. And then, after some more fretting and waiting and doubt, the Pentacost would take place, with the disciples talking to everyone in a multitude of languages, preaching. And it would end with a disciple talking fervently, straight into camera, speaking in English. What would he be saying? Why, the basic Christian idea, of the Atonement. The gospel. The good news.
I'm suggesting a very pious movie. But intelligently done. Why not? Why shouldn't one of the world's great religions have its basic story put onto film? I mean, it would be better than taking some Jesus Movement scholar's version and presenting it. The religious version should be fascinating, if in no small part because the stories themselves are fascinating.
Would it also be anti-Semitic? Well, to be true to the texts would mean some anti-Semitism. Live with it, folks. (hose Christians and non-Christians who insist that the texts be expunged of anti-Semitism strike me as utterly whacked. But then, I think classic works should not be bowdlerized. A whole lot of other people are censors at heart.
If you think the gospels are immorally anti-Semitic, then convert to Zorastrianism or Judaism or Atenism or something, just don't call yourself a Christian. Why believe some of it if all isn't True? And if you aren't a Christian, and you are carping about Christian teaching, don't pretend to be a friendly : you are criticizing another religion. Take a stand and don't be wishy-washy. And don't get upset when they criticize you.
Religious discourse these days is so circumscribed on all sides by hypocrisy and double-standards and tippy-toe care. It's disgusting. Few really can take actual debate. On all sides the sub-philosophic and the sub-religious seems to be the way of the world. I spit them out of my mouth. There. I've said something unduly extreme. I can sign off now.
Of course, I also think the Toldoth Jesu should be filmed!
Designations | January 9, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Tonality and other grave matters
I have improvised at the piano, at the horn, at the kantele, and at other instruments, for years. I've composed a few pieces. Music is almost constantly swirling in my head, much of it new. I am fascinated by harmony and counterpoint. The relationship between melody and harmony is of enduring interest. The innovations to traditional harmony, especially as wrought by Stravinsky, Bartok, Milhaud, Tcherepnin, Hindemith and their ilk have long fascinated me. I've imitated them, and (more often) used their innovations as permission to freely experiment. And yet through all of this, I've never much been interested in atonality. To me, Hindemith had it about right:
Tonality is a natural force, like gravity. Indeed, when we consider that the root of a chord, because of its most favorable vibration-ratio to the other tones, and the lowest tone of a chord, because of the actually greater dimension and weight of its wave, have greater importance than the other tones, we recognize at once that it is gravitation itself that draws the tones towards their roots and towards the bass line, and that relates a multiplicity of chords to the strongest among them.
Well, not gravity itself, I'm pretty sure. But something very much like gravity.
What I've most noticed about chords is the functional nature of dissonance. If a chord includes a dissonance, we want it to move, that is, to change into another chord, less dissonant. In fact, it gets down to something very basic: intervals. The intervals of minor and major third, of the perfect fourths and fifths, of minor and major sixths, and unisons and octaves, and their spacially arranged inversions etc., these intervals are consonant to my ears. Play them, and only them, and I've no great desire to hear them endlessly move on. They might as well stop, Dunstable. But add more dissonant intervals, and the requirement for resolution gives the music a more enduring interest.
Dissonance seems to come in two varieties: clashing and unstable. A minor second is a very clashing, strident dissonance; a tritone doesn't clash so much as strike the listener as unstable, one that seems as uncomfortable as two magnets juxtaposed at their positive poles. The tritone is not strident. But it almost demands resolution. The minor second is a clash of notes, and it may demand resolution, but we mostly just want it gone.
This is not to say that I don't love the bright clash of a minor second. I do. But I do understand the sense of relief the ear and brain feels when the minor second disappears.
The tritone resolves easily, by voice leading. In its surest and most pleasant resolution, both notes move out, precisely as those positive magnetic poles move apart when you release the juxtaposed magnets. The interval of F and B (the tritone, or augmented fourth, or diminished fifth, give or take) becomes a minor sixth, E and c. One can make an imperfect resolution by moving only one of the notes, but this is less satisfying.
The minor second can be treated the same way, though it is amazing how rarely it is, in voice leading. It is very pleasant to take a B and C and turn it into an A-sharp and C-sharp (minor third). Similarly, one could take a major second and lead out to a major third, but this is also rarely done. These two clashing dissonances are resolved in less strict ways — indeed, most commonly by moving one of the voices away, while the other repeats or maintains the note. There are reasons for this that I won't get into.
In times past, the perfect fourth was considered dissonant (for instance, by Fux). Odd, to my ears, that notion; but it was heard as dissonant most likely not as a clashing dissonance, with bite, but as a subtle element of instability, like a tritone. The fourth might best be seen as an inversion of the fifth, and, as Hindemith suggested, we feel it most consonant when the root is at the bottom. So, G-c is not nearly so stable an interval, to our ears, as C-G.
Voice leading practices regarding the tritone help explain the popularity of the Ionian and Aeolian modes of the diatonic scale. The tritone of the diatonic scale resolves most comfortably to a minor sixth — which is contained in an inversion of the Ionian scale's tonic major, and the Aeolian scale's tonic minor, triads. So these are two very stable modes. The Dorian scale, however, when the tritone becomes more obvious in melodic or harmonic patterns, suggests a need to resolve out of the key. Music in the Dorian mode, were it to maintain its Dorian character, naturally resolves away from D and to A Dorian. Or out of Dorian altogether, to a key with a C major at its tonic. Thus it would be easy to move from D Dorian to C Mixolydian to A-flat Dorian to . . . Without much study of the repertoire, I assume that much neo-modal music does precisely this. Medieval and Renaissance music did not do this.
(Invert the normal tritone in C major, to B-f, and one can resolve to F# major, a tritone away. But how often have you heard that? Similarly, D Dorian can resolve into E-flat Dorian as below. It's odd how rarely one hears such adventurous modulations, though.)
In my recent music, besides using major and minor triads, and seventh chords, as my basic chordal palette, I also use diminished and augmented triads nearly as often. Part of this is because much of my music these days uses scales that include both of these chords in them, so it's quite natural to use them. (The augmented triad is not to be found in the diatonic scale; the diminished is, of course.) I also use chordal constructions that I call tetrads — that is, four-note chords that do not contain triads. And, of course, ninth and eleventh chords, too. (The subdominant eleventh, spacially arranged, is my mystic chord.) In the ersatz language of guitar players, I of course use suspended chords quite a bit, but I dislike the terminology. I also interpolate notes into simpler chords, though most theorists call these chords by their more complex name, with some tones simply not played. A favorite tetrad looks like this: C-D-F#-G. A favorite triad with an interpolated note: C-E-F#-G. Both of these have a tritone, and both can be used for similar harmonic purposes. What guitarists call a sus4 chord Alexander Tcherepnin called a Georgian triad, because of its frequent use in the music of the province of Georgia. I consider these chords to be tetrads minus one note. Hah!
Maybe I'll sketch out my harmonic vocabulary at some point. But first, I'm thinking I need to compose some more!
My cousin recently sent me to an essay by Chris McDonald, about a harmonic development in grunge rock, Exploring modal subversions in alternative music. The droll term modal subversion designates a harmonic style that uses simple chords outside of the expected mode to destabilize (or at least broaden up ) the modality of the melody. Nirvana used this technique quite often.
And I used it, along with more standard Hindemithian melodic technique, in a swung rag I composed in the early 1980s. Amusingly, I named my piece Cords of Vanity, after a James Branch Cabell novel. It puns nicely off of chords, and my chords (some of them even power chords — in a rag!) do seem vain by normal tonal and modal standards.
Near as I can tell, my rag, unlike the music of Nirvana (which I've not listened to very much, though I rather like it), has complicated melodies as well as modally subversive chords. And the last theme goes the extra subversive mile, going into sustained bi-modality. Of course, like Milhaud often did, I conclude with a nice major chord.
This (my early music, Nirvana's music) of course just seems like standard neoclassical technique to me. Pandiatonic. Neo-modal. Etc. Nothing new. Surely at least one of Bartok's methods in his 14 Bagatelles (which, along with Milhaud, are the only modern works I know thoroughly well on my fingers as well as my brain) does some similar things, really.
Doesn't it?
In any case, Hindemith would smile, at least at our spirited uses of musical gravity. All this music is tonal, in the sense that the melodies and the chords recognize and play off of the pull of tonal centers. Music without such a pull is usually uninteresting.
Designations | January 13, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Goodbye, Tina
A girl I knew died the other day. Actually, she was a woman when she died, but I knew her chiefly when she was a girl. We were never close, but — in school — never that distant, either. She never said a discouraging word to me, or I to her. Or so I remember.
She developed cancer when she was ten, and had to go to the hospital to have a tumor removed from her chest. She was away from class a long time. Our teacher had us write letters to her. Mine started with, Goodbye, Tina. An ominous start, but all shades of darkness quickly left, as the reader, Tina, quickly realized that the letter was proceeding backwards. It ended with Hello, Tina. Yes, a goofy letter, designed (I thought) to make her laugh. Years later she brought the letters to school, and she and our friends chortled over it.
She was a slender, very pretty girl. We drew names for Christmas back then, and when I drew her name, I bought her a brush and mirror. It seemed apt.
In grade school, we were the same height. She had the dubious pleasure of standing next to me in class pictures.
When we joined another group of students to form the seventh grade at junior high school, it came time to nominate class officers. I was the first to be nominated, and it was Tina who nominated me. I declined the nomination, having discovered in myself a deep revulsion for popularity, class politics, and a number of other elements of polite society. I always felt bad about declining it, but for only one reason: that Tina had done the nominating.
She was always cheerful. Well, that has to be untrue. But my memories of her are of her as happy.
Hodgkin's Disease came on nearly a decade ago. She fought it again. She had pulled through so many times. She endured a bone marrow transplant this winter. It was helping, but it seems her body had been through too much. She died a few days before her 45th birthday.
I last saw her in 1988, at a class reunion. I remember my friend Naki gasp in near wonder at her beauty, and the beauty of her friends. One score and eight years is a good year in the life of a woman. But I will always remember Tina as younger. A girl of good cheer; brave; friendly; always ready to enjoy life.
Now I must end with Goodbye, Tina.
Designations | January 16, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Young, dumb, and full of, er, it
The production of spam, neverending, hits only one of my accounts with anything like a barrage, thus only approaches an annoyance. After a quick survey of subjects, I hit Command-A and drag 'em to the Trash. But I do read some. Why? The things one learns about one's culture from these spam! How could you not want to know?
Know what? you gurgle. Well, know that some men are concerned not only about the size of their genitalia (this has been common knowledge since the penis sheath hit the tribal fashion wear circuit), and the relationship of the protruding portion of that genitalia to the Mohs Scale, but also the quantity and quality of, er, matter that said erect genitalia can eructate.
At least, that's the current push in numerous emails I've received recently, to an account that shall here remain nameless (natch). The come-ons (so to speak) are quite enlightening. Impress her with the quantity of your load. Nowhere in these emails is any reference made to a study showing that women are impressed by quantities of such stuff, nor do the emails deign to mention the chief biological function of it. Yup, no mention of fertility.
I am still amazed that anyone would buy drugs based on an email containing purposively misspelled words, like p3nis, Jissm, Via-gara, and the like. But they are amusing. Keep 'em coming!
Designations | January 17, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Quartet for a certain amount of time
Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time is one of the greatest works of 20th century chamber music. It contains some of the most arresting music ever composed. Its instrumentation alone qualifies it as . . .
Well, I can't write unique, since other composers have written for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano.
In fact, that's why I picked up a CD of the Boston Chamber Players and Gilbert Kalish performing Hindemith and Shostakovich. The Hindemith piece is for the same instrumentation as Messiaen's great work. I wanted to compare and contrast, as they tell you in school.
So, is it in the same league as the Quartet for the End of Time? No. Few works are. But Paul Hindemith's 1938 Quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano is indeed very good. The German composer's masterful handling of the instruments is almost breathtaking. The clarinet writing is what you'd expect from the composer of the Greatest Clarinet Sonata Ever, and the changing textures add to a sense of drama and pathos that fits nicely with Hindemith's ability to write sprightly melody and marshal evocative chords in exciting ways. The work ends, and the listener is satisfied. A rousing conclusion, to say the least. No intimations of the end of time, but for a time we have been served well by one of the masters of composition.
Designations | January 19, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Drawing lessons
Paul Jacob, today, has a charming essay up on Townhall.com, entitled Running gun blues, in which he draws some lessons from trying to find a gun for his 5-year-old daughter. The odd title, he tells me, is from David Bowie.
Oh, I should've written toy gun.
Recently I uncovered a stash of drawings from my childhood. So this morning I ruminated at length not on their meaning as art, but on the meaning of their lack of impressiveness as art. And the lack of impressiveness of our schools. Title of my piece? Strange Bird: The Education of an Education Critic.
I note that all my drawings are of animals. Why is that, I wonder? I believe I drew pictures of human beings, too. Perhaps its a question of selection. Not natural selection, but the artificial selection by mother. She's the one who saved what I now possess, not me!
In my Instead of a Blog piece, mentioned above, I complain about never being trained to draw. Someone who can't make that complain, I bet, is David M. Carroll, whose nature drawings are very, very good.
The other day, before he went off for a few months to Montana to teach a graduate course in environmental writing, Bob Pyle lent me a book by Carroll, Swampwalker's Journal: A Wetlands Year. I used to be a swampwalker, when I was a kid. Now I don't even own a pair of boots! I'll whet my appetite rather than wet my feet by turning the pages of this exquisitely drawn book rather than actually slogging through swamps any time soon.
Thankfully, some swamp creatures travel. I often meet up salamanders and frogs on the road.
And, of course, many a strange bird.
Designations | January 23, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
Ends and means
Two thoughts always to keep in mind when talking of war and the reasons for war:
- No end can justify an unproductive means.
- No unachievable end can justify any means.
The other day I listened to America's president yammer about his desires for peace in the mid-East, and his plans for, er, more war (he was being cagey), and the above truths came to mind. (Democracy as the result of conquest! It's happened before — just not with an Islamic country. Could that make a difference?) Then I continued writing about ends and means, in a somewhat technical way, and decided that what I'd written belonged on Instead of a Blog, not here. So go there. (Or here, if you are a benighted Windows Explorer user.)
Designations | January 26, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
| ThinkingMatters
. . . about as much sense . . .
Putting in Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General would be like appointing Karl Marx as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, or the Dalai Lama as Secretary of Defense.
Designations | January 31, 2005 | Wirkman Virkkala
| ThinkingMatters
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