I realized the other week that I didn’t own a copy of a recording of Rhapsody in Blue. That felt un-American, so I went shopping. I listened to the following eleven renditions in search of one to buy:
Leonard Bernstein / Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Sony, 1959)
Eric Robinson / Pro Arte Orchestra / Larry Adler, harmonica (Digital Gramophone, 1959)
Arthur Fiedler / Boston Pops / Earl Wild (RCA, 1960)
Leonard Slatkin / St. Louis Symphony / Jeffrey Siegel (MMG, 1974)
Michael Tilson Thomas / Columbia Jazz Band / George Gershwin, piano roll (Sony, 1976)
Michael Tilson Thomas / San Francisco Symphony (RCA, 2004)
Jeff Tyzik / Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra / Jon Nakamatsu (Harmonia Mundi, 2007)
Kitchen towels are much more effective at soaking up water if, instead of constantly moving them around, you let them rest. My attention is a kitchen towel.
I don’t feel at work the stress I feel at home, where stress accompanies not only the drive to get things done, but even the desire for recreation!
Why the difference? I’m not certain. But my surmises are several:
For one, I’m explicitly working for other people. That relieves me of the kind of internal pressure I feel when I’m working on my own stuff.
It also helps that those other people for whom I’m working are trustworthy and trust me. That means I basically have liberty to do as I please.
I have liberty to do as I please as long as I color within the lines a distinct mission: To maximize the security, resilience, utility, and accessibility of DiamondBack’s information. That unity of purpose helps.
Finally, five days a week I enjoy eight-hour expanses of time in which do the work.
Oh, and I’ve largely managed to avoid working under deadlines.
Might I import those circumstances into my non-DiamondBack life? Yes. And in :
Just re-listened to Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins. Classic and therefore at this point entirely unsurprising tenor sax-led hard bop that maintains its faculty to please. It might have been better titled Saxophone Colossus with Drum Titan.
Carla: Oof, Sully’s YouTube video made me nauseated. Is that a thing? Can a YouTube video make you nauseated? Scott: Carla, anything can make you nauseated.
I don’t feel sad like I did in 2016. I just feel angry and perplexed that the majority of American voters selected a unabashed narcissist, mythomaniac, sexual predator, and otherwise very well-established heel as their leader.
Forgiveness is dismissal, as of a debt or a sin. There are two kinds of forgiveness:
internal-states-oriented forgiveness, and
relationship-oriented forgiveness.
Let’s take the protagonist of Secret Sunshine as our illustration. [spoiler alert] She can dismiss her son’s killer’s sin as reason for anger or rumination as soon as her anger and rumination is spent. She should try to reach the end of her anger and rumination, although these things do often take time. This is the sense in which love keeps no record of wrongs. This is the sense in which we say forgiveness frees us.
She ought not, however, dismiss her son’s killer’s sin as reason for distancing herself from her son’s killer or for wishing her son’s killer to be incarcerated until such time as that killer has made amends, requested forgiveness, and otherwise shown ample evidence of complete repentance. If she forgives him before those preconditions are met, then she is foolish and shortsighted, risking his further harm to...
In the first six pages of Potts’ introduction, which are viewable if you scroll down here, he makes so many dubious logical moves that, depending on my current frame of mind, it will require either an act of will or a perverse curiosity for me to continue reading. He has basically written, “I can’t make sense of the biblical witness on forgiveness. So let’s just move on from the Bible and cobble together a completely new definition using other literature.” It’s an admission of interpretive failure on his part, not a successful problematization of the biblical witness on the subject.
“Isn’t it a moral hazard of some sort when a person who remains entirely unrepentant and absolutely allergic to reparations, who still menaces violence and still threatens victims, is offered forgiveness without any condition at all?” Yes, but the solution is to correct the unconditionality of the forgiveness—as per the Bible—not to redefine forgiveness beyond recognition.
Just watched: La Haine (1995) written & directed by Matthieu Kassovitz. A memorably stylized, scalding French portrait of three young fictional residents of the Parisian projects. A perfect film. In conversation with Do The Right Thing (1989). A borderline must-see for the sake of humanity. Borderline and not a shoe-in probably because I’m classist and racist. 🍿
Just listened to: Young Liars by TV on the Radio. For as much as I prize chordal playfulness and generosity as the prime musical virtue, I can really get into your endless chordal repetition if your vocals, fuzzy walls of sound, and/or rhythmic loops are striking enough. Which they are on all five slightly post-apocalyptic tracks here. Easily takes its place with Chronic Town, Kindred, and Magical Mystery Tour as one of my favorite EPs ever.
— Carla, substitutes and budget secretary at Delta, to Heather, other secretary at Delta, standing in the Delta office considering a recent College Township job opening for a secretary
Name a movie in which there’s a disagreement between child and parents and the parents turn out to have been unequivocally right.
I’ll wait.
The difficulty in answering this question is representative of a major cultural problem. Filial piety is miles better than whatever it is we’re doing now (just-try-to-keep-the-kids-safe-and-happy-ism?), but it stands zero chance of ever working if it gets zero support from culture machines.
In response to Brad East, Tyler Hummel, and a baptism I attended today, I feel compelled to say that I, for one, currently detect zero indication—in scripture as well as in observation—that there is magic at work in baptism and the Eucharist. That is precisely why they need to be attended by high ceremony.