President at 100 days

I recognize that people all over the world will be writing about this same subject, so I don’t really have a lot to say about it.  

President Obama made at least two speeches yesterday, one at a school in Missouri, and one at the White House.  In the first speech, he was addresssing the public “directly,” in the second, the media.  One of his comments at the first meeting in Missouri really disappointed me.  While discussing the recession or depression, whichever you think it is, he mentioned that some people thought he was spending too much.  He complained that some news networks (read Fox) were orchestrating protests.  And then finally he said that those people who were on TV “waving teabags around” were not coming up with any ideas that they could discuss rationally, or consider putting into practice.

Now I happen to agree with the last statement.  I don’t think fiscal conservatives have any positive agenda to put into practice.  I think that is unfortunate, and that  it must reflect badly on the GOP (after the last eight years, who would expect they remember anything about fiscal conservatism though).  What disappointed me about President Obama’s comment was the way in which he denigrated those people who were protesting his spending.  It was beneath him.  I respect him a great deal, both as a politician and as a human being, and he should be able to appreciate that a lot of people are concerned about how much his administration is spending.  Really concerned.  I thought to myself that even if this admittedly minority group among the American people are not expressing themselves clearly (the tea parties were perhaps a little silly), the President has a responsibility to try and find some significant message.  To dismiss these people as media puppets is wrong as well, since at the end of the day people don’t march on Washington or protest in the streets unless they feel particularly incensed.  

Now all that said, I got to thinking about it, and realized this is something that bothered me about President Bush as well.  Those people with whom he did not agree or to whom he did not care to listen he simply dismissed or set up straw man opponents to take all the steam out of their opposition.  I think the problem comes with the position, more than it does the man.  What came out of this for me was a deeper understanding of just how difficult it is to be the ace at all times, even for someone as talented and intelligent as the President.  I suppose as a young man I have not always been the most patient person in the world, and perhaps that has its strengths and weaknesses, but with something like this I have something like patience.  

Still, he should not have said those things, but I am not going to hold it against him.

Back to the Grind

As a graduate student, I receive an absurdly long break over the winter holidays.  That the break is not a holiday proper, but instead a break, in the sense of an interruption, through which one will be expected to have continued working, I must emphasize, since I don’t want to create the impression that graduate students do not work all that much.

Tomorrow courses begin again, so I guess it is high time that I came back to logging entries here.  I have enrolled in no courses that meet on Wednesdays, but both of the courses I hope to audit meet on that day.  I have doubts about whether two audits is a good idea, but less is not more for me.  That is, I tend to fare better when I have involved myself in too much work.  Beyond that I will have two important exams next week, each of which I expect to fail, hopefully for the last time.  That is, I can fail them with no consequences this upcoming attempt, but when they roll around again in May, there is no second chance.  So the next couple weeks will be busy, but the energy levels are always high this time of year, both for myself and, as I perceive it, for all others involved.  

The last words of the Buddha, according to some translation I read long ago, were something such as this:  ”Transient are conditioned things:  accomplish your aim with diligence.”  The syntax seems to me somewhat pretentious now, but the thought is striking nevertheless.  I think I will make that my motto for the new year, since my greatest obstacle going forward has been the ebb and flow of moods and attitudes toward my work.  I do not think my moods are entirely misguided, there may be some good reason for them, but for the short term they are not doing me any good.  Therefore I will rise above them.

I suppose, dear reader, you will have by now detected a change in me since last month.  I assure you this is an illusion.  Allow me to explain.  My uncertainties about the future are very much with me, as always, but I am taking a new approach to them for the time being.  Silence and stillness, long lost on me, as I have been for some time chasing the “logos,” which is both active and linguistic (Heraclitus said it’s so “deep” that it has not ends)–nay, more–I have been practicing the Platonic dialogue with the soul, in which deliberation, taking both sides to task, debate, and all such pursuits are held central to human life lived well… but silence and stillness I have remembered.  The fragments of Parmenides are truly perplexing remains, but I read through them on and off over the last month as I was tending to other matters.  What became clear to me is that Parmenides, for all the ways he anticipates Plato, has dimension before him other than that of the one, the logos, and the dismissal of non-being/nothingness.  The other way he mentions, and keeps at a distance always, is the way of non-being, division, and silence.  But what does all this mean?  Well, I can say what it means to me.  The latter way of silence makes all things non-sensical.  He who accepts that “there is nothingness,” also suspends the sense of that statement and all others.  I think Parmenides took this as signal enough that nothingness cannot be, that the only way available is the pursuit of the one, of total being, and of the comprehensible logos.  This opens the way towards Plato and Aristotle (perhaps ultimately Hegel), towards a comportment towards being, towards comprehensibility, and towards unity and teleology.  The other way that Parmenides considers and shuns must be characterized by non-unity and unspeakability, if I allow myself a neologism, and aimlessness.  I expect that it is no accident that the “unspeakable,” the aimless, and that which lacks unity all share some sense of moral repugnance; this must be the former path (logic and being), speaking its account of what the latter path (“alogos”) is from its perspective.  Only the former path can have an account of the latter, and the latter cannot have one either of itself or of the former.  

I could not say whether there is anything “eastern” in this mode of thinking.  I do not know enough about Buddhist, Hindu, or even Zoroastrian thought to make that judgment.  It sounds “eastern” to me, but that is perhaps only an accident of its being foreign to me.  Anyway, what strikes me as fascinating is that the Buddha’s last words speak of an aim, thus evoking teleology, at least on some level, and yet the pseudo-”eastern” philosophical path I have been describing seems to resist an inclusion of teleology to the same extent that it seems to resist any exclusion of teleology.  Teleology would have to be incomplete–indeed, incapable of completion by nature–if one is to avoid the one and the logos and the fullness of being, but teleology can certainly fall within this silent world in some confused and confusing way.  

Perhaps that grew somewhat muddy and abstract.  I hope I don’t sound too much like an ass to those who avoid philosophy (I don’t assume that such a plan is a bad one).  I don’t regard this as a total abandonment on my part of the logos philosophy that comes to dominate Greek thought, but rather as my own understanding of that logos philosophy having deepened just a little more.  I would not write now if I felt so strongly about my new curiosity in silence and stillness.  I simply mean to say that since I cannot readily change anything in my predicament without frustrating circumstances that need not develop, I will try on this other way for a time.

Public Television

Tonight on UNCTV, the area’s public supported television network, I saw a documentary called Torturing Democracy.  The program dealt with the various changes to policy on torture the Bush administration developed as essential to their misguided GWoT.  While some parts of this documentary are more theatrical than informative, I have not found anything comparable to it equally informative.  It certainly outdoes the 24-hour networks, that could conceivably air something like this.  I don’t know why a nation that grants the military such a central place in its way of life must see so little of what that military does (the good and the bad) around the world.  Coverage of “roadside explosions in Baghdad” appear on those stations as the familiar image of smoke and witnesses fleeing the scene, perhaps also a wall of a nearby building.  Coverage of air-strikes never appears as anything more than flashes in the background, while some jerk with a microphone tells us about how long the event has been underway.  Anyway, this documentary I saw on the public network is a thought-provoking program,  and I don’t hesitate to recommend it.

Xmas Tree

 

Xmas Tree, originally uploaded by pragma14.

I can see I still have a little to learn about posting photos, since I had to do a second entry on the blog to put up the second photo. I would go back and try to do this the right way, but I am pretty tired and I still have to clean the kitchen.

Pretzels

Pretzels, originally uploaded by pragma14.

I have a couple of photos I wanted to put up tonight. I just taught myself how to use “flickr” tonight (pretty easy really), and I will now, I suppose, use it whenever I have pictures to put up here. The first pics are some “bavarian” pretzels I made tonight. I am having a little holiday gathering tomorrow, and I wanted to have these cooked ahead of time. I am pretty happy with how they turned out. The second picture is my christmas tree, about which I already put up a post, and my dog, who is nothing short of awesome. Her name is Seleba, and I will offer a batch of pretzels just like these here to whomever can prove to me the meaning of her name.

Christmas

I feel poorly equipped for this entry tonight.  It is late and I have little energy left.  I have decided to force myself to go through with this anyway.  

Tonight my girlfriend and I put up our Christmas tree.  I have never done that before in my own home (always at my parents before), and I have to admit it is really fulfilling.  I can be something of a bore, so I was not enthusiastic when she told me that she was going to be getting to work on finding a tree.  I tend to prefer to read, think, play piano, and so on.  

But I was wrong on this, as I often am on things like this.  My girlfriend really has a sense of how to pull a place together and make it not a place but a place to live.  I would be harder on myself about how much a bore I am, if I did not have her around.  I think she complements me well, and where I am skeptical or cynical at times, it offers a counterpoint to her rather more sunny disposition.  

Anyway, the tree is up and the lights and the ornaments, and it looks damn fine.  After we had finished decorating, my girlfriend wandered off to the bathroom to do whatever women do in bathrooms for such long stretches of time.  I was left in the den reading and listening to music, which had been left running from when we were at the tree.  We started out with a few Brandenburgs (BWV 1046, -47, -48), because my girlfriend thinks “there is something Christmasy about Bach.”  I guess I can see that.  Anyway, the player kept going through the rest of the cds in the player, Mendelssohn’s incidental music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Scottish Symphony, and then on into the “Morimur” recording I bought some number of years ago.  All this time I had been reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise (a fantastic read so far, expect a post on it), so it turned out to be a pretty grim night.  

It is refreshing to take a night and just set aside my studies.  I do not often spoil myself in this way without feeling guilty about neglecting my work, but tonight I feel completely justified.  Tomorrow though, it is back to the grind.

And on the Sabbath.

Chopin’s Op. 66

Probably not more than a month ago I pulled up this score and started working on the Fantasie-Impromptu.  Julian Fontana published this piece in 1855, apparently against the composer’s wishes.  I understand that he was an uncompromising perfectionist, so perhaps he had not put his ultima manus to the score.  Whatever the case, it seems not to have damaged the composition’s reception, and few would try and highlight flawed or unfinished passages in the piece.

The piece is not a terribly difficult one, and I suppose the number of pianists performing it, even only at present, must be incalculably large.  I have often heard people comment on how difficult it is to balance between the triple-count left hand and quadruple-count right hand.  Admittedly this is an obstacle at first.  I have found that once one gets the hang of it though, the rhythms fall into place fairly naturally.  That the piece moves at a pretty fast clip almost forces the hands to find a way forward.   

The real difficulty with this piece, I think, is to find some way of making one’s playing of it distinct.  That is, somehow one must keep in sight the Platonic form of the piece, so to speak, and thereby remain true to the essence, but this without falling into just mechanically playing that famous Fantasie-Impromptu by Chopin that everyone has heard a hundred thousand times.  It is not simply a matter of making oneself conspicuous though.  I mean rather that one must make the piece seem at once familiar and fresh.  Eating a banana, for instance, is unmistakably familiar to me, and I could not begin to consider how many I have had, or which was my favorite banana out of the lot.  I can gather some sense right now though of what a banana would taste like if I left the banana aside for a time and ate it at just the right degree of ripeness.  The experience is distinct and tends toward the particular.  That is the problem I have to approach for this piece.

How might that be done?  Well, now that the music is memorized and I can play the piece accurately, I suppose I should dig up some recordings.  This is tricky with a piece this often recorded.  With other works, those that are not performed by every pianist from age 7 to 70, one can count on a significant set of recordings, if not a list so small that one could conceivably listen to all the recordings available.  With the F-I, however, one must turn to his preferences and the acknowledged masters.  For example, Rubenstein is the universally recognized authority in interpreting Chopin, so listening to his recordings is indispensable.  But Leon Fleisher is a pianist I admire a great deal, though I think of him as better equipped by temperament to play Brahms or Schumann.   Anyway, I will probably give myself a listen to his recording, to contrast it with the Rubenstein.  Then comes that most glorious treat for all listeners and readers alike.  One must and may question the interpretations.  Why did Fleisher end the piece in this way (a section with which I am having problems), instead of the way that Rubenstein did?  How did they adjust tempo in light of the dynamics?  Did they follow a more “classical” or “romantic” understanding of the piece?  And so on.  All of these questions are merely exemplary.  Beyond this, fortuitous encounters and liner notes will lead the way to other recordings, and this part of the process really never ends.  At some point one just accepts for the most well known pieces that there is no containing them.

Goals

I believe it is important to have something on one’s horizon, toward which he can direct himself and his actions.  I myself am in the midst of a crisis of values, or something of that sort, and I have suffered some serious setbacks with respect to my goals.  Specifically, I don’t really have any right now.  

And this in part is why I write the blog now.  Something such as this gives one a task, something to accomplish everyday, little by little.  I think accomplishing small tasks is underrated, since it is by doing so that one acquires the fortitude to bear through more difficult tasks.  I remember one of the analects on Master K’ung reads something like this:  he would not sit on his mat until it was straight.  I don’t have the translation in which I read that anymore.  Anyway, I like that idea a great deal and it has stuck with me.  One must take care of the simple task of straightening the mat before one moves onto the more serious and important activity, which involves sitting and participating in ceremony.

So, as I am somewhat in transition right now, realigning my life, I suppose I should set some subordinate goals.  I wrote up a list the other day of things I want to do that serve no particular end, and seem not to fit into some universal teleology in any obvious way.  Here is that list:

1.  Learn to speak a language other than my native English.

2.  Get in shape / discipline my body.

3.  Learn to play jazz piano.

4.  Write on your blog site everyday.

5.  Master reading Greek and Latin.

6.  Learn to read Hebrew a little.

So reads my list.  Some of these seem more daunting to me than others.  Greek and Latin should be manageable, since I have been working at them for some years now.  I realize now that having written “master” there was probably foolish, since mastery is only acquired over decades, not months or years.  Learning to read Hebrew a little should not be too difficult, except that I have not done anything with Semitic languages before.  Learning to speak a language, I should probably go to German, since it is my favorite and I have the most experience with it.  Spanish would be more practical, but this list is not about practicality in that sense.

With the blog site, it is now day two, and I am doing fine so far.

 Jazz piano is somewhat more tricky.  I will have to take lessons, I think, since I have never been able to teach myself this art.  I am a moderately skilled classical pianist, having played since I was 7 (so around 17 years now); I can play pretty much anything by Chopin (save some of the more technical etudes), but little Liszt.  Not a virtuoso, but capable nevertheless.  I also know pretty much all the essentials of the “theory” of jazz, but that amounts to very little if one cannot execute that theory in practice.  

Getting in shape will be the worst.  I have not been fond of exercise for a very long time now.  I once played a lot of basketball (high school, not on the team though), but have not found it all that compelling since I was probably a sophomore in college (some 6 years ago now).  I put the slash in there because I have become kind of a pig with my diet too.  I was a vegetarian for two years in undergraduate, and now I will eat pretty much anything without giving it too much thought.  I remember when I gave up vegetarian eating, I did so because I thought that, going into academia, I would have to follow the academic’s dietary discipline.  I thought that being in academia involved at least in some sense a neglect of the body.  I now see this was a very short-sighted view and it says something about what I really understood back then, but the important point is that the view is wrong-headed.  I don’t know how best to approach this problem, but I know I need to get back to exercising and back to eating right (which at this point means little more than thinking actively about what I eat).  

So that about sums it up.  I hope these short term goals will amount to something, and help me find some direction.  I guess the months ahead will decide.

Statement of Purpose

This newly founded blog should serve one purpose:  to get me back into the groove of writing.  I used to write a great deal as an undergraduate in college, but now that I am a graduate student, I hardly ever write.  Instead, I am always reading…reading…reading…

And what’s more, not reading what I would like to be–unless I am misbehaving.  

So, there you have it.  Once a well practiced hand at composing short essays and letters and statements on this or that, I now find I have hardly the time in which or energy with which to approach a task as simple as putting language to thoughts.  To this task I have now devoted myself in this form, the blog, hoping that if I do not keep up with posting I will feel guilty enough to settle myself into the task, whether I feel prepared or not.