Rachmaninoff, Prelude in D-Major, Op. 23, No. 4

Olga Scheps performs ...

Georgia O'Keeffe: Portrait of an Artist

You see, a painter is one thing and a person, in a way, is another thing.  Some people seem to be luckier than others. I don't know, maybe it's because I've taken hold of anything that came along that I wanted ...

Bliss.

Barkhatkova, In the Autumn, Everyone Wants to Fly Away, 2012

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; 

Lengthen night and shorten day; 

Every leaf speaks bliss to me, 

Fluttering from the autumn tree. 

I shall smile when wreaths of snow 

Blossom where the rose should grow; 

I shall sing when night’s decay 

Ushers in a drearier day.

Emily Brontë

Bartock, Piano Concerto No. 3, Sz. 119, BB 127

Andras Schiff performs the Adagio religioso with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle ,,,

Autumnal.

Restore.

Hilder, November Lanes, 1954

WRITTEN in NOVEMBER

Autumn, I love thy parting look to view

In cold November's day, so bleak and bare,

When, thy life's dwindled thread worn nearly thro',

With ling'ring, pott'ring pace, and head bleach'd bare,

Thou, like an old man, bidd'st the world adieu.

I love thee well: and often, when a child,

Have roam'd the bare brown heath a flower to find;

And in the moss-clad vale, and wood-bank wild

Have cropt the little bell-flowers, pearly blue,

That trembling peep the shelt'ring bush behind.

When winnowing north-winds cold and bleaky blew,

How have I joy'd, with dithering hands, to find,

Each fading flower; and still how sweet the blast,

Would bleak November's hour restore the joy that's past.

John Clare

Oasis.

Iain Sinclair visits William Blake at his final resting place in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground.

... it's a nonconformist burial ground - it's for the unofficial religionists - it's for the people who are dissident and difficult and so they're put just outside the city in this little oasis, with fig trees - a place of real calm.

Brought.

van Gogh, Self-Portrait (detail), 1887

Don’t think that I look with contempt on people such as you describe because their life isn’t founded on serious and well-considered principles. My view on this is as follows: the result must be an action, not an abstract idea. I think principles are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds, and I think it’s good to reflect and to try to be conscientious, because that makes a person’s will to work more resolute and turns the various actions into a whole. I think that people such as you describe would get more steadiness if they went about what they do more rationally, but otherwise I much prefer them to people who make a great show of their principles without making the slightest effort to put them into practice or even giving that a thought. For the latter have no use for the finest of principles, and the former are precisely the people who, if they ever get round to living with willpower and reflection, will do something great. For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to Theo van Gogh, 22 October 1882

Lassus, Missa Osculetur me

The Sixteen, conducted by Harry Christophers, perform the "Credo"...

Home.

HOME

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home,

A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have t’ roam

Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind,

An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.

It don’t make any differunce how rich ye get t’ be,

How much yer chairs an’ tables cost, how great yer luxury;

It ain’t home t’ ye, though it be the palace of a king,

Until somehow yer soul is sort o’ wrapped round everything.

Home ain’t a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute;

Afore it’s home there’s got t’ be a heap o’ livin’ in it;

Within the walls there’s got t’ be some babies born, and then

Right there ye’ve got t’ bring ‘em up t’ women good, an’ men;

And gradjerly, as time goes on, ye find ye wouldn’t part

With anything they ever used—they’ve grown into yer heart:

The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore

Ye hoard; an’ if ye could ye’d keep the thumbmarks on the door.

Ye’ve got t’ weep t’ make it home, ye’ve got t’ sit an’ sigh

An’ watch beside a loved one’s bed, an’ know that Death is nigh;

An’ in the stillness o’ the night t’ see Death’s angel come,

An’ close the eyes o’ her that smiled, an’ leave her sweet voice dumb.

Fer these are scenes that grip the heart, an’ when yer tears are dried,

Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an’ sanctified;

An’ tuggin’ at ye always are the pleasant memories

O’ her that was an’ is no more—ye can’t escape from these.

Ye’ve got t’ sing an’ dance fer years, ye’ve got t’ romp an’ play,

An’ learn t’ love the things ye have by usin’ ’em each day;

Even the roses ’round the porch must blossom year by year

Afore they ’come a part o’ ye, suggestin’ someone dear

Who used t’ love ’em long ago, an’ trained ’em jes’ t’ run

The way they do, so’s they would get the early mornin’ sun;

Ye’ve got t’ love each brick an’ stone from cellar up t’ dome:

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home.

Edgar Guest

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Attuned.

Cardinal Robert Sarah on why sacred music matters ...

It calls us to the conversion of our lives.  It purifies us and heals us and give us the grace to persevere in our vocation as Christian.  And above all, the liturgy prepare us for that inhaling life promised us in heaven. This is why our full conscious and active participation in the liturgy is essential.  I didn't mean that we must be hyperactive in sense of doing many things externally rather I mean that our minds and hearts and soul and yes our bodies also must be as attuned as possible to the meaning of the sacred rights and chants and prayer that comprise the church's liturgy.  For that is how we plug into or connect with the saving action of our Lord Jesus Christ in the liturgy writes. 

This, my friend, is why the liturgy is sacred.  It is something that it is essential essentially holy.  It is first and foremost of God. It is not something that you or I can make or change.  Even if we think that we are experts or even we are bishops. No, we must be humbled before the sacred liturgy as it has been handed over to us in the church tradition. We are to be its faithful stewards and guardians and not to behave like his proprietary and exploit it or change it for our own purpose.

First, burn all the bongos and tambourines.

Happy Birthday, Georgia O'Keeffe

O'Keeffe, Grey and Brown Leaves, 1929

I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

Georgia O'Keeffe, born on this day in 1887

Free.

Faith alone is necessary; all other things are most free, neither commanded, nor prohibited.

Martin Luther, from On the Freedom of a Christian

Presence.

Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own. Unless we are very ungrateful, all those distinguished founders of holy creeds were born for us and prepared for us a way of life. By the toil of others we are led into the presence of things which have been brought from darkness into light. We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all; and if we are prepared in loftiness of mind to pass beyond the narrow confines of human weakness, there is a long period of time through which we can roam.

Seneca, from "On the Shortness of Life"

Hurled.

Flammarion,  L'Atmosphere (detail), 1888

First exaltation, let us speak of that. The change that occurs when we are lifted out of the tight little cages of our daily realities. To be hurled beyond our limits into the cosmos of magnificent forces.  

R. Murray Schafer

Happy Birthday, Claude Monet

Monet, Cloud Reflection on the Water Lily Pond, 1903

I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

Claude Monet, born on this day in 1840

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Robert Louis Stevenson

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

Robert Louis Stevenson, born on this day in 1850, from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Happy Birthday, Auguste Rodin

Steichen, Rodin and The Thinker, 1902

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

Auguste Rodin, born on this day in 1840

Chardin, Young Student Drawing, 1738

Harmony.

Mola, Young Musician with a Viola da Gamba, 1666

IN COMMENDATION OF MUSIC

When whispering strains do softly steal

With creeping passion through the heart

And when at every touch we feel

Our pulses beat and bear a part;

When threads can make

A heartstring shake,

Philosophy

Can scarce deny

The soul consists of harmony.

When unto heavenly joy we feign

Whate’er the soul affecteth most,

Which only thus we can explain

By music of the wingéd host,

Whose lays we think

Make stars to wink,

Philosophy

Can scarce deny

Our souls consist of harmony.

O lull me, lull me, charming air,

My senses rock with wonder sweet;

Like snow on wool thy fallings are,

Soft, like a spirit’s, are thy feet:

Grief who need fear

That hath an ear?

Down let him lie

And slumbring die,

And change his soul for harmony.

William Strode 

Alive.

Whitefish Review interviews Harrison ...

EP: Is writing easier now in your life because there are fewer distractions?

JH: I don’t know if there are any less distractions. I have been out here in this studio every morning since my wife’s death and I must say I haven’t got much done. Rene Char, a French poet says, “You have to be there when the bread comes fresh from the oven.” You just gotta keep doing it. It’s like being a photographer—you got to drive around until something catches your eye. Like [Russell] Chatham, when bird hunting, and I can remember him just standing there looking at the landscape. We’re supposed to write poetry to keep the gods alive.

Wonder.

Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing. Modern civilization does not know how to be quiet. It holds forth in an unending monologue. Postmodern society rejects the past and looks at the present as a cheap consumer object; it pictures the future in terms of an almost obsessive progress. Its dream, which has become a sad reality, will have been to lock silence away in a damp, dark dungeon. Thus there is a dictatorship of speech, a dictatorship of verbal emphasis. In this theater of shadows, nothing is left but a purulent wound of mechanical words, without perspective, without truth, and without foundation. 

Quite often “truth” is nothing more than the pure and misleading creation of the media, corroborated by fabricated images and testimonies. When that happens, the word of God fades away, inaccessible and inaudible. Postmodernity is an ongoing offense and aggression against the divine silence. From morning to evening, from evening to morning, silence no longer has any place at all; the noise tries to prevent God himself from speaking. 

In this hell of noise, man disintegrates and is lost; he is broken up into countless worries, fantasies, and fears. In order to get out of these depressing tunnels, he desperately awaits noise so that it will bring him a few consolations. Noise is a deceptive, addictive, and false tranquilizer. The tragedy of our world is never better summed up than in the fury of senseless noise that stubbornly hates silence. This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter, wonder, and kneeling before God. 

Even in the schools, silence has disappeared. And yet how can anyone study in the midst of noise? How can you read in noise? How can you train your intellect in noise? How can you structure your thought and the contours of your interior being in noise? How can you be open to the mystery of God, to spiritual values, and to our human greatness in continual turmoil? Contemplative silence is a fragile little flame in the middle of a raging ocean. The fire of silence is weak because it is bothersome to a busy world.

Words often bring with them the illusion of transparency, as though they allowed us to understand everything, control everything, put everything in order. Modernity is talkative because it is proud, unless the converse is true. Is our incessant talking perhaps what makes us proud?

Cardinal Robert Sarah, from The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

Soldier.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter

Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet

Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer

Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer

Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician

Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,

Who serves beneath the flag,

And whose coffin is draped by the flag,

Who allows the protester to burn the flag. 

Charles Michael Province

Big Fitz, Rest in Peace

At this hour, on this day fifty years ago, the ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald was lost with all hands in a storm on Lake Superior.

The storm that brought the ship down contained sustained winds of nearly 70 miles per hour, producing waves over 25 feet.

Drink your glasses empty to "Big Fitz" ... rest in peace, boys.

The lastest documentary, Gales of November: The Final Voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald ...

Defines.

Speech characterizes man.  Silence is what defines him.

Robert Cardinal Sarah, from The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

No, Cardinal Sarah does not have a blog.

Humbling.

That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam …

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. 

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Carl Sagan, born on this day in 1934, from Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Gordon Lightfoot, "Restless"

The lake is blue, the sky is gray, the leaves have turned to gold

The wild goose will be on her way, the weather's much too cold

When the muskie and the old trout too have all gone down to rest

We will be returning to the things that we love best ...

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, "King's Highway"

Under a big ol' sky out in a field of green ...

It's sandwich time.

Learn.

Poortvliet, Vigil, 1973

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

Happy Birthday, Bram Stoker

Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.

Bram Stoker, born on this day in 1847, from Dracula

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Released.

The Stones released Undercover on this day in 1983 and I got my copy at Singing Dog.

"Wanna Hold You"...

It's pizza time.

Necessary.

Collaboration.  When all else fails, it becomes necessary to look to the healing power of brute force.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Finger.

Saveur on the history and traditions of fondue ...

Combining a moderately moist cheese, such as Gruyere, with a fattier cheese like Vacherin Fribourgeois helps create a balanced blend (see The Building Blocks of Fondue); Appenzeller, a firm yet creamy cows' milk cheese with tiny holes, works just as well in place of the Fribourgeois. But each region believes its local cheeses make the best fondue, and the choice is entirely up to the cook. James Beard once praised an American homemaker for substituting cheddar and bourbon for the customary Swiss cheeses and kirsch. Perhaps fondue resonates so well with the Swiss because variations unite the regions around the pot: a mirror of a nation of four official languages within 16,000 square miles.

A few suggestions ... 

• Appenzeller is the best cheese for fondue (what's not to love about a cheese whose rind is washed in apple cider?)
• Crush a head of garlic into the cheese as it's melting, per pound of cheese
• Our ratio of cheese to wine is about a 1/3 -1/2 a bottle per pound of cheese (look for a minerally white, we like Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc; drink the rest straight from the bottle as the fondue is prepared)
• Use the best bread you can procure, torn off the loaf as needed.
• Other dippables include, thinly-sliced Speck, hard-boiled eggs, cornichon, course ground pork sausages, your finger.

Beyond.

I want to describe that world beyond the window, even though I know that it cannot be described but only revealed. I am not alone in thinking that world to be real and important. But there are many who dismiss it as an unscientific fiction. And people of this scientistic cast of mind are disagreeable to me. Their nerdish conviction that facts alone can signify, and that the “transcendental” and the eternal are nothing but words, mark them out as incomplete. There is an aspect of the human condition that is denied to them.

Sir Roger Scruton, from "Effing the Ineffable"

Happy Birthday, Marie Curie

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.  Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be achieved.

Marie Curie, born on this day in 1867

Tabakova, Moreni for Clarinet, String Quartet, and Piano

Off the Beaten Path perform ...

Honest.

We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.

But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

Richard Feynman, from his commencement speech, Caltech, 1974

Grainger, “Over the Hills and Far Away” -

The United States Marine Band Marine Band performs ...

Happy Birthday, Philips Koninck

Koninck, A Panoramic Landscape With a Country Estate, 1649

Philips Koninck was born on this day in 1619.

Groucho Marx, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It"

Your proposition may be good

But let's have one thing understood:

Whatever it is, I'm against it

And even when you've changed it or condensed it

I'm against it ...

Happy Birthday, Guido Reni

Reni, Fighting Putti, 1625

I would have liked to have had an angelic brush and forms from Paradise in order to design the Archangel and to see it in heaven; but I could not ascend so high and in vain I sought it on earth; therefore I sought out the form in the concept I had established.

Guido Reni, born on this day in 1575

Happy Birthday, Walker Evans

Evans, Shadow Self-Portrait (Right Profile), Juan-les-Pins, France, 1927

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

Walker Evans, born on this day in 1903

Beauty.

Chardin, Still Life with Copper Pot, Cheese, and Eggs, 1735 

We have learned from Chardin that a pear is as living as a woman, that an ordinary piece of pottery is as beautiful as a precious stone. Everyday life will charm you once you have absorbed Chardin’s painting for a few days like a lesson. Then, having understood the life of his painting, you will have discovered the beauty of life.

Marcel Proust, from "Chardin: The Essence of Things"

Believe.

John Brown delivered his famous speech to the court at his trial on this day in 1859, in Charles Town, Virginia ...

This Court acknowledges too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of GOD. I saw a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that, "All things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them." It teaches me further, to "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of his despised poor, I have done no wrong, but right.

Enter.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

E. M. Forster

Happy Birthday, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

Chardin, A Green Neck Duck with a Seville Orange, 1730

How many attempts, now happy, now unhappy!  He who has not felt the difficulties of his art does nothing that counts.

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, born on this date in 1699