pianogonzology

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Another . . .

. . . opus . .

Experience can not be known
The ups and downs
Extremes no doubt
Of breathing, living
In and out
The depths encountered
With a loss
Or simply due to one bad toss
Exhiliration, of breath be robbed
When o'er the crest we pass
And dash into a fall
Which words will fail
To capture
Still a rapture
Does enthrall
If only do we stand or fall
We never know of such affair
If never choose we to
Ascend
The stair

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Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Labels . . .

(from Hitch 22; A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens [quoting Conor Cruise O'Brien])
". . . "Are you a socialist?" asked the African Leader. I said yes. He looked me in the eye. "People have been telling me," he said lightly, "that you are a liberal. . . " the statement in its context invited a denial. I said nothing. And yet, as I drove home from my interview with the leader, I had to realize that a liberal, incurably, was what I was. Whatever I might argue. I was more profoundly attached to liberal concepts of freedom - freedom of speech and of the press, academic freedom, independent judgement and independent judges - than I was to the idea of a disciplined party mobilizing all the forces of society for the creation of a social order guaranteeing more real freedom for all instead of just for a few. The revolutionary idea struck me as more immediately relevant for most of humanity than were the liberal concepts. But it was the liberal concepts and their long-term importance - though not the name of liberal - that held my allegiance. . . "

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Monday, September 12, 2016

HIghs . . .

. . . and lows . . .

Just look at the morning paper

And tell me what you see

Is something very wrong

Or maybe my eyes deceive me

Somewhere in the local section

A buried paragraph

Someone who had the time to care

And the character to act

The higher the highs

The lower the lows

The older I get

That's the way that it goes

The more that I think that I want

The less that I need

Because I realize how precious

And how short

This time with you may be

When you're young and your biggest worry's

What game you want to play

Such innocence is just surpassed

By the naivete

Take good with the worst

And better

You know they're not the same

Youth somehow brings them all together

Different they are

But subtle the shades

The higher the highs

The lower the lows

The older I get

That's the way that it goes

The more that I think that I want

The less that I need

Because I realize how precious

And how short

This time with you may be

Youth really

Is only wasted

If never

You've tasted

All the bitter

As well as sweet

I hope you don't misunderstand me

Or what I want to say

It's nothing revolutionary

Ignorance won't make this go away

Nobody likes a busybody

Nobody knows it all

There's one thing I can tell you certain

Take none for granted

Short or the tall

The higher the highs

The lower the lows

The older I get

That's the way that it goes

The more that I think that I want

The less that I need

Because I realize how precious

And how short

This time with you may be

Highs & Lows
©2000 Raymond M. Jozwiak

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Sunday, September 11, 2016

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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Saturday, September 10, 2016

Opus . . .

. . . Schmopus . . .

o·pus

ˈōpəs/Submit
noun
1. MUSIC
a separate composition or set of compositions by a particular composer, usually ordered by date of publication.
"The Gambler was Prokofiev's sixth opera, despite its early opus number"

2. any artistic work, especially one on a large scale.
"he was writing an opus on Mexico"
synonyms: composition, work, work of art, oeuvre, piece, creation
"her latest opus is a critical success"

Tenderloin was Ray Jozwiak's improvisation on Jay Graboski's modification of Third-Hand Intelligence (circa 1997). . . DESPITE its early opus number. . . (go figure!!)

Opus #1(Tenderloin)
©2016 Raymond M. Jozwiak

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Friday, September 9, 2016

Mighty . . .

. . . alrighty . . .

I am never at a loss for amazement at technology, although granted, the capability of the video camera utilized in the making of the video below is far from new, I find the ease, simplicity and user-friendliness in relation to the high quality, both audio and video, which it produces to be simply mind-boggling. When I consider the sound quality of my childhood 'record-player' or transistor radio, or the early video cameras and video cassette players, not to mention the heavy, metal telephone we had from which we communicated with extended family via a 'party line'. . . the size, weight and sheer capability of current a/v products is nothing less than . . . mighty.

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Thursday, September 8, 2016

Advocating . . .

(from Hitch 22; A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens)
". . . When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as "Mother" Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitously abolished the famous office of "Devil's Advocate," in order to fast-track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono. . ."

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