Listened to a talk by a world-famous philosopher over dinner. Read his latest book a few months ago. The talk was recorded in 2018. Not only did the talk (on politics and philosophy generally) immediately drift briefly to the Balkans, but the philosopher, sotto voce, as part of it, mentioned a national holiday of a neighboring country. Which is today. More things in heaven and earth, Horatio.
Walked around the souk after a couple hours of reading with a bit of kefir in the cafe. Quite different at night. There's a qualitative difference between these sorts of bazaars/markets and the attempts to replicate them at theme parks, etc. Three hundred years ago, someone (along with several dozen others) thought it might be a good idea to put a booth with some baklava and coffee across from the mosque, and it's still a good idea now. They didn't set out to construct the atmosphere of the place. (Though the modernization does smooth things out a bit.) Much kitsch, of course, but there are still worthwhile things if you know the right sections of the market to look. Very famous section of hammered copper work hidden in a small side alley off the main spot.
Completely modern city, of course, bars and nightlife blocks packed full of folks with their drinks, tables set out on the road wherever the yellow line bounding the driving space allows enough curb. Distinctly Turkish vibe, in some tension with the Moorish style of the brightly lit Austro-Hungarian architecture. Rock music blending with the evening calls to prayer.
Lingered outside a mosque, looking in for a bit -- the fountain, the oudoor prayer spaces. Comparatively, filing in and briefly sticking a fingertip in a bit of water before finding a place in a pew seems downright puritan. Liturgy opens us up for the encounter with these things. God doesn't need liturgy. And sometimes a more careful approach to the building itself can be very useful. In the Midwest, they don't even use the door anymore. Since everyone drives to the church, and the parking lots are usually away from the road, people just head in the side entrance, bypassing the carefully designed entrance to the space.
You do have to be careful when forming ideas under conditions of adversity. Often, it's just kicking at the pricks, attempting to keep the stinger (Canetti) at bay.
I was cafeful not to form dogmatic opinions, but after many years of subsequent work, I think I can trust my understanding of what I saw when, as a method actor from New York, I went to a (top-ranked) Midwestern law school, and understood that there were some peculiarities there. I then transferred to another (top-ranked) school back in New York, and I learned something completely different. (While actually devoting myself to the work, incidentally, taking as many credit hours as I could, getting strong grades, and briefing every case.)
Subsequent work has been instructive. I'm confident that my keeping to the academics then wasn't illusory, and it is what a scholar within the larger academic tradition would have done. And I learned some other things about the culture during that return to the university. Many of the authority figures in the Midwest were like the police officers who would stop me from time to time on spurious bases, mainly because they wanted to keep the bicyclists and pre-dawn runners under control. At least they explicitly used the phrase "I want to teach you a lesson." And there's a long story there, about the land-grant state universities built in the 19th c. by nativist legislatures some distance from the cities, and their relationship to the immigrants drawn to them from the cities. Every institution is but the lengthened shadow of its founders, as Santayana said in his lectures on the university.
As to the culture of the continent writ large, I have come to the understanding that there's a lot of wrongdoing going on inside the prosperity brought by these industrial forms, perhaps largely because the postwar industrial forms are strong enough to function whatever the condition of the culture. But there are relics and useful things within these places. The old basketball gyms at I-----. The immense, usually empty, library stacks at I-----------. Useful things are there, but you won't find them if you think as the people of our time think.
They said, "You have a blue guitar / You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are/ Are changed upon the blue guitar."
Caesura.
Notably, Pisistratus was a very successful leader, despite bringing a tyranny that defeated the arisocracy completely. Poets and playwrights (I think) gathered at his court to enunciate the virtues of the reborn state. People generally stayed on the farm and prospered, rather than flooding into the cities in search of work and food. (One historian said that they didn't come to the cities because their pro-Pisistrates garments would be laughed at.)
I would say things are going just as one might have thought they would go, with the rise of a businessman from New Amsterdam. (Who, it should be noted, was relentlessly publicized on network television for many years.) Both the tactics and the alliances are what one might have expected. And the successes have been real, because running public policy with the herrschaft methods of private industry is like having a pro baseball player as a ringer in the company softball game. But the point of the company softball game isn't always about softball. And in the political realm, the success of an executive doesn't make a state. (See every book written by a king for his son, 1300-1650.) Statecraft, which is the game the others at the table are playing, is a more complicated endeavour.
That's the logical view. The best response from the paritsans of the current leader would be that the corporate mindset rewrites the rules of politics, and allows politicians to be more effective. All well and good, and the quintessence of the sort of pragmatism that birthed the phenomenon, but we have been here before. An expansionist corporate state led by a fellow whom they called their "guide." Perhaps because the image of the effectiveness of the leader was the only thing fashioning the state.
Things could still turn out well. But the aristocracy, even if kept from effectively governing things, does need to stake out a position in the collective mind. The idea of the Aeropagus, an institution for which the present leader has no use, must somehow persist.
Ambroise never indicates his role in the crusade: the only detail he gives about himself is the remark 'nos autre qui a pié fumes' ('we who were on foot'; Ambroise, verse 12039).
https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-66813
This is a rather spiritually dark city. Though very powerful--it hasn't been emptied out. These things are still living questions. But a jedi (shouldn't it be jedus?) has to tread carefully, wake early, and avoid the crowds. Rooms a bit lightless and airless, and some other difficulties there. Slogging through.
On my last visit, it struck me that it was a city under two shadows--the second being the realpolitik alliances with my part of the world, among others. And there is some distant Jeffersonian gleam there of a religiously devout, yet diverse, republic. But at the same time, speaking as a patriot, our realpolitik-inclined apparachiks aren't our best folks. And the local tendency seems to be to polarization and possession rather than founding a diverse republic.
The jedi wakes early, runs, reads, and tries to avoid thinking about the theatre festival in Transylvania that he'd much rather be at this week. Not pining, exactly, but one does plan these paths so that one can tap the wells and replenish the inner strength, and while there's safe quarters and reasonably priced coffee and kefir nearby, this oasis is not inhabited by my people.
What Britten is picking up on here (@ around 1:50) is the reversal of the iamb into the trochee -- strong/weak as opposed to weak/strong. Shakespeare uses it carefully. Sometimes it's called his "magic speech." Usually hexameter as opposed to pentameter. Generally it happens when someone is causing something good to happen.
Midsummer night.
The Eve of St. John is a great day among the mason-lodges of Scotland. What happens with them at Melrose may be considered as a fair example of the whole. 'Immediately after the election of office-bearers for the year ensuing, the brethren walk in procession three times round the Cross, and afterwards dine together, under the presidency of the newly-elected Grand Master. About six in the evening, the members again turn out and form into line two abreast, each bearing a lighted flambeau, and decorated with their peculiar emblems and insignia. Headed by the heraldic banners of the lodge, the procession follows the same route, three times round the Cross, and then proceeds to the Abbey. On these occasions, the crowded streets present a scene of the most animated description. The joyous strains of a well-conducted band, the waving torches, and incessant showers of fire-works, make the scene a carnival. But at this time the venerable Abbey is the chief point of attraction and resort, and as the mystic torch-bearers thread their way through its mouldering aisles, and round its massive pillars, the outlines of its gorgeous ruins become singularly illuminated and brought into bold and striking relief.
The whole extent of the Abbey is with "measured step and slow " gone three times round. But when near the finale, the whole masonic body gather to the chancel, and forming one grand semicircle around it, where the heart of King Robert Bruce lies deposited near the high altar, and the band strikes up the patriotic air, " Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled," the effect produced is overpowering. Midst showers of rockets and the glare of blue lights the scene closes, the whole reminding one of some popular saturnalia held in a monkish town during the middle ages.
Wade's Hist. Melrose, 1861, p. 146.
From time to time, I drop a few thoughts into the timeline as possible breadcrumbs, likely only to surface at Senate confirmation (or impeachment) hearings. There is a way of reading the occasionally spectacular adversities of many years as a means of steering my work, possibly towards government work of a confidential nature. (This is not as outlandish as it might seem; I could a tale unfold.) Even if the dystopan nudge-nightmare were to be the case, though, I think I would be permitted to record a brief minute noting the fact that I haven't ever agreed to do such things, and would likely never agree to do such things. (Having seen what doing such things can do.) Onward.
Interesting Mass at the cathedral. English-language cancelled, so I went to an earlier one. Tried to time it for the Mass of the Faithful, as the readings and homily would have been lost on me. Small, grizzled old man at the door apparently thought I was a gawking tourist and tried to physically grab me as I went in. Kept walking, saying I was there for Mass (in Croatian and Latin). In both the Croatian diaspora and Hungary, I've encountered a fair amount of such things. In this city, the church bells peal loudly, but the church doors are frequently bolted. War-weariness, perhaps.
Interesting free concert of local music scheduled in town tonight, but 9PM on a Sunday. I wonder if there might be some unconscious cultural habit of staging culturally meaningful events at times when the German and Austrian ambassadors would be certain to send their regrets.
American kitsch piece scheduled at the national theatre, Almost certainly going to give it a miss.
I get the sense that things are going just slightly -- but sufficiently -- askew. Perhaps a trick of the mind.
Beautful weather, though.
Oddly there seems to be a push locally for 1950's-style blue laws. The malls and groceries closed on Sunday. (The orthodox coastal bit of the old Republic to the south does the same). It's odd, though. Why would a largely Muslim city absolutely reliant on the tourist industry close up shop on a Sunday? (Though all the tourist things appear to be open -- it's just the malls and proper groceries and most of the retail shops, apparently.) Not that inconvenient -- the western cheap coffee places are still open, so I can get out of the rooms for a bit, and I generally do the grocery shopping on weekdays to avoid the crowds.
Curiouser and curiouser. Gently down the stream -- inshallah.
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