Jaco's Fret-Less Hang!
....where hearts, minds, souls meet and wonder...
You can learn so much from musicians, can't you?
I know this is a lot of text for this medium, but I think it's important and I can't say these things in fewer words. I don't have my own host set up yet, so I've found that using sections with horizontal lines makes it easier to navigate to what interests you.
I don'I don't know where to start with him: "genius, iconoclastic, composer, performer" as Downbeat called him, and he was never into jazz. I'd highly recomend this book to anyone. His father was a scientist who worked in quasi-military positions on the WMDs we made during WW II. I never believed that one. It just didn't feel right. I had mentioned Miles Copeland Jr. before and Sting's music because they gave me so many pointers into other things, but he's not the only one. FZ worked with Pierre Boulez and comes more from Varese, Stravinsky, the Vienesse seriasts, do-wop, R&B and rock. If you have just two hours and you like him, this is a great documentary from Public Radio International: Frank Zappa: American Composer Setup (Actually, it's in chapters, so you don't need to listen all at once.
Syncrhonicity - An Acausal Connecting Principle
I read this a long time ago, and I just love books I guess. "If you act as you think". This theory has some appeal to me. I read Freud and a lot of the neo-Freudians (you can have your facade ideologogy neo-conservatives - most of them have been gone a long time, have they not?) Someone from Amnesty International called the other day and she agreed - They know they've failed.
This is a must read, I'd say.
My aunt spent some time working in Suadi Arabia. I know people from Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Russia and so many other places. I don't know anyone from Cambodia, but I worked with this woman ten years ago - She had an MSEE from the University of Bejing. Her parents both taught Electrical Enginerring there during Mao's cultural revelolution when they were killing a lot of the educated people, like they did in Cambodia. I shared an office with this guy, Charles, in Harvard Square in 1987. He was only 21 and had just gotten out of South Viet Nam after we'd left their word shattered. We helped do the routine things we think nothing of like register his car. So it's been real for a while.
And it seems to me that "divide and conquer" is an old saying and that we've divided ourselves already and "Everywhere around me I see jealousy and mayhem. Because no men have all their peace of mind to carry them"
Listening To: Continuum
You can learn so much from musicians, can't you?
It seems that everyone is circling their proverbial wagons and I don't see that as helping anything in this confusing election year. The next time I hear someone say they can't do anything about it, well what should I say when I know this isn't true? Crossroads House - I was there for 8 years and I know it's somewhat self-absorbed of me to say that, but nonetheless it's true. I did a lot more than that study and consulting and I'm getting a kind of angry at some people for not believing me, and that is not like me at all and I hate it.
Luong Ung - she did some great work getting some of the land mines out of that place. This is a lot like that great film, the Killing Fields, only you get more history. It's an easy read, but it is sad but gripping though.
"First they killed my Father" is told in the voice of a five year old. She was five when When Pol Pot's brutal Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975. His quest for a purely egalitarian society ended in the slaugher of nearly two million Cambodians. (roughtly 1/4 of their population)
Don't believe some of the hype on the cover. I watched her on C-Span. She didn't know that the publishers print some real nonsense on the covers of books to get peoples attention to sell books and fought. She found it despicable and disrepectful to all those who weren't so lucky, including both her parents to say that she was so heroic for getting out after Viet Nam invaded them. "Lucky girl" was her next book. She was up in Vermont, may still be there. I haven't gotten to the second book yet.
Pure ideology never worked. It's Darkness at Noon (Another one I read on the Soviet's communism.
The question I have is...
Does anyone see these connections or similar connections, most of which are deliberate and think they're important?
Darkness at Noon (pure ideology) ----- "It was midnight, midnight at Noon" from the Sting's "Saint Agnes and the Burning Train" on the French Revolution. Or Joni Mitchell's "Lawyers haven't been this popular since Robespierre slautered half of France"- but "Everybody wants to look the other way, when something wicked this way comes", it seems.
Witness Peter Gabriel's non-profit witness.org
Peter Gabriel started this non-profit. He used what he had always and I don't see many people "reaching out from the inside", but "I can hear the distant thunder of a million unheard souls". I just loved his candor on "Us" which was about him. Real world records - it's as real as it gets, I think. Secret world is my favorite DVD at present.
He wrote about a lot of interesting subjects. Milgram's 37, "We do what we're told". I think it's important. How are we going to be one of the 3 of 40 if we don't read things like this, however disturbing they are? And Mercy St. about Anne Sexton, the poet from Boston, which is home to me (the hub of the universe)
Listening To: Continuum
