Notre Fille en France

This is the latest picture of Lauren, who has been
in Bretagne for the past six months.
Doesn't she look great?

He's Bach

Experts have digitally rebuilt the face of 18th century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach -- and say the results may surprise his fans.

Using his bones and computer modeling, they have come up with an image of a thick-set man with closely-shorn white hair. The new Bach face, the creation of Scottish forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson, will go on display at the Bachhaus museum in the eastern German town of Eisenach, Bach's birthplace, next month.

Eighteenth century portraits show him very differently. "For most people, Bach is an old man in a wig, it is a stylized image, we have no realistic portrait of him," Joerg Hansen, managing director of the museum, told Reuters. "We know he was a physical man, that he danced, that he stamped his feet when he played, that he sang. He was a very dynamic man -- with this reconstruction you can see it."

Bach's bones were excavated in 1894 and sculptors first used them to help create a bust in 1908. But it was mainly based on a portrait of the composer and contemporary critics said it was so inaccurate that it might as well have been the composer Handel.

"It's not really that important to know what he looked like, we love Bach through his music, that is why people come to the museum, but they are also interested in the man," Hansen said.

Source

I Feel Like I'm in an Arlo Guthrie Song

What a day. It started just after seven, when I was wakened by Nettl saying, "Liebchen, we have to leave in 10 minutes." I was prepared for this, however. Since the van quit running we've been down to one car again. Today I had a breakfast meeting with a client, so I had to take Nettl to work (on the extreme east end of town) so that I could have the car. Simple enough, so I took her, then met my client (Maestro Lawlor) at Perkins (in the center of town) and enjoyed an Eggs Benedict and a full carafe of coffee. I then came home (on the extreme north end).

What complicated matters was that I needed to get new tags for the car because tomorrow is the absolute last day that I could put it off. No big deal, I thought, but when I looked for our proof of registration, I couldn't find anything more recent than July of 2007. I called Nettl at work and asked her about it. Seems she thought I was making the insurance payment and I thought she was. Gack! I called our insurance company and got everything squared away, and at a lower rate than what we were previously paying. Great!

Now, the TAG office (DMV) is on the extreme west end of town, so I first had to drive to Nettl's office (east end) to pick up the proof of insurance that I requested be faxed there. At the same time, Nettl gave me a deposit to make at the bank (center). When I was on my way once again, I stopped at Napa Auto (east end) to pick up a turn indicator bulb because some hit-and-run schmuck broke ours, then I went to the bank and made the deposit.

When I got to the TAG office (west end) I took a number and waited to be called to the appropriate window. That was okay and the lady was cheerful, but as I stood there, I took out my license to see that it had expired last September! Hell! I thought it expired next September! You see, in California they send you a letter telling you that you're due to renew your license. Here, they don't say nuthin' 'bout 'nuthin.

With the new 2009 sticker proudly affixed to my license plate, I went home (north end) to get my passport and then drove to the northwest end of town to the other DMV office (why they divide things up between the two I still don't understand). There, I stood in line and waited to take care of the business. Then it was back to the TAG office (east end), where I again took a number and waited. Finally it was all taken care of. I was legal once again and I came home (north end) feeling like a responsible citizen.

At four I have to pick up Nettl (east end), then she's dropping me off at the book store (center) while she rehearses the Pergolesi Stabat Mater (with Maestro Lawlor, oddly enough) at the university (center). Then we'll come home (north end), I'll make dinner and then I'm settling back with a couple of beers. Damn. That means I'll have to drive to the liquor store (center).

Pleading the 4th

Nettl at Life in Shades of F-Major has posted a blog entry that is particularly poignant for those of us who have kids. There have always been issues like this in the public school system and parents are often forced to give in.

Check it out. It's important.

Through the Looking Glass

This is too cool. Dylan and Blanchett.

I Eat My Words

Here is a video that some students made to serve as a literature class report on the book I've just finished reading, Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, by James Joyce. They seem to have enjoyed the book a whole lot more than I did. Just goes to show that there are thinking, reading kids out there. Bravo!

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Yesterday, Lynette and I watched “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton. The movie is about a couple whose attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home her fiancé, who is black. It’s a great movie and contains one of the most beautiful moments in film history, that is, Spencer Tracy’s soliloquy in which he addresses the nature of love, both new and old. When my literature teacher planned a field trip to Santa Barbara to see this movie, I had to get a permission slip from my parents, due to "objectionable content". Amazing.

While watching the movie yesterday it occurred to me that, with only very few changes, this William Rose screenplay could be remade to depict a young gay or lesbian couple bringing their intended home to meet their parents in 2007.

It’s hard to believe that it was only in 1967 (the year the film was released) that the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia struck down the last of the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. That was only 40 years ago. Most young people today would have a difficult time believing that interracial marriage was actually illegal in the first place, much less so recently. One hopes and prays that their own grandchildren in 2047 feel the same way about gay marriage.

"But you do know, I'm sure you know, what you're up against. There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say "screw all those people"! Anybody could make a case, a hell of a good case, against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them. But you're two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happened to have a [pigmentation/gender] problem, and I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse, and that would be if -- knowing what you two are and knowing what you two have and knowing what you two feel -- you didn't get married. Well, Tillie, when the hell are we gonna get some dinner?" (Spencer Tracy as Matt Drayton)

We've come a long way, but the fight for civil rights never ends.

How Dumb Can We Get?

The Dumbing Of America
Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces
By Susan Jacoby
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Washington Post

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their "vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen." But these zombie-like characteristics "are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus." Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.

I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time -- as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web -- seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.

No wonder negative political ads work. "With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information," the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. "A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching."

As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible -- and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I'm the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today's public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. ("Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

Susan Jacoby's latest book is "The Age of American Unreason."

To Mr. H.

“You've got as many lives as you like, and more,
even ones you don't want.”
(George Harrison)

I'm Going In

I'm going to give James Joyce another try. I'll let you know how I fared when I come back out.

Pray for me.

Blame it On Tylenol-3

I'm sick of it all.

I'm sick of the meaningless crap that I see on television. I'm sick of network news that spews out only the spin that supports a biased view and then calls it impartial.

I'm sick of hoochie mamas thrusting their pelvises into the camera like they have something that's new and unique to the world of anatomy.

I'm sick of spitting, bad language, hands grabbing supposedly huge penises, fake breasts, perfectly white teeth, mutated duck lips, cadaverous souls, bad manners, loudmouths, and the fucking 15 minutes of fame mentality. I'm tired of bimbos, pimps, paparazzi and obscene conspicuous consumption.

I'm tired of the homogenization of life and people, of the narrowness of mind that pervades our country. I'm tired of slobs and laziness of body and mind. I'm tired of the world celebrating the lowest common denominator, of rewarding it and nurturing it and calling it "talent". I'm tired of slack-jawed nincompoops screeching over who was the father. I'm tired of young girls flashing their tits for dollar bills, or worse, colorful beads.

I want education, the arts, and creativity to matter again. I want some basic human dignity. I want something to count on, to believe in. I want something to really matter. I want substance. I want some meat, god damn it.

Stop the world -- I want to get off.

Pas Beaucoup!

Unable to do much else this week, I've returned to my love of reading. There are two books that I can count on to cast me headlong into the written word when I occasionally drift asea: The Waters Reglitterized by Henry Miller and A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller.

Many of my friends have found it somewhat puzzling that I am such a lover of the works of Henry Miller. Miller, with his honesty and brutal words. Miller, with his nicotine-stained fingers and his cavorting with Paris prostitutes. I love the arguments I have with Miller, of course, but he's the only man who can talk to me like that! I admire him tremendously.

Miller and Nin. What an incongruous couple! But not really. She utterly yin and he firmly yang struck a balance between the sexes and created worlds with their writings that I can only grasp at as if trying to touch a ghost. In their letters to each other they paint a picture of a Paris of their own creation. He with his bedbugs and musty horse blanket and she with her velvet and Spanish lace.

"I try to picture your life at Louveciennes but I can't... Only when you come and I look at you does that picture become clearer. But you go away so quickly--I don't know what to think. Yes, I see the Poushkine legend clearly. I see you in my mind as sitting on that throne, jewels around your neck, sandals, big rings, painted fingernails, strange Spanish voice, living some kind of a lie which is not a lie exactly, but a fairy tale. I put on my corduroy trousers tonight and I saw they were stained. But I can't for the life of me associate the stain with this princess in Louveciennes who holds court with guitarists and poets and tenors and critics." (Henry Miller, March 21, 1932)

"I thought that your enthusiasm and mine resemble each other. I love when you say: all that happens is good, it is good. I say all that happens is wonderful. For me it is all symphonic, and I am so aroused by living--god, Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling of enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness, the fullness... Before, I almost used to think that there was something wrong. Everybody else seemed to have the brakes on... I never feel the brakes. I overflow. And when I feel your excitement about life flaring, next to mine, then it makes me dizzy." (Anaïs Nin to Henry Miller, March 26, 1932)

When I dive back into my favorite pieces of literature it makes me want to turn off the computer, pour a glass of wine and pick up my pen again.

I found a website tonight that was put up by Valentine Miller, Henry's daughter. On the site she writes a letter to her father, calling him "Dad". That struck me. I just never see "dad" in my mind when I think of, or read, Henry Miller. I know that he was a father, but the man I have gotten to know through his writings is never "Dad". It was a pleasant reminder that we are all made up of many aspects and that as honest as we may try to be in our writings, there are always parts we do not reveal.

"I struggled in the beginning. I said I was
going to write the truth, so help me God.
And I thought I was. I found I couldn't.
Nobody can write the absolute truth."
Henry Miller

Inertia

Why is it that some days I can write three entries and others (like today) I can find absolutely nothing to write about? It has been a dry week. I suppose my health plays a large part in this, but crap. I don't like that excuse.

So until I can find something worthwhile to say, I'll leave you with something I read yesterday:

"Maybe a half a dozen people in the world really appreciate what you think and do. What then does it matter about the rest? And as for that half dozen--is there any need to convince them? If they are your sort they accept you without the proofs... In the midst of one's work, in the midst of the best intentions, in the midst of doing good for the world, or making the world happy, etc., one begins to have the gravest doubts. One has to find out whether one is acting because he wishes to do good or bring happiness or spread truth, etc., or whether it is out of egotism or compulsion or auto-therapy that one is acting. In other words, the ground gives way under your feet. That is where I am. That is why I give way to inertia. I'd rather not act than act out of false reasons."

(Henry Miller in a letter to Anaïs Nin, dated September 19, 1942)

Blah

Sunday has increasingly become the busiest day of the week around here. The only difference this weekend was that instead of people coming to our house, we went out. Consequently, I'm tired.

I don't feel like being creative, I don't feel like working and I don't feel like writing. I want to close the blinds, curl up on the bed and live vicariously through other people on telly--people like Anthony Bourdain. But even he might be too energetic for me today.

Rethinking the Comfort Zone

I watched a movie on PBS tonight, Black Narcissus, and it made me think. Oh, not about anything that it was intended to make be think about, but about how comfortable life has become.

Of all the things that should have affected me in the film, the thing that troubled me most was the incessant wind. Not the frigid temperatures of the Himalayas, not the culture, not the palace perched upon dangerously sheer, 9000 ft. cliffs, not even life as a nun. It was the wind and the fact that it blew through the rooms, blew the nuns' habits, the curtains, everything... that's what bothered me most. It was almost unbearable to think about.

But I had to ask myself, why am I now so afraid to challenge myself, to step outside my comfort zone? What happened to me? I lived in Kirk Creek canyon in Big Sur for three months, washing my clothes in the river and showering in a waterfall. I sang for my supper in Haight-Ashbury, never knowing where I was going to sleep at night. I stuck out my thumb with no destination except where the next ride might take me. And now, when I think about going to Merida, Mexico for a year, I balk. And why? Because the streets can look a little third world... because I may not have air conditioning... because I may not be able to flush toilet paper... because, because, because...

Exactly when did the adventureror in me get flabby? When did comfort win out over experience? When did my curiosity get hi-jacked? When did I decide to stop learning?

I think it's important for us to challenge ourselves as we get older. Otherwise we run the risk of not living. I've always said that I wanted to live until I die; I think it's time for me to honor that and to hell with the comfort zone!

If Banner Ads Were Forced to be Truthful

See more here

Happy Valentine's Day: How to Love

Love is a strange thing. It can be the most amazing feeling in the world, or it can really hurt, but in the end love is something most, if not all of us, will face. While there are many different ways to define love and there are many different ways to love someone (even yourself), here is a general guide to loving. Love is the continual act of unconditionally putting the needs of others before your own.

1. Say it.
When you say the words "I Love You," do they carry it with them the desire to show someone you love them or do they carry it with them is it what you want to feel? And when you say it make sure you really mean it and are willing to do anything for that special person.

2. Empathize.
Put yourself in someone else's shoes. Rather than impose your own expectations or attempt to control them, try to understand how they feel, where they come from and who they are; and realize how they could also love you back just as well.

3. Love unconditionally.
If you cannot love another person without attaching stipulations, then it is not love at all, but deep-seated opportunism (one who makes the most of an advantage, often unmindful of others). If your interest is not in the other person as such, but rather in how that person can enhance your experience of life, then it is not unconditional. If you have no intention of improving that person’s life, of allowing that person to be themselves and accepting them as they are, and not who you want them to be, then you are not striving to love them unconditionally.

4. Expect nothing in return.
That doesn't mean you should allow someone to mistreat or undervalue you. It means that giving love does not guarantee receiving love. Try loving just for loving's sake. Realize that someone may have a different way of showing his or her love for you; do not expect to be loved back in exactly the same way.

5. Realize it can be lost.
If you realize that you can lose the one you love, then you have a greater appreciation of what you have. Think how lucky you are to have someone to love.

It does not make you a bad person to desire someone else's love, even if they do not love you. However, to truly love someone, you must let them be free. It is selfish to blame them for your feelings.

From WikiHow


I love you, Nettl!

Favorite Things: The Art of Fragonard

Last October I dissected for you William Hogarth's painting, Marriage à-la-mode duet, The Tête à Tête, and the response was so positive that I thought I’d give you another one today. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Swing, painted by Jean-Honore Fragonard in 1766.

This has always been one of my favorite 18th-century paintings. In fact, I was introduced to it when Maestro Frank Salazar gave me an assignment to write a paper drawing comparisons between it and Franz Josef Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. I no longer have that paper, but I got an A.

Fragonard, a pupil of Chardin and Boucher (another favorite of mine), started his professional life in Italy, where he developed a particular admiration for the late Baroque style, mainly specializing in large historical paintings. When he returned to Paris, he quickly turned toward the more erotic subjects which were the current fashion. His other paintings from this time are The See-Saw, Blindman’s Bluff, The Stolen Kiss and The Meeting, but The Swing is probably his most famous (and erotic) work.

When it first appeared, it was an immediate success, not because of its artistic and technical excellence, but because of the scandal it created. It was at first commissioned of a different painter, but he refused to do it. Thus it came to Fragonard. At first glance, The Swing appears to simply evoke the spirit of frivolity that was so present in during the Ancien Regime, but let’s look more closely.

• The theme is that of love and the rising tide of passion, as suggested by the sculpture in the lower center of the picture. The dolphins driven by cupids drawing the water-chariot of Venus are symbols of the impatient surge of love.
  
  
• Next, we have the gentleman who is lying in the rose bush, looking up at the lady in the swing. Historically, we know that this is the man who initially commissioned the painting, although his name is unknown. He was at one time thought to have been the Baron de Saint-Julien, the Receiver General of the French Clergy, who asked that he be depicted as the voyeur in the painting. The look of rapture on his face is due to the view to which he is being treated – right up the lady’s skirt! To understand this rapture you must know that in the 18th century, women wore no bloomers or knickers, only a panier and petticoat, and stockings that were held up with delicate ribbons. In a word, Monsieur is getting an eyeful; he is literally gasping with anticipation!
  
  
• The bush (a tangle of roses) is a symbol of the lady’s own “secret garden”, a private place as it is enclosed by little fences (indeed!), but the gentleman has at last found his way to it.
  
  
• Thrilling to the sight now offered him, he reaches out with hat in hand. A hat in 18th-century erotic imagery covered not only the head but also another part of the male body when inadvertently exposed.
  
  
• The feminine counterpart to the hat is the shoe that flies off of the lady’s pretty foot to be caught by Cupid, who vows to keep this scene absolutely secret. In French paintings of the period, a naked foot and lost shoe often accompany the more familiar broken pitcher as a symbol of lost virginity. And whether or not Disney understood this (one thinks that he did not), this is indeed the symbolism of Cinderella's lost slipper.
  
  
• We know by the clothing worn by the gentleman who is pushing the swing that he is a bishop. Ah-ha! The painting seems to cry out, “You can look, but you cannot touch!” And who is truly the voyeur -- the gentleman, or the bishop?
  
  
• Initially, the lady in the swing was the mistress of the original commissioner of the painting, and these erotic symbols would lie bloodless on the canvas had not Fragonard charged the scene with the amorous ebullience and joy of an impetuous surrender to love. In a shimmer of leaves and rose petals, lit up by a sparkling beam of sunshine, the lady, in a frothy dress of cream and juicy pink, rides the swing with happy, thoughtless abandon. Her legs parted, her skirts open; the gentleman in the bush, hat off with arm erect, lunges towards her. Suddenly, as she reaches the peak of her ride, her shoe flies off. Très charmant!
  

After his marriage in 1769, Fragonard began painting children and family scenes and even returned to religious subjects.

Instead of the Surprise Symphony, I suggest you listen to the slow movement of Mozart’s 21st piano concerto while perusing this delightful painting.

Then take a cold shower.

Tuesdays with Mozart: "I adore the 21st Century!"

The Great Interview Experiment

A beautiful thing is slowly taking over the web. Neil at Citizen of the Month created The Great Interview Experiment. Here's how it goes: I signed up to join, which means that I interviewed the person who joined before me, and was then interviewed by the person who joined after me. You should join too, because it's a nifty way to meet new people and discover new blogs. Plus, I could read your interviews and satisfy my innate curiosity about the workings of your minds.

Kristabella interviewed me--Pay her a visit!


K: I’m a huge Beatles fan. There was a class on the group and their music that I took in college at Arizona State. I have quite the obsession with the Fab 4. What was it like seeing the Beatles in concert?

SKW: At the time, it was the greatest thing to have ever happened to me (I was 15), but all of the screaming pissed me off. Growing up in a house full of musicians, I thought that a concert like that was supposed to be “heard”, not screamed at. But then, as I’ve said many times, I never wanted to marry a Beatle, I wanted to BE a Beatle. They were so tiny on that little stage covering 2nd base at Dodger Stadium and the sound system was crap, but it was the Beatles. Really THEM out there. It still remains a peak experience for me all these years later.

K: I was also a musician growing up. I played the alto sax for eight years. Do you ever wish your music career had taken a different path?

SKW: Sure. I wish I was a retired rock star right now, sitting back in a big old house in the English countryside, counting my money and receiving awards for my contributions to the world of music! Going into classical music wasn’t something I foresaw, even in my wildest dreams, but as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” When I was a teenager no one told me that I could get a degree in music. College was not an option for me back in the days when only parents with savings accounts could afford to send their kids. If I’d known about music degrees, and if I’d had all the education opportunities that kids have now, I would have gone to college to study music. I think that would have changed everything. If I have a regret, it’s that.

K: As a writer, how to you feel about television today and the onslaught of reality shows?

SKW: Forget the lack of writing that reality shows require, what disturbs me most about them is that I fear we’re getting our cues about how to treat people -- and ourselves -- from these cesspools. Most of them are mean-spirited and narcissistic in the worst possible ways, appealing only to the lowest common denominator. They’re not about entertainment, but about voyeurism, and don’t we just love looking at a car accident as we drive past! From a writer’s point of view, I think the only really good television right now is PBS and a couple of shows like Mad Men and Grey’s Anatomy.

K: What was it like moving around so much as a kid? Did you enjoy living in different places growing up?

SKW: A lot of people with my experience say that they hated moving so much, but I can’t. I really liked the new horizons that moving gave me. I liked getting new bedrooms and new vistas out of my bedroom window. What was hard was always being the “new kid” -- that first day of school over and over again. That tore me up. Most people don’t know that I’m really a very shy person, but because we moved so much I had to learn to act like I wasn’t in order to keep from curling into a fetus ball under my desk at every new school.

K: You had your first child at 18 and ended up losing your child’s father two weeks later. How hard was that to deal with?

SKW: At first I didn’t deal with it. I had a clinical nervous breakdown and was out of it for the first 9 months of my son’s life. I wasn’t hospitalized or anything like that, but without the help of my parents I wouldn’t have made it through. There was, naturally, a tremendous sense of guilt on my part that I couldn’t deal with until 15 months later when his older brother told me that he’d rescued him on two other occasions long before we ever met. That alone was the best medicine I could receive. It was then that I finally let myself off the hook and crawled out of the depression. But as hard as it was on me initially, it has been hardest, long-term, on my son, who never knew his father, how gentle and poetic, and yes, tortured, he was. His suicide left a permanent hole in our son’s life. That has been hardest for me to forgive.

K: What is your favorite part of San Francisco?

SKW: I haven’t been there in so many years (except to drive through on my way to someplace else), it’s hard for me to say. Living in San Francisco in the late Sixties and looking back on that experience hasn’t left me very clear about the city itself; I was too busy busking for my dinner and trying to survive the street life! My favorite part of San Francisco at the time was the spirit of the place and all of us envisioning a better way to live.

K: If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?

SKW: I think everyone knows the answer to this one! Vienna, Austria, hands down. When I first went to Vienna in the spring of 1994, I felt like I’d come home. It has my energy; I don’t know how else to say it. It’s a city built on music and the Viennese adore their musicians. There, you’ll never hear the cold-hearted, materialistic American exhortation, “Get a real job!” If you’re a musician people treat you like gold, respect you, and do everything they can to make you feel welcome.

K: If you had to do it all over again, how much of your life would you change and how much would you keep the same?

SKW: That’s hard to say, because life is a chain of events, each dependent upon the other. Changing one thing would change everything that follows it. I would not have gone to Haight-Ashbury, I would have enrolled in college instead. I would not have made all of the relationship mistakes, I would have waited for Nettl. That’s about it, really, but the things I might change if I could worked together to make me the person I am today, so really, going to college when I was 18 instead of 35 is about the only thing I’d change.

K: What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done?

SKW: I think hitch-hiking up and down the California coastline in search of songs to write during the late Sixties and early Seventies was the stupidest and all of the partying I did in the mid-Eighties was the most dangerous, but I’m not sure I’d call either of them the wildest. Actually, I’m not sure how to define the word. Does wildest mean the craziest, the stupidest, the most dangerous, or merely something completely out of character? Going to live in New York City with only $32 in my pocket was pretty wild. Also, sequestering myself in a 12x15 room for a full year teaching myself to compose classical music was pretty wild, and moving to Oklahoma to be with my twin soul was wild. I don’t know. I can’t decide.

K: What made you start blogging?

SKW: Because I’d kept handwritten journals since 1977, blogging was the next logical step in my ongoing self-analysis. Too, I’m a communicator and I love people, and blogging gives me all of the human connections that private journaling doesn’t. When I first saw the word “blog” I was looking for web graphics for a website that I had. I liked the idea that a blog wasn’t static like a site, that there was interaction with people and that ideas could be exchanged. I love blogging; I hope that it doesn’t fade out and disappear, that it's not a fad. One of my greatest fears is that the people I enjoy knowing through our blogs will one day get tired of it, and stop writing.

K: Do you have any off-limit topics on your blog?

SKW: Not really. I try to stay away from politics and religion because there are so many blogs out there dedicated to that (yawn!). I think that discussing our kids and their lives in any real detail is out. I almost didn’t answer the question about the suicide, not because I don’t want to discuss it, but because that’s my son's experience as well as mine, and I respect his privacy.

K: If you could talk to one person from your past that you’ve lost contact with, who would you talk to and what would you say?

SKW: Omitting Maestro Salazar, who died, the only person I can think of who’s living would be Jacki. We haven’t really spoken for eight years. Nothing bad, just life and miles. We talked on the phone briefly around Christmas, but that doesn’t really count. If I could spend a day with her I’d tell her that I miss her profoundly and that I wish she could compartmentalize her life a little better to include her friends. I’d tell her that I’m afraid that we’ll never see each other ever again and that her beautiful sunshine smile always brightened my life.

Could Be, Could Be Not

I'm working on a new template again. I may use it and I may not. We'll see. I'll always revert back to this one, but I do enjoy creating new looks.

UPDATE 3:15 am: Well, I did. So there.

Saturday Story Time: Folk Fantasy

In May of 1982, I think, I drove up California's Central Valley to Turlock, where my friend Deni was attending CSUS (California State University at Stanislaus). She and her daughter Nicki shared a big old Craftsman house with some other students and had invited me up for a weekend.

On the Friday night the house filled up with various students and friends, many of whom played guitar. Our friend Dee was there as well and she brought her guitar with her, just as I had.

After a dinner of Polish spring vegetable soup and crusty bread, we sat back with jugs of wine and the occasional joint. Then the guitars came out. Some of us took our turn at leading the group in a song as we played together, singing harmonies. There was a black girl who had a great voice and a Latino guy who played Spanish classical guitar. Dee played her "hits" and I sang mine, while one guy who was in a Medieval reenactment group sat in a rocking chair putting his chainmaille together. When I later fell asleep on the living room couch, I did so feeling completely in sync with folk artists like Arlo Guthrie, John Hartford and Bob Dylan. And when I woke up the next day I was inspired to write two songs in the space of about 30 minutes.

It's one of my favorite memories; I miss that kind of evening. I miss sharing a living room
with a bunch of musicians, especially other acoustic guitarists. It was a great way to share new compositions and get honest, well-meaning critiques.

I wonder if this kind of get-together is now something of my past. I hope not. If I could spend this evening any way I want, this is what I'd choose.

What I'm Doing This Weekend

On the landing at the top of our stairs (our bedroom is through a door on the right) is a great little alcove where Nettl's desk has sat since we moved into this house nearly four years ago. She used to use it all the time, until I got my Dell, which we share. Then came the laptop, which I use in the comfy chair here in our bedroom while she sits at my desk. Heather, our 17 year-old, has been using the desk on the landing since Joel bought his new computer and gave his Dell to us. (Are you following this? We now have two Dells and a laptop, which is also a Dell, but that's beside the point.)

Anyway, Heather just enrolled at OSU, so she'll be able to live at home next year, which means that she'll need the desk and that computer in her bedroom downstairs. Which also means that I'll be taking the top section off of the desk and moving everything downstairs this weekend. Doesn't sound like much? No, not to me either. And it wouldn't be if I were 35 or 40.

In Heather's room are two small dressers that will be moving up to the landing (she insists that she can find someplace for her fold-up clothes) in order to make room for the desk. Actually, I think the landing will look nice with them there, covered with a table scarf and topped with a lamp, a couple of books, and a few chotchkies. Thankfully, we have a brand new bottle of Ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet.

My Top Ten Playlist - Meme

I've been challenged to a Meme by my old fart compatriot at Going Like Sixty. I won't tag anyone in particular, but if you want to play, leave a comment so I can read your answers.

The following are CDs I've listened to in the past week.

1. The Essential John Denver

2. Così fan tutte (Mozart)

3. Die Zauberflöte (Mozart)

4. Welcome to the Beat Cafe (Donovan)

5. Gord's Gold (Gordon Lightfoot)

6. Mozart Piano Quartets (The Mozart Players)

7. Mozart Sonatas for Piano & Violin (Mitsuko Uchida & Mark Steinberg)

8. The Traveling Wilburys Vol. I

9. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Greatest Hits

10. Vivaldi's Cello (Yoyo Ma)

Dear God Make it Stop!

“Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but is also a disruption of thought.” (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Damn! I hate it when that happens! What a crappy way to start the day.

How does one turn off a smoke alarm, anyway? And should they really be set to go off because one little piece of toast emits the smallest whisp of smoke? Why do they have to keep going for 15 freakin' minutes? And why does every alarm in the house have to go off?

I have officially lost C# -- my perfect pitch has been unalterably damaged by these blasted contraptions. It's been an hour and my ears are still ringing, and now I have a headache besides.

While the chaos was going on, the cat ran around squalling at me, the electricity went off in parts of the house, but not in others, and I had to have all the doors open, letting out all the heat that had accumulated overnight. I went to the garage and hauled in the ladder, only to discover that the bastards are hard-wired and cannot be unplugged. WTF?!

The only good news is that Romney pulled out. By my count, someone should have pulled out 61 years ago.

And now I will try to return to my earlier state of bliss.

Seven on the 7th

1. It's amazing what a good night's sleep can do. So why am I still up at 2:30 when I promised myself I'd be in bed by 2:00 again?

2. For the first time in my life I don't feel like I'll have to choose between the lesser of two evils when I vote in November. I'll actually be voting for the greater of two goods.

3. Nettl and I have grown just plain silly through the nearly 9 years that we've been together. It's incredible to know that I can act my very silliest and she only eggs me on. What a gift!

4. Tonight I had to look up how to remove the stopper in the master bathroom sink because the water wasn't draining like it should. What a gooey, hairy mess. I gagged. Seriously. Some people can't take needles, or blood. I can't take bathroom hair.

5. If I wanted any fictional character to actually be a real person, I'd choose Zorro. Who would you choose?

6. Today was the first day that I've felt 100% in ages. Please last!

7. Sitting on my desk at this moment is a black lacquered Chinese chest, an empty water bottle on a coaster, a bent apart brass paper clip, a modem and external sound thingy, a bronze urn that holds my pens, a round soapstone box that holds my brass paper clips, a desk lamp, Nettl's empty wine glass, and the CD of website files that I have to take to the Cat Clinic.

It Was Good

Today was a good day. Yeah, I know, but since I haven't gone to bed yet it's still today, okay? Around 5am we were hit by a huge thunder storm, which was cool. Although I heard it going on and could see the lightening flashes through my eyelids, I was under the influence of my Tylenol PMs and slept through it all while still enjoying it. I guess I'd finally really fallen into REM sleep because I was suddenly wakened by a huge thunderclap that rattled the walls. I instantly sat bolt upright and jumped out of bed. Hey, I grew up in southern California, where, when you feel the slightest rumble, you're heading for a doorway. After mumbling something to Nettl, who was about to leave for work, I went back to bed, which is always good.

In the next couple of hours the electricity went off no less than five times. I know this because every time it came back on, the phone answering machine barked out instructions about how to set up the announcement. Bite me. I got up and tried to make coffee while the electricity went off and on another three or four times, but finally came on to stay without my having to go without my morning coffee. Very good.

Later in the day my friend Ernie called me from Santa Barbara, where he was getting ready to work with a new drummer and bass player in the studio. I love talking to Ernie, but you've heard me rave about him before. I made some changes that he wanted to his band's website and we hung up. He said it was good.

Then I had some work to do on the Cat Clinic's website, passing emails with them and their web host for about an hour, and working through the issue in a way that was very good.

After that, I pulled out my guitar and started teaching myself to play the guitar part in Rocky Mountain High, something I always wanted to learn, but just never took the time. That was a lot of fun and I proved to myself that I'm still pretty good.

At 4:30, Nettl came home and we went to our Polling Place, after which we went to El Vaquero for an early dinner. I had Tacos Carne Asada, rice, beans, and a Corona with salt and lime. ¡Muy bueno! We came home, changed into comfy jim-jams and watched the primaries. It's all good!

And that was my day. It was good.

Tuesdays With Mozart: "She's So High"

"She's so high, high above me,
She's so lovely;
She's so high, like Cleopatra,
Joan of Arc, or Aphrodite."
__________

"She's So High" by Tal Bachman

Not So Graceful

On my desk sits a membership enrollment form to AARP. It's been perched there, leering at me for over a week now and I can't decide what to do with it. Do I fill it out and mail it, or do I toss it in the trash?

I mean, 56 isn't elderly. Right? I think of elderly as 70 and beyond. That gives me 14 more years until I have to concede to the harsh reality that I'm no longer 36, or even 46. Hell, I've just made friends with being middle-aged and now I have to embrace being a senior? It's hard because, according to television commercials, I also have to start thinking about burial insurance.

I'm giving myself one more week to work this out with myself.

Well, Feckin' Duh!

It just occurred to me why I've lost inspiration and passion for my art. It started in the mid-eighties when I started listening to all that New Age weebie-wobie crap about happiness being our birthright as human beings. That may well be for regular people, but the Muse never kisses the completed, fulfilled artistic soul. I'm sorry, I didn't make the rules, that's just facts. No wonder the Arts are taking a beating. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost 85% of Americans believe that they are happy. And that's just sad.

Think about it. Would Picasso have entered his Blue Period if he'd been on Paxil? And what about Vincent van Gogh? If he'd taken Prozac he probably would have been working in the back office of his brother's art gallery instead of spending his afternoons in the sunflower fields of Provence. I could list hundreds, perhaps thousands of examples, but I don't think I need to. You can come up with them yourself.

I confess. Back in the mid-eighties I ingested old-fashioned legal Ecstasy with my friends, not as party fuel, but as a kind of sacrament. It took me through years of therapy in mere hours and helped me come to terms with my abusive childhood, but I now realize that all that contentment came at a great price: my Muse no longer felt needed, so she left. I cast out a powerful force, that is, the impetus behind my art. In a word, I committed artistic suicide by eradicating melancholy from my life.

I'm not talking about clinical depression, mind you, which certainly needs to be treated. I'm talking about that bittersweet, aching sadness that demands artistic expression. If we erase that from our lives nothing needs to be expressed and we become banal, not only as individuals, but as a society. What will finally satisfy us Americans? Money? If so, how much money is enough? How many gadgets do we really need? How many pairs of shoes can we actually wear? How many TVs can we watch? How many pills can one take before one feels robbed of the fullness of life in all its grandeur and messiness? How many surgical procedures will it take before we realize that we're just plain empty and there are no longer any ways for us to express our angst, or people who want to hear us? How long can we wear chemical happiness before we discover that it's just a mask that keeps us from necessary introspection and personal growth? In the meantime, those who refuse our Brave New World's happy pills are viewed as suspect, weak and unsuitable for life in mainstream society's ant farm. How long will it be before we fulfill Huxley's prediction? I fear we are dangerously close.

Having come to this Brave New Conclusion, I will no longer assume that happiness is my birthright. Joy, yes, for that's an inner condition not connected with anything external. I will once again look at melancholy as an old friend. I will invite it in and serve it tea, for it has always been my Muse unawares. How dare I expect great inspiration without investing something. Instead of whining when I feel unhappy, I'll recognize it as the seed of creative expression.

You may want to read this article. The author is much more eloquent and informed than I.


"Temenos #8: The Poet" by Jason Hughes