Thursday, August 24, 2006
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If Beethoven is a revolutionary, Bach fully qualifies as a prophet. “Every piano concerto in the history of Western music,” writes James R. Gaines “has its antecedent in the fifth Brandenburg Concerto, when the lowliest member of the orchestra [the harpsichord] was turned loose to become Liszt.”
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In music as well as in all the arts, ideologies, and religions, the medium is not the message, in the same way that the vestments are not the man. To confuse the medium (the packaging, the style, the rituals, and mumbo jumbo) with the message may even be said to be the source of all evil.
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After saying all men are brothers, organized religions divide mankind into two camps, the Cains and the Abels. The message (all men are brothers) is thus perverted to: “Before the Cains kill us, let’s kill them!” In other words, after identifying themselves with Abel, the children of Adam adopt Cain as their role model.
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A crook in denial thinks of himself as an honest man, and Cain in denial thinks of himself as Abel. It follows, to say “God is great!” justifies behaving like swine.
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A few years ago an Armenian by the name of John Douglas published a book on Armenian history. When asked why the false name, he said out of fear of Turkish persecution. Shortly thereafter Vahakn Dadrian published his definitive study of the Armenian Genocide. What happened to him? His book was translated into Turkish and he was invited to Turkey.
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We share this in common with Turks: we identify ourselves with Abel, and when we say Turks are bloodthirsty Asiatic savages, they tell us we are confusing the medium with the message, the message being they are just people like any other people. So are we.
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Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, not only made history but, like Caesar before him and Churchill after him, he also wrote it. In a letter to a friend, he makes the following observation: “To write history is to compile the follies of man and the blows of fate. Everything runs on these two lines, and so the world has gone on for eternity.”
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The quotations above are from EVENING IN THE PALACE OF REASON: BACH MEETS FRDERICK THE GREAT IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, by James R. Gaines (New York, 2005).
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Friday, August 25, 2006
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TWO SCHOOLS OF CRITICISM
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The two most popular schools of Armenian criticism are (one) censorship by editors, and (two) verbal abuse by faceless and anonymous bullies.
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Editors exercise censorship because they have no choice but to follow a policy set by their publisher, whose aim is to maximize the number of subscribers and advertisers. If one or more readers or advertisers take a dislike at a writer or disagree with his views, that writer becomes persona non grata, that is, bad for business, and a publisher’s business, like America’s, is business. Gone are the good old days in Istanbul when an idealistic editor like Krikor Zohrab (1861-1915), who was also a highly respected author, statesman, lawyer, and a contemporary of Sultan Abdulhamid II and Talaat, who could say: “A newspaper is not a chameleon. It should not change its colors to please readers. It is bound to make enemies. I would measure the moral success of a newspaper by its willingness to make enemies.”
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As for faceless and anonymous bullies who are active mainly in discussion forums on the internet: the reason why they refuse to identify themselves is that they are afraid by other anonymous and faceless bullies who may do to them what they do to others, which may be interpreted as an awareness of the fact that what they are doing is worse than wrong, it is also cowardly. There is only one kind of coward who willingly admits to being one, namely, a coward who is also a self-satisfied fool. Next time these bullies think of verbally abusing someone anonymously, I suggest they ask themselves the following question: Why should anyone take seriously the words of a coward and a fool who is not embarrassed to admit to being both?
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Am I wasting my time on riffraff, as some of my friends like to remind me? Let me quote Zohrab again: “So-called important and unusual events leave me cold. I prefer to unmask the hidden meaning of every-day occurrences which tend to be ignored by the majority.”
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Saturday, August 26, 2006
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UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
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There is an old saying, “Even if a blunder were made of the most expensive fur, no one would want to wear it.” We don’t mind admitting that like all human beings we are fallible, but we hate to admit specific blunders, especially when they are of the catastrophic variant. This is true of all of us, including politicians. For a politician to admit an error amounts to admitting incompetence or bad judgment, both of which may be terminal to his career. This point is brilliantly dramatized in WITHOUT PRECEDENT: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION, by Thomas H. Kean and Lee Hamilton (New York, 2006). The co-authors, who were also the co-chairs of the Commission, write: “The starting point for our report was that it would focus on facts. We were not setting out to advocate one theory or interpretation of 9/11 versus another.” But since the American people were polarized, the challenge they confronted consisted in reconciling two contradictory theories: “…there was no middle ground: either the response to 9/11 was heroic and as good as it could have been, or it was a terrible failure, and individuals had to be blamed.” In its efforts to cover up its failures, the Bush administration set up so many roadblocks that it soon became clear to the authors that the 9/11 Commission was “set up to fail.”
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No one denies the facts surrounding our Genocide, in the same way that no one denies the destruction of the Twin Towers and the death of 3000 innocent civilians. It doesn’t necessarily follow we have all the answers. “Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom; we are now afraid of free speech.” These are not the words of a dissident or critic but a darling of our establishment, Hagop Garabents (Jack Karapetian). And in a letter to a friend, Gostan Zarian said this about our political parties: “Their greatest enemy is free speech.” Why? What are they hiding? What is it that they don’t want us to know? In the minds of many Armenians, these questions remain unanswered.
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