06 June 2021
Stability.
No, all hope cannot be pinned on science, technology, or economic growth. The victory of technological civilization has also instilled in us a spiritual insecurity. Its gifts enrich, but enslave us as well. All is interests, we must not neglect our interests, all is a struggle for material things; but an inner voice tells us that we have lost something pure, elevated, and fragile. We have ceased to see the purpose.
It is up to us to stop seeing Progress (which cannot be stopped by anyone or anything) as a stream of unlimited blessings, and to view it rather as a gift from on high, sent down for an extremely intricate trial of our free will.
A complex balancing act thus arises before the West. While maintaining full respect for the entire precious pluralism of world cultures and for their search for distinct social solutions, the West cannot at the same time lose sight of its own values, its historically unique stability of civic life under the rule of law—a hard-won stability which grants independence and space to every private citizen.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from his address to the International Academy of Philosophy, Liechtenstein, 1993
Telemann, Concerto in A major for Flute, Violin and Cello, TWV 53:A2
Bremer Barockorchester performs ...
05 June 2021
Authentic.
The Whip’s authentic pub atmosphere is a casual and inviting place to try traditional English dishes created from local, sustainable ingredients. Bangers and Mash, Scotch Eggs, Welsh Rarebit and Sticky Toffee Pudding are just a few of the delectable offerings that have earned rave reviews and a loyal following among British expatriates and English-fare converts.
Woven into the mix are American favorites, evolving seasonally using the highest quality produce, beef and lamb, cheeses and cream from Chester and Lancaster Counties. One visit to The Whip and you’ll know why so many locals covet it and why hundreds of visitors travel miles to experience it.
Art.
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
W. Somerset Maugham
Eden & Lukas Pool, "Polly Put the Kettle On" ...
John Wardrop, "Peach Bottom Creek" ...
Bruce Molsky, "Piney Mountains" ...
04 June 2021
Call.
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.
Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close bare-bosom’d night—press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds—night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.
Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow’d earth—rich apple-blossom’d earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.
Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable passionate love.
Walt Whitman
Celebrated.
Architectural Digest chants an all-too-familiar dirge ...
Venice has a rich history, but no café there is more famous than Caffè Florian in St. Mark’s Square. It's where one can relish 18th-century decor and soak up the sun while listening to the patio orchestra, while gazing on Doge’s Palace (with a fleet of pigeons).As the oldest café in Italy—and the world, in fact—Caffè Florian recently celebrated its 300th anniversary on December 29 with no fanfare. It was a far cry from the 290th celebration in 2010, with cakes, an enormous party, and a live concert. The café famed for its celebrity clientele—from Charles Dickens to Andy Warhol—now faces closure since the pandemic has taken a toll on tourism.
Supreme.
To address another human was one thing, but a singing voice was capable of so much more. Romance made you weak and love was about suffering. I wanted what the jazz musicians were looking for: the supreme. I wanted my voice to take life by the throat and rattle it until it made sense.
Chrissie Hynde
Exluded.
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.
C.S. Lewis, from The Problem of Pain
Worth.
God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -- of creatures that worked like machines -- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -- that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings -- then we may take it it is worth paying.
C.S. Lewis, from The Case for Christianity
Many.
Free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.
Flannery O'Connor, from Wise Blood
Since.
According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.
G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy
Figures.
What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?
Leo Tolstoy
Construe.
No wonder, then, if the entrenched, secretly smoldering emotions of revenge and hatred put this belief to their own use and, in fact, do not defend any belief more passionately than that the strong are free to be weak, and the birds of prey are free to be lambs: – in this way, they gain the right to make the birds of prey responsible for being birds of prey. When the oppressed, the downtrodden, the violated say to each other with the vindictive cunning of powerlessness: "Let us be different from evil people, let us be good! And a good person is anyone who does not rape, does not harm anyone, who does not attack, does not retaliate, who leaves the taking of revenge to God, who keeps hidden as we do, avoids all evil and asks little from life in general, like us who are patient, humble and upright" – this means, if heard coolly and impartially, nothing more than: "We weak people are just weak; it is good to do nothing for which we are not strong enough" – but this grim state of affairs, this cleverness of the lowest rank which even insects possess (which play dead, in order not to "do too much" when in great danger), has, thanks to the counterfeiting and self- deception of powerlessness, clothed itself in the finery of self-denying, quiet, patient virtue, as though the weakness of the weak were itself – I mean its essence, its effect, its whole unique, unavoidable, irredeemable reality – a voluntary achievement, something wanted, chosen, a deed, an accomplishment. This type of man needs to believe in an unbiased "subject" with freedom of choice, because he has an instinct of self-preservation and self-affirmation in which every lie is sanctified. The reason the subject (or, as we more colloquially say, the soul) has been, until now, the best doctrine on earth, is perhaps because it facilitated that sublime self- deception whereby the majority of the dying, the weak and the oppressed of every kind could construe weakness itself as freedom, and their particular mode of existence as an accomplishment.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Ancestors.
Sir Roger Scruton
Silent.
There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing precisely because it is so silent: it can't be spoken. It has to remain silent. To articulate it, to verbalize it, is to tamper with it, and in some way to destroy it.
Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self. We live in a state of constant semi attention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of what goes on around us all the time.
This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half diluted: we are not quite "thinking", not entirely responding, but we are more or less there.
We are not fully present and not entirely absent, not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available.
It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything and we may in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment. Yet we derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are "part of something" -- although we are not quite able to define what that something is -- and probably wouldn't want to define it even if we could.
We just float along in the general noise. Resigned and indifferent, we share semi-consciously in the mindless mind of Muzak and radio commercials which pass for "reality".
Thomas Merton, from Love & Living
03 June 2021
Hang.
"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"
Scorpions, "Make it Real" ...
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
Heart.
Dufy, Bouquet of Anémones, 1953
When I feel a little confused the only thing to do is to turn back to the study of nature before launching once again into the subjects closest to heart. I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.
Raoul Dufy
Happy Birthday, Hunter
Ian Hunter was born on this day in 1939.
Mott the Hoople, "Drivin' Sister" ...
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Spiritual.
Mondrian, Two Roses, 1921
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To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual.
Piet Mondrian
02 June 2021
R.E.M., "Maps and Legends"
He's not to be reached, he's to be reached
He's not to be reached, he's to be reached
Called the fool and the company
On his own, where he'd rather be
Where he ought to be
And he sees what you can't see, can't you see that?
(He sees what you can't see)
Maybe he's caught in the legend
Maybe he's caught in the mood
Maybe these maps and legends
Have been misunderstood
Down the way, the road's divided
Paint me the places you've seen
Those who know what I don't know
Refer to the yellow, red, and green
Sing.
Turner, Sky Study, 1833
THOSE DANCING DAYS are GONE
Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,
All that silk and satin gear;
Crouch upon a stone,
Wrapping that foul body up
In as foul a rag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.
Curse as you may I sing it through;
What matter if the knave
That the most could pleasure you,
The children that he gave,
Are somewhere sleeping like a top
Under a marble flag?
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.
I thought it out this very day.
Noon upon the clock,
A man may put pretence away
Who leans upon a stick,
May sing, and sing until he drop,
Whether to maid or hag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup,
The moon in a silver bag.
W.B. Yeats
01 June 2021
Sibelius, Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor ...
Accompaniment.
Now there is discoverable in man, freewill. His actions are of moral value to him if they are undertaken upon his own initiative; not if they are undertaken under compulsion. Therefore the use of choice is necessary to human dignity. A man deprived of choice is by that the less a man, and this we all show through the repugnance excited in us by unauthorized restraint and subjection, through coercion rather than authority, to another’s will. We cannot do good, or even evil, unless we do it freely; and if we admit the idea of good at all in human society, freedom must be its accompaniment.
Hilaire Belloc, "An Essay on the Restoration of Property"
Never.
Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.
Harry S. Truman
Never forget.
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