"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

28 February 2021

Endlessness.


The world that is a book is devoured by a reader who is a letter in the world's text; thus a circular metaphor is created for the endlessness of reading. We are what we read. The process by which the circle is completed is not, Whitman argued, merely an intellectual one; we read intellectually on a superficial level, grasping certain meanings and conscious of certain facts, but at the same time, invisibly, unconsciously, text and reader become intertwined, creating new levels of meaning, so that every time we cause the text to yield something by ingesting it, simultaneously something else is born beneath it that we haven't yet grasped. That is why - as Whitman believed, rewriting and re-editing his poems over and over again - no reading can ever be definitive.

Alberto Manguel, from A History of Reading

Happy Birthday, Montaigne


Michel de Montaigne was born on this day in 1533.

It is an absolute perfection, a perfection like that of the gods, to be able faithfully to enjoy one’s own nature.  We search for other conditions because we do not understand how to deal with the condition we actually have, and we go outside ourselves because we do not know what is within us. So there is really no point getting up on stilts, for even on stilts we still have to walk on our own legs. And on the most exalted throne in the world, we still have to sit upon our own bottom.

Michel de Montaigne

Enjoy.


I think the working man is misunderstood by everyone, not least himself. There is, after all, no fundamental difference between the tradesman, the architect or his employers. They are all men made in the image of God with needs and aspirations. But I have noticed that we are all far less covetous when we are working on a job we enjoy; at the end of the day we can go home and think about it and return the next day to take the work a little further. I have heard this from so many tradesmen, that it must be true; it is the boredom of repetitive work, work which requires nothing from you, that makes for an empty mind. The empty mind is a dangerous thing because it soon gets filled with a host of other thoughts which no industrial expert can control ... 

Enjoy.Although the spiritual, political, material and temporal influences are crystallised in wood and stone, and expressed in classical forms, the classical grammar remains neutral; like the paint on the artist's palette.

27 February 2021

Premiered.


Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 premiered on this day in 1814.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Nobly.


Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier."

Theodore Roosevelt, from his speech, “Citizenship in a Republic,” delivered at the Sorbonne, April 23, 1910

George Harrison of The Crowned Heads of Anti-Music put it this way ...
Have you seen the little piggies crawling in the dirt?
And for all the little piggies life is getting worse,
Always having dirt to play around in.

Have you seen the bigger piggies in their starched white shirts?
You will find the bigger piggies stirring up the dirt,
Always have clean shirts to play around in.

In their sties with all their backing hey don't care what goes on around,
In their eyes there's something lacking,
What they need's a damn good whacking.

Everywhere there's lots of piggies living piggie lives,
You can see them out for dinner with their piggie wives,
Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.
 

Fine.

Wagner, Wesendock Lieder

Elīna Garanča performs with Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic ...

Guy Clark, "To Live is to Fly"

More.


I'm a poet and we tend to err on the side that life is more than it appears rather than less.

Jim Harrison

Choice.


Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, 
Strike the bell and bide the danger, 
Or wonder, till it drives you mad, 
What would have followed if you had.

C.S. Lewis

Mozart, La Clemenza di Tito

Elina Garanča performs "Parto, parto, ma tu, ben mio" ...

Happy Birthday, Longfellow

Cameron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1868


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on this day in 1807.

TRAVELS by the FIRESIDE

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
  And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
  Points to the misty main, 

It drives me in upon myself
  And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
  And still more pleasant dreams, 

I read whatever bards have sung
  Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
  Come thronging back to me. 

In fancy I can hear again
  The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
  The sea at Elsinore. 

I see the convent's gleaming wall
  Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
  And castles by the Rhine. 

I journey on by park and spire,
  Beneath centennial trees,
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
  And gleams of distant seas. 

I fear no more the dust and heat,
  No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
  O'er many a lengthening league. 

Let others traverse sea and land,
  And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
  Reading these poets' rhymes. 

From them I learn whatever lies
  Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
  Better than with mine own.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

26 February 2021

Happy Birthday, Hugo



Victor Hugo was born on this day in 1802.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Victor Hugo

25 February 2021

Dualism.


The idea that scientific method is the only method of discovering the truth has a lot to be said for it, if you mean by truth how the world ultimately is as a system of organized matter, but I defend cognitive dualism: that world can be understood completely in another way which also has its truths which are not translatable into the truths of science. So we have to look at the different ways we organize this material that science explains for us.

The assault on the human world in the name of science is more pseudo-science than science, and rejoices in its bald, unmoralized image of "what we really are".  What we really are from the scientific point of view is precisely what we really aren't. The identification of any object in the first-person case is ruled out by the enterprise of scientific explanation. So science cannot tell me who I am, let alone where, when, or how.

Sir Roger Scruton, from The Soul of the World

Mozart, Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219

Viktoria Mullova performs with Jörg Faerber and The Württemberg Chamber Orchestra of Heilbronn ...

Cultivation.


Patience is not learned in safety. It is not learned when everything is harmonious and going well. When everything is smooth sailing, who needs patience? If you stay in your room with the door locked and the curtains drawn, everything may seem harmonious, but the minute anything doesn’t go your way, you blow up. There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out.

Pema Chödron

Broke.


Cosmos Borealis: Light skin of sky and cloud and mountain on the still pond. Water body beneath teeming with reeds and silt and trout (sealed in day skin and night skin and ice lids), which we draw out with silk threads, fitted with snags of fur or bright feathers. Skin like glass like liquid like skin; our words scrieved the slick surface (reflecting risen moon, spinning stars, flitting bats), so that we had only to whisper across the wide plate. Green drakes blossomed powder dry among the stars, glowing white, out of pods, which rose from the muck at the bottom of the pond and broke open on the skin of the water. We whispered across the galaxies, who needs Mars?

Paul Harding

Happy Birthday, Modigliani

Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne au Chapeau, 1917


Amedeo Modigliani was born on this day in 1884.

We have different rights from normal people, for we have different needs which place us above – this must be said and believed – their morality. It is our duty never to be consumed by the sacrificial fire. Your real duty is to save your dream. Beauty too has some painful duties: these produce, however, the noblest achievements of the soul.

Amedeo Modigliani

24 February 2021

Happy Birthday, Homer

Homer, The End of the Day, 1890


Winslow Homer was born on this day in 1836.

The Sun will not rise or set without my notice and thanks.

Winslow Homer

23 February 2021

Happy Birthday, Handel

Hudson, George Frideric Handel, 1748


George Frideric Handel was born on this day 1685.

Hervé Niquet rocks out loud, as the sixth-graders would say, with Le Concert Spirituel in a performance of the Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351, at the park of Chambord Castle ...

David Bowie, "Starman"

22 February 2021

Happy Birthday, Peale.

Peale (Rembrandt), Self-portrait, 1828


Rembrandt Peale was born on this day in 1778.

21 February 2021

Delibes, Lakme

Elīna Garanča and Anna Netrebko perform the Flower Duet with the SWR Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden and Freiburg, Marco Armiliato conducting ...


Goodnight.

Happy Birthday, Roger


"Ranking Roger" Charlery was born on this day in 1963.

"Rough Rider" with The Beat ...

Learn.


MY CATHEDRAL
 
Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
  Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
  The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
  Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
  No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
  No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones.
  No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
  Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!
  Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
  Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
  And learn there may be worship without words.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Browsing.


... a place for browsing the "book of nature."

See.

Denis, Study of Clouds with a Sunset near Rome, 1786


I can see clouds a thousand miles away, hear ancient music in the pines.

Ikkyu

Peaceful.


Nothing can be as peaceful and endless as a long winter darkness, going on and on, like living in a tunnel where the dark sometimes deepens into night and sometimes eases to twilight, you're screened from everything, protected, even more alone than usual.

Tove Jansson

Happy Birthday, Simone


Nina Simone was born on this day in 1933.

"Love Me or Leave Me" ...

Did.


CATHEDRAL BUILDERS

They climbed on sketchy ladders towards God,
with winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven,
inhabited the sky with hammers,
defied gravity,
deified stone,
took up God's house to meet him,
and came down to their suppers
and small beer,
every night slept, lay with their smelly wives,
quarrelled and cuffed the children,
lied, spat, sang, were happy, or unhappy,
and every day took to the ladders again,
impeded the rights of way of another summer's swallows,
grew greyer, shakier,
became less inclined to fix a neighbour's roof of a fine evening,
saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar,
cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck,
somehow escaped the plague,
got rheumatism,
decided it was time to give it up,
to leave the spire to others,
stood in the crowd, well back from the vestments at the consecration,
envied the fat bishop his warm boots,
cocked a squint eye aloft,
and said, "I bloody did that."

John Ormond

Solitary.

Earl, Major-General Baron Frederick William August von Steuben, 1786


Regardless of communication between man and man, speech is a necessary condition for the thinking of the individual in solitary seclusion.

General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben

20 February 2021

Kris Kristofferson, "Shipwrecked in the 80s"

So long, Tonto ...

Old-fashioned.

Collins, Paper with Drawing Instruments, 2015


When I was a kid growing up I wanted to do drawings, and particularly painting that exhibited the draftsmanship of the Renaissance through the 19th century that had a fidelity of representation.  I wanted to be an old-fashioned artist.  If I were to think about what I'm after, it's to try to figure out some way to come back around to that world.

How do you make very beautiful things?  How do you represent the world and the beauty of the world and at the same time participate in this beautiful form?

Jacob Collins

Carrying.


BIRDS AGAIN

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

Jim Harrison

Prevent.

Stuart, Henry Knox, 1806


Every friend to the liberty of his country is bound to reflect, and step forward to prevent the dreadful consequences which shall result from a government of events.

Henry Knox

Happy Birthday, Adams

Adams, Aspens, Northern New Mexico, 1958


Ansel Adams was born on this day in 1902.

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.  The more I “look” for something, the less chance there is for finding anything.

Ansel Adams

19 February 2021

Freer.


How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.

Gilbert K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy

Happy Birthday, Wakeling


Dave Wakeling was born on this day in 1956.

"Doors of Your Heart" with The Beat ...

Imperturbed.


MOUNT IEVERS in SNOW

Wrapt in its ermine mantle
The grand old homestead sleeps
While tempests rage around it
And snow descends in heaps:
Aeolus in his fury lashes the window panes
It mocks his angry efforts
And imperturbed remains.

E.I.

Happy Birthday, Boccherini

Liotard, Luigi Boccherini, 1768


Luigi Boccherini was born on this day in 1743.

La Ritirata performs the Largo and Allegro vivo from the String Trio in C Major, Op. 34, No. 5, G. 105 ...

Vivaldi, Bajazet, RV 703

Elina Garanča performs "Spesso tra vaghe rose" with Europa Galante and concertmaster Fabio Biondi ...

18 February 2021

Chopin, Berceuse in D-Flat Major, Op. 57

Bertrand Chamayou performs ...


Goodnight.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

First.


Loud.

Dove, Moon, 1928


My wish is to work so unassailably that one could let one’s worst instincts go unanalyzed, not to revolutionize or reform, but to enjoy life out loud.

Arthur Dove

Golijov, "Tenebrae"

The Kontras Quartet performs ...

Beyond.

O'Keeffe, Pond in the Woods, 1922


O'Keeffe, Pool in the Woods, 1922


O'Keeffe, Lake George in the Woods, 1922


I feel that a real living form is the result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown—where it has experienced something—felt something—it has not understood—and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown—known. By unknown—I mean the thing that means so much to the person that wants to put it down—clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand—sometimes he partially knows why—sometimes he doesn’t—sometimes it is all working in the dark—but a working that must be done—Making the unknown—known—in terms of one’s medium is all-absorbing—if you stop to think of the form—as form you are lost—The artist’s form must be inevitable—You mustn’t even think you won’t succeed—Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you—catching crystallizing your simpler clearer version of life—only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead—that you must always keep working to grasp—the form must take care of its self if you can keep your vision clear.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Background.

Dove, River Bottom, Silver, Ochre, Carmine, Green, 1923


I can claim no background except perhaps the woods, running streams, hunting, fishing, camping, the sky ...

Arthur Dove

Published.


All right, then, I’ll go to hell.

Huck, published today in 1885

Revel.


CORRESPONDENCES

Nature's a fane where down each corridor
of living pillars, darkling whispers roll,
— a symbol-forest every pilgrim soul
must pierce, 'neath gazing eyes it knew before.
like echoes long that from afar rebound,
merged till one deep low shadowy note is born,
vast as the night or as the fires of morn,
sound calls to fragrance, colour calls to sound.
cool as an infant's brow some perfumes are,
softer than oboes, green as rainy leas;
others, corrupt, exultant, rich, unbar
wide infinities wherein we move at ease:
— musk, ambergris, frankincense, benjamin
chant all our soul or sense can revel in.

Charles Baudelaire

Galuppi, Sonata No.5 in C major

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli performs ...

Know.


PINE TREE TOPS

In the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
The creak of boots.
Rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.

Gary Snyder

17 February 2021

Happy Birthday, Medlocke


Rickey Medlocke was born on this day in 1950.

"Fly Away" with Blackfoot ...


... party.

Happy Birthday, Corelli


Arcangelo Corelli was born on this day in 1653.

Transverse flutist Anna Besson performs the Allegro from the Sonata in F major, op. 5 no. 4 with Louna Hosia, and Jean Rondeau ...

Always.


Pitchers and catchers report today.

15 February 2021

Sentence.

Wyeth, N.C., The Boyhood of C.A. Lindbergh Yields, Many Clues to His Personality as a Man, 1931


The STORM

Now through the white orchard my little dog
    romps, breaking the new snow
    with wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
    hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins,
until the white snow is written upon
    in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
    the pleasures of the body in this world.

Oh, I could not have said it better
    myself.

Mary Oliver