Frequently attended his concerts and open rehearsals during the conservatory degree. Post-Szell, Cleveland has consistently been one of those rare Midwestern arts institutions committed to careful, historically meaningful art, despite all its old European implications and entailments. Apparently connected to Bonhoeffer as an in-law, which I hadn't known.
On days in which you survey the employment listings, and absolutely everything about the situation makes it seem like you have about as much business (or interest in) looking for a position as a random method actor who has done a few years of Shakespeare in the park (note the lower case) has of seeking admittance to an elite Hollywood bistro filled with lunching power-brokers assembling projects, and guarded by several layers of criminally conspiritorial types, from the bouncers on though the front of house folks -- on such a day, do not send out the CVs.
Time and tide might not wait, but they do have their turns.
Interesting concert at the small hall of the local philharmonic ($6). Postwar western-Balkan ensemble, mostly new-music, but mixed in with some of the romantic repertory. The latter actually seemed to be their strength, interpretive freedom, sweeping emotion, wobbly pitch at times from the low strings (which I've noticed everywhere in the Balkans -- perhaps they hear the instruments differently). The paradox is that the type of musician who would be very strong in the romantic repertory, for these same reasons, is conceptually drawn to new music.
The (excellent) hall is very crisp and bright -- with the romantic swooshiness (in the best Rortyan sense) of the pieces, it was a bit like watching a melodrama on a kabuki stage. Every fricative rasp of the strings as clear as daylight. Very interesting.
The Miami Vice move in the Carribean was flagrant under any standard. So why no reaction? Much to do with the use of unrestricted drone warfare in neutral nations ovr the last two decades, I think. They've simply taken off the fig leaf.
When bad things come, they make good use of the bad aspects of the good.
Meanwhile, in the streets, the War on Wilding continues.
Somewhat miraculously, the neighborhood hubbub diminished, and the workspace was quite idyllic for several hours. Managed a solid 30 minutes on the task, though, before I was distracted to necessary admin planning and due diligence. Tempted just to stay at the desk into the evening, but there is an obligation to the place. So, off to the city center, and I'll hope that whatever Friday charm fell over the place will return.
With every new vector introduced on the path, there comes the risk that you will find that it has led you into climes uncongenial to the specific work at hand. At that point, commit to dispassion, as it will be necessary on the long arc back to the known winds of the trade routes.
It's undoubtedly a pleasant place for the people of the place, but I don't seem to have hit it at the right angle.
Bit of a slough of despond. I have set the tasks, though. It's a simple matter of keeping myself at the desk and doing them.
Pausing the morning runs, at least through the week -- several reasons.
Noticed that the city's national theatre (which might be the national theatre, though that's usually not the case in the Balkans) was doing a play that I remember reading as an undergrad, and the sequel to which I actually saw on Broadway when I was doing summer stock in Massachusetts. But then it become cultural phenomenon, the HBO version, etc. Decided that as an American, I didn't want to investigate that American incursion into the neighborhood. Sort of like the fellow you knew in college whom you grew to dislike, and then you see them from a distance when travelling. No need to force the acquaintance. Looking forward to catching one or two of their other pieces while I'm here.
Felling a bit like the mad scientist orbiting the planet from a distance, plotting his grand strategy, yet somehow always the same distance from the planet. Must be sure to give the areas of the orbit their due, though. These are stange and interesting lands, although I don't want to dissipate the energies by turning away from the central work and just calling the whole exercise an extended gap year. There is work to be done, and I have it in hand.
Heu, quam vicina est ultima terra mihi. (Ovid, also in the Balkans)
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.
Thursday. Which I know from the arrival of the TLS in the email inbox (de minimis promotional rate). Like oil running down the beard. The web interface is terrible, basically impossible to read all the way through without opening a few dozen seriatum tabs in the browser, and then it's in random order. The UK seems on a mission to destroy its internationally influential websites. Speaking piecemeal to the nations. The OED was revamped a few years ago, making it basically useless for many purposes. The BBC radio sites have been a complete mess for the past several months; the idea appears to be that they're geo-fencing almost all of the content to the UK, with some content available after a lag of a few weeks. (Perhaps this informed the recent shifts in In Our Time, which would no longer be available same-week worldwide.)
At any rate, with the publicly available snapshots of the first few pages as printed, and the scattershot piecemeal web interface, it's possible to meander through the Weekly Reader, and get some sense of the gestalt. The best way of thinking about the TLS is to imagine yourself as a great Arabian lord standing on his balcony in the evening, and a series of bedraggled urchins sprint into the courtyard and shout garbled versions of the interesting things going on in the other palaces. They're trying to seem impressive as they recite their speech up to the balcony, but the real task is to look past them to see if there's anything worthwhile in the thing they're decribing. One very useful bit is that the reviews will sometimes dismissively run through a list of the old scholarship, which can give you a good reading list.
The consistent ideal for the rooms on this peregrination has been a bright, open minimally furnished place with an abundance of fresh air and sunlight. Ideally, sufficient cultural life in the city--theatre and music, usually around $5-$10 per ticket, as the market hasn't been artificially constrained to make it a luxury good, and the state/foundation support goes right to the art, rather than building the marketing mechanisms necessary for selling the luxury good. More basically, the ability to run in the morning (pace air pollution, dogs, safety). Research libraries in the area with some collections in English have proved useful.
The local ideas of happiness, though, seem to enter on "cozy", heavily furnished and decorated spaces well insulated from air, and occasionally sunlight. I wandered through the main residential developments over the weekend, and was struck that even in the mountains, they build close, cozy spaces in insular communities. Much the same phenomenon in the country directly to the west that was also part of the old republic. The materials of brutalism assist in this. They become vine-draped caves rather than portals to the light.
Eluding local ideas of happiness is the first, and necessary step to escaping the local sleep. Put me in a cozy, hygge room in the center of the hobbit village, and I will light a small lamp, devote all my energies to focusing the mind, and wait for the opportunity to leave.
Just reading the reviews of the TN in the park is very depressing. They used to do good theatre there. Of course, the same can be said of the city. Now, it's just a means of repeating the sensibilities of the television.
Incidentally, after much mulling, I'm more certain than ever that in the letter and the gulling conceit, we were meant to hear "cross-gartered" as wearing a cross, and "yellow starchings" as the ruff. The joke is that M misunderstands. Both the starched ruff and the cross would have been provocative political symbols. (And possibly "Lady of the Strachy as misprint for Stark(ch)y.")
Nowhere in the variorum.
Quite a week, last week. For some reason, absasmurfly everything that could go wrong from an admin POV did go wrong. Including, most significantly for my purposes, an unforced error or two.
By the weekend, was reduced to what a Victorian prime minister might have called a state of mild nervous prostration. But decided to observe the American holday by sleeping in after a placid Sunday, and now it's back to the fray.
Absolute discipline. Some people might call my approach characteristic of national socialism, others might call it characteristic of a Soviet commissar. The choice in those instances would be revealing of the speaker. But it is necessary to have the intensity of focus and being that was deivided between those two (and then reconciled, as Rory noted, at an extended academic seminar called the battle of Stalingrad). By divine edict, Eden isn't an option. Find the grace.
A peculiar 24 hours, weather-wise. Strong cold winds from the south suddenly appeared yesterday afternoon. Storms in the air, battles perhaps, in the sense of meaningful things contending. The air marked by the acrid smell of the southern air here. Then, apparently, the victory of calmer things, and clean air and sunshine, presumably from the north.
Wandered through one of the malls. Not quite the glittering and flashing desire-machines of the country to the northeast, but a solid place. I seem to be able to sense the thread that goes from the market-based modern malls of the country to the southwest, through places like this, and to the north. Perhaps my imagination, but it seems the vehicle of one of the local social sensibilities, tracing out its idea of what a great, good place might be, and so it might be in some tension with the other groups. Instead of coffee from a small, century-old tin pot, digital espresso machines costing hundreds of dollars arrayed between the televisions and the laptops. Such things can be built from private notions of perfection, or in imitation of distant models, or against the proximate others. In the last case, it might have that character for the others as well. An amiable tabernacle, though.
Stopped in at a shrine of a local saint. Whenever you see a sign or a photo on the wall indicating that a pope stopped in here to pray, you get the sense that you might be in a worthwhile place, as opposed to the place across the street. Or perahsp not. Perhaps he's just indicating the neighborhood.
At every moment of your life, no matter the place, no matter the situation, every other moment in your life has a relation to it, and is hoping for it to be a certain thing. No matter the present situaiton, there will be or were moments in your life when you might think about this situation, and have a needful relationship to it, wanting it to be a certain thing. Our life also has meaning through intension -- these moments rely upon one another. Perhaps the essence of "being true to yourself."
Paradoxically, physical rest and getting away from the urban areas can actually work against dispassion. The water clears, things come into view. Thoughts are heard and held more clearly.
Like the executive in Priestley's "I have Been Here Before" who attempts to signal to his wife that the idyllic country inn might be more dangerous that the city hotel filled with the blare of jazz bands.
Once again, I find myself in the southern Balkans, and pining to flee to the mountains of Bulgaria. (And, presumably, when there, I would sense the path northward.)
Precisely the sensation I had in the country to the south in February. But the art of exploring occasionally means trying the thing you didn't like before, but with a slightly different aspect (different culture, faith).
It's by no means as bad as it was, and the quarters are in a decent neighborhood. I look forward to sussing out the cultural bits in the remaining time, but I don't think I'll linger.
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Orthodox - having the true faith. Western: truly having the faith.
"In the holiness of truth."
There are three things that I'm trying to accomplish now, and today, I was able to spend a few hours on one of them. In fairness, I did spend several hours on CV distribution, &c., which I try to do every several days or so, in addition to the real-time alerts. And yet, I was always doing things.
At the state university, I learned how to plod, which can be a skill when you cover ground in the long run, but that also means that the course of the day fills up with the exercises, meditations, etc. that keep the candle going from day to day. The trick is to know when to draw from those energies to feed the projects, when there are projects that it would be good to spend as much time on as possble. I certainly wouldn't give up the daily routines, the running, the eavesdropped Mass (liturgy of the word only if on tape), the focused morning reading, etc. And yet, the thing carrying the mechanism through the day can fill up the day, and there's usually not much to show for it, though sometimes there's some useful things in the writing.
As Heid observed, the plodding is a form of existence that already knows its end and is working towards it. And that can have an effect on a life.
More mercurial, perhaps. To the extent that it's possible without destabilizing the covered wagon heading down the trail.
Have tried the local water over the last few days, after ascertaining that it was at least theoretically safe. Interesting. From the local river mostly, apparently, in addition to springs, which are likely abundant, given the surrounding mountain ranges. Heavily treated, though. Will let it sit out for a few hours before use, if I continue on with it.
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Returned to Pynchon's Against the Day recently. More and more clear to this pugnacious reader that it's about being shocked, or occasionally seduced, out of the episodic cartoon by the events of the aforementioned day. The plot lines, in a fanciful though likely not entirely inaccurate reading, seem to trace the varying threads of the post-9/11 response to things. But eventually we're inside a labyrinth of more realistic events affecting a slate of characters on a Dostoyevskian scale -- perhaps an uncharitable reading on my part, but I think, about halfway through, we get to the point at which you would have to know and care about the models for the characters to follow the plot-lines. Even given the mind-candy settings (Michaelson-Moreley, higher maths, etc.). Or perhaps it's not the best novel to read whan nomading through the Balkans. It requires the ennui of the UWS coffeehouse in early evening.
Might see it through this time, but time and mental focus, assuming there's a difference between those two things, are precious things.
I've joked about this a bit, but it does reflect some rather serious thought. Given the peculiar times between the beginning of the JD and the present, I would likely take a Socratic, if not Shermenesque, view to serving in leadership or government. As an artist or a writer, or even a plain advocate in the courts, I could explain a few things, and help people out. But in that Tamino didn't knowingly enter the trials, I suspect he would have very little business being in Sarastro's court afterwards. I have my understanding; it suffices. In a way, it does reconfirm the initial vocation, which was run a bit akew in the context of the NYC industry. Vissi d'arte, &c.
Odd, the Great and Terrible Gurgle appears to have taken a dislike to this subsite. Completely de-indexed, even after sitemaps, page fixes, and individual pages sent in. (As I used to do this sort of thing for a living, not entirely clueless in that area.) Also, the archive bots seem to have developed a similar distaste -- last snapshots were in March. (Posted a few pages there this afternoon, perhaps it will whet the bots' appetite.)
Bit odd. Time was, this sort of hand-crafted content was the gold standard for search indexing. A little like realizing that you haven't left any footprints on the trail for the last mile. Might force me into mass-market authorship, just so I can be sure that a copy or two will still linger on Salvation Army thrift store shelves a century hence.
The basic elements, perhaps: a tenfold increase in the global population in the last century, a vast expansion of industrialization in the Western postwar model, and considerable corruption in the Woodstock-to-Wall-Street generation that followed the generation of giants who built the place.
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Not to use the interwebs for grousing or chuntering excessively, but this journeying isn't easy. Away from the highways of air travel and proper hotels, one does land in the place itself. In the pond, which is much more different from the last pond than one sunlit upland hill varies from another.
No simple highway.
It's not a disastrous place, just very underdeveloped. It reminds me of anther city divided by a river, a bit to the southeast. I can't help but think that part of the difficulty is that silent war. Defining your world as a marginal improvement on theirs, rather than a thing in itself, or taking a more distant model. The nation to the northeast had less of that threat from the south, and is focused more on the northern models, to better effect. The vibe is sort of underdeveloped small city in NJ. Still evidence about of rougher times. Banks barricaded behind double-door thick glass. Was waiting between the two doors, and caught a whiff what must have been a cleaning chemical. Essence of the visit, so far. But time for improvement.
On the upside, found a decent English-language bookstore (unlike the US, people read here, so in all of these countries, pehaps save one, the bookstores have been ubiquitous). Everything from abroad, though, so no translated locals. Some of the shops in the last country made a point of setting a corner aside for translated locals, and that was always a good place to stop in for a bit.
On this peregrination, I've tried to keep to the capitals and the tourist cities -- this is about travelling and studying while still within (a certain species of) European culture. This isn't an Indiana Jones journey, in other words.
That said, the southern parts of the peninsula can be a bit rough, as I discovered over the winter -- even in the larger/tourist cities. There was a point of decision in January/February: I would either go out and buy some khakis and head into the dirty areas, or increase the amount of time at the kitchen table reading -- opted for the latter.
I'm in one of the more decent parts of this city here, but there are still some rough edges and inconveniences, just from the nature of the place. Far from what the locals have to go through, I'm sure, but it is a salutary reminder to stay as close to the pools of light as possible when travelling in this manner. And there's always the table to read at.
I do miss books a bit. I've been careful to ensure that there were large research libraries nearby, whatever the nature of the times. Given the peregrinations, though, everything's on the glowing screen of the foldable panopticon.
On the other hand, I've been equally frustrated with the conditions of the books on occasion. The other side of the fence is no idyll, just a marginal improvement, all told.
An ebook reader large enough to handle PDFs might be a marginal improvement, but those are still a bit pricey, and I'm wary of carrying expensive things around. Inexpensive, interoperable, and easily replaced technology has been the watchword on these trips, and that approach seems to have worked well so far.
One of the more revealing things that I've seen in the media from the present American president was the disparaging of the notion that the country is an experiment, a test of a certain social proposition. This is disconcerting, because I've never encountered a historical narrative that didn't hold this to be true. For a very long time, the word was governed a certain way, and then another way of thought started to take hold in the northern European island nations. The colonization of (at least the top half of) the hemisphere was based on this new social order, and if it falls apart after a relatively short run of three or four centuries, we'd lose a lot.
If you're being tested, and you don't know that it's you being tested, if you prevail, it won't necessarily be you who prevails. In the same way, we should be clear that a very specific idea of governance and social order is being tested to see if it is a true way for human beings, and it's being tested in the historical context of other ways of going about things. If things go badly wrong, the conclusion might be drawn that a democratic republic can't be trusted with the mechanisms involved in governing an entire continent.
It is possible to err. In the context of a general prosperity, it's easy to forget that.
(Apolitical -- I have no opinion as to which of the present factions would be most, or least likely to provoke the error. Just pointing out to the baseball players that they are, in fact, playing baseball.)
I am a bit careful about how I look for opportunities these days -- which trees I shake. If any of the several networks of folks who've gone up against me in the past decided to be marginally less evil for a brief moment, I could find myself entering a world with an ordained outcome -- "things bad begun..."
So I emphasize the formal aspects of the qualification and experience--so many degrees, so many courses, so many years of experience of practice at a certain level. But, as I've increasingly discovered, the present order of things relies much less on the way things are than what happens when you talk to people.
(As strange as that might sound, if you paraphrsed it out, you might reach the essence of the problem.)
Skipped the AM run to nurse a bit of a twinge through the weekend. Onward.
This is many years of experience talking: the people who are successful and influential in the present order of things (on every level of society) are, by and large, not good people, and the sense of reality that they create in their interactions is not a good world -- despite the structures of postwar industrial prosperity, and the fact that the trucks of frozen hamburgers still roll into town every week. Perhaps it was ever thus, but it most certainly is thus.
Look to the past. Piece together a world from the relics.
One difficulty with thinking about religious things is that pretty much everyone who has given their ideas serious thought has a rather good point, and yet they occasionally completely disagree. The puritans of the new world, for example, all the way to their antinomy in the (still-thriving) know-nothings of the midlands, were vehement in their criticism of orthodoxy. Several of the founders explicitly equated both the eastern church and the western church to the Vedic pantheon and practices. As I travel, from time to time, I do pick up on some of the same vibes around the orthodox clergy as I did among the sorcerers (almost invariably apprentice-level) in the theatre and experimental theatre. And yet, the mind is a mysterious thing, and the whitewashed walls and clerestory doctrines of the reformation might not bring the whole of the human along on their forays into higher things. Cf., perhaps, "I will draw all things to myself."
It appears that the good air comes from the north here, while winds from the south bring a peculiarly acrid air. I've been in some difficult places in the winter (3x -4x the levels of emergency levels of pollution stateside--HEPA at full blast at the desk, and jedi shemaghs over the mouth and nose outside, before they became a political symbol), but I would certainly not want to be here in January and February. Although I understand that it's significantly better than it used to be.
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20091104.html
Cf. the Enlightenment vs. the romantic/historical school. Very similar -- indicating an underlying truth about the mind, perhaps.
Perhaps the question we are heading towards: whether a state (as distinct from government) in the service of the 60%-70%, administered by a more or less corruptly selected further subset of the group, is a valid desideratum. The percentages are high, in historical context, cf. Picketty's second book, but given the industrial mechanisms at hand, an ogliarchy in service of the democratic preponderance is not necessarily the only option at hand.
I see this reflected in local conflicts here. There seems not to be a push for elections, as the political machine would have enough influence to carry a preponderance, but at the same time, the mechanisms of social advancement are gummed up by the corruption. (At least in the view of those protesting, or just grousing.)
One misleading notion: that in an increasingly educated society, there are either fewer career slots or fewer signs of social distinction to compete for. The present reality, seems to be that, as JK Galbraith said when equating the universities of India and the American Midwest, you either go along with things, or find yourself out in the field/street. Not really a plumage competition there.
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