One of the things that liberals did successfully for quite some time was play the race card. One of the things that conservatives (eventually) did in response was name the practice, calling it something like “playing the race card.” Little tricks of illusion and distraction in politics operate much the same way that tricks of …
Doctor, You’re Cutting Too Deep. You’re Scratching the Table.
Where We Got All the Uber-Goobers
“It took Nietzsche to philosophize out of Wagner’s music a program for cultural revolution that would shake the coming age to its foundation. The twentieth century was to become the proving ground for Nietzschean philosophy in its various permutations. There were the Nazis, and then there was the global cultural revolution of 1968-1969, and then …
Can’t Even See the Tablecloth
The eating of this meal is annexed to a great promise made by Jesus Christ. He says that unless we eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, we have no life in us. Conversely, if we partake, then Jesus Christ promises to raise us up at the last day. “This …
Mark the Music
“For the next one hundred fifty years, the West would post the Liebestod question again and again in various ways, from Nazism to Woodstock, and never be able to come up with an answer. In the process, enormous amounts of cultural patrimony were thrown overboard. Classical music, freed from patriarchal melody by Wagner’s chromatic modulations, …
For Love of the Code
These continue to be tumblesome times here in Moscow, and there is both good news and bad news intermingled. The bad news is that critics continue to multiply, but the good news is that they are getting progressively squeakier. The charges are increasingly crazy-out-there and, with reference to their goals, counterproductive. For an example of …
Musical Pornography
“To modulate the notes unceasingly from one key to another, as Wagner’s chromaticism did, was tantamount to blunting the emotional focus; to lead them away never to return to the dominant note gave the feeling of tumultuous and unsatisfied passion, a passion that never got resolved. From a human perspective, there was generally only one …
The Real Problem with “Kill the Wabbit”
“The attraction was essentially erotic. This music bespoke emotion liberated from reason. In the musical realm, the assault on tonality corresponded to an assault on sexual restraint in the moral realm and an attack on the social order in the political realm. Wagner could achieve all three, which would correspond to the deepest needs he …
As Norah Jones Once Sang With Ray Charles, “Here We Go Again”
I am sure that there were many times during his trek to the North Pole that Admiral Peary had occasion to remark on the vista ahead being the “utter frozen limit.” But then, three days later, there would be more. As we have dealt with the monkeyshines of our intolerabuddies, I have used that expression (UFL) …
Got A Nail?
Allow me to introduce my youngest grandson, Judah. Also let me share some nicknames that have been known to come his way: Judah the Hut, Yehuda Buddha, Barrel-rider, and the Hammer (also his favorite toy, and which he gets to play with infrequently, for obvious reasons). But this last nickname fits well with his Maccabean …