And for the Halloween season…
“The mixolydian mode is one of the authentic ‘church modes’ of the
Middle Ages…. On the white notes of a
piano, the mixolydian scale runs from G to G.”
Lulu
Friday,
Oct. 21–Saturday, Oct. 29…. Tickets available at the Harvard Box Office and
Loeb Drama Center Box Office, 64 Brattle St.
Related material:
From Log24 on October 7, 2005,
the day that Dr. Michael Ward died:
Seven is Heaven
“Love is the shadow that ripens the vine.
Set the controls for the heart of the Sun.
Witness the man who raves at the wall
Making the shape of his questions to Heaven.
Knowing the sun will fall in the evening,
Will he remember the lessons of giving?
Set the controls for the heart of the Sun.
Set the controls for the heart of the Sun.”
– Roger Waters, quoted in
Allusions to Classical
Chinese Poetry in Pink Floyd
Barrington Moore Jr. in 1978 On Moral Outrage:
“People’s organizations, loudspeakers, newspapers, the secret police,
and the courts all swing into action and the campaign is launched. A
reasonably intelligent person, particularly the educated product of
Chinese civilization, which for centuries has stressed the nuances of
moral indignation in a setting of intrigue and bureaucratic protocol,
will know at once just how to adjust facial expressions and tones of
voice in showing the correct degree of indignation for each degree on
the official set of priorities that ranks all possible varieties of the
execrable behavior of the enemies of the people. A poor peasant or
worker cannot be expected to do as well.
Worse still, a peasant or a worker may have trouble understanding
why this year’s enemies of the people include some of last year’s
heroes, and why it is necessary to have another exhausting campaign so
soon if the last one was as successful as everybody said it was. But
since socialism is a workers’ and peasants’ state that belongs to the
people, there are lots of people to explain such matters to workers and
peasants, and indeed to anybody else who cares to listen. Furthermore
just about everybody must care to listen. Woe to the person who
stubbornly refuses to listen to the right noises or to try to make the
right noises under socialism, since a socialist state is very efficient
in its allocation of human as well as material resources.”
And I’ll tell you a tale of when
the red iron pits ran plenty….
My children will go
As soon as they grow.
Well, there ain’t nothing
here now to hold them.”
– Robert Zimmerman,
“North Country Blues,” 1963
“Well, if you’re travelin’
in the north country fair,
Where the winds hit heavy
on the borderline,
Remember me to
one who lives there.
She once was
a true love of mine.”
– Robert Zimmerman,
“Girl of the North Country,” 1963
Above: propaganda poster of
the 2005 October revolution.
Where the Rivers Run North,
by Diane Alden.
– http://www.aeonflux.com
“She once was a true love of mine.”
– “Girl of the North Country,”
by Robert Zimmerman
of Hibbing, Minnesota
Sure she was, Bob.
# “Beauty therefore is a relation.”
– Gerard Manley Hopkins
Leo Bogart,
dead on Oct. 15.
 |
“Leo Bogart is surely the Grand Master of social research in the world of the newspaper and the mass media in general.”
– Sociologist
Robert K. Merton, “father of born in Philadelphia as |
More on media:
11:07:16
“Serious numbers
will always be heard.”
– Paul Simon (64 on Oct. 13)
“Her wallet’s filled with pictures.”
– Chuck Berry (79 today)
Collegiate Church of
St. Mary Magdalene,
Atrani, Amalfi Coast, Italy:
“An interior made exterior”
– Wallace Stevens
Interior: Amalfi Coast
Exterior: Amalfi-kysten
Place
“Critics have compared Mr. Stone to Conrad, Faulkner, Hemingway, Graham
Greene, Malcolm Lowry, Nathanael West; all apt enough, but there’s a
James T. Farrell, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett strain as well – a
hard-edged, lonely intelligence that sets bright promise off against
stark failure and deals its mordant hand lightly. In A Flag for
Sunrise (1981), an anthropologist observes: ‘There’s always a place
for God. . . . There is some question as to whether He’s in it.’”
– Jean Strouse on Robert Stone
“When times are mysterious
Serious numbers will always be heard
And after all is said and done
And the numbers all come home
The four rolls into three
The three turns into two
And the two becomes a
One”
– Paul Simon,
“When Numbers Get Serious,” from
“Hearts and
Bones“ album, 1983
“Hickory Dickory Dock….”
How does one stand
To behold the sublime,
To confront the mockers,
The mickey mockers
And plated pairs?
– Wallace Stevens, 1936
Pictured:
“High Society,” “The Philadelphia Story,”
“Rocky” statue, Robert Scott
(See Log24 entry for Rosh Hashana.)
From today’s online Philadelphia Inquirer,
a story first posted on October 13:
“Mickey Mouse will see you dead.”
– Robert Stone
Canon
A brief note to place Edward Bennett Marks,
who died either on Saturday, October 8, 2005 (Washington Post), or on Monday, October 10, 2005 (New York Times), in my personal canon of
saints. Today’s New York Times says that Marks spent his career
“aiding refugees as an executive of American and international
agencies,
both official and volunteer.” This alone was commendable, but not
miraculous. The miraculous is contained in three words from the Log24 entry of October 10, the date of death of Orson Welles, of Yul Brynner, and perhaps of Marks: “All come home.”
For a rather different perspective on St. Yul Brynner, see “Shall We
Dance?”– a profile by Calvin Tomkins in this week’s New Yorker
(issue dated 2005 10/17, posted 10/10) of an artist raised in Bangkok. It is perhaps not irrelevant
that the chess enthusiast Marcel Duchamp plays a prominent role in this
piece.
Some other remarks on chess and art:
| From Introduction to Aesthetics (Log24, October 10, 2004) – G. H. Hardy on chess problems: “It is essential… (unless the problem is too simple to
be really amusing) that the key-move should be followed by a good many variations, each requiring its own individual answer.” According to the New York Times, Marks died on Oct. 10 (see related entry). According to the Washington Post, Marks died on Oct. 8 (see related entry). |
For some remarks on art by St. Edward, see UN Chronicle, Issue 4, 1998.
For the relevance to the United Nations,
see the illustration in Wednesday’s entry:
Click to enlarge.
“My card.”
For the relevance of “Tick Tick Hash”
to Roth and the High Holy Days, see
the obituary of Jerome Roth
from today’s New York Times,
the Log24 entry for Monday,
a philosophical note- Elegance-
and a poem by Wallace Stevens,
“Asides on the Oboe.”
(Today, by the way, is the feast of
Saint Leonard Bernstein.)
