Musical Value. . .

. . . what does music do for you? . . .


(from Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann)
". . . He was incapable of drawing nearer to the music that so preoccupied Gerda and that friend of hers, Herr Pfuhl; and Gerda, who was always impatient and exclusive when it came to matters of art, made any approach even more difficult, sometimes in truly cruel ways.  . . He would never have believed that the essence of music could be so totally alien to his family as it increasingly appeared to be. His grandfather had piped a little on his flute, and he himself enjoyed listening to pretty melodies that had either an easy grace or a quiet melancholy about them, or that perhaps roused him with their cheerful vigor. But if he expressed his preference for anything of that sort, he could be certain that Gerda would shrug her shoulders and say with a sympathetic smile, "How is it possible my dear? Something to totally lacking in musical value. . . ". . . "

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Haunting . . .

. . . song . . .


(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_That_All_There_Is%3F)
". . . The song [Is That All There Is? by  Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller]was inspired by the 1896 story Disillusionment (Enttäuschung) by Thomas Mann. Jerry Leiber's wife Gaby Rodgers (née Gabrielle Rosenberg) was born in Germany, lived in the Netherlands. She escaped ahead of the Nazis, and settled in Hollywood where she had a brief film career in films noir. Gaby introduced Leiber to the works of Thomas Mann. The narrator in Mann's story tells the same stories of when he was a child. A dramatic adaptation of Mann's story was recorded by Erik Bauserfeld and Bernard Mayes; it was broadcast on San Francisco radio station KPFA in 1964. . ."

I remember this song stirring some emotionality in me as a child during the days of the daytime talk-variety televisions shows such as Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin and the like. It's either a very prudent perspective based in reality or a deranged one being expressed by a purely hedonistic personality. Either way, as art, it is the consummate, although somewhat dated, pop song.

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Learning . . .

. . . from the past . .

(from Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . One can call what came to light here the dark possibilities within human nature in general-but is was in fact tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Germans who committed the acts before which humanity shudders, and whatever lived as German stands now as an abomination and the epitome of evil. What will it be like to belong to a nation whose history bore this gruesome fiasco within it, a nation that has driven itself mad, gone psychologically bankrupt, that admittedly depairs of governing itself . . . that will have to live in isolated confinement, like the Jews of the ghetto, because the dreadfully swollen hatred all around it will not permit it to step outside its borders-a nation that cannot show its face? . . ."

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Status . . .

. .. quo

(from Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods)
". . . But since this was not a matter of praise or censure, but simply a factual observation and determination, and since there is always some approbation in every dispassionate recognition of reality, stemming simply from the joy of recognizing it, how could such views not be linked to a multifaceted, indeed comprehensive critique of the bourgeois tradition - by which I mean values like culture, enlightenment, humanity, and dreams like the improvement of nations through significant civilization? That those who offered this critique - offered it jauntily and frequently accompanied by smug, intellectually amused laughter - were men of culture, education and science, lent the mater its especially prickly and disconcerting or slightly perverse charm . . . "

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Absolutely . . .

 . . . nothing! . . .

(from Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . We are lost.  Which is to say: The war is lost, and that means more than a lost campaign, it means that we in fact are lost - lost, our cause and soul, our faith and our history. Germany is done for, or will be done for. AN unutterable collapse - economic, political, moral and spiritual -- in shor, an all-embracing collapse looms ahead.  Not that I would have wished for what threatens us, for it is despair, it is madness. Not that I would have wished it, because my pity, my forlorn compassion, is far too deep for this unhappy nation; and when I think back ten years to its awakening and blind fervor, to the uprising that broke forth to break open and break down, to the new beginning that was to purify everything, to our popular and national rebirth, to that specious holy ecstasy, in which, to be sure, were mixed, as warning signed of its treachery, so much savage brutality and hulking vulgarity, so much obscene lust to violate, torture, humiliate, and which, as every sensible person knew, already bore war, this entire war within it . . . "

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Nothing . . .

. . . or something? . . .

(from Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods)
". . . sometimes not even taking off his hat and coat, he would walk straight to the piano, his face strained with concentration, as if this had been the real point of his having come, and then with a strong attack would sound knotted chords and, his eyebrows raised high as he emphasized each modulating note, try out the preparations and resolutions he might have been considering on his way there. . . "What is that"? . . . "Nothing," the pianist answered with a quick shake of his head, a gesture that looked more as if he were shooing a fly. "How can it be nothing," someone retorted, "since you're playing it?" . . . "And how can he say it's nothing, when it's something he's playing? You can't play what doesn't exist?". . . "Everything . . . was once nothing that became something. ". . . "


Cognition
©2016 Raymond M. Jozwiak, from the upcoming "No Frills"




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Glad . . .

. . . you asked . . .


(from The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . James (in the course of the meal) had asked him out of the blue what happened, exactly, when a body decayed - . . . "First of all, your guts burst," the director replied, propping his elbows on the table and leaning forward over his folded hands. "There you are lying on your wood shavings and sawdust, and the gases, you see, swell you up, blow you up until you're immense, the way frogs look when naughty boys blow air into them, until you're a regular balloon, and then your abdomen can no longer take the pressure and bursts. Bang! You relieve yourself noticeably -- the same thing happens to you that happened to Judas Iscariot when he fell headlong from the bough -- your bowels gush out. Yes, and after that you're actually socially acceptable again. If granted a holiday, you could visit your heirs without causing much offense. You stink yourself out, so to speak. And if you were to go for a stroll, you'd be quite a fine fellow, much like the citizens of Palermo who are hung up in the Capuchin catacombs near the Porta Nuova. There they hang dry and elegant, enjoying universal respect. All you have to do first is stink yourself out."

"To be sure," the consul said. "Much obliged." And the next morning he vanished. . . "

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Multi . . .

. . . tasking . . .

(from The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods)
". . . he (Dr. Behrens, Director of the Bergdorf Sanatorium) could simultaneously listen to a patient's interior, talk about something else, and dictate what he had heard to his assistant. . . "Yes, yes, gentlemen, the damn libido," he said. "The whole affair is great sport for you, of course -  it doesn't matter to you. Vesicular.  But the direcdtor of a sanatorium gets a noseful, believe you - muffled -believe you me.  Can I help it if phthisis is accompanied by increased concupiscence?  Slight roughness?  I didn't arrange things this way, but before you know what's happened you're running a cathouse.  Diminished under the left shoulder. We provide analysis, a chance to talk things out - and a hell of a lot of good it does.  The more the rhonchial pack talks things out the more lecherous they become.  I advocate mathematics.  Better here, the old sound is gone. Keeping oneself occupied with mathematics, I say, is the best medicine for cupidity.  Prosecutor Paravant, who was severely afflicted, threw himself into math - he's busy squaring the circle these days and it has greatly eased his problem.  But most of them are too full-witted or too lazy for that, God help them.  Vesicular. You see, I'm quite aware that young folks go to the dogs all too easily here, and I used to attempt to take occasional measure against their debauchery.  But then one day some lad or lover looked me straight in the eye and asked what business it was of mine. And since then I've been only a doctor. Weak rattling, top right.". . . "

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Demand . . .

. . . a recount?

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . They set out with seventy souls - which is to say: they regarded themselves as seventy in all; this was no numbered count, but more an emotional count by considered agreement-that is, determined by a moonlit accuracy that, as we well know, is no longer suitable for our own era, but was perfectly justifiable and held to be correct in theirs.  Seventy was the number of nations of the world listed in God's tables, and therefore as the number of progeny to emerge from patriarchal loins it was subject to no recount by the light of day. But since it is Jacob's loins we are dealing with here, the wives of his sons should not have been included in the count, should they? But they weren't. If there's no counting to begin with, nothing can be included in the count, and given a result based on the lovely bias of sacred foregone conclusions, the question of what is or is not included in the count is moot. It is not even certain whether Jacob himself was counted, whether the others included him as part of their number, that is seventy, or excluded him as the seventy-first. We must simply accept the fact that this era allowed for both possibilities at once. . ."

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My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

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Those of Us. . .

. . . who Merely Fiddle & Pipe. . .

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . it was not very clear-cut, but mysterious instead, and yet as grand as Jacob himself in the telling of it.  She heard about brothers as enemies, and the murder out in the field. About the children of Cain and their descendants how they were divided into three types over the earth: those who dwell in tents and raise cattle; those who are artificers of metal and make themselves shine with it; and finally those who merely fiddle and pipe. . ."

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(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

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Misspoke . . .

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . So he took his Egyptian handmaid and sired with her a son and named him Ismael. But what he had sired was a detour, leading not to the road of salvation, but belonging to the desert, and the primal father did not believe God's assurances that he would also still have a son named Isaak by his true wife, but fell upon his face laughing at God's word, for he was already one hundred and Sarah's life was no longer after the manner of women.  But nonetheless this laugher was reshaped in her, so that Yitzchak, the averted sacrifice, appeared of whom it was said from on high that he would sire twelve princes - which was not quite correct. God misspoke Himself at times and did not mean precisely what He said. It was not Isaak who sired the twelve, or only indirectly.  Actually he had done it, the solemn teller of stories himself, on whose lips the country girl hung-Jacob, brother of the Red Man, had sired them by four women while serving that devil Laban in Shinar. . . "

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(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

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Celebration . . .

(from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . the official swelling of the Nile was celebrated in all the land of Egypt, and most especially in Nowet-Amun, Wase of the Hundred Gates, with a gala solemnity that one can imagine only if one keeps in mind our own greatest and most tumultuous national, popular, and patriotic holidays.  The entire city was out and about from earliest morning on, and the huge population - far exceeding a hundred thousand, as we know - was vastly increased by swarms of country folk from both upriver and down, who streamed in through the gates to join in the celebration of Amun's great day in the city where the imperial god resided, and who now mixed with the city people to hop on one leg and gaze with mouths agape at glorious and majestic spectacles presented by the state to an overtaxed and overworked peasantry in compensation for a whole year's gray penury and as a means of strengthening them in their patriotism for the drudgery of the year now dawning.  As part of a great sweating crowd, their noses filled with the aroma of burning fat and mountains of flowers, they thronged temples provisioned for the holiday with immense quantities of food and drink and filled those radiantly colorful forecourts plastered with alabaster, covered by awnings and tents, an echoing with pious hymns, where they could stuff their bellies for once at the expense of the god - or actually, of those higher powers who oppressed and swindled them all the rest of the year, but today smiled upon with prodigal beneficence - and thus, against their better judgment, be lulled in the belief that it would always be so, that with this turning point of celebration and delight, the golden age of free beer and roasted goose had dawned the they would never again be visited by scribes demanding payment and accompanied by Nubians armed with bundled rods of palm . . . "

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OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

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Removed . . .

. . . from view . . .

(from Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann- translation by John E. Woods)
". . . A few years more and there would be almost nothing left of the stuff of the Joseph whom Jacob had held in a farewell embrace, as Rebekah had once held him - as little as if his flesh had dissolved into death.  Except that, since it was not death that changed him, but life, his form as Joseph remained more or less intact, but less faithfully and perfectly than sheltering death would have kept it in the mind's eye and as it actually, though deceptively, had done in Jacob's mind. But it should still give us pause that, in regard to the content and form of life, the difference between whether it is death or life that removes a person from view is not nearly so important as people would probably like to think. . . "

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OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
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