4.10.2022 – do you want to hear

do you want to hear
some interesting music …
is called ‘symphony’

In the movie ‘Out of Africa’ which Wikipedia calls an American epic romantic drama film, there is a scene where Robert Redford sets up a spring-driven record player and when a bunch of baboons wonder over, Redford pulls a string and the record player plays the adagio of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major.

Redford’s character, Denys Finch Hatton, says, “Think of it: never a man-made sound… and then Mozart!”

Two things about this this morning.

One thing that didn’t come to mind until I pasted that quote into place.

I live along the Atlantic Coast and while it is much more quiet than Atlanta, with the traffic that there is on the streets and in the sky, I don’t go long without hearing a man made sound.

I think of Michael Palin’s British epic travel drama documentary, Himalayas.

There is a scene where Palin approaches a hut high in mountains (and I mean high) far far far away from the maddening crowd.

The setting is much like those cartoons of people who trek far into the mountains to ask the wise man for advice and no one, but NO ONE, is within a billion miles so the wise man lives in abject silence.

An old old man comes out of the hut and wants to sing a song for Palin.

Palin’s team starts recording and has to stop because of the man-made sound of a commercial airliner or maybe a Fed Ex transport delivering Amazon Prime Next Day to Nepal, that can be heard flying far overhead.

(A minute later the old man sings his song and then asks Michael Palin to sing something and Palin responds with the first song that pops into his head. 40 years after it was sung for the first time on TV, this old man of mountains got to hear Michael Palin sing, ‘I’m a lumberjack and I’m Okay.)

I am going to pay attention and see how long I can go with out hearing a man made song.

The other thing on my mind about movie scene is that, sure, it was a bit of an A-HA moment but we are taking about baboons out in Africa.

I was just reading this morning that in People’s Republic of China, since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Mozart’s and Beethoven’s music had both been banned.

A generation grew up without ever hearing ‘western’ classical music.

Western classical music was decadent, prurient, bourgeois and listened to by blood-sucking capitalists.

I don’t know about that but I was a kid back in 1960’s and I liked it and in all the notes about my bad behavior that I brought home from school, I never once was accused of being decadent, prurient, bourgeois or a blood-sucking capitalist.

That would have been one heck of a note to bring home!

Then in 1972, Richard Nixon went to China.

A year later Henry Kissinger learned from Chinese leaders that they would like to invite the Philadelphia Orchestra to China. Nixon rang its music director, the Hungarian-American conductor Eugene Ormandy, who immediately sensed history in the making: “That’s wonderful. You honour me, honour the orchestra,” he responded.

The article I was reading was a review of an upcoming documentary about the 2 week tour of China by Philadelphia Orchestra titled Beethoven in Beijing.

The reviewer writes:

In the autumn of 1973, Tan Dun, the Oscar-winning Chinese musician who would go on to compose the soundtrack for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, then a teenager, was sent to a rural commune in Hunan province to plant rice. China was at the height of the Cultural Revolution. One day, Tan heard a sound from a loudspeaker in the field.

“Do you want to hear some interesting music? This is called ‘symphony’. The Philadelphia Orchestra is in China,” a friend said to Tan. It was the first time he had heard about a “symphony orchestra”, and it was striking. “I think it was something by Beethoven – the Sixth or the Fifth symphony.”

Until then, Tan had never known of Beethoven or Mozart, but he was deeply touched by the performance blasted from the loudspeaker. When he returned home, he told his grandmother that he would like to learn more about it.

I cannot imagine.

Readers of the this blog will recognize that I am in awe of the fact that through the World Wide Web there is not a piece of recorded music that is not available to anyone anywhere at anytime.

(I know I know, hyperbole)

And of music.

I think of Fran Lebowitz saying, “… whenever I hear it, I instantly become happier. This is true of almost nothing! That’s a very important thing to do for human beings. Music makes people happier, and it doesn’t harm them. Most things that make you feel better are harmful. It’s very unusual. It’s like a drug, that doesn’t kill you.“

In some ways I wonder what it would be like to never have heard Beethoven in your life.

In some ways I am glad I that I don’t wonder.

And in other ways I am happy as there is always music I haven’t heard.

With that in mind I leave you with this.

I heard it on the radio the other day and spent the next two days tracking it down.

I bet if you listen to it you will instantly become happier.

It won’t harm you and it’s very unusual.

4.9.2022 – this done each man be

this done each man be
allowed return to their homes
not to be disturbed

I have long been fascinated by the United States Civil War.

Fascinated by the romance of it.

Fascinated by the accounts of battles that read along the lines of, “Our losses were small. 30 killed and 300 wounded.”

I watch the news and see what 30 killed look like today.

How was any less 160 years ago.

More and more (not or less) takes the romance out of it.

Today, April 9th, is the anniversary of the surrender of Confederate forces at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

When asked for terms of surrender, General US (the initials famous for Unconditional Surrender or pretty much, ‘You admit we won and you have to take what comes’) Grant wrote in his own hand:

APPOMATTOX C. H., VA.,

Ap 9th, 1865.

GEN. R. E. LEE,
Comd'g C. S. A.

GEN: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.

Very respectfully,

U. S. GRANT,
Lt. Gen.

And that was that.

After 4 years of doing there best to kill each other, Grant told the other side to:

Give their paroles.

Give up their arms.

Go home.

Did Grant include a warning or a threat?

Nope.

He included a promise.

A promise that once they gave their parole, gave up their arms and got home they would not to be disturbed by United States authority.

He handed it the other General who, after a sort discussion of plow horses, signed it and said, “. . . that this would have a happy effect upon his army.”

Grant signed it.

End of negotitions.

End of a war.

4.8.2022 – First you figure out

First you figure out
what each one means by itself
thousand little words

Based on the poem, Breakage, by Mary Oliver.

Thank you to my sister Lisa, to telling me about Ms. Oliver.

Here is the poem.

Breakage by Mary Oliver.

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

go down to the edge
of the sea – How everything shines
in the morning light

It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words, thousands of words
First you figure out what each one means by itsel

– – – – – – –

Readers of this blog may remember that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.

This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.

I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.

Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.

This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.

It IS cricket because I say it is.

It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.

Thus I have this series of haiku based on the poem ‘Breakage’ by Mary Oliver.

4.7.2022 – if you don’t like it

if you don’t like it
you can get on with it, others
pick choose if you can’t

Part of the series of Haiku inspired by The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and the article, ‘It takes your hand off the panic button’: TS Eliot’s The Waste Land 100 years on by Andrew Dickson.

Mr. Dickson asks, ‘Is it genuinely one of the greatest works in the language, or – as the poet once claimed – just “a piece of rhythmical grumbling“?’

This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.

I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.

Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.

This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.

It IS cricket because I say it is.

It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.

Thus I have this series based on ‘The Wasteland.’

A thoroughly enjoyable connection of wordplay and source of endless discussion in the search for meaning.

For myself, I like that bit about a piece of rhythmical grumbling by Mr. Eliot so said Mr. Eliot.

I have remembered this story before in these posts, but it reminds me of a story told by the actor Rex Harrison.

Mr. Harrison recounted rehearsing a play by George Bernard-Shaw and that the company was having a difficult time with a certain scene when, wonder of wonder, Bernard-Shaw himself dropped by to watch rehearsal.

Mr. Harrison tells how great this was as they went to the play write and asked how did he see this scene – what was he striving for?

Bernard-Shaw asked for a script and read over the scene, read it over again and a third time, then looked up and said, “This is rather bad isn’t it.”

4.6.2022 – mononymously

mononymously
Raffaello Sanzio
known as Raphael

Always on the lookout for remarkable, or worthy of a remark, words and remarkable words brought together in a remarkable fashion, I came across this line in Wikipedia this morning:

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino; (28 March or 6 April 1483 – 6 April 1520) known mononymously as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance.

I always wish I had studied Italian for no other reason than it LOOKS like fun to talk like that.

I imagine little Raphael in kindergarten and the teacher reading the role, calling Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, and little Raphael saying ‘presente’.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was on my mind this morning due a review I read of an exhibition now in London.

I might as well read about it even though I am not going to London and even if I was I know that I wouldn’t be able to get the ticket to see the exhibition and even I was able to get a ticket I most likely wouldn’t be able to afford it let alone the ticket to London.

The reviewer writes: “Of the big three of the High Renaissance, he was the most straightforward, the most productive, and for 300 years, the most influential.”

When talking of the High Renaissance, the big three were Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.

I remember being in lectures on these fellers back in college as History of Art was my minor but all that I really remember is that of the three, it was Raphael who took a step back, looked at the suffering, angst and anguish that went into the art of the other two and said to himself, “there has got to be a better way” then went out and found one.

He lived the good life and it shows in the life and color that is in his work.

But on the one hand both Leonardo and Michelangelo lived to be crabby old men and Raphael, like Mozart, died in his late 30’s.

The review of the exhibition brought me to search him out and if you throw a name into the google, you will get Wikipedia links back and Wikipedia threw the word mononymously into my brain and it got me thinking.

I love the word and never knew it existed until one hour ago.

Mononymously.

My spell check throws it out.

The Google pretty much throws it out.

Online dictionaries find mononymous and mononym and the Macmillan Online Dictionary has the curious line, There is also some evidence for a derived noun mononymity, meaning something like: ‘the state of only using one name’.

Some evidence?

The Committee is still out on this one I guess.

But no mention of the adverb Mononymously or the act of being known by one name.

Is that just supposed to be understood?

Then it got me to thinking of those folks truly known mononymously.

So often anyone known mononymously owes to their current celebrity.

As Paul Simon wrote:

He’s so unhip that when you say Dylan
He thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas
Whoever he was
The man ain’t got no culture

And I would have bet a doughnut that with a name like Dylan, you would be able to achieve mononymity.

Of course, Mr. Simon does mix first and last names here but you get my drift.

Does a name have to be unusual to achieve true mononymity?

I don’t think so but it helps.

When you say ‘Michael’ do you mean Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan?

When you say ‘Elvis’ do you mean, well, Elvis or Elvis Grbac who played quarterback at Michigan who threw the touchdown pass to Desmond Howard to beat Notre Dame that my wife witnessed but doesn’t remember (the game, the pass or that there was someone named Elvis in the building).

According once again to Wikipedia, 100 Billion people have lived and died in the history of the world.

And somehow, someway, some folks achieve mononymity.

That the big three of the High Renaissance achieved it and have held it for the last 500 years must say something.

I, on the other hand, have achieved anonymity and am happy with that.

One source says one third of the American males are named Michael.

I once saw a printed birthday card that had Happy Birthday Mike on the front … and inside something like, don’t get excited, half the world could get this card.

A search of the Google for my name in quotes shows 1.1 million hits ( in .63 seconds – which is a ridiculous amount of time even when you consider it is often longer than the time separating most Olympic Gold and Bronze medal winners).

Yet in MY CHILDHOOD, when I went to school in 7th grade, three teachers called the role that first day of school and got my name wrong.

I was marked absent for three days until those teachers looked at me and asked who was I?

I said my name was Mike and that I had no idea who Michelle Hoffman was.

I’ll take anonymity.