davus0's Xanga

Monday, November 09, 2009

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:11:42 GMT

yes, augustine is awesome. i am afraid that i will have to regress to high school self in order to relearn high school forte of latin to read original. latin is in some way a language that has shaped my sensibility more than any other. more personal. as a poet once put it, the grand fiction which we live is "to compound the imagination's latin with the lingua franca et jocundissima." everyone has to think and feel in latin or the ur- of latin and then translate into english, and if you take latin you understand that this is true of you. most people are incapable of actually saying anything (though they can learn, or be trained, to make rhetorical ejaculations) because they do not know their own native tongue, which is latin. english is clattery and brittle. all the strong words in english are small and fused together by large swaths of nothing much, and it can be said that there is no such thing as a native english speaker because in english there is not the density needed for the infant psyche to be integral to itself on the basis of its grammar. lacan would have said this if he had not been born french. french is like a cold air current and as someone once said 'omnipotent.' but latin is elemental and sensuously muscular. not as powerful as french but in some way more physical, more perfected.

Monday, November 09, 2009

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:25:17 GMT

"....Augustine is providing a dramatic account of moral transformation, one that stresses the role of intellectual discernment while at the same time highlighting his conviction that no amount of discernment is sufficient to account for what we might refer to, for want of a better phrase, as the phenomenology of internal moral conflict. In terms of this agonistic inner turmoil, the will as both present and emergent is on an equal footing with our powers of rational discernment."

From now on I will, shall, call all my problems phenomena of internal moral conflict and leave it at that.

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/)

Monday, November 09, 2009

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:08:43 GMT

i have been a little bit good about getting in touch with some friends lately. i wish that i had always been as open about life as i am now. although, now i have to be careful because i gush too much resentment when i am not quite composed. talking to my old and everlasting comrades i am reminded that the personal effects of my own life are not my cause. my cause is just in some way to understand humanity and human togetherness. but i wish that i had practiced since i was three or four my conversational taste rather than my ideological fastidiousness. then perhaps it would not feel like i have to or want to shout all the time. that is the bad side of shyness: when you resolve to act unself-conscious you actually go unconscious and your ways of expressing yourself can be rather violent.

too much analysis. i will tell some stories later.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:07:35 GMT

i have had to give up a lot of advantages by wasting them, wasting time and life, just to come to the understanding that advantage doesn't matter. how you leverage what you start with is meaningless. everyone has to uncover in them what is worthwhile. it has nothing to do with games people play to maximize their effect on this world or on themselves. these are prostheses that only put you at a distance from what matters. i do not mean to complain, but it is bad. the only good is that which you come simply to sense. it does not need to be multipled, divided, extended, invested, or anything else. when you grow up thinking you are super lucky, whether because of natural gifts or the kind of social position you were born with, it is deceptive because in the end no one is born with so much that they never have to try, or can avoid the suffering which comes with all kinds of failure. even really powerful, amazing people of the sort that everyone calls 'amazing people' are in fact mere mortals. one human being truly doing all they can is pretty amazing, it's true. everyone has a heap of potential. but it's very rare to get things lined up so that everything actually gets done. sometimes even the notion that you are 'being productive' is distracting from the fact that all you do everyday calls on only a small range of all that you could be doing. it's just like the ergonomic stress caused by repetitive use of really small muscles or joints. people have it in them to do great and varied things, but instead they stress the same operation over and over. a really amazing person, though, works through their whole range of possibility on a regular basis. often they do not even know how perfect they are. they don't know that what they're doing, which seem like the modest efforts of one small person, in fact represent the apical expression of human potential - a whole person, acting from the entirety of their substance. they probably feel as if they have very little to show for the fact that they're calling on absolutely all their powers to get through each day of life. but in fact, one who can actually give everything to their days is certainly going to be noticed as having/being in some ultimate sense enough.

it is dangerous to see yourself as having too much when the essence of life in this world probably has much more to do with limitation, not only that brought by death but all the varieties of fragility. very seldom is anything good enough, and even when things are too good they may not be good enough. ampleness is the rarest quality. people brought up to think only that they have been super-lucky, winning the lottery before birth as it were, are being blackmailed to work harder than anybody deserves to be worked, and toward goals which are not really valid human objectives. it is not fair to demand anything from anybody save for sincerity really.

furthermore, there is not really any justice to be done in life save for the kind which comes from an understanding that you can't please everyone; and probably, in all truth, can only be just once in your entire life, if you are to be wholly just. so people should just follow their intuition and not be so ashamed of ignorance or unsureness. often what people ought to do is not to be frazzling themselves with 'what should i do, what should i do' blahdeeblah all the time, but just wondering. this too can be enough. the strong choices one must make by and by still have to be made with some sense of economy. it is just like giving orders to another person. when you make a big choice you give orders to yourself. can't give too many or you change mere faithful obedience into a kind of slavery. people have to be like good kings to themselves. and then, too, they have to realize that both the subject and the sovereign can only do what they do.

that is a lot. when i was a kid i felt that optimality is important. you should only do what you are good at or is easy. then chill, play games, act a fool. now i feel that this was very wrong. it is necessary to choose to do what you must do, regardless of whether you'd be good or bad at it. it has much more to do with character than mechanical sorts of talent. if you always worry about specializing in what you're good at then you will miss the one thing in life which must not be missed. the rest is dross. you can worry about the rest later on, and there is pretty much always a little time to deal with the minutiae of career positioning and so forth but there is almost never time enough, in fact, time is the arch enemy of the main point you can't afford to miss.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:55:31 GMT

although no man is an island, it is less clear whether we are not all some kind of projectile

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:26:32 GMT

Reading Maynard's biography of Beethoven. I think that this is worthwhile reading for anyone that wants to get a sense of where the physiognomy of LvB's music really comes from beyond all the dualities it is said to embody. True enough that Beethoven was unhappy, but occasionally joyous. However, he is not just trying to mirror his life in sound. The point is not to symbolize contrast but to show the final difference between contraries, which may or may not be a violent relationship. It is certainly not just some hunch-backed soul trying to create a private universe to admire its own deformities. This is music about transport away from deformity, or the end of strife which is effected not through revolution but just by concentrating on and of the spiritual. To feel how one feels, in short. Just to be true to one feeling, without attacking or critiquing anything, just to say one yes as wholly as it ought to be uttered. In the big picture what comes through is not the rage of an individual or the callousness of society but the infinite sensitivity of the soul. In a way this is not even biography as hagiography because it is about spiritual persistence rather than mere life or development.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:08:48 GMT

as far as i can tell, the only way to simplify life is to stop seeking anything else than beauty. all other supposed simplifications lead to clusterfuckery down the road but the road of the aesthete only leads to poverty. you have to give up fun, hope, love, revenge, and the fear of boredom. the good times come and go in life, and if you have a clear mind you can hold onto the good. ugliness, however, can't be directly opposed or driven out as easily as unhappiness or grief, because it admits of present physical circumstances.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:44:56 GMT

Life After The Fall

Of all Iraq documentaries I have seen I would not choose any other to show to my compatriots today or, preferably, seven years ago. This film is not only a reminder, as the director's notes put it, that these people are just like us. It's a reminder of all that they and we are. Not just that there is ordinary life over there, but that in fact, what is normal for us and them is the same. The main difference is the degree to which realization of that normality has been deferred. Human beings never exactly change in terms of their absolute humanity; they're only bullied into giving up on the dream of a life lived in any substantial harmony with it. It could be said that human life does not, as a whole, change at all; the variations in human existence throughout any and all historical/geopolitical scenery that one cares to tour is merely this: that men and women can live as if they are alive, and occasionally have chosen to do so; or else they can conduct themselves in deference to the fact that a human life is at length a death sentence, which is acutely true in Baghdad. The latter leads to increased fear of all the infinite ways in which one can be maimed or killed, while the former leads to a world that few if any have ever seen (heaven? communism? switzerland?).

What people say about other people having lower expectations for what they want out of life, or more perniciously, about certains standards not even existing for groups other than their own, is incorrect and indicates a shallow and lazy mind and mendacious temperament. This is the main problem with your garden variety liberal relativist, philistine worldview. It says on the one hand that the ethos of the status quo represents the best of all possible worlds; and on the other hand, that what this ethos is either can't be shared with different people, or else it ought not to be - i.e. we ought not to try to help them - since they come from different milieux. This film is a reminder that it is not enough to think that one's own life and lifestyle are enough. And it is not even enough to be living the dream of one's own day and age, or one's own dream, if none of these actions enable different people in the present and future to do likewise. It is not fair to give up on anyone. In a way, too, it is not fair so much as to let anyone else give up on themselves.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:19:34 GMT

the transcription does two things which are

1) slowly liberate your conception of the piece from the vice grip of Fantasia. not that there is anything wrong with F per se but it is too complicated and too simplistic at the same time. too much color, too much narrative. especially in the last movement where there is no story really, and the coloring is very discreet. it is just an exploration of a virtual space in sound and light, like sunbeams and horns covering all the different hills. basically, shepherds singing a song is the quintessential lyric situation but not any kind of dramatic storyline.

2) show that symphonic music is not all some fascist spectacle requiring a hundred people to pull off one magic trick. all the feeling and thought can be subsumed in a single person. and at the same time, neither is that single person any kind of grotesque who only thinks and feels in an overcomplicated, obscurantist code. it is proof on the contrary that what we feel and think is superpersonal. copies can be made with exact precision and shared. not every little thing is preserved with fidelity but every detail i elevated beyond the level of a mere thing by being infused with emotion and order.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:09:43 GMT

all day long i listened to beethoven symphony 6 in the piano transcription of liszt. so good! i was going to say that i like the piano-only version even above a big orchestra but i hesistate now. i do not think that the transcription has been recorded so successfully as yet. glenn gould's version is fantastic (especially the last movement where the comparatively slender sound is for once a propos) but still objectionable. the troubly with any intellectually bent pianist playing something that was arranged by liszt is that they take the splashy flourishes as demanding every bit as much of a prominence as the main voices and so too many notes get overexposed. it bombards the audience with information not needed. i am trying to find this one that idil biret supposedly performed on radio. although perhaps hope would not be well-founded given that her 9th is likewise so much x-raying of the urtext....