Thursday, February 01, 2007
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GOD AND MUSIC
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Hector Berlioz: “Bach is Bach as God is God.”
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If music ennobles the soul, why is it that it failed to ennoble Nero and Hitler – both great lovers of music? What if music only enhances the inherent qualities of a man – makes the good better and the bad worse? Either that or the evil spell of power is mightier than the fragile charms of music. Even religious faith (or God), it seems, cannot resist the evil spell of power. Think of the Crusades, the vicious conduct of Renaissance Popes, the Inquisition, religious wars, and more recently, the epidemic of priests molesting children. I won’t even bother mentioning the daily atrocities committed in the name of Allah.
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God and music, faith and beauty: in their absence man would have found substitutes in whose name he would have spoken with a forked tongue and proceeded to follow his gut and ignore his brain.
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E.M. Cioran: “”Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser.” (As opposed to pretending to be the morally superior winner.)
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Alain-Fournier: “Getting there is better than being there.”
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Asked how he writes his plays, Tennessee Williams is quoted as having said, “I start with a sentence.”
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Friday, February 02, 2007
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Both the massacre of innocent civilians and the violation of someone’s human right of free speech have the same root: the arrogance of power. Now then, tell me, what’s the difference between them and us?
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Whenever I get emotionally involved in an argument I know I have lost it, because emotion betrays more ego and less reason.
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There are as many versions of a historic occurrence as there are paintings of Fuji-Yama and Ararat.
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When I was dead wrong it never even occurred to me to consider the possibility of not being right. Another way of saying, I too was a believer and a fanatic.
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Are we perennial victims or morally superior victors? Can lamentation be reconciled with bragging? Tell me, do you have an answer?
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Why should love of homeland stand in opposition to love of truth?
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Paul Klee: “Art does not reproduce what we see. Rather, it makes us see.” (Or, it exposes our blindness.)
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George Orwell: “We are living in a world in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive.”
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What’s the difference between racism based on blood, and a racism based on ideas? Do you see any difference between “My blood is better than yours,” and “My ideas are better than yours”?
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Saturday, February 03, 2007
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MEMOIRS
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In the memoirs of two contemporary English novelists there is endless talk of several troubled marriages, lovers by the dozen, substance abuse (both alcohol and pills), psychiatrists, and attempted suicides, among other problems. So far I have relied only on alcohol. Couldn’t afford the rest. Sometimes it pays to be poor. During the war years and after our breakfast consisted of tea, bread, and olives. My cousin in America by contrast breakfasted on eggs, bacon, and buttered toast. Result? Open-heart surgery, pacemaker, and a dozen pills a day, among other problems.
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Speaking of lovers: in the final page of her memoirs, a filthy rich American celebrity in her eighties describes her latest gigolo as “the Nijinsky of cunnilingus.”
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“The pleasures of love last no more than a moment, its regrets a lifetime.” Has this old proverbial saying stopped anyone from resisting the temptations of the flesh? Instinct rules even the lives of reasonable men, perhaps because reason only whispers, more often than not inaudibly, where instinct is as loud as thunder. As for writers and philosophers: they may think they are in the business of dispensing wisdom, but all they can hope to do is provide a few moments of harmless entertainment.
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