Mondegreens

The New Neo Posted on by

When I was about three years old I liked to listen to the music from “Guys and Dolls” on our scratchy old record player.

For some reason–perhaps because I was fond of animals–I particularly loved the lyrics of “Fugue for Tinhorns,” which I’d often warble semi-tunefully for a small audience of my parents’ friends (yes, I know, shameless self-aggrandizer).

Do you know the song? It offers advice for betting on horse races. Here’s a little sampler:

I got the horse right here
The name is Paul Revere
And here’s a guy that says that the weather’s clear
Can do, can do, this guy says the horse can do
If he says the horse can do, can do, can do.

What did I understand about the words? Not very much, although I did know that they had something to do with horses and racing, and that “Paul Revere” and the other names in the song (I especially liked “Valentine”) referred to the animals.

But much of the meaning of the song was unintelligible to me. The many parts I didn’t comprehend (“I’ve got the feed box noise”??) I memorized in a sort of phonetic, syllable-by-syllable rote way, trying to give them meaning as I went along, or ignoring meaning when I couldn’t divine any.

“Feed box noise,” for instance, was just that–a lot of noise, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing. I couldn’t make it into any words at all, so it remained something like “fee pox voize” in my mind.

But other parts seemed to include recognizable words, although those words didn’t always make a whole lot of sense. There was this: “It’s from a handicapper that’s real sincere,” which I turned into “It’s from a handy capper that’s real sincere.” A handy capper: someone good with his hands who made caps, or who wore caps–whatever.

And in my mind there it stayed–as “handy capper.”

I hardly ever thought of those song lyrics again, until one day well into middle adulthood, when for some reason the song came up. I was discussing the lyrics with a friend, and I started to say, “One thing I don’t understand; what’s a ‘handy capper’?” But as those words were about to come out of my mouth, they suddenly coalesced into a single word, one I actually knew and connected to horse racing–“handicapper”–and I burst out laughing at my own stupidity.

What I’d done was to create something known as a “mondegreen,” and by no means one of the most amusing ones around. But the internet comes to the rescue; here’s a site with some wonderful mondegreens. Especially fine, I think, are the following:

All my luggage, I will send to you.
(Actual lyric: All my loving, I will send to you–Beatles)

Baby come back, you can play Monopoly.
Actual lyric: Baby come back, you can blame it all on me.
(Player “Baby Come Back”)

Come shave my heart.
Actual lyric:Unchain my heart.
(Ray Charles)

Donuts make my brown eyes blue.
Actual lyric:Don’t it make my brown eyes blue.
(Crystal Gale)

Give me the Beach Boys and free my soul.
Actual lyric:Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul.
(Dobie Gray “Drift Away”) (I think I may have succumbed to this one myself.)

Hold me closer, Tony Danza
Count the head lice on the highway.
Actual lyric: Hold me closer, tiny dancer.
(Elton John “Tiny Dancer”)

Just brush my teeth before you leave me, baby.
Actual lyric:Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.
(Juice Newton “Angel of the Morning”)

Last night I dreamt of some bagels.
Actual lyric:Last night I dreamt of San Pedro.

he’s got a chicken to ride.
Actual lyric:She’s got a ticket to ride.
(Beatles)

She’s got electric boobs, a mohair too.
Actual lyric:She’s got electric boots, a mohair suit.
(Elton John “Benny and the Jets”)

Sugar fried honey butt.
Actual lyric:Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch.
(Four Tops “Can’t Help Myself”)

Got any of your own?

By their works shall ye know them: barbarians and sadists

The New Neo Posted on by

The news was all but inevitable: the bodies of the two missing soldiers have been found in Iraq, and spokespeople say they have been “tortured in a barbaric fashion.” No details have as yet been provided.

Pajamas Media has a roundup of reactions from both sides of the political spectrum.

All thoughtful people–myself included–mourn their loss, and the suffering they endured before their deaths.

When I read the sad news, however, the use of the word “barbaric” caught my eye. Like many familiar words, ordinarily we hardly think about what it really means.

Here are some synonyms:

barbarian, barbarous, boorish, brutal, coarse, cruel, fierce, graceless, inhuman, lowbrow, primitive, rough, rude, tasteless, uncivilized, uncouth, vulgar, wild

The word is the essence of cultural non-relativism. Its origins are in antiquity:

…from Latin barbaria, from Latin barbarus, from the ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros) which meant a non-Greek, someone whose (first) language was not Greek. The word is imitative, the bar-bar representing the impression of random hubbub produced by hearing spoken a language that one cannot understand, similar to blah blah or rhubarb in modern English.

Many cultures traditionally have had terms for “the other.” Even if those appellations don’t start out as pejorative, they usually wind up that way. And so it is with “barbarian” and “barbaric,” which have come into general use to mean especially vicious, cruel, and sadistic.

It’s really that last definition–sadistic–that seems to be the most important element here. When a soldier kills, there is always violence, no matter how the killing is accomplished. But barbarism implies a gratuitous level of mayhem, a sort of overkill, which indicates an emotional element that drives the perpetrator towards inflicting the maximum amount of pain for personal enjoyment and sensations of power.

One of the hallmarks of jihadi violence has been this element of barbarism–or, perhaps more correctly, sadism. There is a practical and strategic goal as well, which is to instill fear. Sadism and strategy are not mutually exclusive, however; they can coexist, and both may be driving this particular behavior. No one who has watched the beheading videos–or even read descriptions of them–can avoid the sense that those doing the deed are reveling in their own barbaric power, unleashed.

Sadism traditionally has been linked to sexual kinkiness. If you Google the word “sadism,” most of the definitions you find will have some connection to sex. Many have also remarked on the disturbances in Arab culture’s treatment of women and their sexuality (see this, for example), so it’s easy to surmise that there’s a connection between the two.

But it’s certainly not as simple as that–sadism is probably overdetermined among the jihadis. And another one of the elements that go into it are the backgrounds and personality disorders of some of those who rise to positions of power, such as the late and unlamented Zarqawi, who was clearly both a sadist and a psychopath in the classic sense.

But sadism and psychopathology are not limited to Arab culture, of course. In fact, the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal clearly involved elements of sadomasochism of the sexual sort, although the sadism did not even begin to rise to the level of that seen with the jihadis.

Then there were the Nazis, who came from a culture with enormous cultural achievements, one that was thought to be almost ultra-civilized prior to WWII. That’s one of the reasons the deeply barbaric turn many Germans took at that time was so very shocking: the degree of sadism that was unleashed in the concentration camps, for example, rivaled anything in history, classical or otherwise (and yes, I’m aware that not all the guards were German, but the guiding vision sprung from that society, and was largely a product of German or Austrian nationals).

The bottom line is that barbarism and sadism are possibilities for all human beings. But some societies and some historic times seem to encourage their fuller expression. And the task of a “civilized” military is to reduce the elements of sadism, while preserving the ability to kill.

I’ve written previously about how US soldiers are trained to kill without sadism, here. It’s not an easy task, but it’s the goal of the US military to reduce combat stress and make atrocities far less likely to occur (read the post for the details of how this is done). In contrast, the goal of the Nazis was to maximize the expression of sadism in their concentration camp guards. Likewise, this seems to be the goal of the jihadis, or at least many jihadi elements.

And they’re not the only ones who are drawn to the admiration of the barbaric. As the Wikipedia article on barbarians indicates, in a discussion of the fictional Conan the barbarian (and with an interesting connection to German history):

The modern sympathetic admiration for such fantasy barbarians as Conan the Barbarian is a direct descendant of the Enlightenment idealization of the “Noble Savage”. The German Romantics recharacterized the barbarian stereotype. Now it was the civilized Roman–or that modern Romanized Gaul, the Frenchman–who was effeminate and soft, and the stout-hearted German barbarian who exemplified manly virtue. The reforming of Arminius as “Hermann” the noble barbarian countering evil Rome provided a prototype from the 16th century onwards.

In fantasy novels and role-playing games, barbarians (or berserkers) are still depicted as brave uncivilized warriors, often able to attack with a crazed fury. Conan is simply best known of the type.

Many of those who defend jihadis, make excuses for them, and/or sympathize with them, may indeed be feeling these sorts of Rousseauvian/Romantic stirrings.

One petite step for womankind

The New Neo Posted on by

Not that I ever shop there–but still, I’m happy to know that Saks has bowed to popular demand from its vertically challenged female shoppers and announced it will revive its petite section.

The ripple effect has already been felt. As a result of Saks’s return to the petite biz, designer Ellen Tracy, who had opted out of the petite game, is coming back.

For those who are wondering what I’m talking about and why, see this previous post of mine.

And, in the interests of rigorous honesty, I confess that the title of this post was suggested to me by a thoughtful reader.

The difference between trolling and disagreeing

The New Neo Posted on by

I know I wrote that I wasn’t going to post any more threads about trolls, and that I would simply implement a solution instead. And that is my plan.

But I found this to be so excellently put that I simply could not resist highlighting it here. It’s from a commmenter, Brad, on the subject of how to differentiate between trolls and mere dissenters:

So confud,
why have I never been branded a troll? I have clearly stated several times that I don’t like Bush; that I didn’t vote for him; that I was completely opposed to the war in Iraq; and that I never went through any 9/11-related epiphany. Clearly, I don’t agree with a lot of what is stated here. Despite this, none of the people who comment here, aside from you, have insulted me or labelled me a troll. And the same is true at other blogs where I comment, across the political spectrum.

Perhaps it is because I don’t repetitively post hate-filled mockery, laced with insult and misused epithets (such as your constant misuse of the term “racist”), and inform people that I am once again laughing at them. Having spent a life time in higher ed, around people who either have strong opinions (faculty) or are developing them (students), I have learned to disagree with someone, listen to any response, and move on. You, on the other hand, have barged into a virtual room, screaming invective, shouting down dialogue, attempting to shut down the forum, and then you smugly state that they call you a troll because you disagree with them. Horse poop, they call you a troll because you are a virtual violent bully.

[ADDENDUM: I am planning to be home by the end of the week, and hope to implement some of the promised changes in the blog not too long after that. It may take a while, so please be patient, but it will be done.

But because I’m such a polite hostess, I thought I’d provide this thread to give my beloved and esteemed trolls a place to vent. As I’ve said many times before, I believe that every time a troll goes about his/her business (I think I’ll just drop the cumbersome PC inclusive pronoun designation here and go with the masculine, if you don’t mind) he provides further and ever more detailed evidence of his trollish nature. So it’s all in the nature of an exhibit of trolldom.

But enough is enough, and as I’ve said, in a little while, changes will be instituted. Please bear with me till then.]

Hawks, chickenhawks, and other birds of prey

The New Neo Posted on by

Democratic Representative John Murtha has been in the news lately, most recently in his appearance on “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert. Many have commented on his strangely disjointed and virtually unintelligible utterances during that interview (for example, see this from Jeff “I don’t speak Murtha” Goldstein, and this from Ann Althouse).

I don’t know what accounts for Murtha’s near incoherence lately. I’ll leave speculation on that to others. I want to comment instead on a phenomenon that comes up often in connection with Murtha as well as so many others: whether service in the military (or lack thereof) is a legitimate way to credit or discredit a person’s judgment on military matters.

In other words, the old hawk vs. chickenhawk argument.

“Hawk” probably isn’t the best term, however, because the hawks in question tend to be–like Murtha–former military men who are against the Iraq war, or at least many aspects of it. Perhaps they should be called “dovehawks,” instead? This is, of course, in contrast with the “chickenhawk” phenomenon–the term is always applied to those who have not served in the military but who are advocating military action of some sort of other.

Murtha himself has served in the Marines; no chickenhawk he. But military service does not a master military strategist make. Murtha has given his critics plenty of ammunition by offering up some rather spectacularly strange military suggestions in the Russert interview–for example, the idea that Zarqawi could have been (and should have been) effectively dispatched with bombers launched from, of all places, Okinawa. At Blackfive, Murtha’s military judgment in offering his “Okinawa option” seems pretty effectively demolished (please read the linked text for details).

On the subject of Murtha’s dovehawk credentials, Blackfive’s Froggy writes:

As an ex-Marine Colonel, Murtha is probably the senior military veteran in the Democratic Caucus which somehow earns him a pass on his ridiculous military proclamations.

This is the opposite of the “chickenhawk” accusation. To summarize, the chickenhawk assertion is that anyone who did not serve in our armed forces and yet advocates military action is suspect, and the hawk (or dovehawk) assertion is that anyone such as Murtha with a history of military service by definition knows what he’s talking about in military matters by virtue of that history. Both arguments are used by the antiwar left: the hawk argument to give extra credit to military men who are now antiwar, the chickenhawk argument in an attempt to invalidate the pro-war views of those who didn’t serve.

Why have these arguments become so popular lately? Part of it may be due to the relentless twenty-four hour news cycle. The need to fill airtime dictates countless interviews with retired military experts who don’t necessarily have access to up-to-date information, and were not necessarily military strategists even when they did serve. But they are considered very qualified to pass judgment on the details of military decisions in the Iraqi theater and elsewhere. So when any of these military people are antiwar (and there are so many of them that some are bound to be antiwar, just by the law of averages), it’s understandably considered a huge advantage by the left.

Another factor is a change in the demographics of the military. Ultimate control of the US military has always rested in the civilian hands of the executive branch. It was never a requirement that, in order to hold the post of Commander in Chief–the Presidency–a candidate must have served in the military, and of course some Presidents have not (most recently and notably, Bill Clinton comes to mind). Nor does the Secretary of Defense need to have actually served.

But back when the draft was still in effect, it used to be far more common for US citizens (that is, males) to have served, so opportunities for mounting the chickenhawk argument were few and far between. But with the end of the draft in the early seventies, and the start of the all-volunteer military, the number of people in public life–both pro and antiwar–who have a history of military service has gone way down, and there’s no reason to believe that it will go back up any time in the near future.

(One interesting sidelight is that now, with far greater numbers of women in Congress, they constitute a large group in government who are especially unlikely to have served in the military. And yet, strangely enough, the hawk vs. chickenhawk argument is almost never mounted towards women–although, paradoxically, woman bloggers are considered vulnerable to it. But I digress.)

The chickenhawk accusation is actually a form of ad hominem argument:

An ad hominem fallacy consists of asserting that someone’s argument is wrong and/or he is wrong to argue at all purely because of something discreditable/not-authoritative about the person or those persons cited by him rather than addressing the soundness of the argument itself. The implication is that the person’s argument and/or ability to argue correctly lacks authority.

The dovehawk argument is an ad hominem argument as well, although of a different sort:

In contrast, an argument that instead relies (fallaciously) on the positive aspects of the person arguing the case is sometimes known as “positive ad hominem,” or appeal to authority.

Murtha’s military experience doesn’t help his argument much if he’s not making a logical and thoughtful point; the argument must stand or fall on its own merits. Likewise, those who have not served should not be automatically discredited. But, as the above linked Wikipedia article states, ad hominem arguments are extremely tempting to mount because they feel so powerful and convincing, and are therefore very common.

All else being equal, it does make a certain amount of sense to believe that someone who has served in the military might have more knowledge of military matters, and be more inclined to make good military decisions, than one who has not. But all else is very rarely equal; arguments can and must be judged on their own merits.

That should go without saying, but it seems there’s a need to spell it out once again.

[See this video for an example of Murtha himself using the chickenhawk argument to deflect criticism from Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert.]

Sunday in Seattle

The New Neo Posted on by

I think I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping up with this blog, considering I’m on vacation. But of course my concentration hasn’t been focused on it like a laser.

I’ve got a few more days here–returning in midweek to my home, where I hear it’s been about ninety degrees lately. New England’s like that; nothing subtle about the change of seasons. Weeks of cold driving rain and then bam!, it’s summer, and you remember just why summer is not necessarily your favorite season, although it has its pluses.

I can just imagine how much the mosquitoes have loved the recent rains and proliferated to epic proportions. There’s a joke in some parts of New England that the mosquito is the state bird, its only serious competition for that honor being the black fly. Both of these insects bite, of course, but true connoisseurs can tell the difference between the itch and swelling caused by one and the other (personally, I think the discomfort of the black fly’s bite lasts longer and is sharper, but that’s just me).

New Englanders live for summer, since so many of them own boats, praying for nice weather so they finally can get out on the ocean or lake. It’s not often it works out the way they want, but it’s all the more appreciated when it happens.

Seattle is a bit the same, from what I can gather from my short stay here–nice weather is an elusive commodity. The gardens are different–although not so different as one might think. The same azaleas and rhododendrons, which thrive here, and I’ve never seen such tall foxglove. Watering isn’t necessary, of course, but sun can be an issue. Seattleites wait for the summer with almost as much anticipation as New Englanders do, because it’s the only time of relatively reliable sunshine and warmth.

That’s why I timed my trip for now; I figured I’d have a chance of good weather, and that’s the way it’s panned out. The quality of the light here is very similar to the light at home, as well–must be something about these high latitudes that adds a certain bright shimmer. And it stays light so late that I lose track of the time, enhanced by the fact that I rarely wear a watch.

The food is good in Seattle–very very good–and I think the shopping, too, although I’ve not done much of it (I must remedy that failing before I leave). I can see there’s a big hip music scene, a predominantly young one. Lots of street people and panhandlers, though, not unusual in a large liberal laid-back town like this, especially one where it’s possible to live on the street year-round without freezing to death (although one might be in danger of drowning).

The rain, when it comes, is mostly short-lived this time of year. It can be a sunny day and suddenly, without your even realizing it, the cloud cover comes and you feel the first familiar drops and try to take cover. Real Seattleites don’t care–they do it (whatever “it” might happen to be) in the rain. People carry a windbreaker or fleece wherever they go, and most of the time they get a chance to use them several times during the day. Taking one’s jacket off and on is an aerobic exercise in Seattle.

And now I’m going out. It’s cloudy, with a chance of rain. So, what else is new?

[ADDENDUM: About three minutes after I published this post, the sun came out; beautiful day. But by the time I came to write this addendum and remark on that fact, completely overcast again.]

Smarter monkeys

The New Neo Posted on by

Maybe Bush really is a chimp, after all–or perhaps a rhesus monkey.

It turns out that monkeys are smarter than they were thought to be, even understanding causality, and not just in situations to which they’ve been exposed to before, but in novel ones as well.

Reaching critical mass in Iraq?

The New Neo Posted on by

Both before and after we invaded Iraq, one of our problems was lack of good intelligence from inside that country. Many of our advisors were Iraqi expatriates whose information was out-of-date and not necessarily reliable, and Iraq itself seemed opaque and nearly impenetrable.

After the invasion the situation couldn’t be turned around all that quickly. Iraqis were wary, and for very good reason. Why trust Americans to have Iraqis’ best interests at heart or to be competent in building a new and better Iraq? Why believe that the awesome and terrible control of Saddam was no more? Why believe that al Qaeda and the foreign terrorists streaming into the country would not remain powerful forces?

But it seems that the long slow process of winning the trust of Iraqis has begun to pay off, and the more this happens, the more it will tend to happen. It’s a snowball effect; small accretions build on each other, and finally some sort of critical mass is reached. It’s as though the situation in Iraq immediately prior to Zarqawi’s death resembled a supersaturated solution, and his demise– and especially the resultant capture of a vast treasure trove of related intelligence on al Qaeda’s working in Iraq–was the trigger that caused a host of cascading events to crystallize, which in turn appear to be profoundly weakening the terrorist network in Iraq.

The increased trust and cooperation that probably contributed to Zarqawi’s end was no doubt due to a combination of factors, not the least of which was the nascent Iraqi government with its growing police force and army. And now (in the immortal words of none other than Bin Laden himself) since people tend to back a strong horse, with the killing of the hated Zarqawi and the arrest of many of his confederates, the US probably seems as though it just might be a stronger horse than previously thought.

Although there’s always the possibility that the following represents some sort of psych-ops operation rather than the real deal, if we can believe the authenticity of a document reported to have been recently captured by our forces, the insurgency knows itself to be in trouble:

The document said the insurgency was being weakened by the American program to train Iraqi security forces, as well as “massive attacks and arrests,” the disruption of insurgents’ financial networks and the launching of a propaganda campaign that was prompting Iraqis to believe that the insurgents were acting against the public interest.

Effective anti-insurgency and anti-terrorist operations have been slow to build, but that is changing:

So far, the June 7th strike has led to over 500 more raids. There have been so many raids, that there are not enough U.S. troops to handle it, and over 30 percent of the raids have been carried by Iraqi troops or police, with no U.S. involvement. Nearly a thousand terrorist suspects have been killed or captured. The amount of information captured has overwhelmed intelligence organizations in Iraq, and more translators and analysts are assisting, via satellite link, from the United States and other locations.

Zarqawi’s successor must be feeling at least a trifle edgy since his promotion, unless of course he aches for martyrdom. His identity and photo have already been posted with a speed that is still another indication of the recent improvement of our intelligence.

Does any of this mean that terrorist attacks such as this one will suddenly become a thing of the past in Iraq? Of course not, although it would be wonderful to see them begin to decrease.

And note the planned timetable for the increase in the use of Iraqi forces, mentioned in the same NY Times article that discusses Zarqawi’s successor:

“There is an agreement to take over the security responsibilities from the British, Australian and Japanese forces in southern Iraq during this month,” al-Zubaie said. “We hope that the Iraqi security forces will live up to their duties there. It is the dream of all Iraqis that our forces will handle security issues all over Iraq.”

Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki announced shortly after taking office on May 20 that Iraqi security forces will start assuming full responsibility for some provinces and cities this month, beginning an 18 month process leading to the eventual withdrawal of all coalition forces.

None of this means things will inevitably continue to go in the right direction. But events do build on events, not only in terms of concrete information gained, but also in terms of changed perceptions. Greater strength on the part of the allies can only inspire more people to come forward with more information, which can only increase the number of terrorists and insurgents captured, which can only result in more intelligence information gained from their laptops and the like, which can only lead to more captures and more cooperation from Iraqi citizens. It’s the opposite of a vicious cycle–that is, it’s vicious only to those who are the hunted, al Qaeda and the insurgents.

Last thread on trolls

The New Neo Posted on by

The goal of trolls? To take over a thread and ultimately a blog, and get everyone to dance to your tune. The technique? Have a feed and jump on the thread immediately, setting the tone and the topic. If at all possible, let your comments be off-topic and repetitively insulting. Have a lot of energy for this. And then, wait for the reaction of the other commenters, since–people being the way they are–reaction there will be, and plenty of it.

Trolls are many things, but among those things are provocateurs, egotists, and parasites. The first because they like nothing better than to cause a stir and get people energized and enraged, the second because they like to be the center of attention, and the third because rather than start their own blogs (or, if they have a blog, deal with the small amount of traffic they have, and try to attract more) they feed off the audience they get from a more heavily-trafficked blog.

Right now the trolls have come way too close to dominating the conversation, for the simple reason that people are responding. With trolls, as I’ve said before, the best response is no response. This is true for several reasons: the first is the aformentioned thriving on attention. The second is because trolls only give the appearance of wanting to have a substantive discussion, and only do that for a short time; there is no way to discuss issues with them in a logical and respectful manner except for very brief periods, which are a sort of setup for the next barrage of personal invective, goalpost moving, non sequitors. The tone of the troll is a dead giveaway: insulting, arrogant. And now, with the trolls on this site, the gloves and the masks are off, and they’ve dropped even the pretense (always somewhat transparent) of having a substantive discussion.

One would think trolls might have something better to do with their time. But apparently not. To a troll, there is something remarkably and deeply satisfying about what they do. Harrassment is no doubt very reinforcing to some personalities.

But what’s most interesting about trolls is how, in the playing of the game, they give themselves away. Trolls, as I’ve noted before, are instructive. They are their own worst advertisement. Even an argument with some weight to it loses something when esposed by a troll. But most of their arguments are not of that nature, they’re instead a demonstration of those logical fallacies I never did get around to writing about. Logic isn’t a troll’s interest, though. Either they simply don’t get it, or the emotional rewards of trolling far exceed the emotional rewards they might get by actually advancing an argument point by point, and following a discussion.

They also love “last touch,” almost as much as they love “first touch.”

Psychologically, the profile is similar to that of a person who makes harrassing phone calls. But perhaps more than anything else, trolls are an excellent example of what I’ve called the “Martin Higby phenomenon,” and written about, here.

This will probably be my last pronouncement on the troll problem until I implement the solution.

On the topic of trolls

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m on vacation for a few more days, and am unusually busy–having fun. A novel idea. Therefore my access to computers is far more limited than usual. For example, yesterday I hardly saw a computer at all except to post relatively early in the day.

Of course, the trolls have been out in force, jumping on the thread and trying to derail it in a fairly transparent and offensive manner. Not a surprise. I don’t have the time right now (or perhaps ever, but certainly not now) to be on constant troll patrol. So, for now, all I can ask is that you ignore them.

However, rest assured that there are remedies. I can’t employ them now because they require a certain amount of time to implement. When blogs reach a critical mass, sooner or later–if they have comments sections–they are all faced with this problem. I am planning, when I get back and have a good chunk of time, to add and/or change certain elements here that will allow me to deal quite effectively with trolls, never fear. But it will be some time before that happens, so I counsel patience.

And now I’m outta here. I do plan to post later today, however, on a more substantive and (hopefully) interesting issue.

The theme and variations vs. the symphony: on love

The New Neo Posted on by

I try to do about three miles of brisk walking every day for exercise. On rainy or snowy days, I’m off to the gym and its treadmill, which feels like–well, like being on a treadmill. But on beautiful days or even halfway decent days, I prefer to be outside.

I live in a beautiful area, and there are a wide variety of choices for walking. But, somehow, I almost always end up at the same place: a park by the ocean. It’s convenient, only a two-minute drive from my house. I know exactly what route to follow to get in my requisite three miles. It has just the right combination of flats and hills, sun and shade, dogs and owners, parents and children. Part of the walk lies in a wooded area, but most of it is open and within sight of the water, some cliffs and crashing waves, and even a couple of lighthouses. The sort of thing people journey to New England for from all over the world.

So, how could I ever ask for anything more?

And yet, to walk along essentially the same route, day in and day out, for several years? Doesn’t it get boring?

Well, every now and then I guess it does get boring–like almost anything can, even dessert. But mostly it’s not boring at all, even though it’s the same walk and the same scene. Because, like that proverbial river that one never steps in twice, it’s somehow ever-changing.

Some of this is due to variations in light and weather. When the sun is out, the place is transformed from the landscape when the sky is overcast. The wind whips the waves on a turbulent day, which is different entirely from a calm sea. The dogs change, although not so much as the weather; the canines and their owners are nothing if not creatures of habit. The babies get older. The seasons work their magic, especially the brilliant falls.

So yes, it’s the same park and the same ocean. But it’s never really the same. And, although walking repeatedly in the same place is very different from traveling around the world and walking in a new place every day, is it really so very much less varied? It depends on the eye and mind of the beholder; the expansive imagination can find variety in small differences, and the stunted one can find boredom in vast changes.

And I submit that love is like that, too. Some people spend a lifetime with one love, one spouse; plumbing the depths of that single human being and what it means to be in an intimate relationship with him/her. Others go from relationship to relationship, never alighting with one person for very long, craving the variety.

It would seem on the face of it that the second type of person has the more exciting time in love. But it ain’t necessarily so. Either of these experiences can be boring or fascinating, depending on what we bring to it: the first experience is a universe in depth, and the second a universe in breadth. But both can contain multitudes.

I’ll let author Milan Kundera take over on the subject now, since he was actually my inspiration in the first place (from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). Here he is describing his musicologist father who, during the last ten years of his life, had lost the ability to speak:

Throughout the ten years of his illness, Papa worked on a big book about Beethoven’s sonatas. He probably wrote a little better than he spoke, but even while writing he had more and more trouble finding words, and finally his text had become incomprehensible, consisting of nonexistent words.

He called me into his room one day. Open on the piano was the variations movement of the Opus 111 sonata. “Look,” he said, pointing to the music (he could no longer play the piano). And again, “Look,” and then, after a prolonged effort, he succeeded in saying, “Now I know!” and kept trying to explain something important to me, but his entire message consisted of unintelligible words, and seeing that I did not understand him, he looked at me in surprise and said, “That’s strange.”

I know of course what he wanted to talk about, because it was a question he had been asking himself for a long time. Variation form was Beethoven’s favorite toward the end of his life. At first glance, it seems the most superficial of forms, a simple showcase of musical technique, work better suited to a lacemaker than to a Beethoven. But Beethoven made it a sovereign form (for the first time in the history of music), inscribing in it his most beautiful meditations.

Yes, all that is well known. But Papa wanted to know how it should be understood. Why exactly choose variations? What meaning is hidden behind it?

That is why he called me into his room, pointed to the music, and said, “Now I know!”

And, somehow, Kundera the son finally understood (or thought he understood; the father wasn’t telling) what his father meant:

I am going to try to explain it with a comparison. A symphony is a musical epic. We might say that it is like a voyage leading from one thing to another, farther and farther away through the infinitude of the exterior world. Variations are like a voyage. But that voyage does not lead through the infinitude of the exterior world. In one of his pensées, Pascal says that man lives between the abyss of the infinitely large and the abyss of the infinitely small. The voyage of variations leads into the other infinitude, into the infinite diversity of the interior world hidden in all things.

…Variation form is the form in which the concentration is brought to its maximum; it enables the composer to speak only of essentials, to go straight to the core of the matter. A theme for variations often consists of no more than sixteen measures. Beethoven goes inside those sixteen measures as if down a shaft leading into the interior of the earth.

The voyage into that other infinitude is no less adventurous than the voyage of the epic. It is how the physicist penetrates into the marvelous depths of the atom. With every variation Beethoven moves further and further away from the initial theme, which resembles the last variation as little as a flower its image under a microscope.

Man knows he cannot embrace the universe with its suns and stars. Much more unbearable is for him to be condemned to lack that other infinitude, that infinitude near at hand, within reach….

It is not surprising that in his later years variations become the favorite form for Beethoven, who knew all too well…that there is nothing more unbearable than lacking the being we loved, those sixteen measures and the interior world of their infinitude of possibilities.