Happy Birthday, Simone Weil

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

Simone Weil, born on this day in 1909, from "Reflections on War"

Happy Birthday, Felix Mendelssohn

Magnus, Felix Mendelssohn, 1846

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born on this day in 1809.

The Frankfurt Radio Symphony, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada, performs Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Op.27 ...

Pärt, Nunc Dimittis

Harry Christophers guides The Sixteen ...

Beware.

The dark ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction.

Beware, I say; time may be short. Do not let us take the course of allowing events to drift along until it is too late.

Sir Winston Churchill, from "The Sinews of Peace"

Re-Adorn.

Down with the rosemary and bays,

Down with the misletoe;

Instead of holly, now up-raise

The greener box, for show.

The holly hitherto did sway;

Let box now domineer,

Until the dancing Easter-day,

Or Easter's eve appear.

Then youthful box, which now hath grace

Your houses to renew,

Grown old, surrender must his place

Unto the crisped yew.

When yew is out, then birch comes in,

And many flowers beside,

Both of a fresh and fragrant kin,

To honour Whitsuntide.

Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,

With cooler oaken boughs,

Come in for comely ornaments,

To re-adorn the house.

Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;

New things succeed, as former things grow old.

Robert Herrick

Happy Candlemas.

Thanks, Mum.

Comes.

Wyeth, February 2, 1942, 1942

The hedge-rows cast a shallow shade

      Upon the frozen grass,

      But skies at evening song are soft,

      And comes the Candlemas.

Each day a little later now

      Lingers the westering sun;

      Far out of sight the miracles

      Of April are begun.

O barren bough! O frozen field!

      Hopeless ye wait no more.

      Life keeps her dearest promises—

      The Spring is at the door!

Arthur Ketchum

Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand

Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them - while you'd give a year of my life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors - hatred? No, not hatred, but boredom - the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"

"I've felt it all my life," she said.”

Ayn Rand, born on this day in 1905, from Atlas Shrugged

Evensong.

Candlemas Evensong from Newcastle Cathedral, London ...

Happy Birthday, Mike Campbell

Mike Campbell was born on this day in 1950.

"Makin' Some Noise"

Difference.

My parents ...

• took photos of the family, friends, and scenery, not themselves.
• discussed politics at the dinner table, not in public.
• were humble, never bragged.
• read books, listened to music, and did puzzles, not video games.
• posted their kid's report cards on the refrigerator, not in the newspaper.
• wore dress clothes to church, never shorts and a t-shirt.
• made and drank coffee at home, not the grocery store.
• celebrated and sacrificed, never indulged.
• circled-the-wagons and stuck together through tough times, never gave up.
• took their kids on vacation in the summer, not in February.
• waited their turn, held doors, and offered encouragement, condolences, and congratulations, not proclamations.
• made eye-contact, nodded, and smiled at strangers, not self-absorbed.
• were quiet when they didn't have something nice to say, never said "F-you," ... ever.
• showed up, never skipped.

I'm lucky.  Back then it made a difference. 

David Francey, "Redwing Blackbird"

Released.

Cheap Trick released At Budokan on this day in 1978.

Tallis, Videte miraculum

The Ely Cathedral Choir performs ...

Look.

CEREMONY UPON CANDLEMAS EVE

Down with the rosemary, and so

Down with the bays and misletoe ;

Down with the holly, ivy, all,

Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas Hall :

That so the superstitious find

No one least branch there left behind :

For look, how many leaves there be

Neglected, there (maids, trust to me)

So many goblins you shall see.

Robert Herrick

Peter Frampton, "All I Want to Be (Is By Your Side)"

Happy Birthday, Phil Manzanera

Phil Manzanera was born on this day in 1951.

"On an Island," with David Gilmour ...

Dared.

In January, Lake Erie froze nearly to Canada. One evening, standing before its ominous expanse in my ice skates, with a wool cap pulled over my ears and a long scarf wound around my neck and crisscrossed over my chest beneath my blue Navy-surplus pea jacket, I left the shore. I planned to face down the spectre of my fear by going as far as I dared toward Canada, or the Livingston ship channel if the icebreaker had been through. 

I hoped that my love of skating would propel me through the worst of my worries ...

Tom McGuane, from "Ice"

Happy Birthday, Franz Schubert

Rieder, Franz Schubert, 1825

Franz Schubert was born on this day in 1797.

Members of the Vienna Philharmonic perform "The Trout," Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 ...

Ravel, Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 2

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the London Symphony Orchestra ...

 

Priority.

But whatever the depths of self-enchantment, the demagogue has to say something ...

There is always rivalry, and there is always a search for means of exploiting the means of advancing one's own position. In other ages, one paid court to the king. Now we pay court to the people. In the final analysis, just as the king might look down with terminal disdain upon a courtier whose hypocrisy repelled him, so we have no substitute for relying on the voter to exercise a quiet veto when it becomes more necessary to discourage cynical demagogy, than to advance free health for the kids. That can come later, in another venue; the resistance to a corrupting demagogy should take first priority.

William F. Buckley Jr., from "The Demagogues Are Running"

Warns.

"Don't Be a Sucker" is a 1943 U.S. Army Signal Corps film that warns Americans about the dangers of bigotry, hate speech, and demagoguery by showing how they mirrored the rise of Nazism in Germany ...

Happy Birthday, Thomas Merton

In an age when totalitarianism has striven, in every way, to devaluate and degrade the human person, we hope it is right to demand a hearing for any and every sane reaction in favor of man's inalienable solitude and his interior freedom. The murderous din of our materialism cannot be allowed to silence the independent voices which will never cease to speak. It is all very well to insist that man is a "social animal" -- the fact is obvious enough. But that is no justification for making him a mere cog in a totalitarian machine -- or in a religious one either, for that matter.

In actual fact, society depends for its existence on the inviolable personal solitude of its members. Society, to merit its name, must be made up not of numbers, or mechanical units, but of persons. To be a person implies responsibility and freedom, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrity, a sense of one's own reality and one's ability to give himself to society -- or to refuse that gift.

When men are merely submerged in a mass of impersonal human beings pushed around by impersonal forces, they lose their true humanity, their integrity, their dignity, their ability to love, their capacity for self-determination. When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment, and hate.

No amount of technological progress will cure the hatred that eats away the vitals of materialistic society like a spiritual cancer. The only cure is, and must always be, spiritual. There is not much use talking to men about God and love if they are not able to listen. The ears with which one hears the message of the Gospel are hidden in man's heart, and those ears do not hear anything unless they are favored with a certain interior solitude and silence.

In other words, since faith is a matter of freedom and self-determination -- the free receiving of a freely given gift of grace -- man cannot assent to a spiritual message as long as his mind and heart are enslaved by automatism. He will always remain so enslaved as long as he is submerged in a mass of other automatons, without individuality and without their rightful integrity as persons.

Thomas Merton, born on this day in 1915, from Thoughts in Solitude

Excellent.

Excellent albums ...

Styx, "Borrowed Time"

Lowenbrau pitchers are the lunch special ...

Listening.

Laura Cannell, "Summon the Ghost Horses"

Filled.

For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College"

Truth.

If we cannot justify the very concept of the aesthetic, except as ideology, then aesthetic judgement is without philosophical foundation. An "ideology" is adopted for its social or political utility, rather than its truth. And to show that some concept—holiness, justice, beauty, or whatever—is ideological, is to undermine its claim to objectivity. It is to suggest that there is no such thing as holiness, justice or beauty, but only the belief in it—a belief that arises under certain social and economic relations and plays a part in cementing them, but which will vanish as conditions change.

Sir Roger Scruton, from Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

Blessed.

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where others see nothing.

Camille Pissarro

Done.

Done and done.

Dare.

The MENTAL TRAVELLER

I travelled through a land of men,

A land of men and women too,

And heard and saw such dreadful things

As cold earth wanderers never knew.

For there the babe is born in joy

That was begotten in dire woe,

Just as we reap in joy the fruit

Which we in bitter tears did sow;

And if the babe is born a boy

He’s given to a woman old,

Who nails him down upon a rock,

Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

She binds iron thorns around his head,

And pierces both his hands and feet,

And cuts his heart out of his side

To make it feel both cold & heat.

Her fingers number every nerve

Just as a miser counts his gold;

She lives upon his shrieks and cries—

And she grows young as he grows old,

Till he becomes a bleeding youth

And she becomes a virgin bright;

Then he rends up his manacles

And pins her down for his delight.

He plants himself in all her nerves

Just as a husbandman his mould,

And she bcomes his dwelling-place

And garden, frutiful seventyfold.

An aged shadow soon he fades,

Wandering round and earthly cot,

Full filled all with gems and gold

Which he by industry had got.

And these are the gems of the human soul:

The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye,

The countless gold of an aching heart,

The martyr’s groan, and the lover’s sigh.

They are his meat, they are his drink:

He feeds the beggar and the poor

And the wayfaring traveller;

For ever open is his door.

His grief is their eternal joy,

They make the roofs and walls to ring—

Till from the fire on the hearth

Alittle female babe does spring!

And she is all of solid fire

And gems and gold, that none his hand

Dares stretch to touch her baby form,

Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

But she comes to the man she loves,

If young or old, or rich or poor;

They soon drive out the aged host,

A beggar at another’s door.

He wanders weeping far away

Until some other take him in;

Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,

Until he can a maiden win.

And to allay his freezing age

The poor man takes her in his arms:

The cottage fades before his sight,

The garden and its lovely charms;

The guests are scattered through the land

(For the eye altering, alters all);

The senses roll themselves in fear,

And the flat earth becomes a ball,

The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away—

A desert vast without a bound,

And nothing left to eat or drink

And a dark desert all around.

The honey of her infant lips,

The bread and wine of her sweet smile,

The wild game of her roving eye

Does him to infancy beguile.

For as he eats and drinks he grows

Younger and younger every day;

And on the desert wild they both

Wander in terror and dismay.

Like the wild stag she flees away;

Her fear plants many a thicket wild,

While he pursues her night and day,

By various arts of love beguiled.

By various arts of love and hate,

Till the wide desert planted o’er

With labyrinths of wayward love,

Where roams the lion, wolf and boar,

Till he becomes a wayward babe

And she a weeping woman old.

Then many a lover wanders here,

The sun and stars are nearer rolled,

The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy

To all who in the desert roam,

Till many a city there is built,

And many a pleasant shepherd’s home.

But when they find the frowning babe

Terror strikes through the region wide;

They cry, ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!’

And flee away on every side.

For who dare touch the frowning form

His arm is withered to its root,

Lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee

And every tree does shed its fruit;

And none can touch that frowning form,

Except it be a woman old;

She nails him down upon the rock,

And all is done as I have told.

William Blake

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Bernardo Bellotto

Bellotto, The Fortress of Königstein from the North-West, 1758

Bernardo Bellotto was born on this day in 1720.

Letizia Treves, curator England's National Gallery, introduces the exhibition, Bellotto: The Königstein Views Reunited ...

Stop.

Hang.

'Tis Winter and the weekend begins now ...

"Hang care!" exclaimed he. "This is a delicious evening; the wine has a finer relish here than in the house, and the song is more exciting and melodious under the tranquil sky than in the close room, where the sound is stifled. Come, let us have a bacchanalian chant—let us, with old Sir Toby, make the welkin dance and rouse the night-owl with a catch! I am right merry. Pass the bottle, and tune your voices—a catch, a catch! The lights will be here anon."     

Charles Ollier, from "The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington" 

For best results, order an extra side of ranch for the chicken nachos and listen to Wings, "Hi, Hi, Hi' ...

The euphony transformed me and inundated my soul in a roguish countenance, the likes of which I had know well in younger days. Such impishness soon drove out the complaints of the day. 

Umberto Limongiello

Phony Beatlemania is still way overrated.

Thanks to Steve for the inspiration.

The Jam, "Going Underground"

The public gets what the public wants

But I want nothing this society's got ...

Privateness.

Pears, The Student Travels Underground, 1930

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and

retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For

expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. 

Francis Bacon, from "Of Studies"

Ice.

Ice boating on Lake Leelanau, God's Country ...

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Nameless.

VINCULUS' SONG

I reached out my hand, England's rivers turned and flowed the other way...

I reached out my hand, my enemies's blood stopt in their veins...

I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies' heads like a flock of starlings;

My enemies crumpled like empty sacks.

I came to them out of mists and rain;

I came to them in dreams at midnight;

I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn;

When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood...

The rain made a door for me and I went through it;

The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it;

Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever;

England was given to me to be mine forever.

The nameless slave wore a silver crown;

The nameless slave was a king in a strange country...

The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics;

Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts;

Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory.

I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritance

But Englishmen have despised my gift

Magic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it;

Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it;

In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it...

Two magicians shall appear in England...

The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me;

The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction;

The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache;

The second shall see his dearest posession in his enemy's hand...

The first shall pass his life alone, he shall be his own gaoler;

The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside...

I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me.

The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it;

The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it...

The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown

The nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country...

Susanna Clarke, from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Conditions.

Anton Chekhov from a letter to his brother 1886 ...

You have been gifted from above with something most others lack : you have talent. That talent sets you above millions of people, for here on earth there is only one artist to every two million men.  That talent puts you on a plane apart, and even if you were a toad or a tarantula you would still be respected, for all is forgiven to talent. You have only one failing. But in it lies the source of your false position, your misery, and even of your intestinal catarrh. That failing is your utter lack of culture.  

Do excuse me, but veritas magis amicitiae, for life imposes certain conditions.  To feel at ease among intelligent folk, not to be out of place in such company, and not to feel this atmosphere to be a burden upon oneself, one must be cultured in a particular way.  Your talent has thrust you into this charmed circle, you belong to it, but you are impelled away from it and find yourself forced to waver between these cultured people and your neighbors. The vulgar flesh cries out in you, that flesh raised on the birch rod, in the beer cellar, on free meals.  To overcome this background is difficult - terribly difficult.

In my opinion people of culture must meet the following requisites ...

Thankful.

The Reverend Dr. Cornel West, interviewed on The Skeptic's Guide to Enlightenment ...

My beloved mother had a favorite a moment in the biblical text that’s Thessalonian, the fifth chapter, where Paul talks about being thankful in all circumstances. You say, how could that be? That makes absolutely no sense. Thankful, gratitude, piety, and acknowledgement of the blessings owing to the sources for good in your life in terms of the kind of father and mother that you had, over which you had no control, or the kind of grandparents you had, or the kind of friends you encounter, or the kind of text that you read, the kind of music that you listen to.

We’re grateful for Beethoven. Grateful for Aretha Franklin. Why? Because they’re sources of good in our lives. We’re thankful for Schiller, we’re thankful for Paul Salaam and his torturous poetic wrestling with catastrophe. We’re thankful to Mark Twain and Herman Melville and Tony Morrison and Chekhov. Of course, Chekhov is my favorite, so I won’t go anywhere beyond that. That’s about as deep as you can get.

But you’re thankful that they laid bare in their lives and in their works and with their words the source of joy. That’s a love and a joy that go hand in hand. Yes, with the sense of joy and gratitude and thankfulness.

Kurt has Buckley on the same. 

Happy Birthday, Anton Chekhov

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

Anton Chekhov, born on this day in from "The Bet"

Guarantee.

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

Thomas Paine, from The Rights of Man

Happy Birthday, Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius was born on this day in 1862.

"Winter Night Sleigh Ride"...

Wander through Delius: Apostle of Nature.

Laura Cannell, Antiphony of the Trees

Different.

Miracle: The Boys of '80 comes out tomorrow.

Our approach to the game was gonna be entirely different ...

Published.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

            Only this and nothing more" ...

Edgar Allan Poe, from "The Raven," published on this day in 1845

Happy Birthday, Thomas Paine

Jarvis, Thomas Paine, 1809

Government with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery. 

Thomas Paine, born on this day in 1737, from "Rights of Man"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...