So we know that a metronome is not rhythm. It’s a tool, and rhythm is wrapped around it. What kind of comparable tool, then, for harmony — something which should be turned off when the music appears?
really? that guy?
I still don’t know why anyone would want this president to be president. Guys like him are not supposed to get further than the house of representatives.
If someone can explain it without resorting to slogans and memes about who’s lying and who’s crooked, that would be interesting… but… well we’ve been through it already…
Also: I don’t want to hear that he’s playing on fear of violence. It’s the desire for violence that he’s playing on. That’s why it works.
It’s always the ‘iron fist of truth’ (as promoted by the NRA) that seems to be behind this idiocy.
Annie Proulx’s assessment
Annie Proulx described the internet as ‘a garbage-filled tsunami’. It is the best description I’ve heard. There’s no need to improve on it until the medium improves itself.
I think I’m just beginning to know how to deal with it, to understand that the tsunami itself is virtual.
I hope the garbage is, too.
The current cultural moment may all be a bit like the story people of running away from the movie of a train coming (in 1896 or whatever it was, if it indeed happened).
Except everyone in the world is doing it at the same time, and running in different directions.
left/right/static
I’m beginning to no longer recognize American left or right. I see the names of things being treated as though they were absolute — so often!
Everything is turning into nouns.
‘woke’ – ii
I take it back about the ‘woke’ idea being a bit toxic. Everyone needs a slogan. It’s fine.
There is something that bothers me in the undertone of we-alone-are-not-dreaming. But I guess one needs some sense of trueness. Something which feels like you can see what’s there. So, yeah. Okay. Woke. I don’t think I can use it for myself.
I only wonder if it is the ‘woke’ versus the ‘saved’, whose certainty will turn out to have been a fantasy?
amendment/commandment
It’s a pity how much the word ‘amendment’ resembles the word ‘commandment’, and that there are ten of each.
It breeds confusion. And, sadly, the second of the amendments seems to contradict the sixth of the commandments.
In a fundamentalist mind-set
commandment is to amendment as Saint Nicholas is to Santa Claus
An important joke
Three statisticians go hunting. The first shoots too low. The second shoots too high. The third lowers his gun and says to the others, ‘Got him!’.
Borders
It is a curious property of music that it can cross borders without breaching them.
‘Woke’
This is already a tired slogan. It reeks of bogus enlightenment. It alienates all who cannot be included, which means a large number of thoughtful people.
Some of the ideas to which it corresponds in real life are good.
And I suppose it has the quality of being memorable, which is why I might mention it.
Truth is not as attractive as fiction
I think it is one of the odd and unattractive side effects of the business I’m in (music, performing arts) that a certain amount of intellectual laziness is required to get things done in the first place – and that industriousness is used mainly for reinforcing the tropes of being ‘convincing’. It may be time to start over.
Here’s an interesting view, on the attractiveness of lies: