Music Conducting Quotes

A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.

It would be inappropiate, undignified, at 38, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour or intensity of a 22 year old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry? Crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photobooths? Taking a whole day to make a compilation tape? Asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or TS Eliot or, god forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at 38, to expect a song or book or film to change your life.

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face.

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.

I have always kept one end in view, namely ... to conduct a well-regulated church music to the honour of God.

If we are in a general way permitted to regard human activity in the realm of the beautiful as a liberation of the soul, as a release from constraint and restriction, in short to consider that art does actually alleviate the most overpowering and tragic catastrophes by means of the creations it offers to our contemplation and enjoyment, it is the art of music which conducts us to the final summit of that ascent to freedom.

Those who choose, conduct, present, and accompany the music may influence the spirit of reverence ... more than a speaker does.

The French idea of playing an instrument well is to be able to SING well upon it.

The power of sacred music increases the honor given to God by the Church in union with Christ, its Head. Sacred music likewise helps to increase the fruits which the faithful, moved by the sacred harmonies, derive from the holy liturgy. These fruits, as daily experience and many ancient and modern literary sources show, manifest themselves in a life and conduct worthy of a Christian.

My code of life and conduct is simply this: work hard, play to the allowable limit, disregard equally the good and bad opinion of others, never do a friend a dirty trick, eat and drink what you feel like when you feel like, never grow indignant over anything, trust to tobacco for calm and serenity, bathe twice a day . . . learn to play at least one musical instrument and then play it only in private, never allow one's self even a passing thought of death, never contradict anyone or seek to prove anything to anyone unless one gets paid for it in cold, hard coin, live the moment to the utmost of its possibilities, treat one's enemies with polite inconsideration, avoid persons who are chronically in need, and be satisfied with life always but never with one's self.

If novelists know anything it's that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting.

Your own love story? Your paramour may have had lovers before you. But no one has ever loved him the way you do. No one has ever heard music. Not the way you hear it. The songs are beautiful vampires, asleep in your iPod, coming alive at night, aglow. You can have them on your hours, yours to conduct. Music shapes us and we shape it.

Colour's five hues from th' eyes their sight will take; Music's five notes the ears as deaf can make; The flavours five deprive the mouth of taste; The chariot course, and the wild hunting waste Make mad the mind; and objects rare and strange, Sought for, men's conduct will to evil change.

It was, however, in keeping with the way my uncle conducted his life that he should reach his destination without knowing the name of the goal.

I urge pupils when studying a work and in order to master its most important aspic, the rhythmic structure, or the ordering of the time process, to do just what a conductor does with the score: to place music on the desk and to conduct the work from beginning to end as if it were played by someone else, an imaginary pianist with the conductor trying to impress him with his will, his tempo first of all, plus all the details of his performance.

To me, the true artist is one who lives completely, harmoniously, who does not divide his art from living, whose very life is that expression, whether it be a picture, music, or his behavior; who has not divorced his expression on a canvas or in music or in stone from his daily conduct, daily living. That demands the highest intelligence, highest harmony. To me the true artist is the man who has that harmony. He may express it on canvas, or he may talk, or he may paint; or he may not express it at all, he may feel it. But all this demands that exquisite poise, that intensity of awareness and, therefore, his expression is not divorced from the daily continuity of living.

We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We “think different” (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer’s famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions—our schools and our workplaces—tells a very different story.

It is not easy—perhaps not even desirable—to judge other people by a consistent standard. Conduct obnoxious, even unbearable, in one person may be readily tolerated in another; apparently indispensable principles of behaviour are in practice relaxed—not always with impunity—in the interests of those whose nature seems to demand an exceptional measure.

Like the master score of a bewitchingly complex symphonic work, the genome contains the instructions for the development and maintenance of organisms. But the genomic "score" is inert without proteins. Proteins actualize this information. They conduct the genome, thereby playing out its music-activating the viola at the fourteenth minute, a crash of cymbals during the arpeggio, a roll of drums at the crescendo.

I hate Toscanini. I've never heard him in a concert hall, but I've heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanin 'honoured' me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those recordings, too, and they're worthless.

In the "Republic," Plato vigorously attacked the oral, poetized form as a vehicle for communicating knowledge. He pleaded for a more precise method of communication and classification ("The Ideas"), one which would favor the investigation of facts, principles of reality, human nature, and conduct. What the Greeks meant by "poetry" was radically different from what we mean by poetry. Their "poetic" expression was a product of a collective psyche and mind. The mimetic form, a technique that exploited rhythm, meter and music, achieved the desired psychological response in the listener. Listeners could memorize with greater ease what was sung than what was said. Plato attacked this method because it discouraged disputation and argument. It was in his opinion the chief obstacle to abstract, speculative reasoning - he called it "a poison, and an enemy of the people.

However, I don’t believe that those who pray are any more or less connected than those who don’t. We all have our own way of recognizing that infinite space within us, and for some it may be prayer. For others, it can be music, art, being in nature, or even pursuing knowledge and technology—whatever brings out our passion, creativity and purpose for living. In other words, it’s not prayer in and of itself that makes some of us more aware of our magnificence than others. Rather, it’s choosing to conduct our lives by connecting with our own internal passion, bringing out a Zen-like quality and giving our lives meaning and a feeling of unity.

They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world—and most recently in America—the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind.

All great conductors are different. The mediocre ones are more or less the same.

1962 performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1 by Glenn Gould with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic.

silent enabler of an invisible, audible force.

When you are in love with someone, their life, past, present and future, becomes in a curious way part of your life; and yet, at the same time, since two separate human entities in fact remain, you merely carry your own prejudices into another person’s imagined existence; not even into their ‘real’ existence, because only they themselves can estimate what their ‘real’ existence has been. Indeed, the situation might be compared with that to be experienced in due course in the army where an officer is responsible for the conduct of troops stationed at a post too distant from him for the exercise of any effective control.

She spoke loudly in order to be heard above the noise of personal communitainers that were thudding and banging all around them. Some people used earphones, some didn't, clearly believing that as many people as possible should be given the opportunity to appreciate their musical taste. That, combined with the mass leakage from the headsets, created a terrible din and even discreet private conversations had to be conducted at a yell.

Ashe was typical of that strata of mankind which conducts its human relationships according to a principle of challenge and response. Where there was softness, he would advance; where he found resistance, retreat. Having himself no particular opinions or tastes he relied upon whatever conformed with those of his companion. He was as ready to drink tea at Fortnum's as beer at the Prospect of Whitby; he would listen to military music in St. James's Park or jazz in Compton Street cellar; his voice would tremble with sympathy when he spoke of Sharpeville, or with indignation at the growth of Britain's colored population. To Leamas this observably passive role was repellent; it brought out the bully in him, so that he would lead the other gently into a position where he was committed, and then himself withdraw, so that Ashe was constantly scampering back from some cul-de-sac into which Leamas had enticed him.

A fascinating and somewhat disturbing study out of the University of Virginia showed that, given the choice, many preferred undergoing electric shock to sitting alone with their thoughts. Study participants were exposed to a mild shock, which they all reported they didn’t like and would pay money not to undergo again. But when left alone in an empty room with a “shocker” button for up to fifteen minutes, removed from all distractions, unable to check their phones or listen to music, two-thirds of men and one-fourth of women in the study chose to voluntarily shock themselves rather than sit in silence. Dr. Tim Wilson, who helped conduct the study, said, “I think this could be why, for many of us, external activities are so appealing, even at the level of the ubiquitous cell phone that so many of us keep consulting. . . . The mind is so prone to want to engage with the world, it will take any opportunity to do so.

genuine courtesy is a creation, like pictures, like music. It is a harmonious blending of voice, gesture and movement, words and action, in which generosity of conduct is expressed. It reveals the man himself and has no ulterior purpose.

The people in the Eden’s Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they’re good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America were an Eden where God’s warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they’re participating in a pyramid scheme that’s chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they’re all congratulating themselves for it.

As for my unrestrained podium comportment: to this I will answer that that the one and only purpose my gestures serve is a musical one. I do not consciously set out to perform histrionics on the podium. If I did, it would immediately show up in the music. Phony gestures produce phony sounds. For myself, I approach what I play not from a conductor’s point of view, but from a composer’s point of view. When I conduct the 'Eroica', as I recently have with the (New York) Philharmonic, I feel as though I’m actually writing the piece.

Yes, Phebe was herself now, and it showed in the change that came over her at the first note of music. No longer shy and silent, no longer the image of a handsome girl, but a blooming woman, alive and full of the eloquence her art gave her, as she laid her hands softly together, fixed her eye on the light, and just poured out her song as simply and joyfully as the lark does soaring toward the sun. "My faith, Alec! that's the sort of voice that wins a man's heart out of his breast!" exclaimed Uncle Mac, wiping his eyes after one of the plaintive ballads that never grow old. "So it would!" answered Dr. Alec, delightedly. "So it has," added Archie to himself; and he was right: for just at that moment he fell in love with Phebe. He actually did, and could fix the time almost to a second: for at a quarter past nine, he thought merely thought her a very charming young person; at twenty minutes past, he considered her the loveliest woman he ever beheld; at five and twenty minutes past, she was an angel singing his soul away; and at half after nine he was a lost man, floating over a delicious sea to that temporary heaven on earth where lovers usually land after the first rapturous plunge. If anyone had mentioned this astonishing fact, nobody would have believed it; nevertheless, it was quite true: and sober, business-like Archie suddenly discovered a fund of romance at the bottom of his hitherto well-conducted heart that amazed him. He was not quite clear what had happened to him at first, and sat about in a dazed sort of way; seeing, hearing, knowing nothing but Phebe: while the unconscious idol found something wanting in the cordial praise so modestly received, because Mr. Archie never said a word.

The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice. This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings—happiness, peace of mind, exaltation—must be sought by each man within himself alone. Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society. It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: that is its aim. No sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to forgo advancing its cause by appealing to men's senses. Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.

Some swivel in Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden’s Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they’re good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America were an Eden where God’s warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they’re participating in a pyramid scheme that’s chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they’re all congratulating themselves for it.

Some swivel in Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden’s Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they’re good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America were an Eden where God’s warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they’re participating in a pyramid scheme that’s chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they’re all congratulating themselves for it. MATHILDA:

Aaron Copland, whom Bernstein had met when he was in his junior year at Harvard and who would become a lifelong friend and mentor, wrote him encouraging letters. “Don’t expect miracles,” Copland advised the young man, “and don’t get depressed if nothing happens for a while. That’s NY.” But on August 25, 1943, his twenty-fifth birthday, Bernstein got his first professional break when Artur Rodzinski, then the music director of the New York Philharmonic, chose him to become his conducting assistant. “I have gone through all the conductors I know of in my mind,” Rodzinski explained to his new assistant, “and I finally asked God whom I should take, and God said, ‘Take Bernstein.

Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden’s Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they’re good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream—as though America

Everybody of course, was like this, - depth beyond depth, a universe chorally singing, incalculable, obeying tremendous laws, chemical or divine, of which it was able to give its own consciousness not the faintest inkling… He brushed the dark hair of this universe. He looked into its tranquil black-pooled eyes. Its mouth was humorous and bitter. And this universe would go out and talk inanely to other universes – talking only with some strange minute fraction of its identity, like a vast sea leaving on the shore, for all mention of itself, a single white pebble, meaningless. A universe that contained everything – all things – yet said only one word: ‘I.’ A music, an infinite symphony, beautifully and majestically conducting itself there in the darkness, but remaining for ever unread and unheard.

It is not unusual now to hear religion and humanism spoken of as if they were opposed, even antagonistic. But humanism clearly rested on the idea that people have souls, and that they have certain obligations to them, and certain pleasures in them, which arise from their refinement or their expression in art or in admirable or striking conduct, or which arise from finding other souls expressed in music or philosophy or philanthropy or revolution.

Headphones opened up a world of sonic colors, a palette of nuances and details that went far beyond the chords and melody, the lyrics, or a particular singer’s voice. The swampy Deep South ambience of “Green River” by Creedence, or the pastoral, open-space beauty of the Beatles’ “Mother Nature’s Son”; the oboes in Beethoven’s Sixth (conducted by Karajan), faint and drenched in the atmosphere of a large wood-and-stone church; the sound was an enveloping experience.

The first problem I had with conducting was coming out on stage and turning my back on the audience. It was an utterly foreign sensation. I always felt as if my rear end were hanging out. That particular portion of my anatomy suddenly seemed enormous, living a life of its own, engaged in its own relationship with the public behind my back. For the first couple of years I conducted, I sat on a chair in front of the orchestra, to help quell that particular discomfort.

Christianity, as it was first given to the slaves [...] was to be used strictly as a code of conduct which would enable its devotees to participate in an afterlife; it was from its very inception among the black slaves, a slave ethic. [...] One of the very reasons Christianity proved so popular was that it was the religion, according to older Biblical tradition, of an oppressed people. The struggles of the Jews and their long-sought "Promised Land" proved a strong analogy for the black slaves.

Recently a group of researchers conducted a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs. The researchers reported a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music. In line with their hypothesis, they found a decrease in usages such as we and us and an increase in I and me. The researchers also reported a decline in words related to social connection and positive emotions, and an increase in words related to anger and antisocial behavior, such as hate or kill.

As I hang from the ceiling like a strung-up doll, I feel free. His finger slides down my chest, between my breasts, and moves achingly close to my nipples before returning to my sternum. He traces a line to my stomach, leaving a trail of fire. All my senses come to life as he strokes me delicately, carefully, as if his finger is the baton and I am the instrument he’s conducting. Whimpers that must sound like music to his ears slip from my mouth. I’m a slave to his touch. This controlling man has me under his power, and I’m loving every shameful, immoral moment that we share.

The last dealership had a Toyota Carina 1800 GT Twin-Cam Turbo and a Toyota Mark II. Both new, both with car stereos. I said I’d take the Carina. I didn’t have a crease of an idea what either car looked like. Having done that, I went to a record shop and bought a few cassettes. Johnny Mathis’s Greatest Hits, Zubin Mehta conducting Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Kenny Burrell’s Stormy Sunday, Popular Ellington, Trevor Pinnock on the harpsichord playing the Brandenburg Concertos, and a Bob Dylan tape with Like A Rolling Stone. Mix’n’match. I wanted to cover the bases—how was I to know what kind of music would go with a Carina 1800 GT Twin-Cam Turbo?

Some swivel in Seymour has locked: he can no longer see the planet as anything but dying, and everyone around him complicit in the killing. The people in the Eden's Gate houses fill their trash cans and pilot SUVs between their two homes and play music on Bluetooth speakers in their backyards and tell themselves they're good people, conducting honorable, decent lives, living the so-called dream - as though America were Eden where God's warm benevolence fell equally across every soul. When in truth they're participating in a pyramid scheme that's chewing up everybody at the bottom, people like his mother. And they're all congratulating themselves for it.

I hate Toscanini. I’ve never heard him in a concert hall, but I’ve heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanini ‘honoured’ me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those records, too, and they’re worthless. I’ve read about Toscanini’s conducting style and his manner of conducting a rehearsal. The people who describe this disgraceful behaviour are for some reason delighted by it. I simply can’t understand what they find delightful. I think it’s outrageous, not delightful. He screams and curses the musicians and makes scenes in the most shameless manner. The poor musicians have to put up with all this nonsense or be sacked. And they even begin to see ‘something in it’. (…) Toscanini sent me his recording of m Seventh Symphony and hearing it made me very angry. Everything is wrong. The spirit and the character and the tempi. It’s a sloppy, hack job. I wrote him a letter expressing my views. I don’t know if he ever got it; maybe he did and pretended not to – that would be completely in keeping with his vain and egoistic style. Why do I think that Toscanini didn’t let it be known that I wrote to him? Because much later I received a letter from America: I was elected to the Toscanini Society! They must have thought that I was a great fan of the maestro’s. I began receiving records on a regular basis: all new recordings by Toscanini. My only comfort is that at least I always have a birthday present handy. Naturally, I wouldn’t give something like that to a friend. But to an acquaintance-why not? It pleases them and it’s less trouble for me. That’s one of life’s most difficult problems- what to give for a birthday or anniversary to a person you don’t particularly like, don’t know very well, and don’t respect. Conductors are too often rude and conceited tyrants. And in my youth I often had to fight fierce battles with them, battles for my music and my dignity.

The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 90 percent of the time, which roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates. One can get an idea of how important this kind of touch is to primates from an infamous experiment conducted in the 1950s by a primatologist and psychologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire mesh mother, however, had a nipple that dispensed warm milk. The babies took their nourishment as quickly as possible and then rushed back to cling to the terry cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. Clearly, touch and closeness are vital to the health of baby primates—including humans. In America during the 1970s, mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the modern practice of making young children sleep by themselves. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone in their own room—a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them. The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.” Another study notes about Bali: “Babies are encouraged to acquire quickly the capacity to sleep under any circumstances, including situations of high stimulation, musical performances, and other noisy observances which reflect their more complete integration into adult social activities.

The laws of physics, which govern the behaviour of atoms and the movements of the stars, govern also the conduct of rational beings. And yet: Being is still enchanted for us; in a hundred Places it remains a source - a play of pure Powers, which touches no one, who does not kneel and wonder. Words still go softly forth towards the unsayable. And music, always new, from palpitating stones Builds in useless space its godly home. [Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, n] This enchantment — revealed to us in the constant intimation of sacred things — belongs, not to the world of physical science, but to the Lebenswelt, which we ourselves construct through our collusive actions. The 'scientific realist' sees only a disenchanted world; and what he sees is real. But within reality we also make our home, and in doing so we provide the meaning that is lacking from the world of science.

People who believe in fundamental and irreversible changes in human nature are themselves ahistorical and naive. If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world — and most recently in America — the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.

Tamara Bunke was the only woman to fight alongside “Che” during his Bolivian campaign. She was an East German national, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 19, 1937, of Communist activist parents. As a child, her home was frequently used for meetings, hiding weapons and conducting other Communist activities. After World War II, in 1952 she returned to Germany where she attended Humboldt University in Berlin. Tamara met “Che” Guevara when she was an attractive 23-year-old woman in Leipzig, and he was with a Cuban Trade Delegation. The two instantly hit it off as she cozied up to him and, having learned how to fight and use weapons in Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, she joined his expedition to Bolivia. Becoming a spy for the ELN, she adopted the name “Tania” and posed as a right-wing authority of South-American music and folklore. In disguise, she managed to warm up to and entice Bolivian President René Barrientos. She even went on an intimate vacation to Peru with him.

When Sloboda and a colleague conducted a study with students at a British boarding school that recruited from around the country—admission rested entirely on an audition—they were surprised to find that the students classified as exceptional by the school came from less musically active families compared to less accomplished students, did not start playing at a younger age, were less likely to have had an instrument in the home at a very young age, had taken fewer lessons prior to entering the school, and had simply practiced less overall before arriving—a lot less. “It seems very clear,” the psychologists wrote, “that sheer amount of lesson or practice time is not a good indicator of exceptionality.” As to structured lessons, every single one of the students who had received a large amount of structured lesson time early in development fell into the “average” skill category, and not one was in the exceptional group. “The strong implication,” the researchers wrote, is “that that too many lessons at a young age may not be helpful.

But the worst came from the Mongol Tamerlane, a dedicated Muslim who conducted furious jihad campaigns against the Nestorians and devastated their cities and churches. It was full-blown war against the Assyrian Christians: Tamerlane offered them conversion to Islam, dhimmitude, or death. By 1400, the vast Nestorian domains were no more; Christianity had almost completely died out in Persia, Central Asia, and China.7 After this, virtually all Nestorians lived as dhimmis under Muslim rule. And like the Zoroastrians, their community dwindled down to a tiny remnant under the relentless weight of this institutionalized injustice. If the Christians in Europe had been subjected to the same fate, it is distinctly possible that the world might never have known the works of Dante Alighieri, or Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Mozart, or Bach. It is likely that there would never have been an El Greco, or a Giotto, or an Olivier Messaien. A community that must expend all its energy just to survive does not easily pursue art and music. The Crusades may have made the full flowering of European civilization possible.

Why did I obsess over people like this? Was it normal to fixate on strangers in this particular vivid, fevered way? I don't think so. It was impossible to imagine some random passer-by on the street forming quite such interest in me. And yet it was the main reason I'd gone in those houses with Tom: I was fascinated by strangers, wanted to know what food they ate and what dishes they ate from, what movies they watched and what music they listened to, wanted to look under their beds and in their secret drawers and night tables and inside the pockets of their coats. Often I saw interesting-looking people on the street and thought about them restlessly for days, imagining their lives, making up stories about them the subway or the crosstown bus. Years had passed, and I still hadn't stopped thinking about the dark-haired children in Catholic school uniforms - brother and sister - I'd seen in Grand Central, literally trying to pull their father out the door of a seedy bar by the sleeves of his suit jacket. Nor had I forgotten the frail, gypsyish girl in a wheelchair out in front of the Carlyle Hotel, talking breathlessly in Italian to the fluffy dog in her lap while a sharp character in sunglasses (father? bodyguard?) stood behind her chair, apparently conducting some sort of business deal on his phone. For years, I'd turned those strangers over in my mind, wondering who they were and what their lives were like, and I knew I would go home and wonder about this girl and her grandfather the same way.

If this is true—if solitude is an important key to creativity—then we might all want to develop a taste for it. We’d want to teach our kids to work independently. We’d want to give employees plenty of privacy and autonomy. Yet increasingly we do just the opposite. We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We “think different” (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer’s famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions—our schools and our workplaces—tells a very different story. It’s the story of a contemporary phenomenon that I call the New Groupthink—a phenomenon that has the potential to stifle productivity at work and to deprive schoolchildren of the skills they’ll need to achieve excellence in an increasingly competitive world. The New Groupthink elevates teamwork above all else. It insists that creativity and intellectual achievement come from a gregarious place. It has many powerful advocates. “Innovation—the heart of the knowledge economy—is fundamentally social,” writes the prominent journalist Malcolm Gladwell. “None of us is as smart as all of us,” declares the organizational consultant Warren Bennis,

There is safety in learning doctrine in gatherings which are sponsored by proper authority. Some members, even some who have made covenants in the temple, are associating with groups of one kind or another which have an element of secrecy about them and which pretend to have some higher source of inspiration concerning the fulfillment of prophecies than do ward or stake leaders or the General Authorities of the Church. Know this: There are counterfeit revelations which, we are warned, “if possible . . . shall deceive the very elect, who are the elect according to the covenant.” (JS—M 1:22.) . . . For the past several years we have watched patterns of reverence and irreverence in the Church. While many are to be highly commended, we are drifting. We have reason to be deeply concerned. The world grows increasingly noisy. Clothing and grooming and conduct are looser and sloppier and more disheveled. Raucous music, with obscene lyrics blasted through amplifiers while lights flash psychedelic colors, characterizes the drug culture. Variations of these things are gaining wide acceptance and influence over our youth. . . . This trend to more noise, more excitement, more contention, less restraint, less dignity, less formality is not coincidental nor innocent nor harmless. The first order issued by a commander mounting a military invasion is the jamming of the channels of communication of those he intends to conquer. Irreverence suits the purposes of the adversary by obstructing the delicate channels of revelation in both mind and spirit.

Schools, gymnasiums, arithmetic, geometry, history, rhetoric, physics, biology, anatomy, hygiene, therapy, cosmetics, poetry, music, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, theology, agnosticism, skepticism, stoicism, epicureanism, ethics, politics, idealism, philanthropy, cynicism, tyranny, plutocracy, democracy: these are all Greek words for cultural forms seldom originated, but in many cases first matured for good or evil by the abounding energy of the Greeks. All the problems that disturb us today—the cutting down of forests and the erosion of the soil; the emancipation of woman and the limitation of the family; the conservatism of the established, and the experimentalism of the unplaced, in morals, music, and government; the corruptions of politics and the perversions of conduct; the conflict of religion and science, and the weakening of the supernatural supports of morality; the war of the classes, the nations, and the continents; the revolutions of the poor against the economically powerful rich, and of the rich against the politically powerful poor; the struggle between democracy and dictatorship, between individualism and communism, between the East and the West—all these agitated, as if for our instruction, the brilliant and turbulent life of ancient Hellas. There is nothing in Greek civilization that does not illuminate our own. We shall try to see the life of Greece both in the mutual interplay of its cultural elements, and in the immense five-act drama of its rise and fall. We shall begin with Crete and its lately resurrected civilization, because apparently from Crete, as well as from Asia, came that prehistoric culture of Mycenae

Through education, then, man must be made— First, subject to discipline; by which we must understand that influence which is always restraining our animal nature from getting the better of our manhood, either in the individual as such, or in man as a member of society. Discipline, then, is merely restraining unruliness. Secondly, education must also supply men with culture. This includes information and instruction. It is culture which brings out ability. Ability is the possession of a faculty which is capable of being adapted to various ends. Ability, therefore, does not determine any ends, but leaves that to circumstances as they arise afterwards. Some accomplishments are essentially good for everybody—reading and writing, for instance; others, merely in the pursuit of certain objects, such as music, which we pursue in order to make ourselves liked. Indeed, the various purposes to which ability may be put are almost endless. Thirdly, education must also supply a person with discretion (Klugheit), so that he may be able to conduct himself in society, that he may be liked, and that he may gain influence. For this a kind of culture is necessary which we call refinement (Civilisierung). The latter requires manners, courtesy, and a kind of discretion which will enable him to use all men for his own ends. This refinement changes according to the ever-changing tastes of different ages. Thus some twenty or thirty years ago ceremonies in social intercourse were still the fashion. Fourthly, moral training must form a part of education. It is not enough that a man shall be fitted for any end, but his disposition must be so trained that he shall choose none but good ends—good ends being those which are necessarily approved by everyone, and which may at the same time be the aim of everyone.

Most of the information on this topic is crap.” “What do you mean by that?” Crade demanded. We all looked at him, because in an instant he had become markedly defensive. Sammann raised his eyes from the screen of the jeejah and gazed interestedly at Crade. He let a few moments go by, then responded in a calm and matter-of-fact tone: “Anyone can post information on any topic. The vast majority of what’s on the Reticulum is, therefore, crap. It has to be filtered. The filtering systems are ancient. My people have been improving them, and their interfaces, since the time of the Reconstitution. They are to us what the Mynster is to Fraa Erasmas and his kind. When I look at a given topic I don’t just see information about that topic. I see meta-information that tells me what the filtering systems learned when they were conducting the search. If I look up analemma, the filtering system tells me that only a few sources have provided information about this and that they are mostly of high repute—they are avout. If I look up the name of a popular music star who just broke up with her boyfriend,” Sammann continued, nodding at a tearful female on the speely, “the filtering system tells me that a vast amount of data has been posted on this topic quite recently, mostly of very low repute. When I look up the excavation of the Temple of Orithena on the Island of Ecba, the filtering system informs me that people of very high and very low repute have been posting on this topic, slowly but steadily, for seven centuries.” Sammann’s explanation had failed if its purpose had been to settle Crade down. “What’s an example of a person of high repute? Some fraa sitting in a concent?” “Yes,” Sammann said. “And what would a low-repute source be?” “A conspiracy theorist. Or anyone who makes a lot of long rambling posts that are only read by like-minded sorts.

Rather, I found through this experience that there is significant similarity between meditating under a waterfall and tidying. When you stand under a waterfall, the only audible sound is the roar of water. As the cascade pummels your body, the sensation of pain soon disappears and numbness spreads. Then a sensation of heat warms you from the inside out, and you enter a meditative trance. Although I had never tried this form of meditation before, the sensation it generated seemed extremely familiar. It closely resembled what I experience when I am tidying. While not exactly a meditative state, there are times when I am cleaning that I can quietly commune with myself. The work of carefully considering each object I own to see whether it sparks joy inside me is like conversing with myself through the medium of my possessions. For this reason, it is essential to create a quiet space in which to evaluate the things in your life. Ideally, you should not even be listening to music. Sometimes I hear of methods that recommend tidying in time to a catchy song, but personally, I don’t encourage this. I feel that noise makes it harder to hear the internal dialogue between the owner and his or her belongings. Listening to the TV is, of course, out of the question. If you need some background noise to relax, choose environmental or ambient music with no lyrics or well-defined melodies. If you want to add momentum to your tidying work, tap the power of the atmosphere in your room rather than relying on music. The best time to start is early morning. The fresh morning air keeps your mind clear and your power of discernment sharp. For this reason, most of my lessons commence in the morning. The earliest lesson I ever conducted began at six thirty, and we were able to clean at twice the usual speed. The clear, refreshed feeling gained after standing under a waterfall can be addictive. Similarly, when you finish putting your space in order, you will be overcome with the urge to do it again. And, unlike waterfall meditation, you don’t have to travel long distances over hard terrain to get there. You can enjoy the same effect in your own home. That’s pretty special, don’t you think?

How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/ or connection. We’ll explore those final three elements later, but for now, let’s focus on elevation. To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script. (Breaking the script means to violate expectations about an experience—the next chapter is devoted to the concept.) Moments of elevation need not have all three elements but most have at least two. Boosting sensory appeal is about “turning up the volume” on reality. Things look better or taste better or sound better or feel better than they usually do. Weddings have flowers and food and music and dancing. (And they need not be superexpensive—see the footnote for more.IV) The Popsicle Hotline offers sweet treats delivered on silver trays by white-gloved waiters. The Trial of Human Nature is conducted in a real courtroom. It’s amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. At Hillsdale High, the lawyers wore suits and the witnesses came in costume. A peak means something special is happening; it should look different. To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure: a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment. Consider the pregame jitters at a basketball game, or the sweaty-hands thrill of taking the stage at Signing Day, or the pressure of the oral defense at Hillsdale High’s Senior Exhibition. Remember how the teacher Susan Bedford said that, in designing the Trial, she and Greg Jouriles were deliberately trying to “up the ante” for their students. They made their students conduct the Trial in front of a jury that included the principal and varsity quarterback. That’s pressure. One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras. If they take pictures, it must be a special occasion. (Not counting the selfie addict, who thinks his face is a special occasion.) Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.

Seven Versions" 1. The Kiss Massive languor, languor hammered; Sentient languor, languor dissected; Languor deserted, reignite your sidereal fires; Holier languor, arise from love. The wood’s owl has come home. 2. Beyond Sunlight I can’t shakle one of your ankles as if you were a falcon, but nothing can prevent me from following, no matter how far, even beyond sunlight where Jesus becomes visible: I’ll follow, I will wait, I will never give up until I understand why you are going away from me. 3. A Man Wound His Watch In the darkness the man wound his watch before secreting it under his pillow. Then he went to sleep. Outside, the wind was blowing. You who comprehend the repercussions of the faintest gesture—you will understand. A man, his watch, the wind. What else is there? 4. For Which There Is No Name Let me have what the tree has and what it can never lose, let me have it and lose it again, blurred lines the wind draws with the darkness it gets from summer nights, formless indescribable darkness. Either give me back my gladness, or the courage to think about how it was lost to me. Give me back, not what I see, but my sight. Let me meet you again owning nothing but what is in the past. Let me inherit the very thing I am forbidden. And let me continue to seek, though I know it is futile, the only heaven that I could endure: unhurting you. 5. The Composer People said he was overly fond of the good life and ate like a pig. Yet the servant who brought him his chocolate in bed would sometimes find him weeping quietly, both plump pink hands raised slightly and conducting, evidently, in small brief genuflective feints. He experienced the reality of death as music. 6. Detoxification And I refuse to repent of my drug use. It gave me my finest and happiest hours. And I have been wondering: will I use drugs again? I will if my work wants me to. And if drugs want me to. 7. And Suddenlty It’s Night You stand there alone, like everyone else, the center of the world’s attention, a ray of sunlight passing through you. And suddenly it’s night. Franz Wright, iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, Vol I Issue I . (May 15th, 2011) The individual sections of “Seven Versions” ia based, loosely—some very loosely—on poems by Rene Char, Rumi, Yannis Ritsos, Natan Zach, Günther Eich, Jean Cocteau, and Salvatore Quasimodo.

The Comte de Chagny was right; no gala performance ever equalled this one. All the great composers of the day had conducted their own works in turns. Faure and Krauss had sung; and on that evening, Christine Daaé had revealed her true self, for the first time, to the astonished and and enthusiastic audience. Gounod had conducted the Funeral March of a Marionette; Reyer, his beautiful overture to Siguar; Saint Saëns, the Danse Macabre and a Rêverie Orientale, Massenet, an unpublished Hungarian march; Guiraud, his Carnaval; Delibes, the Valse lente from Sylvia and the Pizzicati from Coppelia. Mlle. Krauss had sung the bolero in the Vespri Siciliani; and Mlle. Denise Bloch the drinking song in Lucrezia Borgia. But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daaé, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trio in Faust, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or seen anything like it. Daaé revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to it its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room. A few subscribers, however, protested. Why had so great a treasure been kept from them all that time? Till then, Christine Daaé had played a good Siebel to Carlotta's rather too splendidly material Margarita. And it had needed Carlotta's incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daaé, at a moment's warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the programme reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the subscribers wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to Daaé, when Carlotta was taken ill? Did they know of her hidden genius? And, if they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden? And why had she kept it hidden? Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing at that moment. She had often said she meant to practice alone for the future. The whole thing was a mystery.

For some reason, Jase thought it would be really funny to lock me out of the house, and I was furious. I kept banging on the door, but Jase had turned the music up loud so he wouldn’t hear me. He kicked his feet up on a table and kept yelling, “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you.” I went to Granny’s house and told Kay what Jase had done. Kay went marching back to our house and was hotter than a catfish fry in July. She started banging on the door, but Jase thought it was still me and just kept blaring the music and enjoying having the house to himself. Kay got so angry that she banged on the glass pane and her fist went right through the window, cutting up her hand pretty badly. This caught Jase’s attention. When he saw her hand, he knew he was in big trouble. “When your dad gets home, he’s going to whip y’all’s butts,” Kay told us. I hadn’t even done anything, but Phil didn’t usually conduct and investigation to find out who was at fault. He just whipped whoever was in the vicinity of the crime. Jase and I ran back to our room and padded up with anything we could find-socks, underwear, and pillowcases. We sat on our bed with our butts padded, waiting for Phil to get home, certain we were in big trouble. Phil came into our house and saw the bandage on Kay’s hand. “What in the world did you do?” Phil asked her. “Look at what these boys did,” Kay told him. “Jase locked Willie out of the house, and I was banging on the door for him to let us in. My hand went right through the window.” “Kay, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Why would you bang on a glass window?” Phil said. Phil walked right by her and took a shower. Jase and I were standing there with padded behind, our mouths wide open with relief. Phil was always in charge of disciplining us, but sometimes Kay tried to take matters into her own hands. Unfortunately for Kay, she was really an uncoordinated disciplinarian. One day when Phil was out fishing, Kay announced that she was going to whip us. She grabbed a belt that had a buckle on one end and told us to line up for a whipping. Now, Kay never liked whipping us and always closed her eyes when she swung because she didn’t want to watch. This time, she reared back and swung and missed, and the buckle flew back and hit her right in the forehead. Jase and I just looked at her, started laughing, and took off running into the backyard. I really don’t know how she survived raising us four boys. Korie: Poor Kay! All that testosterone in one house! Maybe that’s why she is so great to us daughters-in-law. She is thankful we took them off her hands. She has definitely enjoyed all of her granddaughters. She has set up a cute little library and a place for tea parties. They have coloring contests and dress-up parties. She didn’t get to do any of that with her four boys so our daughters have gotten the full “girly” grandma treatment.

The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 90 percent of the time, which roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates. One can get an idea of how important this kind of touch is to primates from an infamous experiment conducted in the 1950s by a primatologist and psychologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire mesh mother, however, had a nipple that dispensed warm milk. The babies took their nourishment as quickly as possible and then rushed back to cling to the terry cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. Clearly, touch and closeness are vital to the health of baby primates—including humans. In America during the 1970s, mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the modern practice of making young children sleep by themselves. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone in their own room—a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them. The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.” Another study notes about Bali: “Babies are encouraged to acquire quickly the capacity to sleep under any circumstances, including situations of high stimulation, musical performances, and other noisy observances which reflect their more complete integration into adult social activities

I will spend the rest of my life knowing that I may never again hear finer music, never again experience a shred of what I felt sitting in that theater while he conducted.

Senior citizens naturally lament the passage of a former way of life whenever a county undergoes massive infrastructure changes; all acts of change are disconcerting. It is easy to confuse feelings of nostalgia for an incorrect belief that our youth was the Golden Age of Civilization and now decadence and debauchery mars the county that we cherish. A democratic nation is always a roughhouse of bawdy conduct. Each thronging generation of Americans fought tooth and claw over politics and social engineering and America brims with its congeries of impatient groups. Every generation includes speculators wanting to obtain quick results and instant wealth. Every age group loudly squabbles over issues of local, national, or international import. Each passing generation of American citizens skeptically questions the art and music of the new generation and dubiously interprets change as severing America from its root structure when in truth America’s fundamental tenet is its mutability, the ability to transform its governmental mechanisms, quickly adapt to transformations in science, medicine, industry, and technology.

Smiling to myself, I pictured our family one sunny afternoon last fall. It had been a warm day, and we were on our way to the city aquarium. Dad had the car windows rolled down, and I recalled the feel of the wind in my hair and the scent of Mom’s perfume wafting from the seat in front of me. Mom and Dad were chatting and I was scrolling through my Instagram feed. But the moment the song sounded on the radio, I squealed. “Turn it up!” I said, leaning forward in my seat, enough that the belt tightened across my chest. As soon as Dad reached over and turned the knob, I started singing the lyrics aloud. Both Mom and Dad joined in. With the wind in my hair and the music filling the car, a warmth had filled my insides, almost as if I were wrapped in my favorite fuzzy blanket. The memory was fresh in my mind and I could still see Mom’s head bob up and down as she sang while Dad tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Come on, Dad!” I said, giggling. “Sing with us.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’m waiting for my favorite part. I don’t want to stretch my singing muscles.” “What singing muscles?” Mom smiled at him. He put a finger in the air for her to wait. “Here we go.” When the chorus of the song began, Dad screeched out the lyrics in a really high voice. He was trying to mimic the singer’s voice but he wasn’t even close and the sound he made was terrible. I burst out laughing. He ignored me and continued to sing, all the while, waving a hand through the air with wide flourishes, as if conducting an orchestra. He tilted his head back and belted out the high notes. When we pulled up at a red traffic light and the car slowed to a stop, Dad was oblivious of the carload of people alongside us watching him. The passengers of the other car had their windows open too and I stared at them in horror. Their eyes were glued to Dad and they shook their heads and rolled their eyes. “Dad!” I called to him. “Those people are watching you.” But he didn’t hear me and continued to sing. I sank into my seat, my cheeks flushing. He finally realized he had an audience but instead of being embarrassed, he waved to them. “Hello, there!” he said. “Did you enjoy my singing?” The light turned green, and the carload of people cracked up laughing as their car lurched forward in their hurry to escape the weird man in the car next to theirs. Dad shrugged. “I guess not.’ Mom and I burst out laughing too, unable to hold it in any longer. Dad waved a dismissive hand. “They wouldn’t know good music if it hit them in the face.” Tears sprang from my eyes because I was laughing so hard. My dad could be so embarrassing sometimes, but that day, it didn’t bother me at all. Dad had always managed to make me laugh at the silliest things. He had a way of making me feel happy, regardless of what mood I was in. Deep down I thought he was a really cool dad. My friends thought so too. He wasn’t boring and super strict like their dads. He was fun to be around and everyone loved him for it, including my friends. Our little family was perfect, and I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

After the emergence of quantum mechanics in the early 1900s, many great theorists, including Albert Einstein, tried to find the microscopic theoretical underpinnings of superconductivity but to no avail. A quantum mechanical picture of superconductivity did not exist. It was Cooper's ingenious physical insight, known as the Cooper pair, that unlocked the quantum secrets of superconductivity. Under typical circumstances, the individual electrons flowing in a piece of metal wire experience resistance because they repel each other, much like the defending players in rugby or football interfere with the movement of the player with the ball. However, Cooper showed that by using the wave-like property of electrons, they can "pair up," thus changing their repulsive properties in the metal and allowing them to conduct without resistance.

Magnetic train levitation is based on the Meissner effect, which is a direct result of superconductors. The influence between magnetic fields and electric currents implies that magnetic fields exert forces on electrons, which work to obstruct the flow of a current. Superconductors, with their unrestricted flow of electrons, will expel any magnetic field present in order to maintain the resistance-free flow of the current. Thus, if you place a magnet above a superconducting material, the material's supercurrent, which refuses to allow a magnetic field to enter it, produces a strong mirror image magnetic field, causing the external magnet to levitate. Train tracks made out of superconductors and train "wheels" made of magnets will induce the Meissner effect, causing the train to levitate. This effect played a key role in the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. The Higgs boson is nothing but a type of super-conductivity, only now the superconducting medium is empty space itself. These achievements, which followed from the groundbreaking discovery of Cooper and his colleagues, are only a few of the reasons why Cooper was my hero.

researchers have conducted more than a hundred studies that explore music’s ability to evoke in the listener the five “basic” emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and love/tenderness, which appear in musical scores as, respectively, festoso, dolente, furioso, timoroso, and teneramente—or the hundreds of subsets of those emotions.

Speaking is like conducting an orchestra; but instead of music, you are directing emotions.

Jam to some tunes. Anything that helps you relax and especially breathe more deeply assists your lymph to circulate. Listening to music works; singing or playing an instrument has an even more powerful effect. Orchestra conductors live longer; they move their lymph through the chest via their arm movements. Go ahead and dance, air-conduct, and enjoy your favorite music. I played music all the time in

moved like she was conducting a symphony, and the water followed her commands, dancing in time with the music.

Afterward, someone associated with the orchestra asked me in a hushed voice, “Would you like to know who came in early in the Mendelssohn?” Whether it was the slightly conspiratorial nature of the question that put me off, or whether it was that such a question was in disturbing contrast with the spiritedness of the music that we had just performed, I found myself saying, “No” abruptly, and then adding, “I did it.” Not literally, of course. I didn’t actually play the violin. But in that moment, in the context of the great music we had just made, it seemed absurd to me to consider handing out blame. It could only divide us, and for what? Certainly that player would never again come in early in the Italian Symphony, nor, perhaps, from this time on, make the mistake of a premature entrance in any performance. And I myself would know to be especially careful in guiding the orchestra through those eleven steps whenever I conducted that passage again. There was absolutely no gain to blaming anyone, and a real cost in terms of the blow to our integrity as a group. Besides, I know full well that every time I step onto a podium, I take a risk that things won’t turn out exactly as I anticipate them in my ear—but then, there is no great music-making without such risk taking.

In November of 1997, the New Jersey–based independent radio station WFMU broadcast a live forty-seven-minute interview with Ronald Thomas Clontle, the author of an upcoming book titled Rock, Rot & Rule. The book, billed as “the ultimate argument settler,” was (theoretically) a listing of almost every musical artist of the past fifty years, with each act designated as “rocking,” “rotting,” or “ruling” (with most of the research conducted in a coffeehouse in Lawrence, Kansas). The interview was, of course, a now semi-famous hoax. The book is not real and “Ronald Thomas Clontle” was actually Jon Wurster, the drummer for indie bands like Superchunk and (later) the Mountain Goats. Rock, Rot & Rule is a signature example of what’s now awkwardly classified as “late-nineties alt comedy,” performed at the highest possible level—the tone is understated, the sensibility is committed and absurd, and the unrehearsed chemistry between Wurster and the program’s host (comedian Tom Scharpling) is otherworldly. The sketch would seem like the ideal comedic offering for the insular audience of WFMU, a self-selecting group of sophisticated music obsessives from the New York metropolitan area. Yet when one relistens to the original Rock, Rot & Rule broadcast, the most salient element is not the comedy. It’s the apoplectic phone calls from random WFMU listeners. The callers do not recognize this interview as a hoax, and they’re definitely not “ironic” or “apathetic.” They display none of the savvy characteristics now associated with nineties culture. Their anger is almost innocent.

washroom was the same. Not possessed of a strong stomach, he’d opted not to find out. Cockroaches had been conducting a track-and-field meet along the footrail of the bar, the pungent odor of urine had been held to a draw by the generous application of sweet-smelling disinfectant, the old status quo had prevailed, and Lockington had spotted Rufe Devereaux sitting in a rear booth, talking to a blonde woman. There’d been something vaguely familiar about her but Lockington hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Devereaux had observed Lockington’s entrance, waving to him, motioning him to take a seat at the bar, then holding up a be-with-you-in-a-moment finger. Club Howdy attendance had been sparse—a few scruffy-looking characters had been clustered in a dark corner of the place, there’d been a pair of elderly men at the end of the bar, but the tables had been deserted, and Lockington had discounted the threat of being crushed in a rush. A four-piece string band had been mauling “Clayton’s Ridge” when Lockington had seated himself. “Clayton’s Ridge” came under the heading of bluegrass, and Lockington had never been convinced that bluegrass came under the heading of music. Bluegrass had always reminded Lockington of a midnight cat fight in a trash heap, but he’d ordered a Martell’s and waited.

MAN PLAYS A TUNE IN COLORS THE VIBRATIONS OF MUSIC LIGHT UP MACHINES. SIMPLER YET, WRITE ‘AZURE’ & THE LANGUAGE- CONDUCTING BRAIN IS FLOODED WITH A TONE OF SUMMER SKIES. THE PAINTER’S PIGMENTS ARE BLANKLY SEEN THEY CONTAIN NO LIGHT. ARE NOT PAINTINGS BLANK IN A DARK ROOM? & EVEN THE LIVE WHITE LIGHT SHED UPON THEM APPEARS BUT TO DIM THEM FURTHER Vuillard, Piero, Goya, Blake, O’Keeffe, Who lit the mind? It blinks in disbelief.

hearts here that love Jesus Christ and keep in unison with Him, and are sympathetic with His desires, will learn to know His will, and will re-echo the music that comes from Him. And if our supreme desire is to know what pleases Jesus Christ, depend upon it the desire will not be in vain, 'If any man wills to do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' Ninety per cent. of all our perplexities as to conduct come from our not having a pure and simple wish to do what is right in His sight, clearly supreme above all others.

The Goal of Pleasing God by Obeying His Commands (4: 1-2)American culture is caught up with the grand goal of enjoying life and pleasing oneself. For example, a recent magazine article discussing vacation homes as investments led with the caption: "The No. 1 reason to build a vacation home is to enjoy yourself. " Today more than ever society is caught up in concern for health and personal well-being. Churches sometimes try to attract people to their services by advertising that what goes on at church will be enjoyable to them. Some churches advertise that contemporary music and coffee will be served throughout the service. One can even enjoy breakfast beforehand at a church cafeteria or be entertained by "sitcom-like" plays. Some of these things may not be bad in themselves, but the impression is that of the church attempting to attract people by dangling before them the kinds of pleasures that they can find outside the church. If a church does this too consistently, then what it may have to offer may be no different, ultimately, than what the world offers. We must not fool ourselves and think that things were radically different in the first century. A few years ago I went to Turkey (old Asia Minor) to see the ancient sites of the towns where the seven churches of Revelation were located. At Pergamum I visited the ruins of an ancient Roman health spa, where, among other things, people would go to be rejuvenated emotionally because of depression. There were even rooms where a patient could rest; in the ceiling were little holes through which the priestly attendants of the spa would whisper encouraging things to help the victims recuperate psychologically. Whether in the ancient world or today, the chief end of humanity has often been to take pleasure in this life. In contrast, our passage begins by affirming the opposite: humanity's chief goal ought to be to take pleasure in pleasing God. Such passages in Scripture as this fueled the great confession, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. " Granted, Christians enjoy the material pleasures of this life, but only as a gift from the gracious God whom they serve (1 Tim 4: 4). This world is not an end in itself to be enjoyed. On the basis that God has begun to work in the readers and that they are beginning to live in order to please God, Paul appeals to them to excel in this: we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. The main point of 4: 1 is that the ultimate purpose of living as a Christian is not to please oneself but increasingly to please God (Rom 8: 8; 15: 1-6). This develops further the earlier reference to pleasing God (2: 4) and walking worthily for the goal of achieving God's glory for which they have been called (2: 12). The Greek text of 4: 1 reads "just as you received from us how it is necessary for you to walk so as to please God. " Although the NIV leaves out "it is necessary" (dei; so also Moffatt 1970 and NLT), most other translations attempt to express it, typically by "you must" or "you ought. " Some readers may understand this to mean that Christians should live in the way Paul had instructed, but if they do not they will not experience the full blessing they could otherwise. Paul's urging of them to excel, however, suggests that there is a necessity that his readers live this lifestyle and that such living is not optional for less seriously minded Christians. Indeed, this necessity is heightened by the fact that such a lifestyle is a divine commandment (4: 2), that God has called believers to this conduct (4: 7), that God has given true believers the power to fulfill this commandment (3: 12-13) and that to reject living in this manner is tantamount to rejecting God (4: 8). Consequently, it is necessary that God's true people live this way if they want to avoid the inevitable last judgment (4: 6). Paul says the basis for his appeal that they please God is grounded in the authority of the Lord Jesus

Any performer tries to perform music as if for the first time, with all that energy and excitement that comes from discovering a new piece--maybe trying to recreate the memory of falling in love with a piece when hearing it first as a child--and just as people regularly say of a brilliant conductor that they seem to conduct as if recreating the energy an audience must have felt when the piece was first played decades, even centuries, before, so too I think we need to communicate our knowledge with the passion we first encountered as children.

Jackendoff and Lerdahl also suggest that the way people convert music into gesture, whether by dance or in conducting an orchestra, is instinctive and special to music alone.

I don’t know what instructions Nimiar gave her seamstress in private. I had expected a modest trunk of nice fabric, enough for a gown or two in the current fashions. What returned, though, just over a week later, was a hired wagon bearing enough stuff to outfit the entire village, plus three determined young journey-seamstresses who came highly recommended and who were ready to make their fortunes. “Good,” Nee said, when we had finished interviewing them. She walked about inspecting the fabulous silks, velvets, linens, and a glorious array of embroidery twists, nodding happily. “Just what I wanted. Melise is a treasure.” “Isn’t this too much?” I asked, astounded. She grinned. “Not when you count up what you’ll need to make the right impression. Remember, you are acquiring overnight what ought to have been put together over years. Morning gowns, afternoon gowns, riding tunics and trousers, party dresses, and perhaps one ball gown, though that kind of thing you can order when we get to town, for those take an unconscionable amount of time to make if you don’t have a team doing it.” “A team? Doing nothing but sewing? What a horrible life!” I exclaimed. “Those who choose it would say the same about yours, I think,” Nee said with a chuckle. “Meaning your life as a revolutionary. There are many, not just women, though it’s mostly females, who like very much to sit in a warm house and sew and gossip all day. In the good houses the sewers have music, or have books read to them, and the products are the better for their minds being engaged in something interesting. This is their art, just as surely as yon scribe regards her map and her fellows regard their books.” She pointed toward the library. “And how those at Court view the way they conduct their public lives.” “So much to learn,” I said with a groan. “How will I manage?” She just laughed; and the next day a new arrival brought my most formidable interview yet: with my new maid.

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Well, there's another set forward, you see. Up to now you couldn't stand all this dance and jazz music. It was too superficial and frivolous for you. Now you have seen that there's no need to take it seriously and that it can all the same be very agreeable and delightful. And by the way, the whole orchestra would be nothing without Pablo. He conducts it and puts fire into it.

Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach yours to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach yours to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology — all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone; they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired, quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more important life, and they can. Don't let your own children have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a preteen, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age, . . . there's no telling what your own kids could do. (p. xxii) — John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction

Our tests, our approaches...are ridiculously inadequate. They only show us deficits, they do not show us powers; they only show us puzzles and schemata, when we need to see music, narrative, play, a being conducting itself spontaneously in its own natural way.

A year later, there is another miscarriage, another lost boy, and then an operation, and Rachel is in a muddle. Another missed carriage, she hears, conjuring a vision of Mama in a typical dash from the house, hurrying for trains to other cities where she will conduct music and choirs. Rachel sees Katya on a railway platform, suitcase and baton box in hand, but Mama is too late, the train hurtles by, screaming through the arches, a great train of missed carriages. Rachel's night-time wish is granted then, that though Katya has left her once again, she must return home as quickly. She has missed her carriage. 'Mama,' Rachel whispers into the night bedroom air, 'Mama, hurry home!

Among the gifts on the table was a DVD recording of the late Carlos Kleiber, a conducting titan who had cost our departing friend millions of dollars in cancelled projects.

Divested of any metastory, the Bill of Rights is being used as a manifesto against any restraint on the individual. John Stuart Mill called for a freedom for the individual "where conduct that merely concerns himself, his independence, is, of right, absolute." He maintained that the individual is to be "free of constraints imposed by religion, morality, law, family and community."14 This expresses a very one-sided notion of freedom. Freedom cannot exist without discipline. I have no freedom to express myself musically on the piano because I haven't submitted to the discipline of practicing on the instrument. In the same way, values that revolve only around the self soon rob us of the very things we aspire to. They leave us incapable of even maintaining an enduring relationship with another person as they work against our committing to anyone but ourselves.

April 17 MORNING “We are come to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” — Hebrews 12:24 READER, have you come to the blood of sprinkling? The question is not whether you have come to a knowledge of doctrine, or an observance of ceremonies, or to a certain form of experience, but have you come to the blood of Jesus? The blood of Jesus is the life of all vital godliness. If you have truly come to Jesus, we know how you came — the Holy Spirit sweetly brought you there. You came to the blood of sprinkling with no merits of your own. Guilty, lost, and helpless, you came to take that blood, and that blood alone, as your everlasting hope. You came to the cross of Christ, with a trembling and an aching heart; and oh! what a precious sound it was to you to hear the voice of the blood of Jesus! The dropping of His blood is as the music of heaven to the penitent sons of earth. We are full of sin, but the Saviour bids us lift our eyes to Him, and as we gaze upon His streaming wounds, each drop of blood, as it falls, cries, “It is finished; I have made an end of sin; I have brought in everlasting righteousness.” Oh! sweet language of the precious blood of Jesus! If you have come to that blood once, you will come to it constantly. Your life will be “Looking unto Jesus.” Your whole conduct will be epitomized in this — “To whom coming.” Not to whom I have come, but to whom I am always coming. If thou hast ever come to the blood of sprinkling, thou wilt feel thy need of coming to it every day. He who does not desire to wash in it every day, has never washed in it at all. The believer ever feels it to be his joy and privilege that there is still a fountain opened. Past experiences are doubtful food for Christians; a present coming to Christ alone can give us joy and comfort. This morning let us sprinkle our door-post fresh with blood, and then feast upon the Lamb, assured that the destroying angel must pass us by.

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking (Edward B. Burger;Michael Starbird) - Your Highlight on page 17 | location 251-270 | Added on Monday, 6 April 2015 03:03:56 Understand simple things deeply The most fundamental ideas in any subject can be understood with ever-increasing depth. Professional tennis players watch the ball; mathematicians understand a nuanced notion of number; successful students continue to improve their mastery of the concepts from previous chapters and courses as they move toward the more advanced material on the horizon; successful people regularly focus on the core purpose of their profession or life. True experts continually deepen their mastery of the basics. Trumpeting understanding through a note-worthy lesson. Tony Plog is an internationally acclaimed trumpet virtuoso, composer, and teacher. A few years ago we had the opportunity to observe him conducting a master class for accomplished soloists. During the class, each student played a portion of his or her selected virtuosic piece. They played wonderfully. Tony listened politely and always started his comments, “Very good, very good. That is a challenging piece, isn’t it?” As expected, he proceeded to give the students advice about how the piece could be played more beautifully, offering suggestions about physical technique and musicality. No surprise. But then he shifted gears. He asked the students to play a very easy warm-up exercise that any beginning trumpet player might be given. They played the handful of simple notes, which sounded childish compared to the dramatically fast, high notes from the earlier, more sophisticated pieces. After they played the simple phrase, Tony, for the first time during the lesson, picked up the trumpet. He played that same phrase, but when he played it, it was not childish. It was exquisite. Each note was a rich, delightful sound. He gave the small phrase a delicate shape, revealing a flowing sense of dynamics that enabled us to hear meaning in those simple notes. The students’ attempts did not come close—the contrast was astounding. The fundamental difference between the true master and the talented students clearly occurred at a far more basic level than in the intricacies of complex pieces. Tony explained that mastering an efficient, nuanced performance of simple pieces allows one to play spectacularly difficult pieces with greater control and artistry. The lesson was simple. The master teacher suggested that the advanced students focus more of their time on practicing simple pieces intensely—learning to perform them with technical efficiency and beautiful elegance. Deep work on simple, basic ideas helps to build true virtuosity—not just in music but in everything. ==========

George Rogers Clark (1752-1818) was the highest ranking military officer on the western frontier in the American Revolution.  He was also the brother of famed Freemason William Clark (of the Lewis and Clark expedition).  A Freemason, George Rogers Clark's Lodge is unknown, but Abraham Lodge 8, Louisville conducted his Masonic funeral.  In 1809, at age 57, Brother Clark suffered a stroke and fell into a fireplace, burning his leg so badly it required amputation. When Dr. Richard Ferguson, Master of Abraham Lodge, performed the amputation, the only anesthetic Brother Clark received  was music from a fife and drum corps playing in the background.

Rachel thinks, What long fingers Mama has, like wands in fairy tales. All the better to conduct with my dear! Ekaterina Wolff has conduits for fingers. Rachel muses on the conducting of music and the conducting of electricity, and of the yellow sign depicting a man falling, struck by a current. Danger of death! What fells the man? A powerful conduction of electricity? Of thought? Of sound? Which? Perhaps the man is felled by music. In the sign, he falls backwards.

There’s a dignity in the way she conducts herself sometimes, something faintly regal behind that soft and bumbling exterior. Every time Victoria thinks she has Anna down to the last layer, she develops some new interesting facet. It’s deeply annoying and somehow completely fascinating.

Goldfish Memory For decades people believed that the goldfish memory lasts only for 3 seconds. But over the years, this belief has been debunked multiple times with experiments and research. Goldfish are one of the most popular pet fish, and if you are a proud owner of a goldfish, you would be happy to know that your fish remembers you. Disproving the 3 seconds memory myth Studies show that your goldfish memory spans more than three months. In one of the studies, the scientists added a lever to the goldfish tank that dispensed food when pressed. The goldfish in the tank quickly learned to press the lever to get food. The goldfish started to come to the lever whenever they were hungry. Later the scientist changed the process and adjusted the lever to dispense food only at a particular time within a one-hour window. Soon the goldfish learned to return to the lever each day around that time when the lever dispensed food. This experiment proves that goldfish do have memories that span more than 3 seconds. In another study, the scientists used music to train the goldfish. Whenever they brought food for the goldfish, a particular piece of music would be playing. The goldfish learned to associate this music with food. Later, the scientists released the goldfish into the wild. After about five months, they played the same piece of music, and the goldfish returned to the same feeding place. The results of the above experiments would have been different if the goldfish has a 3-second memory. Are goldfish smart? The answer is yes they are! Besides having better than a 3-second memory, goldfish are also quite intelligent in their own right. They have shown an incredible ability to learn and process information. In many cases, your pet goldfish have been found to remember their owners' sound and to distinguish the one who feeds them. They are usually scared when they meet new people, and it is only after repeatedly seeing the person that they no longer fear them. There have also been instances where goldfish do complex activities like swimming through a maze or push a ball into a net. This proves that the goldfish have better memory and can perform far more complex tasks than we give them credit. Goldfish evolving over millions of years Scientists believe that the entire fish category has evolved over hundreds of years and have learned to remember where and how they can find food, what predators look like, how to stay safe, and basic survival instincts. Conclusion From all the research and studies that have been conducted, it is easy to deduce that when you keep your goldfish in a bowl with the same accessories for years, it will not provide a scintillating environment for the fish to thrive. The goldfish may not be the smartest species in the animal kingdom, but they do have a memory that is more than just 3 seconds. Hence, it is only fair that if you bring home a goldfish as a pet, give it the environment it needs to enjoy a healthy and stimulating life.

There is a species of taverns of a lower denomination, which, however, are sometimes resorted to by good company, when disposed to enjoy a frolic. These are the oyster-cellars, a sort of ale-houses, where the proper entertainment of the house is oysters, punch and porter. Most of the oyster-houses have a sort of long room, where a small party may enjoy the exercise of a country dance, to the music of a fiddle, harp, or bag-pipe. But the equivocal character of these houses of resort prevents them from being visited by any of the fair sex who seek the praise of delicacy, or pique themselves on propriety of conduct.

He used to love newsrooms: the ones he had visited when his father was alive, the ones where he had interned when he was starting out—AP and UPI wire machines buzzing and clicking; typewriters clacking; reporters on phones, conducting interviews, badgering sources; heated arguments about politics in the commissary and by the vending machines. But entering the Tomorrow building was like walking into a war-torn city after a neutron bomb had gone off. Half the offices were empty or filled with their downsized occupants’ detritus. Eerie silence predominated; cubicles were occupied by beaten-down millennials scrolling Twitter, listening to music through headphones, surreptitiously filling out job applications or updating their CVs on LinkedIn. People barely talked, just messaged each other on Slack.