Unsurpassable.

A GENTLEMAN’S WEALTH

A poet’s treasure consists of words and phrases;
A scholar’s days and nights are perfumed with books.
For me, plum blossoms framed by the window is an unsurpassable pleasure;
A stomach tight with cold but still enchanted by snow, the moon, and dawn frost.

Ikkyu

Happy Birthday, Blackwood

Algernon Blackwood was born on this day in 1869.

No place worth knowing yields itself at sight, and those the least inviting on first view may leave the most haunting pictures upon the walls of memory. Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or another, and I am no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.

Algernon Blackwood

RUSH, "The Camera Eye"

Happy Birthday, Einstein

Albert Einstein was born on this day in 1879.

Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But that’s not right. Knowledge is dead; the school, however, serves the living. It should develop in the young individuals those equalities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth. But that does not mean that individuality should be destroyed and the individual becomes a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant. For a community of standardized individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently thinking and acting individuals, who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life problem.

But how shall one try to attain this ideal? Should one perhaps try to realize this aim by moralizing? Not at all. Words are and remain empty sound, and the road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal. But personalities are not formed by what is heard and said but by labor and activity.

The most important method of education accordingly always has consisted of the where pupil was urged to actual performance. This applies as well to the first attempts at writings of the primary boy as to the doctor’s thesis on graduation from the university, or as to the mere memorizing of a poem, the writing of a composition, the interpretation and translation of a text, the solving of a mathematical problem or the practice of a physical sport.

But behind every achievement exists the motivation which is at the foundation of it and, which in turn is strengthened and nourished by the accomplishment of the undertaking. Here, there are the greatest differences and they are of greatest importance to the education value of the school. The same work may owe its origin to fear and compulsion, ambitious desire for authority and distinction, or loving interest in the object and a desire for truth and understanding, and thus to that divine curiosity which every healthy child possesses, but which so often is weakened early. The educational influence which is exercised upon the pupil by the accomplishment of one and the same work may be widely different, depending upon whether fear of hurting egoistic passion, or desire for pleasure and satisfaction is at the bottom of this work. And nobody will maintain that the administration of the school and the attitude of the teachers do not have an influence upon the molding of the psychological foundation for pupils.

Albert Einstein

CONNECT

Happy Birthday, Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann was born on this day 1681.

Frans Brüggen performs the Fantasia No. 3 in B minor, TWV 40:4 ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Bach, Sonata in E minor, BVW 1034

Ensemble Flautino perform the Andante and Allegro ...

Roam.

When the cities are gone and all the ruckus has died away. when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways, when the glass-aluminum sky scraper tombs of Phoenix, AZ barely show above the sand dunes. why then, by God, maybe free men & wild women on horses can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom and dance all night to the music of fiddles! banjos! steel guitars! by the light of a reborn moon!

Edward Abbey

Son Volt, "Sinking Down"

Will.

Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians.  Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told.

Winston S. Churchill

Thanks to The Man in the Green Shirt.

Far.

Manet, Lilacs and Roses, 1882

It is not enough to know your craft – you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more.

Edouard Manet

Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, "Yalla Yalla"

Robert Plant, "Gallows Pole"

Unknown.

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

Rebecca Solnit

Own.

Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Thank You, Jessica.

Zeppelin.

Happy Birthday, Taylor

James Taylor was born on this day in 1948.

"Country Road"



It's sandwich time.

Josquin, Nymphes de Bois

Euouae performs ...

Sacred.

A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniences, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, who dares say to reason, "Be thou a slave;" who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.

The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.

Cesare Beccaria, from Essays on Crimes and Punishments, 1764

Widely.

Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.

Fernando Pessoa

Dog.

All.

Shishkin, Old Oak, 1866

ODES

1.
Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love
Most of all those fugitive roses
         That on the day they are born,
         That very day, must also die.
Eternal, for them, the light of day:
They're born when the sun is already high
         And die before Apollo's course

         Across the visible sky is run.
We too, of our lives, must make one day:
We never know, my Lydia, nor want
        To know of nights before or after
        The little while that we may last.
2.
To be great, be whole: nothing that's you
         Should you exaggerate or exclude.
In each thing, be all. Give all you are
         In the least you ever do.
The whole moon, because it rides so high,
         Is reflected in each pool.

Fernando Pessoa

Happy Birthday, Tasso

Unknown, Torquato Tasso, 1593

Torquato Tasso was born on this day in 1544.

Now the waves murmur
And the boughs and the shrubs tremble
in the morning breeze,
And on the green branches the pleasant birds
Sing softly
And the east smiles;
Now dawn already appears
And mirrors herself in the sea,
And makes the sky serene,
And the gentle frost impearls the fields
And gilds the high mountains:
O beautiful and gracious Aurora,
The breeze is your messenger, and you the breeze's
Which revives each burnt-out heart. 

Torquato Tasso

Telemann, Fantasia No. 1 in A major

Genevieve Lacey performs ...

Forward.

The Highwaymen, "The Last Cowboy Song"

James McMurtry, "No More Buffalo"

Don't chase that carrot
'Til it makes you sick
What do you think you're gonna prove?
Just let it dangle 
'Til it falls off that stick
That's when you make your move

Don't go chasing after shooting stars
Trying to make yourself a name
You could joust at the windmills
With that old Fender guitar
You'd probably do about the same ...

I never thought they'd ever doubt my words
I guess they were just too tired to care
I'd point to the horizon
To the dust of the herds, still hovering in the air
Somebody said it ain't any such
Man, you wish so hard you're scaring me
Those are combines kicking up that dust
But I guess you can see what you want to see
You can keep on chasing what used to be there
Top that rise and face the pain
But man they were here, they were here I swear
Not just these bleaching bones, stretching across the plain

Billy Joe Shaver, "Willie The Wandering Gypsy and Me"

It's sandwich time.

Dreamed.

PARADOXES and OXYMORONS

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know 
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.

It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.

John Ashbery

Responds.

Is it not all in us, how strangely!  Look at this congregation of men; -- the words might be spoken, -- though now there be none here to speak them, -- but the words might be said that would make them stagger and reel like drunken man.  Who doubts it?  Were you ever instructed by a wise and eloquent man?  Remember then, were not the words that made your blood run cold, that brought blood to your cheeks, that made you tremble or delighted you, -- did they not sound to you as old as yourself?  Was it not truth that you knew before, or do you ever expect to be moved from the pulpit or from man by anything but plain truth?  Never.  It is God in you that responds to God without, or affirms his words trembling on the lips of another.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy Birthday, Barber

Samuel Barber was born on this day in 1910.

I have always believed that I need a circumference of silence. As to what happens to when I compose, I really haven't the faintest idea.

Samuel Barber

Leonard Slatkin conducts the Detroit Symphony in performing the Adagio from his String Quartet, Op. 11 ...



Thank you, John.

Last.

Groupthink is the blight of our Age of Information, and is most pernicious in our obsolete academic institutions, whose long suicide since 1967 continues.  The study of mediocrity, whatever its origins, breeds mediocrity.   Thomas Mann, descendant of furniture manufacturers, prophesied that his Joseph-tetralogy would last because it was well made.  We do not accept tables and chairs whose legs fall off, no matter who carpentered them, but we urge the young to study mediocre writings, with no legs to sustain them.

Harold Bloom, from Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds 

Themselves.

Moe Bandy, "Americana"

WOO-HOO!  HAPPY FRIDAY!

Freedom.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Søren Kierkegaard

The Cars, "Up and Down"

Lofty.

Michelangelo, Libyan Sybil, 1512

Painters are not in any way unsociable through pride, but either because they find few pursuits equal to painting, or in order not to corrupt themselves with the useless conversation of idle people, and debase the intellect from the lofty imaginations in which they are always absorbed.

Michelangelo

Eddie Money, "Gamblin' Man"

Artificial.

One of the disadvantages of our civilization is that too often stress of circumstances places square pegs in round holes in the artificial economy of your lives.  A man of splendid frame, who should be exploring the wilds, must sit at a desk; a brain teeming with fine imagination is deadened by routine work in a factory.  Nature never practices such misfit politics.

The Book of Knowledge

Mystery.

A fact may not be much, by itself, but it points toward what is true, and even the humblest truth may in time lead a mind to contemplate the beautiful and the good. A blue jay will give a certain kind of warning shriek to alert his fellows that a hawk is nearby.  Ponder that fact awhile and perhaps the common pest of the backyard feeder, so familiar to us that we miss his bold brave beauty, will resume his proper mystery.

Anthony Esolen, from Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

Happy Birthday, Michelangelo

Michelangelo, David, 1504

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on this day in 1475.

If people knew how hard I worked to achieve my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all. 

Michelangelo

The BBC's The Divine Michelangelo ...



NOVA: The Sistine Restored ...



A virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel is HERE.

Happy Birthday, Tiepolo

Tiepolo, The New World, 1797

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was born on this day in 1696.

Play.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau

Hallowe'd.

Revere, The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770, by a party of the 29thRegt., 1770

Unhappy BOSTON! see thy Sons deplore, Thy hallowe'd Walks besmear'd with guiltless Gore: While faithless --- and his savage Bands, With murd'rous Rancour stretch their bloody Hands; Like fierce Barbarians grinning o'er their Prey, Approve the Carnage, and enjoy the Day.

If scalding drops from Rage from Anguish Wrung If speechless Sorrows lab' ring for a Tongue, Or if a weeping World can ought appease The plaintive Ghosts of Victims such as these; The Patriot's copious Tears for each are shed, A glorious Tribute which embalms the Dead.

But know, FATE summons to that awful Goal, Where JUSTICE strips the Murd'rer of his Soul: Should venal C-ts the scandal of the Land, Snatch the relentless Villain from her Hand, Keen Execrations on this Plate inscrib'd, Shall reach a JUDGE who never can be brib'd.

The unhappy Sufferers were Messs. SAM. L GRAY, SAM.L MAVERICK, JAM.S CALDWELL , CRISPUS ATTUCKS & PAT.K CARR Killed. Six wounded two of them (CHRIST.R MONK & JOHN CLARK) Mortally

There.

Wyeth, Jamie, Sea Watchers (study), 2009

DISCONTINUOUS POEMS

The frightful reality of things
Is my everyday discovery.
Each thing is what it is.
How can I explain to anyone how much
I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems
And may write many more, of course.
Each poem of mine explains it,
Though all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
I don't begin thinking whether it feels.
I don't force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by
And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
          it worth having been born.

I don't know what others will think who read this;
But I find it must be good because I think it
         without effort,
And without the idea of others hearing me think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it as my words say it.

Once they called me a materialist poet
And I admired myself because I never thought
That I might be called by any name at all.
I am not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
        valuable.
The value is there, in my verses.
All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
       of mine.

Fernando Passoa

Sight.

Happy Birthday, Geisel

Theodor Geisel was born on this day in 1904.

You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

Dr. Seuss

Shinyribs, "Rainbow in the Dark"

DEVO, "Through Being Cool"

Ray Wylie Hubbard, "Train Yard"

WOO-HOO!  HAPPY FRIDAY!