Author: bfaure

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Glenn Gould – What Genius Sounds Like

     A casual fan of classical music often has a typical collection of greatest hits that they delve into when they are in the mood for a little introspective listening.  The performances are often attached to movies, such as the musical interlude Hannibal Lector listens to for solace in jail in “Silence of the Lambs“, the Goldberg  Variations – Aria, by Johann Sebastian Bach.  Few would realize that the musical expression that so entrances Lector is performed by Glenn Gould, an equally eccentric genius who changed the way we listen to Bach forever.  

     Glenn Gould (1932-1982) was a Canadian pianist with completely unique stylings, performance concepts, and interpretations of music.  He had a special ability to pull melody and emotion out of the mathematical structures of Bach that brought a modern sense of enlightenment to what often was felt to be the flaw of Baroque music, its relative detachment from human emotional reflexes.  At the same time he brought a prodigious technique to his play, in which the musical melody would soar over but not vanquish the individual notes of the composition, regardless of the speed of play.  This created a Glenn Gould sound that is immediately apparent in his recordings.  With many outstanding performers over the years having put their stamp on Bach, no one sounds like Glenn Gould, and none quite make you feel that you have heard what Bach himself was trying to express, until you have heard Glenn Gould perform it. 

     The zenith of Glenn Gould’s contributions are Bach’s Goldberg Variations.  Gould made two completely different interpretations of the composition, the “young” Gould in 1955 and the “old” Gould  in 1981, both of which are legendary performances, available today, and both requiring separate and complete immersion.   Gould stated that he rarely practiced in the formal sense, tending to “play” in his mind the music directly off the score for hours before physically performing it on the piano.   This technique allowed him to bring out the amazing waves of sub-melodies, different timbres, and counterposed rhythms, all while maintaining the a perfect musical metronome demanded by Bach’s passion for musical structure.  It also lead to the irritating habit in his performances of humming over his play as he reconstructed in real time the many layers of the piece, a practice that worsened as he got older.   He became more eccentric as he got older, refusing to publicly perform, cantankerous in the recording studio, and notorious for unrehearsed spontaneous conversions of performances that would often leave the orchestra and conductor completely mystified.   Leonard Bernstein, who loved Gould and his singular creativity, took to warning audiences ahead of Gould and New York Philharmonic performances that Bernstein “could assume no responsibility for what they were about to hear”.   What they were about to hear more often then not , was wondrous magic.

     Gould died of a stroke at the two young age of 50 years, but he left us a tremendous collection of music and film to digest forever. Enjoy an excellent presentation of Gould in the video below,  The Art of the Piano,  then, revel in the incredible technique and musicality Gould brings to bear in one of the Goldberg Variations, No. 5.  

 

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World Class Artistry, from a Wisconsin Artist

     Illustration has been a driving force of artistic expression in human culture since the earliest identified images applied to cave walls by pre-literate man some 30,000 years ago in Lascaux, France. The explosion of public appreciation for this skill through the act of painting on a canvas as a form of expression of symbolism or beauty for its own sake was a gift of the light of the Renaissance and has not waned since. We continue to this day to enjoy a plethora of talented artists the world over that create a singular image through applied pigments that move us and increase immeasurably our quality of life and interpretation of the world around us.

     We have in our local midst in Wisconsin a world class interpreter of the art of  portrait and landscape in Dan Gerhartz .   Dan was born and lives in Kewaskum, Wisconsin.  His skill set for painting is innate but received additional instruction at the American Academy of Arts in Chicago, Illinois.  His portraits are, in particular, studies immersed in multiple references of artistic inspiration.  To my mind the intense and intimate expression of the portraited individual reminds one of the impressionistic stylings of John Singer Sargent, but the presentation a myraid of influences – the geometric orientation of the grecian urn, the organic interaction of subject ,color, and place reflective of Klimt and the Art Nouveau, the composition of timelessness and curvilinear classic beauty art Deco,  the multi-layered splash of intense colors reminescent of Russian Impressionists, and the underlying religious symbolism evocative of the 19th century Spanish Neo-classicists.  It all blends into a image of great beauty and inspiration that says Dan Gerhartz. 

    Dan has just begun his journey through the artform of painting but it is obvious to the art world that he has much to contribute.  His paintings have won major national awards, and his works are hanging in many prestigious galleries across the nation and internationally – including mine.   You too, can be so lucky.

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The Dangerous Season

     For the United States, a nation battered and tired by a decade of conflict and two intractable wars, a period of retrenchment from world affairs has been pledged by the current administration. Unfortunately the world, as usual, is in no mood to cooperate. We have been entering for some time a dangerous season of instability and potential disaster driven by two authoritarian powers with aggressive desires and hostile intentions. We as a society ignore significant trends in these reactionary societies at our peril.

     The obvious issue that binds the futures of western society and these two dictatorial powers is nuclear proliferation. Both regimes have been bent on developing a nuclear program with nuclear weapon capacity. North Korea, despite have one of the world’s most wretched economies has consistently invested in an expensive nuclear weapons process despite multiple declarations to the contrary. In 1994 North Korea jointly signed an agreement with the Clinton Administration to suspend its nuclear weapons program and agree to international atomic energy inspections in return for economic support and development of nuclear energy grid to supply electricity to impoverished population. In 2002, North Korea admitted it had violated all definitive aspects of the agreement and succeeded at plutonium extraction required for development of a nuclear explosive device. On October 9, 2006, North Korea achieved a small but successful explosion consistent with a nuclear device, an obvious abrogation of the previous 15 years of diplomacy. The efforts to achieve nuclear weaponry are at great odds to the nation’s stated desire to use nuclear sources for energy production, as a satellite view of North Korea at night compared to its neighbors attests.   

North Korea At Night

      Iran has been on a similar path, eliciting North Korean nuclear scientist expertise, to develop similar nuclear weapon capacity. Using much the same diplomatic tactics as North Korea, in claiming peaceful nuclear use while forging ahead with infrastructure for weapon development, Iran sits on the precipice of achieving nuclear weapon capacity. Diplomatics efforts by multiple nations to steer Iran away from nuclear weapons development have met with much the same success. Iran, despite having the the third largest oil reserve in the world, and producing 5% of the world’s current oil production, has determined to put its nation’s economy on hold in the effort to complete the nuclear weapons task.   

     Since 1949, with the Soviet Union’s successful testing of a nuclear device, the potential catastrophe of a nuclear exchange has been feasible , but constrained by the nuclear powers acknowledged capacity to annihilate each other, and the recognition of each as to the destruction of civilized society with such an exchange. September 11th, 2001, changed everything in the world’s understanding of rules of engagement, and the risks have therefore increased acutely. North Korea since 1950 has been ruled into the ground by a dictator and his son, with now a complete implosion of its economy and a starving population, ignored by a military machine that props up the regime and jealously lashes out at its hated genetic brothers, the South Koreans, for their obvious success in nationhood. The regime has no qualms about starting a major conflict, evidenced by the unprovoked torpedo sinking of the South Korea military vessel Cheonan, with the loss of 46 sailors on March 26 of this year. The North Korean’s propensity for irrational and dangerous statements to the world can not be taken lightly given their propensity for just such behavior.   The Iranians have shown similar bluster, with repeated comments by the Iranian president Ahmadinejad to deny the Holocaust and promise the removal of the Isreali nation from the world map.   

     The blustering theats from both parties are unfortunately becoming a potentially realistic scenario as both have developed delivery systems capable of attacking both their local and regional enemies, and frankly, approaching the capacity to strike the United States and Europe.  Iran has shown ballistic missile development in the Sejil- 2 missile with a 2500 kilometer range;  North Korea is even farther along, with medium , and now long range missiles in the Taepodong series, reportedly capable of up to 10000 km range, approaching the distance between Pyongyang and Chicago.  It is clear that the United States’ once safe oceanic separation from the world’s regional conflicts is a thing of the past.   

     The time is likely inevitable when both states will have the capacity for enormous damage and the irrational and messianic will to engage a crisis.  How the civilized world responds to the threat before it reaches such proportions is the key question of our times.  The United States is currently led by an administration that has cut funding for missile defense and purports that engagement and appeasement offer safer routes then confrontation to controlling the risks of the modern world.  Such thinking has been on the wrong side of history since the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia to an dictator with insatiable allusions, and has continued in failures of logic as communist permanency , nuclear freeze, strategic missile reduction, military defense contracture, treaties of engagement with dictators,  United Nation sanctions,  apologies for perceived slights, and a myriad of other self absorbed illusions of means of peaceful co-existence.  The manning of the ramparts to preserve the peaceful protection of the great achievements of western civilization against those dictators that would risk a dark age for their own survival is likely upon us in the coming months.  Our will is being tested and our ability to respond before Danger’s Door, will determine whether this Dangerous Season marks an end to an era of human prosperity and liberty, or we hold on , one more time.

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Dancing and Other Things I Can’t Do

    I am enthralled with the idea of old fashioned dancing.  The process for hundreds of years in western culture was a shared experience between a couple, classically man and woman, attracted to each other and stimulated to share a coordinated bonding to music – sounds good to me.   I  have been, however, a singular failure at the concept of social dance, due to genetic programmed incapacities in muscle memory and flexibility.  Hundreds of years of coordinated social interaction to music, whether it be the minuet, sarabande, waltz, tarantella, tango, swing dance, square dance, twist or frug has remained frustratingly beyond my ken.

      There is a dance that through its rhythmic simplicity offers some hope – the Texas Two Step.  Based on the 4/4 rhythm, even a cowboy booted fellar can provide a positive experience to his gal on the dance floor.  The partnered dance, performed in a clockwise fashion, with the repeated easy gliding steps of quick step, quick step, slow step, slow step makes the beginner feel like an expert fairly quickly.  The real positive experience is in the music, with its gentle pulsing rhythm and three cord lattice that evokes the feel of the west and the great outdoors.  It reminds you to bring your favorite partner, put your best foot forward, leave your self absorption at home, and enjoy an evening of  music  evolved from the western campfire and clear starry nights.

     Consider below a little practice, then get your self ready for one of the great purveyors of the two step musical universe, the Mavericks.
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A Thief in the Night

    One of the most disheartening aspects of current governments is their propensity to steal.   The overwhelming urge to pilfer is born from another addiction, the insatiable appetite for growth.   The classic resource for governmental action, the tax. has , secondary to this gluttonous appetite,  required supplementation by the fee, the assessment, the service charge, the toll, the penalty, the tuition, the class-action lawsuit, and others that functionally fundamentally as – a tax.   The very unfortunate truth is no form of income streams have proved sufficient to satiate most governments.  In order to fund the ever-growing entitlement processes and programs without end or size limitation, pilfering has become the weapon of choice for budget busting spending. 

      At the national level, this process of pilfering has incurred subtly through the facetious guarantee of the “lock box” for Social Security.  Political leaders pretend in their accounting that on-going funding is occurring, when in reality, future resources to support later Social Security participants is being spent now on other “more pressing” priorities.  The “promise” is to guarantee underwriting of the mandate for later generations.  As I noted in a previous posting on the Debt Clock, the unfunded mandate for Social Security alone is 14.45 trillion dollars – may I be the first to express my skepticism regarding this promised underwriting.

     At the state level where balanced budgets are often a requirement of their constitutions, the pilfering has been much more audacious.  In the state of Wisconsin, budget shortfalls have not incentivized any elected officials to cut expenditures to reflect available resources – perish the thought.  The reaction instead has been the brazen stealing of funds meant to be locked in place to meet specific concerns of the populus, such as transportation, environment,  tobacco lawsuit health fund, and other funds meant to be used specifically for certain venues.

PILFERING THE STATE FUNDS

 

     Why do they steal? – as a famous thief was once asked why he chose to rob banks – That’s Where The Money Is! The state of Wisconsin managed to finally go too far, however, with an audacious grab of 200 million dollars of the state’s malpractice fund, specifically invested in by the state’s physicians and hospitals to be used exclusively for damages. I am convinced Governor Doyle took the money, not because he wasn’t sure it was inappropriate, but because he was convinced he could get away with it.  No such luck for our own Badger thief – the State Supreme Court acknowledged that when a law stipulates a certain requirement, amazingly, the government that has voted for a law must be in the business of actually upholding it. A thief gets his just desserts.
Its critical that accountability return to our legislatures, so that the future we hold for all of us in escrow, someday, might just see the light of day.

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Brett Favre – One More Time

     We are about to enter the 2010 NFL football season and once again, as we have for the past seven years, the Brett Favre watch has begun.  Since 2004,  Mr. Favre has created tense off -season scenarios as to whether he would come back to play for “one more year”, and this year will be no different.  The current NFL all time leader in touchdown passes, passes thrown, passes completed, yards thrown, interceptions, and dashed hopes and broken hearts of Green Bay Packer fans the world over, will once again marshall the media to follow his vague signals as to his possible return to the fields of play.

     Certainly, as it is now several years from Green Bay Packer fans playing a direct role in the kibuke theater Favre performed each summer, the process is much less stinging.   Now it is to our delight to watch our silly neighbors to the north to hover over every word and smoke signal.  Whether he plays again or not, he will forever be the most entertaining performer on earth. for his last second heroics, feats of incredible creativity, and downright boneheaded plays.  Before the hating begins again for his traitorous actions in joining the Vikings and his willingness to rub our nose in it, perhaps just one more look at the greatness that was Brett Favre, Green Bay Packer….

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The West is Jackson

      A very special place on earth is Jackson, Wyoming. A little town of 8600 inhabitants sits in one of the most beautiful venues on earth and is definitely worth a trip to see and experience. The town is the gateway to some of the more spectacular natural formations on the American continent. Rising over thirteen thousand feet above the valley, the Teton range dominates the visual experience with its almost perfect isolation from its brothers farther north in the Absaroka range. The king mountain is the Grand Teton, shark tooth-like and intimidating, shadowing the crystal clear lakes below, Jenny Lake and the larger Jackson Lake , and adjacent to the equally beautiful peak, Mt. Moran.

The valley is rent by the the dramatic rapids of the Snake River, providing some of the best white water experience in the world, and flowing through the basin of the National Elk Refuge, a massive expanse that allows the wild herds of Elk to migrate from Canada south into their nature refuge for mating and raising their young, often followed by the Yellowstone bison herd.

     The town of Jackson is eclectic, with movie stars and former political stars hobnobbing with ranchers, outbackers, and cowboys. The real experience however is the sprawling outdoors that pulls the naturist in you to every corner of the entire valley from the Tetons to the great falls of the Yellowstone. Most of the excitement is on foot, but even surfers can find a reason to visit.

Western Adventure – that’s the idea….

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Dusty Springfield Revisited

     Mary O’Brien, an british born singer better known as Dusty Springfield, created a new world of music in the 1960’s with soul inflected sensual music that resonates to this day.  She managed to marry the intense internalization of emotions reflected in American soul music of the urban street and rural south with the cheerful, upbeat, and hip sound of the modern British band into a unique synthesis of sound, presented with a beautiful stage presence that separated her from all pretenders.   Hits poured out of her delivery with songs such as “I Only Want to Be With You”, “The Look of Love”,  “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me”, and “Just a  Little Lovin'”  definitive performances of the 1960’s  music avalanche.  She reached a zenith with the album “Dusty In Memphis“, where her personal vocal mark was able to drive the sound into an intimacy not usually allowed by the era’s overproduced, string and horn distorted female performers.  It remains an album for all time, ranked 89 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of the 500  best music albums.

     Recently Shelby Lynne,  a performer with Nashville roots, but expansive musical tastes, took on the challenge of capturing the Dusty Springfield sound, and delivering her own special sensitivity and emotion to Dusty’s discography, with her tribute album, “Just A Little Lovin'” .   Compare for your self how she did side by side and reflect on the gift that is musical talent and inspiration.


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The Monster in the Attic

      We are in the midst of a national conversation regarding what are the responsibilities of a nation of wealth to provide for its population. Assumptions as to what are the personal responsibilities of individuals to care and provide for their own welfare have eroded on a steady basis over the last 40 years, to the point where societies are being asked to support not only those who can’t provide for themselves, but also for those that can. For this nation, born on principles of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, this burden is beginning to project to ominous moments in the near future in the form of unfunded mandates. An unfunded mandate has an obvious definition: a government’s promise to underwrite a future personal liability, with no identifiable mechanism for funding it.

     Unfunded mandates are becoming a federal, state, and local nightmare,  with governmental pensions exploding budgets and entitlements to the population creating dangerous scenarios for budgetary collapse in the near future for massive programs such as Medicare and Social Security, to the point where the very precepts of each are being questioned as to their viability.  The health care “reform” of 2010 recently added, only adds to the worst components of the previous system, adds millions to the census of “receivers”, and like its elder brothers, provides no viable means for adequate funding.  

     We can no longer assume the bottomless resources of a nation of wealth, as obviously the productivity of the population that supplies its wealth is progressively  becoming ensnared in its promises to an intolerable level.  An ageing society naturally reduces the roles of “producers” to ” receivers”, with the ratio of productive workers to pensioners in the 1960’s of 8:1, soon to fall below the insupportable level of 2:1.   Its is strangling our capacity to grow and prosper, poisoning the relationships between generations, and potentially forever changing the implied promise of this nation as one of limitless opportunity to those who seek opportunity.

     We can no longer push these issues down the road if we wish to be a viable society our children will be content to live in.  Review the U.S. Debt Clock below, and when politicians present their credentials for review for their election as our representatives, ask them what they plan to do about the Monster in the Attic.  Vote for the ones who want to kill monsters, not live and ultimately be devoured by them.

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The Eagle Has Landed

     July 16th is the 41st anniversary of the liftoff of three brave explorer astronauts from Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral)  in the greatest adventure of our modern times.  It is hard to recall through the distant mirror of time the extent of the world’s focused attention, hopes, and unstated fears the crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins carried on their shoulders.  I was young, but can still recall my own rapture and profound pride over the incredible exploits over an 8 day journey.    To put its miraculous voyage in perspective, the challenge of putting astronauts on the moon  and returning them safely to earth had been articulated by President John F. Kennedy only eight years earlier, at a time when the concept of a man travelling on a rocket was less than a year old and the idea of converting from a brief near earth flight to the intricacies and equipment required for planetary travel bordered on ridiculous.  In the space of eight years, the United States developed three completely revolutionary space travel systems, learned to orbit, dock and walk in space, devised landing and take off systems for extraterrestrial travel, and survived crushing timetables and the disaster of first Apollo spacecraft with its launchpad fire and horrific deaths of three astronauts a mere 18 months before the successful culmination of President Kennedy’s dream in Apollo 11.   The extraordinary accomplishments in so short a period of time compares uncomfortably to our current fixation on a twenty five year old launch system in the shuttle without a single advanced concept of flight leaving the drawing board over that interval, nor,  with the scrubbing of the Constellation system, one in the identifiable future.

     The mission required lifting payload on a rocket behemoth called Saturn 5, a three stage rocket 363 feet tall  (36 stories!) filled with huge amounts of explosive fuel delivering 7.8 million pounds of propulsion thrust to escape the earth’s gravitational pull.  No machine compared with its combination of height, weight, thrust and payload., or has been built since.  No one whoever saw a Saturn launch failed to be forever changed by its immense beauty and power.

     The journey to the moon, the landing, and the trip back to safe splashdown on July 24th was filled with so many never before firsts in flight it awed the mind – and the “perfect” landing on the moon assumed by all proved in later historical accounts to have been a near catastrophe, with Armstrong manually flying a landing craft due to failure of the onboard computer ( a computer with a computer containing the hard drive computing power and memory of a hand held calculator),  Aldrin rapidly making navigation assumptions and  residual fuel estimates with a slide rule, the original “safe” landing zone missed approaching instead a field of house sized boulders as the inevitable landing target, and a landing decision past the point of feasible safe landing abort – a touchdown with only 13 seconds of fuel left to fly. We who were watching heard only  the mission control statement “you have a bunch of guys ready to turn blue here”, a understated description of the true emotions attached to the avoided catastrophe by those in the know.

     Many have remarked that the rush to the moon ultimately did little to change lives here on earth and spent too much money better used for other services.  I beg to differ;  programs such as Apollo are critical to the human experience and promote its deepest aspirations and creative instincts.  In a nation that has turned its back on the sky above it, a whole new adventure to bind us, thrill us, and renew us is worth every penny.