Happy Birthday, William James

Whitman, William James, 1903

Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.

William James, born on this day in 1842, from The Varieties of Religious Experience

First.

On this day in 1939, Frank Sinatra made his first commercial recording, "From the Bottom of My Heart" and "Melancholy Mood," with Harry James and his Orchestra.

A vinyl copy of it will cost you around $275.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Brushes.

Wyeth (Andrew), The Witching Hour, 1977

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

Henry James

Soars.

A PERFECT MARKET

ou plutôt les chanter

Recite your lines aloud, Ronsard advised,
Or, even better, sing them. Common speech
Held all the rhythmic measures that he prized
In poetry. He had much more to teach,
But first he taught that. Several poets paid
Him heed. The odd one even made the grade,
Building a pretty castle on the beach.

But on the whole it’s useless to point out
That making the thing musical is part
Of pinning down what you are on about.
The voice leads to the craft, the craft to art:
All this is patent to the gifted few
Who know, before they can, what they must do
To make the mind a spokesman for the heart.

As for the million others, they are blessed:
This is their age. Their slapdash in demand
From all who would take fright were thought expressed
In ways that showed a hint of being planned,
They may say anything, in any way.
Why not? Why shouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they?
Nothing to study, nothing to understand.

And yet it could be that their flight from rhyme
And reason is a technically precise
Response to the confusion of a time
When nothing, said once, merits hearing twice.
It isn’t that their deafness fails to match
The chaos. It’s the only thing they catch.
No form, no pattern. Just the rolling dice

Of idle talk. Always a blight before,
It finds a place today, fulfills a need:
As those who cannot write increase the store
Of verses fit for those who cannot read,
For those who can do both the field is clear
To meet and trade their wares, the only fear
That mutual benefit might look like greed.

It isn’t, though. It’s just the interchange
Of showpiece and attention that has been
There since the cavemen took pains to arrange
Pictures of deer and bison to be seen
To best advantage in the flickering light.
Our luck is to sell tickets on the night
Only to those who might know what we mean,

And they are drawn to us by love of sound.
In the first instance, it is how we sing
That brings them in. No mystery more profound
Than how a melody soars from a string
Of syllables, and yet this much we know:
Ronsard was right to emphasize it so,
Even in his day. Now, it’s everything:

The language falls apart before our eyes,
But what it once was echoes in our ears
As poetry, whose gathered force defies
Even the drift of our declining years.
A single lilting line, a single turn
Of phrase: these always proved, at last we learn,
Life cries for joy though it must end in tears.

Clive James

Merely.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely re-arranging their prejudices.

William James

Keep reminding me.

Bob James, "Bulgogi"

Same.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.

Clive James

Thank you, Emily.

All.

Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.

Henry James

Happy birthday, James.

Harry James was born on this day in 1916.

"Trumpet Blues"



Thanks, Dad! Hearing this music as a kid meant it wouldn't be long until I could smell the charcoal burning in the grill.