Analogies

I love this theme and, while I think she's good, her execution of it is hurried (2:13 - 2:19, 2:39 - 2:41, etc; there are many such examples)- to me, it's like she's eating, the piano is her plate of food, which is an approach I like, only she's swallowing too fast, without savouring the notes properly. A few more fractions of a second spent on some notes would make this Very Good. Wait for the drummer & the bassist, Lynne! Don't jerk them around so much, offer them a bite.

I posted the passage above on YouTube under this video, only to notice, after clicking "post", that it is her channel, and the comment is now 'waiting for approval' by the owner of the channel; so I post it here instead.

Yknow how some people are very territorial about their plate of food? Usually men? Somehow, these same people manage to go out with other people who do not want to order a side of fries and end up doing the inevitable:

"Can I steal a fry?"

"Why didn't you order some if you wanted them?"

"I want one, not a whole plate of them."

"::Obnoxiousloud sigh:: fine."

Well, here, the best approach in my view is to offer some fries before it is even asked, because I've noticed people have a harder time accepting something that was offered.

In this case, Lynne is not only not offering the fries to her drummer and bassist, she's telling them "no, you can't have one, they're all mine!" She's hungry, hungrier than these two! And that's fine. But... but...

If this were footie, she'd be the center-forward or striker. It is known that center-fwds are v v good at running short distances v v fast; they're highly skilled at finishing a play; they're the star atop a Christmas tree.

However, without the midfielders, left and right-wingers, and fullbacks, the striker is useless. There is even no striker glory without a goalie. There is no play for him to finish, because they're seldom the tactically gifted heads, though they do have extraordinary vision and ability to see in their minds' eye what is going on 50 metres away.

But alone, strikers cannot be together. Jazz pianists can, provided they are, in fact, solo.

Dead or Alive?

At the Louvre, while strolling for hours, I noticed something that struck me as bizarre: many of the portraits in the Flemish and Northern School rooms reminded me of famous people who are alive. One was Daniel Day-Lewis; then I saw Johnny Depp in XVII century clothes. Blinking, doing double-takes left right and centre, I asked my friend if he saw it too. He smiled, laughed, and at times nodded his agreement.

This made me think about the Soul Factory.

Can it be that there are a limited number of souls, or, at any rate, souls that come back, again and again, and those who were once famous for the right reasons, come back, again and again, until they stop, as famous?

And, can it be that souls who (yes, who, not which), for one reason or another, have a particularly tricky mission to accomplish get split in two or perhaps even more, thus dividing the task?

Naturally, all this rests on the assumption souls exist, and many would disagree. I can't think otherwise, despite lack of scientific proof.

When there are so many people who look like other people, this question comes to me. However, never before had I noticed this between someone who's dead and someone who's alive.

Antonio Moro's Portrait d'Homme Désignant une Pendule

Michael Keaton

Is it striking or is my mind playing tricks on me?

The curious case of how the semantic value of a word can be better in a language without a Latin root or origin

Excerpt from Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

"All languages that derive from Latin form the word "compassion" by combining the prefix "with" (com-) and the root meaning "suffering" (Late Latin, passio).

In other languages - Czech, Polish, German, and Swedish for instance - this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefix combined with the word that means "feeling" (Czech: sou-cit; Polish: współ-czucie; German: Mit-gefühl; Swedish: med-känsla).

In languages that derive from Latin, "compassion" means: we cannot look on cooly as others suffer; or, we symphathize with those who suffer.

Another word with approximately the same meaning, "pity" (French: pitié; Italian: pièta; etc.), connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer. "To pity on a woman" means that we are better off than she, that we stoop to her level, lower than ourselves.

That is why the word "compassion" generally inspires suspicion; it designates what is considered inferior, second-rate sentiment that has little to do with love. To love someone out of compassion means not really to love.

In languages that form the word "compassion" not from the root "suffering" but from the root word "feeling," the word is used in approximately the same way, but to contend that it designates a bad or inferior sentiment is difficult.

The secret strength of its etymology floods the word with another light and gives it a broader meaning: to have compassion (co-feeling) means not only to be able to live with the other's misfortune but also to feel with him any emotion - joy, anxiety, happiness, pain. This kind of compassion (in the sense of soucit; współczucie; Mitgefühl; medkänsla) therefore signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination, the art of emotional telepathy. In the hierarchy of sentiments, then, it is supreme."

*****

Coltrane's Compassion can exemplify this well, I think.

In images, the first one that comes to mind is Delacroix's La Liberté Guidant le Peuple, a specific detail: right in the lower half of the painting under Liberty's feet, we see a man, presumably dead, wearing only one sock. I saw this painting yesterday, and the feeling it gave me then was of deep understanding of this man's sensations (thus giving him "real human" status, communicating to the viewer this man's existence as a body, and not just a/another symbol in a painting-- movement in inertia, etc) right before he was killed.

He only has one sock on, and one can guess he didn't choose this. It's a detail that may perhaps appear to be of little consequence but that, to me, means a great deal, because it symbolizes lack of comfort of a very specific type; though one cannot quite call it suffering, it is not difficult to realize that minor but continuous lack of basic comfort-- sometimes of a seemingly banal type-- can come to mean a great deal of discomfort.

Edmund Burke (1729–1797). On the Sublime and Beautiful. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Of the Passion Caused by the Sublime

THE PASSION caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. 1 In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect. ***** Power BESIDES those things which directly suggest the idea of danger, and those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power. And this branch rises, as naturally as the other two branches, from terror, the common stock of everything that is sublime. The idea of power, at first view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones, which may equally belong to pain or to pleasure. But in reality, the affection, arising from the idea of vast power, is extremely remote from that neutral character. For first, we must remember, 1 that the idea of pain, in its highest degree, is much stronger than the highest degree of pleasure; and that it preserves the same superiority through all the subordinate gradations. From hence it is, that where the chances for equal degrees of suffering or enjoyment are in any sort equal, the idea of the suffering must always be prevalent. And indeed the ideas of pain, and, above all, of death, are so very affecting, that whilst we remain in the presence of whatever is supposed to have the power of inflicting either, it is impossible to be perfectly free from terror. {…} ***** Privation ALL general privations are great, because they are all terrible; Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude,and Silence. With what a fire of imagination, yet with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amassed all these circumstances, where he knows that all the images of a tremendous dignity ought to be united, at the mouth of hell! where, before he unlocks the secrets of the great deep, he seems to be seized with a religious horror, and to retire astonished at the boldness of his own designs: Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbræque—silentes! Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca nocte silentia late, Sit mihi fas audita loqui; sit, numine vestro, Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas. Ibant obscuri, sola sub nocte, per umbram, Perque domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna. Ye subterraneous gods, whose awful sway The gliding ghosts and silent shades obey; O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound! Whose solemn empire stretches wide around; Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell: Give me your mighty secrets to display From those black realms of darkness to the day.—PITT. Obscure they went through dreary shades that led Along the waste dominions of the dead.—DRYDEN. ***** Infinity ANOTHER source of the sublime is infinity; if it does not rather belong to the last. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime. There are scarce any things which can become the objects of our senses, that are really and in their own nature infinite. But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if they were really so. We are deceived in the like manner, if the parts of some large object are so continued to any indefinite number, that the imagination meets no check which may hinder its extending them at pleasure. Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a sort of mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has ceased to operate. 1 After whirling about, when we sit down, the objects about us still seem to whirl. After a long succession of noises, as the fall of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers beat and the water roars in the imagination long after the first sounds have ceased to affect it; and they die away at last by gradations which are scarcely perceptible. If you hold up a straight pole, with your eye to one end, it will seem extended to a length almost incredible. 2 Place a number of uniform and equi-distant marks on this pole, they will cause the same deception, and seem multiplied without end. The senses, strongly affected in some one manner, cannot quickly change their tenor, or adapt themselves to other things; but they continue in their old channel until the strength of the first mover decays. This is the reason of an appearance very frequent in madmen; that they remain whole days and nights, sometimes whole years, in the constant repetition of some remark, some complaint, or song; which having struck powerfully on their disordered imagination in the beginning of their phrensy, every repetition reinforces it with new strength; and the hurry of their spirits, unrestrained by the curb of reason, continues it to the end of their lives.

Edmund Burke (1729–1797). On the Sublime and Beautiful. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Of Beauty

IT is my design to consider beauty as distinguished from the sublime; and, in the course of the inquiry, to examine how far it is consistent with it. But previous to this, we must take a short review of the opinions already entertained of this quality; which I think are hardly to be reduced to any fixed principles; because men are used to talk of beauty in a figurative manner, that is to say, in a manner extremely uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty I mean that quality or those qualities in bodies, by which they cause love, or some passion similar to it. I confine this definition to the merely sensible qualities of things, for the sake of preserving the utmost simplicity in a subject, which must always distract us whenever we take in those various causes of sympathy which attach us to any persons or things from secondary considerations, and not from the direct force which they have merely on being viewed. I likewise distinguish love (by which I mean that satisfaction which arises to the mind upon contemplating anything beautiful, of whatsoever nature it may be) from desire or lust; which is an energy of the mind, that hurries us on to the possession of certain objects, that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by means altogether different. We shall have a strong desire for a woman of no remarkable beauty; whilst the greatest beauty in men or in other animals, though it causes love, yet excites nothing at all of desire. Which shows that beauty, and the passion caused by beauty, which I call love, is different from desire, though desire may sometimes operate along with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute those violent and tempestuous passions, and the consequent emotions of the body, which attend what is called love in some of its ordinary acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is such. ***** Beautiful Objects Small THE MOST obvious point that presents itself to us in examining any object, is its extent or quantity. And what degree of extent prevails in bodies that are held beautiful, may be gathered from the usual manner of expression concerning it. I am told that, in most languages, the objects of love are spoken of under diminutive epithets. It is so in all languages of which I have any knowledge. In Greek the [Greek] and other diminutive terms are almost always the terms of affection and tenderness. These diminutives were commonly added by the Greeks to the names of persons with whom they conversed on terms of friendship and familiarity. Though the Romans were a people of less quick and delicate feelings, yet they naturally slid into the lessening termination upon the same occasions. Anciently in the English language the diminishing ling was added to the names of persons and things that were the objects of love. Some we retain still, as darling,little to everything we love: the French and Italians make use of these affectionate diminutives even more than we. In the animal creation, out of our own species, it is the small we are inclined to be fond of; little birds, and some of the smaller kinds of beasts. A great beautiful thing is a manner of expression scarcely ever used; but that of a great ugly thing is very common. There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible; the latter on small ones, and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us; in one case we are forced, in the other we are flattered, into compliance. In short, the ideas of the sublime and the beautiful stand on foundations so different, that it is hard, I had almost said impossible, to think of reconciling them in the same subject, without considerably lessening the effect of the one or the other upon the passions. So that, attending to their quantity, beautiful objects are comparatively small. (or little dear,) and a few others. But, to this day, in ordinary conversation, it is usual to add the endearing name of ***** Gradual Variation BUT as perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed of angular parts, so their parts never continue long in the same right line. 1 They vary their direction every moment, and they change under the eye by a deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning or end you will find it difficult to ascertain a point. The view of a beautiful bird will illustrate this observation. Here we see the head increasing insensibly to the middle, from whence it lessens gradually until it mixes with the neck; the neck loses itself in larger swell, which continues to the middle of the body, when the whole decreases again to the tail; the tail takes a new direction; but it soon varies its new course: it blends again with the other parts; and the line is perpetually changing, above, below, upon every side. In this description I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well with most of the conditions of beauty. It is smooth and downy; its parts are (to use that expression) melted into one another; you are presented with no sudden protuberance through the whole, and yet the whole is continually changing. Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and breasts; the smoothness; the softness; the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible at any point, which forms one of the great constituents of beauty? It gives me no small pleasure to find that I can strengthen my theory in this point, by the opinion of the very ingenious Mr. Hogarth; whose idea of the line of beauty I take in general to be extremely just. But the idea of variation, without attending so accurately to the manner of the variation, has led him to consider angular figures as beautiful: these figures, it is true, vary greatly; yet they vary in a sudden and broken manner; and I do not find any natural object which is angular, and at the same time beautiful. Indeed few natural objects are entirely angular. But I think those which approach the most nearly to it are the ugliest. I must add too, that, so far as I could observe of nature, though the varied line is that alone in which complete beauty is found, yet there is no particular line which is always found in the most completely beautiful, and which is therefore beautiful in preference to all other lines. At least I never could observe it.

Or:

Oscar Wilde-
The Picture of Dorian Gray-
Preface

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

Ogden Nash

The Tale of Custard the Dragon

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called him Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagon
At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
and Blink said Weeck! which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.

Belinda paled, and she cried Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,
And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.

But up jumped Custard snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm,
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets, but they didn't hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim.
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pirate.

But presently up spoke little dog Mustard,
I'd been twice as brave if I hadn't been flustered.
And up spoke Ink and up spoke Blink,
We'd have been three times as brave, we think,
And Custard said, I quite agree
That everybody is braver than me.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.