Reports From a Harmonious Reality

The end?

2005-12-13T12:40:00.000+01:00

I have been in and out of this weblog a couple of times, but I expect this posting to be the last one. If I am right this means that I will only be back for answering comments and perhaps make some technical tweaks.

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Walk in beauty

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New York? No thanks

2005-12-12T20:08:00.000+01:00

Opera are offering one of their community members a trip to New York City on New Years Eve and having her or his face shown on a big screen at Times Square.

I briefly (very briefly) considered trying to win the prize, but I quickly decided that I am not interested. There are lots of practical problems, but the real important thing is that New York is not on the list of places where I would really want to go.

Besides: Sooner or later someone would read this. I doubt that I would be a popular guest.

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Walk in beauty

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Meditation on a wishing-well

2005-12-11T19:54:00.000+01:00

If I could choose one thing to be remembered for by the international web community I most likely would choose the wishing-well. I built it for one specific person, but others may use it too. And it works.

Pour love in it and make a wish - as noble a wish as you can - and you will be given something. You may not be given what you wished, but you will be given something.

You may also pour love in it without wishing.

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Walk in beauty

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Alone?

2005-12-11T07:58:00.000+01:00

Someone commented that pictures from space of the Earth "gave the sense that Earth’s an island, surrounded by a lot of inhospitable space."

I see it quite differently.

For me it is Gaia in her huge, soft bed. And in case you think that she's alone: Have you looked at the night sky lately?

Perhaps this is just the difference between atheism and religiousness.

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Walk in beauty

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The Pope is Dead, Long Live the Pope

2005-04-19T21:49:00.001+02:00

Pope John Paul II died on the 2 April and cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected as his successor some hours ago and took the name Benedict XVI. Not being a catholic - or for that matter a Christian - it is not my business who has this office, but I do have some thoughts about it.

One significant fact about pope Benedict is that he is German and old enough to have taken active part in World War II. In this context it is important to mention that he has an anti-Nazi record. This may mean that he has good possibilities to help healing some of the remaining wounds from what the Nazis did to the world and especially to Europe. I believe that many Germans regard him as a possible helper in the task of final reconciliation between Germany and those who suffered under German Nazism and imperialism. I would not be surprised to see Pope Benedict very early focus on Israel and eastern Europe.

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Walk in beauty

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A degenerate and dying civilization

2005-03-02T23:00:00.000+01:00

Mahatma Gandhi once reportedly was asked what he thought of western civilization?

He is said to have answered:

I think it would be a good idea.

I don't know if this story actually is true or if it is a product of someone's witty imagination, but the above link suggests that Gandhi was very well aware of the existence of western civilization and that he had no high opinion of it.

I agree on both points. Western civilization does indeed exist and its very existence is the problem.

On the other hand I am quite certain that this problem is in the process of being solved in a completely natural way. For me and many others there is no doubt that the western civilization is dying just like all earlier civilizations have died.

If you find this thought to be shocking you may find comfort in another thought: It is possible that I am wrong. Of course it is. Be that as it may.

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Walk in beauty

Getting tested by life

2004-11-23T23:15:00.000+01:00

You constantly get tested by life. Some tests you fail, even some of the easy ones. Some tests you pass, even some of the hard ones.

That's life.

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Walk in beauty

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"Because it is there"

2004-10-04T16:36:00.000+02:00

George Mallory was a famous mountaineer. But today he may be more known for what he said when asked in 1924 why he wanted to climb Mount Everest:

Because it is there.

In fact many people know only the quote and have no idea who actually said the words and this is actually rather appropriate. Mallory was a very gifted person and put up great performances and is the key figure in an exciting mystery. But still his words reach much farther than his deeds.

So many people have taken a challenge that life gave them. Not because there was any rational reason to do so, but because something in them urged them to. Because the challenge was there. Some failed, some succeeded. And if they succeeded life still had some demands on them.

The great Tenzing Norgay said:

I have climbed my mountain, but I must still live my life.

Because it was there.

And his companion, Edmund Hillary, said:

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

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Walk in beauty

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In the eye of the beholder

2004-10-02T22:31:00.000+02:00

It is said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Very true. But the same is true of ugliness.

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Walk in beauty

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The day that the world did not change

2004-09-11T02:00:00.000+02:00

What happened on the 11th of September 2001? Let me first tell you what did not happen: Contrary to propaganda from some politicians and some journalists the world did not change.

Nothing happened that was in any imaginable way contrary to the fundamental nature of the world.

Nothing happened that was not fundamentally the same as what had happened lots of times before.

Nothing happened that could not have been predicted, at least in general terms.

Nothing happened that ought to have surprised people who understand the nature of the world.

But let me get back to my question: What did happen?
The short version is:

Millions of people were hit by reality, a reality which they somehow had managed to not be aware of.

Many millions of people were killed in wars in the 20th century. Millions of people were killed in violent acts that were not part of a war. Complete villages and towns have been devastated, not just individual buildings.

Yes, on the 11th of September 2001 many hundreds of people were killed by a premeditated action, most of them guilty of no crime. And many hundreds of innocent children lost a parent. And two buildings of not only material but also symbolic value were completely destroyed. But the only unusual in this was that it happened in the USA. It has happened lots of times elsewhere.

A tragedy for those people somehow involved, but it certainly did not change the world.

Will it happen again? I don't know. Logic says that sooner or later someone will succeed in directing one more cruel blow at the US American people. Exactly like logic three years ago had been saying for a long time that it could only be a matter of time before the first blow would fall.

It seems that millions of US Americans have learned nothing. And the law of life is that if you don't learn from the lessons that life give you they will be repeated.

Millions of people hate and despise the USA. Nothing has happened to diminish their hatred and contempt.
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Walk in beauty

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Glenn Gould in Salzburg 25/8/1959

2004-08-25T08:07:00.000+02:00

Today it is 45 years ago that Glenn Gould gave a recital at Mozarteum at the Salzburg Festival, a recital that was to become legendary. Gould played music by

Some years ago Sony Classical released the recordings of this recital and I am the happy owner of copy of the CD. Technically it is not a good recording with its muzzy sound and as might be expected from a recital recording there is some noise from the audience. And of course Gould hums and sings to his own playing as was his habit. But receptive listeners soon forget the disturbances for the magic of the music and of Glenn Gould's playing.

The main piece on the CD is Bach's Goldberg variations, a composition closely associated with Gould and of course it is delightful. But I personally tend to think that the most interesting experience may be the sonata by Mozart. Here Gould's singing is perhaps more intrusive than I have heard it anywhere else and he actually forms the music with it.

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Walk in beauty

Age differences between woman and man

2004-08-23T09:29:00.000+02:00

Some time ago I read about a celebrity whose name I have happily forgotten. He was in his fifties and publicly said that he would never have sexual intercourse with a woman older than 30.

I can only say about his attitude that his mental development obviously never went past puberty. But let us try to have a dispassionate look at this whole question of age differences in a relationship between a woman and a man.

There are two different healthy and natural attitudes that may be found among both women and men:

Age is not very important. It certainly is not irrelevant, but it is of secondary importance compared with the factors that really count.
Someone about the same age is preferable.

And then there are quite a lot of women who have a slightly different but still completely healthy attitude. It is rather well known that men very often mature at a later age than women. Many young women react to this by preferring men who sufficiently older than themselves to compensate for the difference.

It is also possible for a man to have a completely sensible reason to prefer younger women: Some middle-aged men want to have (more) children.

This pragmatic attitude may be confused with the immature and mentally unhealthy sexual focus on much younger women that I alluded to in the beginning, but actually it is in marked contrast to it.

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Walk in beauty

Who on earth is Arvo Part?

2004-08-22T22:12:00.000+02:00

It seems that this mysterious person is more popular among bloggers here at blogger.com than the great Estonian composer of a somewhat similar name: Arvo Pärt.

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Walk in beauty

Count Basie 21/8/1904

2004-08-21T07:04:00.000+02:00

William "Count" Basie was one of the greats of 20th century music. Basie and the few years older Duke Ellington for several decades towered above everything else in big band jazz and toured the world as ambassadors for the musical heritage of Afro-Americans.

Count Basie was an excellent pianist too. His style was minimalist with few but exquisitely chosen tones and chords. On one of the recordings from a public concert (can't remember which one) this fact is contrasted in a delightful way: Suddenly cascades of piano tones gush forth. Basie had seen Oscar Peterson - a good friend and a musician of the same calibre but a quite different style - standing half hidden behind the scene and called him before the curtain and offered him the music stool.

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Walk in beauty

A homage to Carlos Kleiber

2004-08-17T22:59:00.000+02:00

In classical music the 20th century to a very large extent was the century of the star conductors. Carlos Kleiber was one of the biggest stars. Or at least he could have been if he wanted to, but he evidently did not.

It was said about Kleiber that he only conducted when the emptiness of his refrigerator forced him to. And that his desk had two drawers: One with unpaid bills and one with unsigned contracts for conducting concerts or making disc recordings. When the first drawer was full he would take a contract from the other drawer and sign it.

There is hardly one single of his recordings that is not legendary, hardly one note that is not filled with life and emotion. If you don't know classical music but would like to open your mind for it one of your best options would be to buy the complete recordings of Carlos Kleiber.

Right now I am listening to his magic recording of Beethoven's 5th symphony. This is vintage Kleiber. Every single note is rhythmically and dynamically right in the bull's eye.

Carlos Kleiber is no more. He died on the 13th of July. But the music still pulsates and dances and makes sonorous magic.
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Walk in beauty

Wishes

2004-08-12T08:07:00.000+02:00

Somebody once said something like:

There are two curses in life:

Not having your wishes fulfilled.
Having your wishes fulfilled.

As I see it there is only one way of avoiding those two curses: Do not have wishes.

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Walk in beauty

Quality or quantity?

2004-08-11T06:51:00.000+02:00

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.

This famous quote by Galileo Galilei is an expression of what some people call measuring-fetishism, a term that was coined among hifi-nerds many years ago to describe the attitude that the ultimate judgments about quality levels of hifi equipment should be made by measuring distortion, noise etc.

As you may already have thought out I disagree strongly with Galilei. For me it is quite obvious that quality and quantity are two completely different phenomena and that it is hopeless trying to quantify or measure quality.

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Walk in beauty

Changing the world?

2004-08-10T07:08:00.000+02:00

Mahatma Gandhi said:

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

Aldous Huxley said basically the same from a slightly different angle:

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner.

I have always wondered about those people who have incredible amounts of critical sense pointing outwards to a world that they want to change but seem to be completely unwilling to see their own actions and opinions in a critical light.

Like Gandhi and Huxley I believe that they have very limited prospects of changing anything. They certainly have not impressed me.

Personally I am still working on what Aldous Huxley calls my "own corner" and have little hope of ever finishing it.

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Walk in beauty

Questions

2004-08-08T21:20:00.000+02:00

What is life?
What is death?
What is beauty?
What is ugliness?
What is good?
What is evil?
What is truth?
What is lie?
What is randomness?
And does it exist?
Who or what am I?
Who or what are you?
What is knowledge?
What is belief?
What is ignorance?
What is wisdom?
Has the world (including you) real existence?
Or is it just something that I imagine?
Are my questions important?
Are the answers?

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Walk in beauty

A basis of morality

2004-08-07T08:30:00.000+02:00

I have always wondered what atheists and materialists might regard as the basis of morality. Some materialists are quite frank and say that there is no genuine morality, that morality is a human invention, an illusion. I must say that I respect the honesty of those people and the consistency and logic of their view. I disagree with them, but there is no doubt that if I had their starting point I would with inevitable logic reach the same conclusion.

By contrast I am deeply confused by those materialists who allow themselves to moralize. I have seen tonnes of atheists express their indignation over the atrocities that Christians, Muslims, Jews etc. have done to humanity and to truth and honesty. I understand the indignation, but I am completely unable to comprehend what moral justification an atheist can have for virtuous indignation.

My own morality is completely seamlessly integrated into my idea of the world. The reality that I live in is spiritual and morality is a natural part of it. I do not claim to understand this morality very well and I very often sin against it, but none of my life's experiences has ever given me any cause to doubt that it is there.

Not so with atheists and materialists. If they want to give their indignation any moral weight they will first have to show a convincing morality. I have not seen that happen. Where would they find the basis for such a morality? In the chaotic material world that they believe in? Hardly. Would they construct it themselves? Why should other people respect their home-made morality?

The morality upon which I try to build my own life, my own opinions and my own actions might be suggested by these words by Mahatma Gandhi: Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

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Walk in beauty

Learning from your opponents

2004-08-04T16:15:00.000+02:00

In the complicated and somewhat confusing reality of modern industrial civilization it is important to have an open mind. If you live a life close to nature it is much more easy to keep in constant touch with the fundamental realities of life and you do not really have to care about other people's experiences, but in modern "information society" you are constantly bombarded with pseudo-knowledge from fake authorities.

There is a very real risk that you will take over an ideology wholesale from the nearest or loudest pseudo-authority. To reduce that danger you should in my opinion do two things:

1. Carefully consider your own experiences of life. (I hope to make this point the topic of another article.)

2. Make yourself acquainted with those opinions that are opposed to your own. And do not make the very common mistake of carefully concentrating on the most stupid or dishonest of your opponents in order to "prove" the validity of your own view by the flattering contrast.

You can learn much from getting to really know and understand your opposition.

A. First there is the possibility of realising that an opposing opinion actually fits better with your experiences than the one you had chosen yourself.

B. If that is not the case there may still be some minor aspects where you may learn something from your opposition.

C. It is good to have your views tested under harsh conditions. If they pass the test of being carefully compared with hostile accusations against them you may consider them to be fairly well-authenticated.

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Walk in beauty

Religion is for cowards and hypocrites, right?

2004-08-02T23:33:00.000+02:00

It is a central part of materialistic and atheistic ideology that religions per definition are unrealistic. According to materialists and atheists a religious attitude has to be either hypocritical or based on ignorance or fear.

I cannot judge about ignorance as a possible foundation for religion. This ignorance would have to be my own and how would I be able to have a qualified opinion about that? But I can say with absolute certainty that neither hypocrisy nor fear are to any degree problems that characterize religions. They are people's own personal problems regardless of what philosophy of life they may have chosen.

My own religiousness is totally fearless and completely honest. And I know many religious people who could say the same.

It is true that some people who claim to be religious are hypocritical about their religion or have fled into it because of fear. But that is their personal problem, not their religion's problem.

My own potential cowardice never is relevant for my religiousness for the very simple reason that there is nothing in this field that I fear. What fears I have deal with very banal situations from everyday life and do not involve existential questions.

Nor do my occasional tendency to a certain lack of sincerity have any relevance in religious questions for there is simply nothing to be dishonest about. The lies I have told in my life have all been about replacing an inconvenient truth with a more pleasant lie. But in this case the truth as I see it and have been testing it through all my life is much more beautiful than any lie that I could think of or have heard from others.

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Walk in beauty

Words from the heart

2004-07-31T20:49:00.000+02:00

A nurse had developed the habit that before listening to the chests of her child patients she would let them listen to their own hearts through the stethoscope. This experience would always make their eyes light up with awe. One day she asked a four year old boy: "What do you suppose that is?" He made a very puzzled face while listening to the strange tapping sounds coming from his chest. Then he broke into a wondrous grin. "Is that Jesus knocking?" he asked the nurse.

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Walk in beauty

Attaining greatness through flaws

2004-07-28T10:54:00.000+02:00

I do believe (but can hardly know for sure) that saints really exist and that there are people whose characters are flawless. And this is not some escapist dream that I flee into for fear of a tough reality. It is actually something suggested by the patterns in what I do know from everyday life. From my own experiences with the world it would be quite logical to expect that saints exist though they may be very seldom.

But though true saintliness may be an interesting topic this article is about something that may be a bit more relevant for most of us: Greatness attained in spite of - and perhaps to some extent because of - human shortcomings.

And this is actually something that I know about from myself: I certainly do not believe that I have more greatness than most people, but it's a rather surprising fact that what evidences of greatness I see in myself is closely connected with some of my most significant shortcomings. As if the existence of those shortcomings so to speak force me to develop my best strengths.

And I believe to see that in others too. Nelson Mandela is a magnificent example. I get a very strong impression that his knowledge of his own flaws has been a strong factor behind his constant attempts to reach as high a moral level as was within his reach.

He is an example to all of us. At least to those of us who are not saints!

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Walk in beauty

Doing several things at the same time

2004-07-27T17:49:00.000+02:00

Lyndon B. Johnson reportedly once said about Gerald Ford that he could not chew gum and walk at the same time. I was reminded of that old story one day when I was counting some drops falling into a glass of water while at the same time I was chewing - not gum but raisins - and I got the numbers mixed up because the drops were falling in another rhythm than I was chewing.

Some people are more competent. Glenn Gould could listen to two different radio broadcasts at the same time. I can do that too, but the difference is that Gould could understand both while I presumably would understand neither.

And the aging Arturo Toscanini once was seen having a score on the music desk before him while conducting an opera. This was quite contrary to his habits so between two acts a spectator asked a musician if age at last was taking its toll from the maëstro's memory. "Oh no", was the answer. "He is studying the opera that we will be playing tomorrow."

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Walk in beauty

What a wonderful world.....

2004-07-21T16:25:00.000+02:00

Louis Armstrong grew up in poverty and violence among people some of whom had been slaves. Nevertheless I have not been able to find one single word written or spoken by him that betrayed self pity. Nor have I found self pity in his music. From his playing on the cornet always shone beauty, clarity and harmony.

The title of this post is taken from a song written by Bob Thiele and George Weiss. Louis Armstrong made that song famous.

Some people called the song and its title naive and unrealistic. Armstrong rejected that criticism in spoken words in a recording of it. And with his personal background he certainly had the moral authority to do that. He was not an escapist. He knew about harsh realities of life and he had been able to integrate them.

What a wonderful world. What a wonderful musician.

Walk in beauty

Magical Andean flutes

2004-07-14T19:20:00.000+02:00

I have to say that I know very little about the music of the Andes region, but what I do know gives me the impression that this is indeed where you will find the most exciting and most beautiful music of all America. Nothing of what I have heard from North America surpasses this, nor does what I know of the incredibly rich and varied musical of the rest of South America.

Right now I am listening to a CD with those wonderful flutes and other Andean instruments. Delicious.

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Walk in beauty

Artificial reality?

2004-07-13T23:04:00.000+02:00

You have heard about artificial intelligence? This term has always amazed me and I would like to suggest some others:

Artificial wisdom.
Artificial truth.
Artificial knowledge.
Artificial honesty.
Artificial love.
Artificial beauty.

Walk in beauty

Pablo Neruda in memoriam

2004-07-12T23:04:00.000+02:00

Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, was born 100 years ago today. His greatest masterpiece, Canto general, is one of the great collections of poetry.

It is quite some time ago that I read some of his poetry. I read Neruda's poems in excellent Danish translations. My Spanish never was good enough to give me full profit of texts at that literary level. But I still remember the impression his poems made on me.

I also remember his death. I don't believe that he was actually murdered by the fascist regime that took power in Chile in 1973 in a military coup. They did not have to murder him. He was mortally ill. Still his death is closely connected with political violence.

But his poems live. Their light will still shine when his persecutors are deservedly forgotten.

Walk in beauty

Tobacco smoking will damage your health, right?

2004-07-11T15:41:00.000+02:00

Wrong!

Tobacco abuse will damage your health just like any kind of abuse will. And according to my experiences the huge majority of tobacco smokers are tobacco abusers so in practice most often tobacco smoking will be unhealthy. But you should blame the smokers for that, not the innocent tobacco plant.

Walk in beauty

What year is this? A.D. 2004? Or A.D. 1707?

2004-07-10T08:56:00.000+02:00

Falsification of history is a very well known phenomenon. It mostly happens in a local or private or otherwise limited sense:

A woman lies about the paternity of her child and the wrong man is registered and officially regarded as the father. Or a foreman in a small business lies about why a worker was removed from a specific job and the foreman's lie goes into history as the official truth.

Such things are happening all over the world all the time. Most of them affect very few people. But sometimes a swindle is made with history that gives very many people an unprecise understanding of the past.

One such swindle may be 297 extra years in our calendar! Today I stumbled upon this exciting theory that the years from 614 to 911 do not really exist but were artificially added. Somebody made a jump in the calendar and then those invented years were filled with invented persons ans invented events.

This theory of a phantom time seems to have been discussed quite a lot in Germany for several years, but I had never heard of it before.

I do not claim to understand the pros and cons, but it looks like the theory cannot stand scrutiny. Too bad, in a way. Somehow the theory seemed more elegant.

I cannot give you any links. The German website that markets this Phantomzeit theory is of very low technical quality and I will not link to it. And the websites arguing against the theory are not much better.

Walk in beauty

Nathaniel Hawthorne in memoriam

2004-07-04T21:32:00.000+02:00

Today it is 200 years ago that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born. He belongs to the first generation of American writers who reached a level to make them worthy of being compared with the best European writers.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was arguably the first great American novelist and The Scarlet Letter, his greatest masterpiece, is still one of the finest novels in American literature. One of the most remarkable features of this beautiful novel is the fact that Pearl - the little girl who is the result of a sin - fares well and does carry the burden of the original sin.

Hawthorne's writings show a deep and broad understanding of the fundamental conditions of human life. His literary works have passed the test of time very well.

Walk in beauty

"George Sand" in memoriam

2004-07-01T23:46:00.000+02:00

Just a few minutes before the 1st of July ends here in Denmark (and in France) I found out that today it is 200 years ago that Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin (later married Dudevant) was born.

This fascinating woman who today may mostly be remembered for her relation to Fréderic Chopin and other male celebrities was a famous writer in her day.

She used the pseudonym George Sand as a writer and did indeed challenge the accepted borders of feminine behaviour. It is not unreasonable to regard her as one of the very important pioneers for the social movements that were to give women a completely different position in public life in the 20th century.

Walk in beauty

Music of life vol. II

2004-06-29T00:27:00.000+02:00

May I assume that we are instruments on which God plays the music of life. The tone is impure. Own wishes, purposes for our own sake, the way they express themselves and are pursued — we understand that as our individuality. But it is exactly this that makes the tone impure. There is no eternity in this. Competence, perhaps, talents, all that you want, but it will disappear. Soon it will be as if it had never been. Give it up. Let it die already while you are alive — and you are just God's instrument. The tone is pure and it is exactly you....Destruction, ruin, you said — yes, it feels like that, because we perceive the impurity of the tone as the unfolding of our personality though actually it is its hindrance. The pure tone is exactly us. It is God who plays, us who sound....

Thus wrote the Danish novelist J. Anker Larsen in his novel, Martha og Maria. This quote is in my own translation from Danish, but the novel does exist in an English translation.

And elsewhere:

The whole world is a loud song.

This quote is taken from a short story: Landsbyens Magdalene. I don't know if the story has been translated to English.

Walk in beauty

Integrated opposites

2004-06-28T23:26:00.000+02:00

I have always been fascinated by phenomena that seem to somehow have their own opposites integrated. Here are a few examples:

People:
1. Old people with agile and open minds.
2. Young people who possess genuine wisdom.
3. Women with a "height" that would allow them to stand under my beard if they came close enough, but who nevertheless have big personalities.

Music:
1. Some sopranos have an incredibly beautiful sound when they sing in the deepest end of their register.
2. Some bass instruments (violoncello, basoon) have a very exciting sound in their upper register.

Walk in beauty

A dream inside a dream inside a dream?

2004-06-16T23:03:00.000+02:00

Have you ever dreamt that you were dreaming? Or to put it in other words: Have you ever had a dream inside another dream? Have you tried to dream in that outer dream that you woke up from the inner dream?

I can remember having had such an experience at least once. The funny thing was that waking up inside the outer dream felt like "really" waking up.

And perhaps this life is really a dream that someone is dreaming. I have read that some Hindus actually have a name for that dreamer: Brahma. Apart from that the most well known presentation of this thought may be a poem by Lewis Carroll where he asked: Life what is it but a dream?

Walk in beauty

Ray Charles in memoriam

2004-06-10T23:57:00.000+02:00

One of the giants passed away. Rest in peace, Ray. Your light still shines.

Walk in beauty

A mantra of love

2004-06-06T11:55:00.000+02:00

Shima is a Hopi word, meaning love. The word has been used by Hopi shamans as text in a song.

Deva Premal used the song as a mantra on The Essence which was where I learnt to know it. And in this score is a four part arrangement of the song. (There also is a link where you can hear an excerpt of Deva Premal's version.)

In the Navajo language Shima is a girl's name meaning mother. A very appropriate coincidence considering what Marlene Dietrich said about a mother's love: Love in its purest and most passionate form.

Shima shima shima-a shima, shima shi-ima-a shima ya.

Walk in beauty

Bruce Chatwin in memoriam

2004-05-31T09:12:00.000+02:00

My own knowledge of Bruce Chatwin is indeed very limited. I never was part of the "cult" around Chatwin and I only have read The Songlines (in the Danish translation), but in this most succesful of his book I found an attitude that in my opinion makes Chatwin and his books deserve the interest of anybody who wants to understand this multi-cultural globe a little better.

And today is a good day to remember Bruce Chatwin. He was born on the 31st of May in 1940 so it would have been his 64th birthday.

Walk in beauty

Grand ladies of music

2004-05-30T09:07:00.000+02:00

.... as found among my CD's and LP's.

Hildegard of Bingen is the earliest female composer that is known today. She may not be able to compete with the fame of some female pop singers who compose (some of) their own music, but she is the best known female composer in the classical European tradition. And arguably she is the greatest of all female composers regardless of musical genre.

And Hildegard was much more than "just" a (great) composer. She encompassed a broad field but those other aspects of her activity are not dealt with here.

There are quite a few recordings with wonderful singers from very different genres on my shelves. To name a few:

Miriam Makeba, affectionately called Mama Africa by many.

Angélique Kidjo, another generation, another African country, another style, but another wonderfully pulsating singer and showing the same kind of responsibility to people who are victims of some kind of oppression.

Mari Boine is another representative of a people that for a long time has been oppressed by mainstream European culture. She is a Sami and perhaps the most significant example of the Sami joik getting to be a part of world music without losing its own identity.

Walk in beauty

Two sages complementing each other

2004-05-25T15:59:00.000+02:00

Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.

Thus reportedly said one sage: Confucius.

Instead:

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

As said by Jesus of Nazareth.

Walk in beauty

Music of life: "Life itself is tone"

2004-05-22T08:35:00.000+02:00

On the 23rd of May in 1803 Johann Wilhelm Ritter wrote to Hans Christian Ørsted:

I cannot tell thee what a complete Acoustics can give. As if it were to hit each case accurately. Since I have dived into history and everywhere see periods rising and going back Oscillation for me has got an elevated meaning and the frequent attempts to reduce everything to cycles are educative. There is Oscillation at the foundation of all perception by the senses. Light is visible tone, tone is audible light, smell is smelled tone, taste is tasted smell. Also the sense of touch concords with Oscillation. In every change of condition there is Oscillation at the basics. Every chemical process comes from maximum of Oscillation through its gradual changing into the end product and life itself is tone. In short: everywhere where something happens it necessarily happens oscillatorilly.

(My translation from Ritter's original text in German. Please feel free to suggest improvements.)

For several years I had the impression that Ritter's only claim to being remembered was his friendship with H. C. Ørsted, but he was actually a fine scientist in his own right and made significant discoveries. And he had an important influence on Ørsted's philosophy:

Originally Ørsted as a representative of Kant's new critical philosophy had a rejecting attitude to the romantic Nature Philosophy. But this changed after a prolonged visit to Johann Wilhelm Ritter in 1801.

(My translation from Humboldts Briefwechsel mit romantischen Naturforschern)

Walk in beauty

A perfect world? An imperfect world?

2004-05-19T10:56:00.000+02:00

Is the world perfect? I have heard or read some self assured statements to the effect that the world is certainly not perfect. Here is a strong one:

Nothing is more certain from all human experience than the fact that the world is not perfect.

The writer and others with the same opinion may be right. How am I to know? I can only say that if he expresses a certainty it is a certainty in which I do not have any share. I do not personally have access to any knowledge deserving to be called a proof of the world's imperfection.

All I know is that the world is as it is. It certainly demands a level of wisdom far beyond mine to judge whether the world is perfect or imperfect. I tend to believe that it actually demands perfect (pun intended!) wisdom.

There are phenomenons of the world that I personally regard as imperfect in themselves.

But of course this fact can in no way be regarded as a proof that the world is imperfect. My opinion of those phenomenons might be wrong.

But even if they indeed are imperfect their imperfection is not a proof. For all I know they may be indispensable parts of an overall scheme that is indeed perfect.

For my part the question of the world's degree of perfection still stands wide open and I do not have any ambitions of finding an answer. I prefer to limit myself to working on those "local" imperfections that I have a chance of both understanding and improving: my own ones.

Walk in beauty

Pain, sorrow, anger - and beauty

2004-05-17T23:43:00.000+02:00

A few days ago I stumbled upon a website where a young Norwegian woman tells about some of the burdens that lie upon her. Having been raped is the one central experience that colours all the others. I was really surprised to find genuine beauty in her writings. There is no mistaking the pain and sorrow and desperation, but still the best of her writings are intensely beautiful.

That reading experience reminded me of some other situations when I have found beauty the most unlikely places:

There was a great Russian composer whose name in English is rendered Shostakovich. He was one of the greatest composers of string quartets and his most famous string quartet is no. 8 which was inspired by his visit to Dresden after the 2nd World War.

That city with its great cultural traditions had been more or less ruined by allied bombings. String quartet no. 8 is dedicated to the victims of fascism and war, but it is so filled with musical quotes from his earlier compositions that it must be considered a good guess that he felt himself to be among those victims.

There is so much pain and sorrow in this music that for many years I simply could not stand hearing it. I eventually learned to cope with the pain and thus get the possibility of enjoying the great beauty of this masterpiece.

When Eduard Douwes Dekker (Multatuli) wrote his famous novel, Max Havelaar, many people wrote to him about the extraordinary beauty of his language.

Multatuli did not like that compliment. He had written his novel to express his sorrow and anger about what he had seen in the Dutch colonies. His agenda was not about beauty.

But is there beauty in Max Havelaar? Yes there is. Very much, actually. Like there is in string quartet no. 8 by Shostakovich and like there is in the writings of the raped girl.

Pain, sorrow and anger do not exclude beauty. They are not evidences of an ugly world. That is the great miracle. It is possible to express genuine pain, genuine sorrow and genuine anger and still have great beauty in your expression.

Walk in beauty

South Africa kicking it home

2004-05-15T23:31:00.000+02:00

Today it was decided that the World Cup in football in 2010 will be in South Africa. Of course this was to a large degree decided because of banal facts. South Africa has the infrastructure and there is huge public interest for football. And for some years South Africa has had a strong national team that has a natural place in the World Cup.

But there is also appropriate political symbolism in this decision. It was about time that the World Cup tournament were held in Africa and no other African country would be a more fitting place than South Africa. This country more clearly than any other exemplifies Africa carrying the burden of European imperialism and slowly finding its own identity again.

And then there is Nelson Mandela, of course. Nothing could be more appropriate than the grand old man of Africa doing one more symbolic deed and being the first African to lift the prize in triumph.

Walk in beauty

Not one more word about the royal wedding

2004-05-13T21:30:00.001+02:00

(Well not after this post at least!)

Tomorrow (I think!) there is going to be a royal wedding here in Denmark. This is one of those events when a lot of people show much more about themselves than they are aware of.

I know exactly what my own (lack of) reaction shows about me.

A Danish "expert in communication" wrote in a Danish weekly that the Danish royal family is the center of "our" last great community. In that case I am certainly not one of "us".

(I seldom am. When people use terms as "we" or "us" they mostly make statements that very obviously are not true about me!)

My own Danishness has deep roots in the landscape, in Danish history, language and culture and in my descent from a family as old as the Danish nation. My Danishness is not in the slightest degree dependent on events in an inter-European royal family that definitely is less Danish than me.

Walk in beauty

World Wide Web: A multi-cultural network or one more tool for cultural imperialism?

2004-05-08T23:47:00.000+02:00

Moved to a new address at another blog:

World Wide Web: A multi-cultural network or one more tool for cultural imperialism?

Walk in beauty

Perfetto come la 'O' di Giotto

2004-05-06T23:15:00.000+02:00

Many years ago I heard or read the wonderful story about a great painter who painted a perfect circle freehand. Over the years I forgot both his name and the circumstances under which he performed his great deed, but then some time ago I stumbled upon the information: It was Giotto di Bondone. And his deed inspired an Italian proverb that I have chosen as title for this article:

Perfect as Giotto's O

What is so perfect about Giotto's circle?

First of all: A circle is in itself a perfect phenomenon that combines a wealth of qualities and meanings with the utmost simplicity.

And secondly: This particular circle was the result of a performance almost as perfect as possible for a human. Giotto combined technical mastery with a deep understanding of the essentials of life.

Walk in beauty

My native language is degenerating. How about yours?

2004-05-05T23:52:00.000+02:00

"The Danish language is ugly."

Such - in my own translation to English - were the words in a letter to the editor in a Danish computer magazine a couple of years ago.

I strongly disagree. The best Danish writers produce linguistic beauty at the same level as the best writers of any language that I know. And some Danes are able to make spoken Danish very beautiful though perhaps they may not be able to reach quite the same beauty as you may hear in for example Norwegian, Russian, Italian or Portuguese.

But it is true that some versions of spoken and written Danish are indeed ugly. A very obvious example is the bastard language that I would call Danglish and which dominates large parts of the Danish Internet. Danish IT professionals in general are very incompetent in the use of their native language.

My local dialect is dying, killed by radio, movies, telephone, TV and the tendency to move from rural districts into town. I do not think that anybody below 30 years speak it. And now Internet is doing the same to the national language.

But be that as it may. All languages eventually die. Latin was once a large and dominating language and now it is dead. It is only natural that Danish follows the same path. But I would have liked it to die in beauty, not in ugliness.

Walk in beauty

Magical mystical musical tour vol. IV

2004-05-04T23:45:00.000+02:00

Flamenco Festival is a rather insignificant title for a CD and I believe that it has been used more than once. My own CD with that title is a rather heterogeneous collection. It looks like the record company had 22 minutes with one guitarist, 28 minutes with another and 14 with a third and decided to put this together on one CD and give it an appropriate title. But the music is excellent!

Carlos Montoya may not have quite the legendary status of his uncle, Ramón Montoya, but he was certainly one of the greats of the flamenco guitar. In my personal judgment his playing is not on quite the same level of technical perfection as that of Sabicas and Juan Serrano, the two other guitarists on the CD, but it has more warmth and beauty.

Sabicas is in good company on the three tracks that carry his name. Two different cantaores (singers), a host of percussionists and dancers and another guitarist.

This other guitarist is a very interesting member of the team of musicians. He is obviously not a guitarist of Sabicas' elevated standard, but he performs his job very well. He is a supporter and he fills out "holes" in the musical structure.

It is obvious that Sabicas has complete freedom in his improvisations so now and then he will be very difficult to follow. In those cases the other guitarist will often play "open" chords, but in one of those situations where he actually plays in a key he chooses a wrong one! He immediately corrects himself and gets onto the same track that the master has chosen.

The two singers are excellent too. And the sound of the dancers, the clapping hands, castagnettes etc. help to create a wonderfully pulsating poly-rhythmic atmosphere. This music is light-years away from the industrialised militaristic "rhythms" of most pop music.

Juan Serrano also has singers and a fine rhythm group. One of the songs, Rumba Flamenca with Chaléco (José Fernandez) has some features that make it deserve special treatment. (I intend to deal with it in another article.) In general these songs are great examples of what a good flamenco group can perform.

Walk in beauty

Magical mystical musical tour vol. III

2004-05-03T23:33:00.000+02:00

Ever heard of Sabicas? Or indeed heard himself? In my opinion he is a good bid for the title as the greatest guitarist ever being recorded. And I base that on only two CDs.

One is Grande figure du flamenco, vol. 14: Sabicas, an excellent anthology from Le chant du monde. Here Sabicas displays his incredible virtuosity that according to connoiseurs easily surpasses anything heard before. But those technical skills of the great craftsman actually were not what most clearly set him apart from other flamenco guitarists.

The most significant quality of Sabicas was something else: A combination of two abilities that in themselves were seldom but in their combination were unique and theoretically might be considered contradictory until you heard the combination of them performed at the level that Sabicas mastered.

He had a lightness and clarity in his tone and in the structure of his music that I have not heard with any other flamenco musician and very seldom with musicians of any other genre. (This clarity caused someone to compare Sabicas with Joseph Haydn.)

And on the other hand Sabicas had all the duende that you could possibly wish for. And duende is the one quality that a flamenco musician simply must have.

On the last track of this CD Sabicas accompanies another flamenco legend: Carmen Amaya. And strangely enough it seems to me that he manages to raise his incredible quality level one more step. It is as if the opportunity to play with another great musician adds another dimension to his playing. He still has excellent solo improvisations, but he also exhibits a wonderful ability to let his guitar playing support his co-musician.

This is also evident on the other CD, a rather mixed affair named Flamenco Festival where we can meet two other great flamenco guitarists: Carlos Montoya and Juan Serrano. But that is another story to be told later.

Walk in beauty

Magical mystical musical tour vol. II

2004-05-02T23:27:00.000+02:00

Considering that Estonia just joined the EU I regard this as a very appropriate place to mention Arvo Pärt. One of my favourite CDs is Fratres with I Fiamminghi. There are no less than six different versions of the wonderful title piece on that CD.

The other compositions on the CD make it total 79 minutes of sheer beauty. Pärt was one of those composers who turned new "classical" music in a more spiritual and religious direction in the years around 1970. Fratres is a magnificent example of this.

Estonia has a significant position in Danish history. Legend has it that Dannebrog, our flag, came falling from the sky during a battle in Estonia.

Walk in beauty

Ayrton Senna in memoriam

2004-05-01T23:35:00.000+02:00

Today it is 10 years ago that Ayrton Senna was killed in San Marino's grand prix.

And who was Ayrton Senna? Many people - with Stirling Moss among them - claim that he was the greatest racing driver ever. There may be differing opinions about this. Tazio Nuvolari, Juan-Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark and Michael Schumacher are some other drivers that might be considered worthy candidates to that title.

Jackie Stewart is not quite as categorical as Stirling Moss in his opinion of Senna, but he has described him as the fastest driver ever. And this may be the central fact about Senna as a driver: He was unbelievably fast. He went closer to the limits of his cars than what their constructors believed to be possible.

The negative aspect of his driving style was that he was completely uncompromising in his pursuit of victory on the track. He may have been the only driver to ever gain a world championship by pushing a rival off the track.

But there is more about Ayrton Senna than his qualities behind the steering wheel of a racing car. There is good sense in describing him as the most fascinating personality ever to drive a Formula 1 car.

Senna was a strong personality that dominated not only other drivers but also the teams that he drove for. He was very intelligent and he spoke several languages fluently and with a poetic quality. He was deeply religious and he meditated as part of his preparations for races. He was born into a wealthy family but was very conscious of the fact that many thousands of children in Brasil live in the streets. He set up a foundation to help them.

Senna's death was the most shocking and traumatic event in the history of a sport that has seen many of its greatest performers being killed. Ten years later the admiration has not diminished.

Walk in beauty

Healing Europe

2004-05-01T07:40:00.000+02:00

Readers from other continents will have to forgive me for being very Euro-centric in this post. I find it extremely important for Europeans to develop their consciousness of cultures in other continents, but right now I will allow myself to be very European.

I grew up at a time when Europe still had very deep wounds from the 2nd World War. Denmark certainly was one of those few European countries that had come reasonably unhurt through the war, but even here the consequences were very evident. And many other European countries had suffered very much more.

And it was not just that one big war. The changes in Europe in the first half of the 20th century were huge. First there was the 1st World War and then revolutions and civil wars in several countries. All those events were still casting long shadows over Europe.

Some of the shadows slowly retreated through my childhood and youth. Old enemies in western Europe forgave each other and began cooperating. Dictatorships in Portugal and Spain crumbled. There were backlashes in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but eventually the Soviet empire crumbled too. And surprisingly peacefully.

Yugoslavia, another product of the chaotic first half of the 20th century also broke down. This process was cruel and without any comparison Europe's worst attack of insanity since the 2nd World War. And that story has not seen an ending yet.

But the tendency is clear: Europe is in a process of healing after the gruesome 20th century. And today on the 1st of May 2004 a new significant step in that healing process is taken: Many countries that for decades were cut off from the rest of Europe join the EU.

Of course we should not overestimate the importance of such a membership, but for those countries it has a huge symbolic significance.

We might almost say that today the 20th century at long last ended.

Walk in beauty

A magical mystical musical tour

2004-04-30T23:33:00.000+02:00

How about a small tour in my personal CD-collection?

The tour begins in Denmark. Two Danish jazz musicians, Morten Øberg and Bent Lundgaard, in 1998 released a lovely CD with Danish psalms and songs in softly jazzified versions for saxophone and keyboard instruments: Gør døren høj. (This link leads to an mp3 file with the title song.) Rhythm and harmony are treated with a significant degree of freedom, but love and respect for the songs are the two strongest elements in the attitudes of the musicians.

The step to Jan Johansson's Folkvisor is a logical one. In Lundgaard's playing like in so many other Scandinavian jazz pianists you may now and then hear the legacy of the legendary Jan Johansson. Johansson reached his greatest fame with recordings of Swedish traditional folk music. This music often plays games with tonalities just like jazz does with its blue notes.

Folkvisor collects to LPs: Jazz på svenska and Jazz på ryska. In the latter Johansson investigates another incredibly rich musical heritage: Russian folk music. In doing this he bridges three different musical traditions. The result is delicious.

There is quite a jump to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. This magnificent representative of Qawwali, the old musical tradition of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, made some incredibly beautiful recordings at a concert in Paris. I am the happy owner of one CD from this concert: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan en concert a Paris vol. 1

Walk in beauty

Being respected as an individual or as a member of a group?

2004-04-26T23:50:00.000+02:00

Many people seem to expect being respected by others just for the fact that they belong to a group of some kind: a profession, a nation, a gender, a race, an age group, a religion etc. etc. etc.

It is really amazing how many journalists, doctors, scientists, priests, IT professionals etc. expect you or me to automatically discard our own experiences if those experiences happen to not fit into the teachings of the authorities.

And as to national arrogance: I am completely dumbfounded to see the huge number of well educated and fairly intelligent Americans who seem to be completely unaware that many people outside the USA do not at all feel inferior to them.

(Of course I am well acquainted with the combination of chauvinism and provincialism in Denmark, but the difference is that even the most narrow-minded Dane cannot avoid knowing that some other nations perform better in some fields than we do.)

I have only briefly mentioned racist, sexist, religious and age based arrogance. Perhaps I can go more into depth with these problems in later posts, but for now I would prefer to mention the positive side of the topic:

I do indeed know journalists, doctors, scientists, priests and IT professionals who are very competent while at the same time their characters seem completely devoid of arrogance.

And I also have the luck to know many Americans whose friendship indeed is a great honour for me. But that honour is solely built on the fact that those people personally are who they are.

Walk in beauty

"Evolution": not open to debate?

2004-04-14T17:44:00.000+02:00

Some people do not like to be contradicted. Depending on their starting point they may use different tactics to fight the unwelcome dissension. If they believe in "science" they may state that their opinion is not an opinion but a fact and by contradicting them you contradict a fact. Here is a good example that I found on an atheist website:

"Evolution is a fact. This is not open to debate."

Oh, indeed? Sorry to say so, but I do not recognize your "fact". I do realize that change is a fact, but I cannot regard "evolution" as anything other than an interpretation.

Often it is fairly easy to realize that some kind of change is happening in the world, but it may be very difficult to interpret the nature of that change. What looks like a linear or exponential growth may very well in reality be a very small part of a circular and periodical process.

Any kind of "evolution" may simply be a misunderstanding based on nothing but the evolutionists limited perspective. If we imagine a person with a memory of only the 12 hours from midnight to noon on one day that person may very well interpret the events in nature during those 12 hours as nothing but evolution.

From my point of view Darwinism or any other kind of theory of evolution may be regarded as a "solution in search of a problem". And my personal view of the world does not have the problem that Darwinism was supposed to solve.

Oh, and by the way: I am not a creationist. Or if I indeed am a creationist in some meaning of the word it is certainly not the meaning that evolutionists like to give it.

It seems to me that many evolutionists prefer to believe that anyone daring to disagree with them must necessarily be a creationist. A creationist of the one and only kind that they seem to know about. And that is simply not true.

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Walk in beauty

When will they ever learn?

2004-04-12T23:45:00.000+02:00

I am not anti-American. How could I possibly be with all the American friends that I have? But neither am I "pro-American". My attitude to the USA is strictly neutral and has been for many years.

When George W. Bush decided to attack Iraq I did not for one second seriously consider the possibility that he might be honest about the reasons he gave for the attack. Right from the start I was convinced that the attack was mainly a part of his reelection campaign. Bush was playing the tough guy and showing the American electorate that he could and would hit back at "the bad guys".

And later events seem to confirm my opinion. When the large statue of Saddam Hussein was famously pulled down the event was turned into a demonstration of American force. And recent fighting in Iraq seem to be results of an American wish to show who is in power.

The current American administration acts like it is determined to make more and more people hate the USA. That is hardly the case, but no matter what their intention may be there can be no doubt that more hate will be the result.

Where have all the soldiers gone?
They've gone to graveyards, every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Walk in beauty

And never the twain shall meet?

2004-04-05T23:50:00.000+02:00

There is nothing new in the fact that many politicians and journalists and other professional opinion makers like to use terms like "the west" and "western" in a way that I regard as intimidating, insinuating and definitely insulting. It has been like that in all the time that I remember.

But it has become worse in the last couple of years. And I feel the necessity of making my own position clear.

I do live in a country that geographically can be called "western" and I do have some of my spiritual roots deep down in a culture that is closely connected with the area where I live.

But my thoughts and ideas and feelings can by no means be characterized as "western". They are not tied to a geographical area. They are universal.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

Rudyard Kipling has been dismissed as an "imperialist" writer and his most famous quote has been interpreted as derogatory against Asian cultures. But try to read once again the lines above where his words about east and west are placed in their original context.

Kipling did not confuse geographical and spiritual facts. I see no reason why I should.

Walk in beauty

The bumblebee syndrome

2004-04-04T23:39:00.000+02:00

Some ways of thinking that may be regarded as typical of the bumblebee syndrome:

It is impossible to read other people's minds. And the bumblebee cannot fly.

It is impossible to feel somebody else looking at you. And the bumblebee cannot fly.

It is impossible to feel other people far away from you. And the bumblebee cannot fly.

It is impossible to cure diseases just by the touch of your hand. And the bumblebee cannot fly.

Igor Sikorsky, the famous aeronautic designer, seemingly was aware of the bumblebee syndrome: He ordered this notice to be hung up in the lobby of his technical office:

The bumblebee, according to our engineers' calculations, cannot fly at all, but the bumblebee does not know this and flies

Bumblebee © Maryann Sterling

And there were earlier greats who documented their scepticism regarding theorizing: Galileo Galilei:

It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.

And Goethe:

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie
und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

In my own staggering and unpoetical translation:

Grey, my precious friend, is all theory
and green the golden tree of life.

------------------
Walk in beauty

The justified anger and the distorted face

2004-03-31T23:46:00.000+02:00

I was working on a new website and I was editing a two or three years old text for publishing. I found that I was softening several expressions. I got to thinking about this fact and I remembered that quite a lot of my editions of existing articles over the last couple of years have been of this same kind: softening expressions.

And I wondered why this is so. It is not because my opinions have changed. Neither is it because I have become more afraid of the reactions of people who disagree with me.

I believe that it is because my anger has diminished. For several years I was a very angry man. And I am not any more. I still have no doubt that my anger was completely justified, but I have to say that it distorted my messages. My later editions have very much been about removing those distortions.

And I got to think about a wonderful poem by Bertolt Brecht:

An die Nachgeborenen

Brecht knew about anger. Both his own anger and other people's anger. He began his writing carrier as an angry young man and it was to a large part his anger that brought him into trouble with other people. Eventually Brecht made what must have been a kind of world record as a fugitive, all because of anger.

When Brecht was a fugitive from Germany he sat in his small house in Denmark and wrote about anger. And he urged his readers to remember that even the justified anger distorts the face and the voice of the angry person.

Auch der Haß gegen die Niedrigkeit
Verzerrt die Züge.
Auch der Zorn über das Unrecht
Macht die Stimme heiser.

The knowledge expressed in his poem did not hinder Bertolt Brecht from provoking more anger. When German troops attacked Denmark he had to run away again and eventually got to the USA. After the second world war he was accused of "anti-American activity" and fled back to Europe. And when he died he seemed to be heading into a situation where being a fugitive once again was a very likely possibility. Brecht never got along well with rulers.

But this does not diminish the truth in his poem.

Walk in beauty

Quotes to live by?

2004-03-29T11:18:00.000+02:00

I love quotes. Everything worth saying has already been said by others - and said better than I can have any realistic hope of saying it myself.

Here is a quote by Winston Churchill:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

There certainly was a poetic quality to Churchill's speeches and writings. And here is a real poet with more or less the same message. Walt Whitman:

To The States, or any one of them, or any city of The States, Resist much, obey little;
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved;
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty.

Being a very disobedient person I feel a strong affinity with the sentiments behind these two quotes.

But there is more to personal dignity than just posing a strong resistance to those who are willing to use force to have their way with you. You also have to try showing the world a true picture of the person that you are. Listen to Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter:

Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!

And don't forget love. Gunnar Gunnarsson:

Let your heart be open to all love but closed against hatred, and see to that your mouth is rich with blessings but mute to curses.

Walk in beauty

"Ewig dein, ewig mein, ewig uns"

2004-03-28T15:49:00.000+02:00

"Eternally yours, eternally mine, eternally us."

Ludwig van Beethoven is not only one of the greatest musicians in the history of European music. He is also one of its most intriguing personalities.

As a young musician Beethoven was the rising star of Vienna, the capital of European musical life at the time. And one of the qualities that made him such a splendid musician was his fantastic sense of hearing.

But then he began losing that sense. Perhaps you already know that long and sad story, but even if you don't it ought to be self evident that losing your hearing sense is a disaster for a composer and musician.

And what did Beethoven do? The most important thing that he did was to go on composing. And what's more: his music got better and better. Not just very beautiful music, but music showing a very seldom degree of ability to organize human experience into a perfectly balanced entity.

And not one single note in his music shows the slightest sign of self-pity. Beethoven is a splendid example of a person carrying the weight of a hard fate with dignity.

One of the mysteries about Beethoven is his relations with women. Beethoven never was married and it still must be regarded as an unanswered question if he actually ever had any sexual relation to a woman.

But there is no doubt that Beethoven during his life had strong emotional ties to several women. After his death three letters to one of these women were found among his papers. The last of these letters ends like this.

These are the words that I have chosen as the title of this posting.

A not insignificant point with these words is that they may be used not only about the love between two individuals but also about a love that encompasses all living beings. And I am certain that Beethoven came to be aware of this. He never was to live with this eternally beloved woman, but to a degree never surpassed by any other musician he expressed love to all humanity in his music.

Eternally yours, eternally mine, eternally us.

Walk in beauty

Do what you do

2004-03-23T23:44:00.000+01:00

It is so incredibly easy to let your mind wander from what you are doing and perhaps wish that you were doing something else. And most often the quality of your actions suffer heavily form it.

At least two old religious traditions have stressed the importance of this problem:

I believe that the Jesuits have a rule of life that might be translated to something like this: "Do what you do."

And the zen Buddhists have a rule that talks about being present in what you are doing.

Some people can actually manage to let their minds deal with two or more actions at the same time without lowering the quality of any of those actions. But for most of us it is very important to keep our minds at what we are doing.

Do what you do. And be present in doing it.

Walk in beauty

Predicting the future

2004-03-16T23:54:00.000+01:00

There are two imaginable ways of predicting the future:

1. To experience future directly. This will most likely demand that you - consciously or unconsciously - open your mind to an extra dimension in time. A dimension in which it is possible to experience events from different times as contemporary. According to some theories about reality this is not possible.

2. To calculate future on the basis of the past. This will demand that you gather experience about the past and then extrapolate tendencies from this experience into the future.

Here is a very simple graphical illustration of such a situation:

The full line symbolizes a known past and the dotted line symbolize a prediction about the future.

Such a prediction can be fairly precise if you fulfill certain requirements:

1. You should understand the past that you build your prediction on. The line symbolizes a past with a tendency that is easy to interpret.
2. You should limit your prediction to cover a reasonably short future. In this case the dotted line is fairly short compared with the full line.

But most often it is quite a bit more difficult to make predictions by making calculations from the past. For example your experience of the past may be something that could geometrically be rendered like this:

How would you draw a curve, that could be regarded as a good interpretation of the experiences expressed by these dots? And how would you extrapolate that curve?

I tend to believe that the only really good predictions made on the basis of the past are those that deal with periodic events. I have not hesitated to extrapolate this sinus curve beyond a sharp turn:

A few examples from real life:
I predict that the sun will rise tomorrow.
I predict that it will be winter again in some months.
I predict that some day I will die.
I predict that the civilisation that I am part of will die.

But of course (some of) my predictions may be wrong.

Walk in beauty

Who lives in the most limited reality?

2004-03-14T23:01:00.000+01:00

Have you ever noticed that very often people with opposing opinions use exactly the same arguments against each other's opinions? Here is an example:

"And for me to look into the depths of the night sky is to behold something far greater than your religion could ever allow for."

This quote is an atheist arguing against a Christian. Not being a Christian myself I do not have to care about which problems the Christian religion may have or not have with its perception of reality.

But it is a bit funny to see an atheist accusing his opponents of living in a limited reality. The simple fact is that atheism is about denying. An atheist denies the existence of certain phenomena.

As a deeply religious person I live in a reality easily containing anything that I have ever heard or read an atheist tell about. This reality of mine also contains quite a lot that atheism would never "allow for".

Walk in beauty

Soy un madrileño

2004-03-13T12:10:00.000+01:00

Well of course I'm not. Though certainly not being a patriot I am very much a Dane. Or more precisely: I am a Jutlander. (Even the small, homogeneous and peaceful Denmark has its regions.)

More than forty years ago John F. Kennedy, then president of the USA, visited Western Berlin and said his famous sentence: Ich bin ein Berliner!

Since then many people have quoted or paraphrased that sentence. Sometimes this has been done with dignity while other times it has been done with a very distinctive lack of personal dignity.

I hope that my own way of doing it may belong to the former group.

Walk in beauty

To learn or not to learn, that's the question

2004-03-12T23:13:00.000+01:00

Sometimes you are hit by reality because something dreadful happens to you or to someone near you. In such a situation you have two options:

To reject the lesson that life gives you. To insist that you have done nothing wrong and the world has been unjust to you. To allow yourself to sink down in self pity.
Or to take the lesson that life gives you.

Walk in beauty

Spain in my heart

2004-03-11T22:53:00.000+01:00

Spain, so very different a country from Denmark, has always occupied a significant room in my heart including some of my heart's soft spots.

It has a lot to do with Spanish history (both ancient and recent), so filled with triumphs and tragedies. I will limit myself to mentioning only a few aspects of that:

Spain with its long coastal line was one of those countries frequently visited (and partly terrorized) by Scandinavian Vikings. Possibly with my own Viking chief forefathers among them.

The strong Arabian flavour in Spanish history and culture has always fascinated me. Our own mythical national hero, Holger Danske (Ogier le Danois), reportedly took some part in the wars between Christians and Muslims in Spain.

I am myself from a culture with ancient and great seafaring traditions. Vikings — not Danish but Norwegian and thus still Scandinavian — reportedly were the first Europeans to visit America. With that background it is quite natural for me to be fascinated by the thought of the great Spanish explorations of this globe.

In my childhood and youth Spain was still a military dictatorship. The memory of the Spanish civil war was still very much alive in Denmark and I read Ernest Hemingway's For whom the bell tolls.

Apart from my awareness of Spanish history it has also a lot to do with music. I have always loved flamenco music: the passion, the beauty, the virtuosity, the duende of the guitarists, the singers and the dancers.

And of course it has a lot to do with football. And here we see it again: the passion, the beauty, the virtuosity, the triumphs, the tragedies:

Real Madrid and to a lesser extent FC Barcelona have been primary forces in football in all the years that I have been interested in the beautiful game. Another significant factor in my view of Spanish football has been my wondering about the apparent inability of the national team to gain the results that the wealth of national talents deserved.

It also should be mentioned that the most famous citizen of my home town is Allan Simonsen whose greatest time as a football player was reached in his years at FC Barcelona.

Spain definitely has a place in my heart. And my heart feels sorrow for the Spanish people after the deadly explosions in Madrid. I hope that the Spaniards will not lose their dignity but will try to learn from the dreadful things that have happened.

Walk in beauty

Burden of proof vs benefit of doubt

2004-03-10T23:32:00.000+01:00

I can understand that people want to have for themselves the benefit of doubt and to put the burden of proof on those who disagree with them. But why do so many people so obviously believe that their opposition will accept this?

One of the classic examples is religion. I find it quite logical that atheists will not accept the reality of a divine power and consciousness unless this reality is somehow "proved" to them. But many atheists go one step further: They seriously expect me to let the validity of my religious experiences be judged by them.

I am completely unable to understand how they could get such a completely absurd idea. It would be like letting my musical judgements be overruled by people who are not musical.

Walk in beauty

VSAM: Very Superior Auld Musicke

2004-03-09T23:49:00.000+01:00

One of the most significant Danish kings was Christian IV. In his days it was common for kings to gather excellent musicians around them and Fjerde Christian (Fourth Christian) was no exception. John Dowland is the most famous composer whose name is associated with king Christian, but there are many others.

In 1988 BIS released four CDs with music from the time of Christian IV. On one of them we find an anonymous mass that is one of the most exciting pieces of vocal music that I have ever heard. As far as I know it is pure guesswork who of the great composers of the 16th century made this wonderful music, but I know that he had an excellent understanding of the human voice. When I hear the mass I invariably join the bass voice. Pure self healing!

Walk in beauty

Walk in beauty

2004-03-08T18:55:00.000+01:00

Navajo prayer: "Night Way"

In Beauty may she walk.
All day long may she walk.
Through the returning seasons may she walk.
Beautifully will she possess again.
Beautifully birds... Beautifully joyful birds...
On the trail marked with pollen may she walk.
With grasshoppers about her feet may she walk.
With dew about her feet may she walk.

With Beauty may she walk.
With Beauty before her, may she walk.
With Beauty behind her, may she walk.
With Beauty above her, may she walk.
With Beauty beneath her, may she walk.
With Beauty all around her, may she walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of Beauty, lively, may she walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of Beauty, living again, may she walk.
It is finished in Beauty.
It is finished in Beauty.

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The Night Way prayer presented above is a mixture of two slightly different versions and I have adapted it to the specific purpose of being for a sick mother.

Two other Navajo prayers, aimed at healing:

Navajo Prayer of Healing (Affirmation)

Prayer of Affirmations ? A Navajo Prayer

Walk in beauty

A prayer for the sick mothers

2004-03-08T11:21:00.000+01:00

Is there a mother that you love? Perhaps your own mother is dead or perhaps you do not like her, but still it's a fairly good guess that there is at least one mother that you love. If my guess is right then you should be able to understand the friend of mine who wrote this:

My Mum starts Chemotherapy tomorrow

He has been answered by several other people. Some of them have sick mothers too and of course they all from their personal lives have some kind of experiences with sick people, including sick mothers.

Perhaps the most remarkable evidence of human dignity was shown by an atheist who decided to go against his own belief and try to send prayers to that sick mother. This person took an attitude that might - in words of my own choice - be expressed like this:

"I have my own opinions and beliefs, but for the sake of a fellow human being I will accept the possibility that my opinions may be wrong, and I will act accordingly."

A mother is indeed a symbol of life itself. I was reminded of that in the last years of my own mother's life. But she was an old woman and had had a rich (though certainly not easy) life and was ready to die. It's different with younger mothers. If they are hit by serious illness your perception of life may really be challenged.

Serious illness is one of the big tests of life and especially so if death is a likely outcome of that illness. When you are tested hard by life it is very important how you choose to regard that test:

Do you regard it as an evidence that the world is imperfect and now you are being hit by one of the defects of that imperfect world?

Or do you choose the opinion that life is what it is and that you will have to learn to accept it as such?

The choice is yours. No-one else can make that choice for you. But no matter what you choose, praying is an option. If you pray you will be given something. You may not be given what you pray for, but you will be given something.

That is also true if you do not pray for yourself but for others.

Pray for the sick mothers. Perhaps you have a religion that has a specific prayer which may easily be adapted to such a purpose? If you don't then you may choose your own words as best you can for such a prayer.

Your prayer may not save the life or health of any mother, but it will work somehow.

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Some prayers:

She Who Heals – An American Indian Healing Prayer

A Prayer For Healing | Prayer of Healing

Prayer For The Sick- A Christian Prayer

Prayer In Time Of Sickness - A Christian Prayer

Traditional Buddhist Blessing and Healing Chant

If you use one of those prayers I suggest that you adapt it slightly to the specific situation like I have done with the Navajo prayer.

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Walk in beauty

The inability of writing

2004-03-08T08:18:00.000+01:00

I cannot write!

Am I hearing some of my friends chuckle in the distance: "What's the fuss? We know you can't write. You never could."

Be that as it may. It's not for me to judge my writing skills, but the fact still remains that for some time I have had large difficulties with putting words down on my screen.

Better writers than me have experienced that inspiration may dry out and trying to write will be like needlessly banging your head against an immovable wall. At least one of those writers (the great Norwegian writer Tarjei Vesaas) actually wrote a short story about a writer being unable to write!

So what am I as a webmaster doing when the words stop coming easily to me? I use the old proven solution for those situations when there is something that I want to do but can't: I do something else!

The banal fact is that everything that you do is an exercise whether you are aware of it or not. If you perform one specific action, you at the same time practice doing exactly that very specific action. This means that if I do a vain attempt to write I practice the inability of writing. I don't want to do that so I do something else:

I have been making technical revisions in hundreds of pages at my websites and here and there I have made small edits in the texts. While doing that I have been waiting for the return of what writing skills I have.

Perhaps those skills are coming back now. Sometimes admitting a problem may be a significant step towards actually solving it.

Walk in beauty

An ideal world?

2004-02-15T21:17:00.000+01:00

I remember the first time I read that the world is not "ideal". It was in a technical article written by two electronics engineers. Somewhere in the article they wrote about how something would have worked in an "ideal" world, but then they added that the world is not "ideal" so in reality it does not work that way.

I thought a bit about this. Then it struck me: They were talking engineers talk!

Electronics engineers talk about "ideal" components. An "ideal" capacitor is a capacitor that exemplifies the "idea" of a capacitor. Such a capacitor does not exist in reality. It is an abstraction.

An "ideal" capacitor is a component that has only one electronic dimension.

(Just like an "ideal" tall man would be a tall man who only had height and no other dimensions. I know a couple of very tall and very thin men who come fairly close at exemplifying that ideal, but they do not quite reach it.)

So it is easy to imagine that an electronics engineer might take that way of thinking and use it on the whole world. Take any idea about the world and then ask yourself: "Does the world fit into this idea?". The answer is very easy. There is no commonly known idea about the world that the world actually fits into.

Ergo: the world is not ideal.

Since then I have read quite a few people's words about how something would have been in an "ideal" world. They never bother to tell what kind of idea they are referring to, but that really is not necessary. I do not doubt that the real world does not fit into any of the ideas of those people,

The world is not ideal. The world is real. Take it or leave it.

Whether the world is perfect is quite another question.

Walk in beauty