With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
January 03, 2004 - 12:04 p.m.
Yesterday I tried to back up my files on this computer so I can transfer them to the one that Lawrence gave me. I wasn't successful. I couldn't get any of the drives to work. I'm going to have to keep trying. This computer is fading fast.
My fun for the day was going to see Ruth Gerson. She went on at nine so I left my house around eight. I know it is a half hour drive from here. I should have left earlier. It took me that long to find a parking space. I got in there just in the nick of time. When I did get there I found Gella and her friend Andrew. She had actually been there all evening. I should have left earlier to hang out with her.
This was my first time seeing Ruth solo in long time. Ruth is always insecure but when she does a solo show it becomes extreme. I love her solo, I often prefer it, but she always thinks that she needs the band. She also becomes more endearing when she's worrying so much. She reminds me then of most of my of the other people I care about. The room was filled with her friends, so that helps. Guess who the two most vocal people in the audience were. She did have one bad moment when she forgot the words to a song. She was going to start over till somebody suggested that she go back to the chorus. She fast forwarded through that till she got to the place she got stuck and remembered the words.
After the show I drove Gella and Andrew back to Gella's house. I had never been there and she couldn't give them to me. I had to find it on my map and plan it out. The first part was hard the second really easy. For the first time since I met her she lives someplace fairly convenient for me.
I always get ideas for entries when I'm making long drives and my trip to the DC area was no exception. I first wrote "good ideas" but I'll leave the value judgments to you.
I was listening to the radio to WQXR classical countdown. That is their annual listeners poll of the top classical pieces of all time. I just went to their website to check out the list and it isn't posted. They still have the forms to fill out to vote though. Their webmaster needs to get on the ball.
Anyway back to the story. Number six or so on the countdown was Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. What I realized was that his Fifth and Ninth had to be higher on the list so three of the top six pieces were by Beethoven. I would probably agree too except that I might have his Third Symphony above the Seventh. The poll might have too, perhaps four of the top six were his. Leonard Bernstein once did a show on TV where he explored the question, "Why Beethoven?" It is something I've often thought of and in my car I came up with another reason.
I think that more than any other artist Beethoven portrayed how in each of us are elements of the divine and the profane. The Fifth and Ninth are structured very similarly. They start very foreboding, showing the dark sides of our nature. In the last movement things start of lighter but then the dark themes from earlier insinuate themselves into the movement, threatening to take them over. In the end there is a divine theme in a major key that triumphs in the end. Beethoven in his personal life was far more profane than divine but he saw the good that was in his heart and could express it in music. When we listen we find the divine in ourselves while not forgetting the profane. He doesn't compose fluff, he acknowledges the evil in the world but gives the hope for its eventual defeat.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile January 03, 2004
