I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
March 10, 2003 - 12:49 a.m.
I'm really getting bad about updating. I have to get back in the habit of updating regularly. So now I have a weekend to catch up on. I think I'll just zip through it.
On Friday I saw Rod Picott again. He was playing at the Postcrypt Coffeehouse. That's at great series that's been held at Columbia University for over thirty years. The shows are in the basement of the chapel. It's an incredibly intimate venue. It is so small there is no need for amplification, it is totally unplugged. There aren't even mics. They get first rate performers too. Some people that have been there are: Dave Bromberg, Jeff Buckley, Shawn Colvin, Dave's True Story, Kris Delmhorst, and Ani Difranco. That's just up to the Ds, for the complete list look here.
The show was great and I met some people there. The other people at my table looked familiar but I didn't know their names. The married couple said hi to me and said how they always see me around but don't know my name. That broke the ice. I do always see them at the Bottom Line and they sat next to us at Appel Farm. Then a woman joined who also is always at the Bottom line. Maybe I'll start actually talking to the regulars.
Yesterday I didn't do much. I did buy tickets to see Natalie MacMaster on St. Patrick's Day. She's playing at Joe's Pub. I'm glad it wasn't sold out.
Have you noticed that one of the central themes in my entries is looking for central themes? It is important in most things I care about. One of the first things that Carey and I bonded over was that we like mapping people onto other people. The idea of finding the essential similarities in things that are outwardly different fascinates me. It is the heart of the sciences. What is physics but mapping the universe onto mathematics? The motions of the planets are mirrored in equations. The forces that cause the motion are mirrored in partial differential equations.
The development of physics had consisted largely of a series of unifications. Newton showed how the motions of the planets followed the same rules at the motions of objects on earth. Magnetism and Electricity started as two separate ideas till Faraday and Maxwell showed they were different aspects of the same force. Today everything has been reduced to four forces; gravitation, electromagnetic, the weak, and the strong. Two of them the electromagnetic, and weak, have been shown to be the same at high enough energies. The key problem of physics today is unifying all the forces, the holdout is gravity.
Music has often been compared to mathematics and this is where the similarity really exists. Two pieces of music might have no notes in common but really be the same. The most common way this is happens is when they are in different keys. In the end it is the intervals that count not the notes. The similarity can be more cryptic though. In fugues a melody can be played upside down, each interval is reversed, where one melody goes down the other goes up. It can also be reversed, the notes are played in backwards order. The speed can be doubled or halved. Whatever is done you can always get back to the original if you know the process. In some sense they are identical if you only look at the right way.
People are the same way, they can seem totally different, but in some way they are the same. Not the perfect correspondence you find in music but the broken symmetries of physics.
I think that people can see why I'm friends with Lawrence, our similarities are right there on the surface. We are geeks that like baseball and bridge. I have other friends that I think most people wouldn't think are compatible with me. Carey, Leah, and Gella come to mind. They all seem different from me and different from each other but given the right circumstances the symmetries are there. We have different strengths and weaknesses but I still feel kinship. Somehow deep down it's all a matter of transposing to the right key. The thought that comes to mind is perhaps that's true of everyone and I just don't have the wit to see it. It's a harder problem to solve than unifying the forces of nature.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Horvendile March 10, 2003
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