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They are marching for us Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith. They sleep on concrete every night. Their clothes are soiled. They have eaten more bagels and peanut butter than they ever thought possible. They have tasted fear, been beaten, gone to jail, been blinded by pepper spray, cried, hugged each other, laughed, sung, talked too long in general assemblies, seen their chants drift upward to the office towers above them, wondered if it is worth it, if anyone cares, if they will win. But as long as they remain steadfast they point the way out of the corporate labyrinth. This is what it means to be alive. They are the best among us.It is our duty—as men and women—to behave as though limits to our ability do not exist. We are collaborators in creation of the Universe. |
1 October 2011
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Our common destiny What keeps us from coming together as one nation, indeed one world, pursuing our common interest peaceably and efficiently? Through most of human history, the labor of many men was required to support the comfort of one. Thus slavery was endemic, and we were in a continual state of warfare to determine who would be master and who would be slave. But this premise is no longer true. Technology offers the possibility of comfort with modest expenditures of labor, and—if we can control our population—manageable material demands. John Locke thought it was mankind’s legacy of selfishness and greed that keep people from cooperating. But now we know that most people are, if anything, too eager to cooperate and sacrifice their own needs for ideals that they believe in. Are there legitimate, but irreconcilable differences in perspective that keep us from seeing eye-to-eye? I have come to believe that neither religions nor political ideologies can be maintained without propaganda and outright deception. I believe that the majority of humans are peaceful, cooperative, and idealistic—but perhaps too dependent on a community to do their thinking for them, and thus vulnerable to being misled. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter....Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.’ I don’t know if a free and uncensored press is sufficient to assure peace and freedom, but I’d sure like to give it a try. — Josh Mitteldorf |
2 October 2011
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Atoning for every failure to accept joy when it is offered Most Jews still think that fasting is more righteous than feasting. Yet the Talmud suggests that in the world to come a person will have to stand judgment for every legitimate pleasure in this life that was renounced. The Nazirite—the person who gave up the pleasures of wine and family life to devote himself entirely to God—was called a sinner on the grounds that he gave up the joys of wine when the Torah did not require him to do so. The perception that asceticism is superior to enjoyment is wrong... Joy is revelation. Joy unearths latent potentials no one even knew existed and amplifies revealed potentials to levels no one ever thought possible. Joy is an effusion of self that spills over to places and achievements far beyond the soul's natural horizons. — Yanki Tauber |
8 October 2011
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Kol Nidre Yesterday, Jewish people began their observance of the holiest day of the year with the Kol Nidre: All personal vows we may make between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur,, all personal oaths and pledges, we publicly renounce, in advance. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void. Let our personal vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths. This is subversive stuff. It leaves us radically free to decide in each moment how we wish to proceed. But more devastating is its effect on the social contract. How can I trust you to cooperate with me if you have told me in advance that I shouldn’t believe anything you promise? The only way I can make sense of this is to admit that the 17th Century theory of Locke and Rousseau is far too rational to describe real human behavior. As they conceived the Social Contract, it was a bargain negotiated, perhaps unconsciously, between society and the individual, who voluntarily surrenders some of his freedom of action in order to gain the protection and security of a community. But communities are far older than rational negotiation – ask any honeybee! It may be that we cooperate in communities and conform our behavior to social norms because it is programmed in our genes. It may be that we behave caringly toward other humans not because we have been trained in righteousness, but because we have hearts that feel empathy. Marx envisioned a utopia in which laws would not be necessarily, and people would live together in harmony because of their innate goodness and their socialization. Maybe Marx was Jewish. — Josh Mitteldorf |
9 October 2011
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Verdi Giuseppe Verdi, born this day in 1813, gave people what they came to the opera to experience: passion, drama, beautiful melodies and deep emotion. His long life overlapped with Beethoven at the front end and with Paul Hindemith at the back end, and he composed continually from his first opera at age 25 to his last at 74. While he was working on his second opera, Un giorno di regno, Verdi’s wife died. The opera, given in September 1840, was a flop and he fell into despair and vowed to give up musical composition forever. However, Merelli persuaded him to write Nabucco and its opening performance in March 1842 made Verdi famous. His Te Deum is alternately solemnly mystical and explosively
joyous.
Listen. |
10 October 2011
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Richard Feynman talks about aesthetics and the scientist |
11 October 2011
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Use it or lose it Salamanders that live in dark caves lose their eyesight within a few generations of natural selection. Thus almost all the vertebrates alive today lost the ability to detect tiny electric currents, though this was a ‘sixth sense’ in our common ancestor, a 500 million-year-old fish. Melinda Modrell figured this out via comparative genetics. Sturgeons, ‘paddlefish’ and a few others retain that sense today, but you and I rely on a an electronic voltmeter. — Science Daily article |
12 October 2011
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Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. that’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. |
13 October 2011
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No matter how complete the despair, no matter how bitter the cynicism, a possibility beckons of a world more beautiful and a life more magnificent than what we know today. Though we may rationalize it, it is not rational. We become aware of it in moments, gaps in the rush and press of modern life. These moments come to us alone in nature, or with a baby, making love, playing with children, caring for a dying person, making music for the sake of music or beauty for the sake of beauty. At such times, a simple and easy joy shows us the futility of the vast, life-consuming program of management and control. We intuit also that something similar is possible collectively — Charles Eisenstein, previewing The Ascent of Humanity |
14 October 2011
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Small but sweet victory in Manhattan |
15 October 2011
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In my present form, I remain trapped in appearances most of the time, catching only occasional glimpses of a mystery beyond. May I be transformed, that I may experience reality face-on. In my present form, I prefer to occupy my mind with puzzles and entertainment, to focus on the small parts of the world I can understand and the smaller parts I can control. May I be transformed, that I might look unflinching into the face of the sun and feel awe. — Josh Mitteldorf |
16 October 2011
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«Il n’est rien de plus doux pour l’oreille de la liberté que le tumulte et les cris d’une assemblée du peuple.» — de L’Esprit de la Révolution et de la Constitution en France “For liberty, there is no sweeter sound than the tumult and the shouts of a crowd.” — Claude-Henri Saint-Simon, born this day in 1860 |
17 October 2011
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Lost Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you |
18 October 2011
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Early Childhood Education LONG-TERM STUDY OF ADULTS WHO RECEIVED HIGH-QUALITY EARLY CHILDHOOD
CARE AND EDUCATION SHOWS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL GAINS, LESS CRIME Compared with a control group, children who went through the Perry
program were 22 percent more likely to finish high school and were
arrested less than half as often for felonies. They were half as likely
to receive public assistance and three times as likely to own their own
homes. |
19 October 2011
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Counterpoint to rationalism It was when I said, |
20 October 2011
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This is how it begins I arrived at Freedom Plaza, Washington DC, on the morning of October
6, 2011 for the start of the October 2011 ‘Stop the Machine’ actions and
I was overcome by what I found. I was in the company of several thousand
fellow citizens, from all corners of the US. There was a powerful
communal spirit. It felt like we were one being. We had come together
because we had all, separately, felt so strongly about changing the US,
and the world, that we had put our daily lives on hold, committed
resources, and travelled long distances to be there. We believed that
our presence, in that place and at that time, had meaning. The power of
the energy and passion of the participants was overwhelming to me. I
immediately understood why Abbie Hoffman thought it was possible to
levitate the Pentagon in 1967. I felt like a space traveler arriving on
a friendly and welcoming planet. I wept tears of joy and excitement.
The genie is out of the bottle. People will no longer accept the
systematic transfer of wealth and power from we the people to the 1
percent. In this remarkable, leaderless movement, each one of the 99
percent who gets involved helps shape history. |
21 October 2011
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Sangar “During the decade of the Russian Revolution, [Lincoln] Steffens was in his Christian Socialist phase. John Reed dedicated a poem to him, in which the hero, Sangar,‘the mad recreant knight of the West’, attempted to ward off a Hun invasion with the words of the Gospel. His message unavailing, Sangar fell at the hand of his own son, who rejected Sangar’s appeal to conscience and insisted on meeting iron with iron. At this point Sangar went to his reward.” — H. W. Brands
“War means an ugly mob-madness, crucifying the truth tellers,
choking the artists, |
22 October 2011
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Caring less is not the answer Equanimity is not indifference. Disengagement can be a temporary
expedient, an opportunity for rest and consolidation; but ultimately,
every relationship, every interaction will feed our child-like delight
and curiosity, a source of joy and wonder. |
23 October 2011
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Berio Of all the composers who experimented in the last half of the 20th Century with radical departures from traditional tonality and classical forms, I find that Luciano Berio (born this day in 1925) is the most listenable, the most consistently dramatic and interesting and entertaining. He was also a political radical a teacher and conductor who made a big splash in the small pond of experimental and electronic music. ‘Among serious composers working since the Second World War, Luciano Berio wrote the music which comes across most clearly as compassionately human.’ [Martin Anderson] Visages (1961) was a collaboration with his first wife, Cathy Berberian who had remarkable control over her voice. Chemins IV (1975) for oboe and strings offers new sonorities around every corner. Likewise, Formazioni (1986) for orchestra offers a constantly changing soundscape that holds our interest by shifting in unexpected ways. |
24 October 2011
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Earth your dancing place
Beneath heaven’s vault
Enter each day
Train your hands
Take earth for your own large room ~ May Swenson |
25 October 2011
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Scarlatti’s birthday Domenico Scarlatti was the third of the three great composers of the High Baroque, all born in 1685. He composed choral music for the church through a long career, a repertoire which is forgotten today. But after Sarlatti’s retirement at age 66, he devoted himself to writing for the harpsichord, and composed 555 sonatas of such inventiveness and variety that he is justly called the father of modern keyboard technique. Sonata K87 in b minor is more contrapuntal than Scarlatti’s typical style. The mood is placid, the tone hypnotic. Voices are overlaid and dovetailed, disappearing and reappearing just in time to keep the motion flowing. Here it is in a home-made recording by Josh Mitteldorf. Here is sonata in A K39, reprentative of Scarlatti’s exuberant pyrotechnics, made of little motifs, scales and sequences and repeated notes, strung together in a way that is both fresh and satisfying. Performance is by Dmitry Gordin. And one more, sonata K8 in g minor performed by Mikhail Pletnev, in the style of a sarabande. |
26 October 2011
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Sonatas and life Scarlatti also gave us the first version of Sonata Form, which, in the next generation, Haydn ran with and demonstrated its versatility. Beethoven and Brahms filled the 19th Century with romantic sonatas, and the form continues to submit to content that is ever stranger and more distant from the language of Scarlatti or Haydn. My present project is a Sonata by Martinu in which the form is discernible (after a few listenings, perhaps). The recipe for a sonata sounds so much like some of the extra-musical adventures that animate our lives:
We shall never cease from exploration |
27 October 2011
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The Sixth Precept Do not maintain anger or hatred. As soon as anger and hatred arise, practice the meditation on compassion in order to deeply understand the persons who have caused anger and hatred. Learn to look at other beings with the eyes of compassion. — Thich Nhat Hahn This is #6 of the 14 Precepts, wise counsel and a steep challenge for living. Commentary: Anger and hatred are burdens that cause suffering in the person who carries them, and they also interfere with judgment, often leading to ill-considered actions that can spread waves of harm through a community. But it is not clear that the practice of meditation is (always and for everyone) the best means for letting go of anger. For some, various forms of Western psychotherapy are effective, for others it’s chopping wood, or stomping or screaming. Anger can be the driving force behind organization and resistance to challenge oppression. But un-reconstructed anger is rarely an effective basis for action. Thich has led a life both of political action and spiritual leadership, and we can trust him as well as anyone to help us reconcile these two directions in our lives. |
28 October 2011
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The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration. — Paul Brunton The amazing thing to me is how often
they come through with the goods.
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29 October 2011
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Sabbath Live strictly by your discipline six days a week. On the seventh, abandon all rules and follow your whims from moment to moment. — Josh Mitteldorf |
30 October 2011
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Waiting We all focus our lives around some BIG EVENT, or intermittent series of big events, with an endless smorgasbord of activities thrown in. Dates are the markers of these events. Dates and times. Calendars and clocks don’t tell us what we do. They tell us what we wait for. On a platform, a woman stares down the tracks, looking for the face of a train. She is wearing red, maybe to attract the train, to pull it closer to her, faster to her, like the woman of Babylon in Revelations hastening the end of the world. There is a man too, several men, they are looking at their wrists, shifting around, trying to act casual, trying to hold it together. The platform is full of men and women, waiting, waiting to get home—or to go… somewhere? Each of them is listening to a private concert—presumably, understandably, different private concerts, though one wonders what would happen if all the musics could suddenly be heard at once. It would be a fitting soundtrack for the chaos of waiting. Is waiting a state of being or is it an act of consciousness? It’s hard to say. One thing we know, though. Waiting is undesirable, regrettable, at times frustrating as all hell, and to be avoided at any cost. Waiting signals a breakdown of order. In modern times, when we are waiting, it’s because we think that something is not functioning properly, someone isn’t doing their job. ...maybe waiting is just another word for living. It’s a devastating thought though, I would say. To live is to wait. To live is to wait. * * * There’s a sigh of relief when the train finally comes, but why? It’s not as though lives have changed by this fact, the train’s arrival, even one tiny bit. But it feels like it. The end of a wait feels like a movement towards something. The end of a wait feels like the beginning of something new. But if you can live inside the waiting, can be present for the wait, rather than wishing it finished, rather than holding your holding your breath—you can almost trick yourself into believing that you are really living. — Stefany Anne Golberg, writing at 3QuarksDaily |
31 October 2011
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