I Love Opera!
Mood:  lyrical
Now Playing: Chi il bel sogno di Doretta (La Rondine; Puccini)
Topic: Soliloquies

 

I love Opera!

This seems a strange thing in these days and time. How many Opera lovers can you find in the several billions people who inhabit this, our hapless planet?

Our seal, I mean human beings in general, our seal seems to be the confused, mixed, blatant noises; the confused, mixed, blatant actions in growing speed, if you breath you lose, if you blink you are left behind, we must go, Go, GO! never mind grasping what is going on around us, no time for that! We must reach the future before it reaches us and becomes long past and use it just as a propeller for the next step into future.

When time overtake us and we find we are not fit anymore for the athletic feats that filled all the time of our life we find our hands empty, maybe some of us reached the shores of the American Dream, but, and this is arguable, the only thing they have is wealth, poor and stupid wealth with no significance when the line of end is near.

Now, if you could stop and think a bit, lose a small part of the immense wealth you are pursuing since you learned to read the words “one dollar”, then there is hope to fulfil a rich experience in life…

Opera is not a popular music genre. It cannot be. Society as a gregarious group presents a difficult way of living, the bigger the group the greater the competition. This situation demands so much of an individual that any other requirement is to ask too much.

The need of music and lyrics that help people find a way to raise their thresholds on suffering and let them be lost in any kind of ecstasy, in rapturous delight; that separate them from the hard reality, IS a strong need, but that music must be undemanding, able to dull feelings into a kind of stupor that conceal the piercing pain of actuality.

Opera is just the opposite, it tells melodramatic stories, with tortured characters full of pathos and pain, the “real” reality, (except in what is known as “opera buffa“, that is, comic opera which are just a little part of the whole) but the music is the redeemer. When you accept the hurting feelings from those acting, the drama as normal since so is life too, and let music seeps into the tissue of your soul, then OPERA is the only way to set you free, to stir, to shake you into a magic world of bliss and joy without creating a fantasy world for a while nor dampening your human feelings.

Maybe this introduction makes you recoil from Opera or maybe it opens a small crevice of curiosity.

(to be continued)

Ecco un filosofo...!
Mood:  crushed out
Now Playing: The Beatles
Topic: Ranting
Standing erect to his full foot height and sending me an ironic kiss with the palm of his right arm, Elf pronounced:

-Ecco un filosofo! [Here, a philosopher!]

He had this glitter in his eyes, sign of some mischief ahead.

-Please, I pleaded knowing it was useless, do not try to emulate Tosca, will you?!

He was quoting a slightly changed line from the Opera where Floria Tosca cry:

Ecco un artista! [Here, an artist], thinking her beloved Mario feigned very well his falling in front a shooting squad before she realized he was actually shot to dead.

You see the implications!

-Please, don’t be ridiculous, I was trying shame him into silence.

-Ridiculous, ridiculous my butt! he was not shamed and never will be, you know who is ri-dic-u-lous? he marked the word (syllable separation is mine, he is not able to recognize what a syllable is!!), You are ri-dic-u-lous!!! Thinking all those inebriated little thoughts about Honesty!

-I am not ridiculous, and there are no little thoughts in my thinking! I was affronted! I was pretty proud about my disquisitions on so deep a subject, I know I am not a philosopher, but I can think, by Jove!

-You are, too!

-No, I am not, period!

-No? ask anyone what can they make of this sentence:

«facts, I try to define, are as certain as thoughts but difficult to understand in its ontological reality.»

this only a small instance! And it was not enough one note but you need three to say nothing at all!

-How can you argue with an empty mind, I said and immediately regretted saying it, I was being venomous and should have restrained myself, there is no point insulting people… or goblins for that matter!

He seemed not affected by my words or anger.

-Now look, life is simple if you can let your hands open, the moment you fold your fingers to grab something or to turn your hand into a fist is when things get complex!

-Well, that is what I wrote, I said, surprised to see he has understood my meaning.

-So, why didn’t you say it so instead of writing so many elaborated and difficult sentences? It took me just so many words to define your thoughts!

He had a point there! what were my reasons? self complacency? Trying to show off my “knowledge”, but nobody read this, of course it stays online and… Oh, well, maybe there is all that and more selfish feelings. Phew! this darned imp always find a way to puncture my ego balloon. Maybe he really is doing his job to lead the way, as he always points out!

I felt like Tosca over Mario’s dead body, looking down to my dead ego! Darn it all! He knew what he was saying when called at me: Ecco un filosofo…! Only I didn’t jump over the battlement of the Sant’Angelo Castle nor dare to tease Elf with the sentence “Avante Dio”…

Honesty! «Third & Last Note»
Mood:  quizzical
Topic: Soliloquies
From the beginning of time Philosophy and Religion, on different roads of knowledge, have tried to "remake" humankind ethos following the simple rule of concordance, a kind of psychological action-reaction, "do unto others as you like others to do unto you", if it makes any sense, but the internal force that define a human being as such is just the opposite: "be as you like and prevent other to be as they like".

This seems uncouth and barbarian but it is the core of survival, "domination" does not guarantee survival but it "seems" to be the right way to it, a common ground where most human beings find themselves trying to rule, lead, and impose over others, even in small matters.

We may recognize in this need to be "the ruler", in the reasons we have to justify the need, a kind of fallen nature in humankind, fallen nature in the sense of making sure the survival of the species but of our own self primarily, this drive is common with all species, any individual try to save life in the event more life can be procreated but what differs is motivation.

Not a single creature, with the exception of human beings, thinks in the importance of the self, only our kind try to preserve life through our own person.

This fallen nature comes, is said, from our special awareness of the difference between "right" and "wrong", which is the leverage to prompt a misconception on the idea that anything right for us personally is the only right thing generally speaking.

There is a trend to align this feeling with the sense of insecurity, lack of stability, or sense of inadequacy humankind found to be its companion through the millennia lived on this planet.

This supposed fallen nature in humankind suppresses any and all possibilities to find a recognizable and ontological definition for this triad (and many other abstract concepts) and will continue doing so while human beings do not find the real meaning of the tissue we call reality, moreover, only after comprising this meaning into the real sense of survival as a whole entity, not as an “enlightened” isolated being but as many personal psyches within a unique essence, is possible to envision an answer.

Even then, after a real understanding of reality, we must find the way to work from the outside of this reality to start glimpsing the primeval rags of Truth, Honesty and Love.

Possibly the major surprise will come from the fact that Love encompass all others.

This premise must have been whispered into human ears in the first steps of our awareness, we do not know its source, but it is easily understood that it could not come from the natural "feelings" humankind could find or "concoct" by itself since we are aware that our, so called, fallen nature would prevent anything that could suggest to help a neighbor in detriment of the "inner personality".

Each instance known of the occurrence of an action contravening this law written in our core makes us separate the transgressor from our "normal" behavior and we see that person in a higher moral level.

This attitude seems to point toward a possible change for the better for humankind in a far future.

Honesty! «Second note»
Mood:  quizzical
Now Playing: ¡Qué Risa!
Topic: Soliloquies
The complex interacting forces between the subconscious being and the soul, supposing subconscious being and soul exist, (in the event they do not, there must be something to replace them since we have experience of the existence of subtle forces working in the inner layers of our understanding of reality, you may call them mind and intuition or brain and instinct), then, the complex interacting forces between subconscious being, soul, and our conscious mind work in the same system we call our reality.

The fact that this reality may be very different from one human being to another does not affect the outcome because the subject is concomitant with the stage, and the stage is what the same subject, in a proper manner, develops based on the facts reality shows to the subject’s understanding. All this shaded by the inner capabilities each one of us “receive” at birth. The difference between recognizing a red thing and knowing what red is, applies here.

This being of ours, immersed in our reality, invalidate any intent of explanation we can think of Honesty, Truth, and Love. All these explanations will be tinted with the implant of our being alive (perception of reality), of our culture, of our vast or small knowledge of ourselves and the world in general.

Confucius, from my viewpoint and with due respect, is not the only one trying to oversimplify the notion starting from a sophism, or maybe from a warped rule of true understanding what “being good” means. He stated his thoughts in words that a human mind can understand but cannot translate into deeds since the ancestral power that moves humankind is just its own survival, a powerful self-centered drive that rules out any concept, idea, or perception out of those boundaries.

This survival force overrides any other law and, being a whole with no crevices, it cannot be severed, fractured or divided in parts because it only exists in its own wholeness. Only if we seek and attain a way to nullify this strong force of “life” and found intellectual reasons strong enough to keep the survival “howl” that live inside our deep self quiet and mute, it is possible to find the road to honesty, truth and love (lower case words), which put us near enough but not there yet!

(to be continued)

Honesty! «First note»
Mood:  quizzical
Now Playing: Tango
Topic: Soliloquies
Honesty is one of the triad also composed by Truth and Love.

Rivers of ink, and now electronic beams, if I can use use this over trod sentence followed by a new concept, have flowed in the intent to explain this trinity.

In the basic principle of Life it is impossible for humankind to learn the meaning of any of those three words. Weird enough is that we know the words, they belong in a different realm, we are too self centered a species as to have a remote conception of their significance. We can experience the outcome of their existence but, as elusive deities, we never can "see" their faces.

The first fallacy rest in the belief that honesty is simple. The second is our recognition of facts, sayings, and acts as we believe them to be. On this ground there exist as many Honesty as human beings on Earth. The same is true, no pun intended, with Truth and Love.

The simple fact that we MUST use our own faculties to "interpret" the meaning and span of our thoughts and acts, puts us in the handicap of a very much known experiment in Physics: It is not possible to change or interact with any part of a system from inside the same system. Otherwise said: You cannot raise your body holding yourself from your ankles.

Other way to represent this situation is to consider Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: If you try to measure the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time you will find that uncertainties, or imprecisions, always turn up.

This Physics' law reinserts itself into Philosophy and when you try to use the minimum knowledge humans have acquired through time, despite the huge dimension of that acquired knowledge and despite the reluctance to accept it as it is, just a small atom in a minuscule drop of the ocean of awareness and learning, when you try to interpret or, worse yet, to understand the implied forces in abstract concepts like that of Honesty (this is the same with Truth, Love, and many others), imprecisions arise, and those imprecisions are managed by the subjective elegance of personal knowledge, cultural background, and inner taste, determined by the facility we find in our "own personality" to elucidate and accept the "facts" found in, again, our observations.

Here again, we are trying to understand the same system that contains us and the "facts" contained in the system. Facts; as "certain" as the definition of a colour, where we have concordance about what thing is red, but we cannot understand what red, as an abstraction, is in our own perception and much less to compare it with some other person's perception; facts, I try to define, are as certain as thoughts but difficult to understand in its ontological reality .

These conditions determine the impossibility of a true understanding, no matter how much we learn in time. This growing knowledge will only be part of the same whole system that contains us and as I wrote above, the "facts" found in our observations; there is a small hope in the belief that sentience is something outside from the "real" world but this, up to this moment, pertains to the realm of mystical spiritualism and is out of the reach of science.

(to be continued)

Time and its whims...
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Philarmonic Orchestra Saint Martin in the Field
Topic: Soliloquies
Coming down to it, time is like sand, it slides between the fingers as fast as a silk scarf, faster I would say. ¿Where have I heard this before?

Last year July seems a place so far away, but I cannot recollect how it was it went away while I was just moving within business as usual.

Then your eyes get clear, down comes the veil and you are astounded seeing that almost a year had disappeared in the sands of time... I am sandy, today!

Never mind, I'll be back, trying to keep this "worthy" soliloquies, ranting and beliefs alive, even if now it may seem an unnecessary bout but maybe in time somebody, somehow, will find all these scattered thoughts useful.

So, don't despair, sweet soul, I will follow the trail...

My Elf and I (or would it be better: Him and me?)
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: Lucia de Lammermoor - Edita Gruberova

I said aloud:

- There is this theory about the "chance electron", or more scientifically said "accidental electron".

The elf who live in my mind looked flabbergasted, which is a very uncommon occurrence since he always seems to know everything. Trying to gain some foothold before I were overruled by the little imp and his theories I pressed on:

- Have you heard about it? Even if it was evident he has not heard about it, he recomposed rapidly and interposed.

- It is nothing, really! I felt chagrined, would this creature never recognize not knowing everything?

- Oh Ok, I taunted him, then it is not worth to discuss it.

No answer.

- It was interesting anyhow, I proceed.

Silence.

Darn his socks! I thought this aside and very low, "punning" my pun!. Sometimes it is difficult to speak to myself without his meddling. I did not want him to hear me.

- Are you there? I gave up at last.

Why the silence?

- Just meditating, he said.

Meditating, meditating! Where, by the wood of the main door to hell, does he find these long breathed words! What have he against thinking? Not the same? Ok, but I bet he doesn't know the difference, either!

- What about? as always he was getting on my nerves!

- The accidental electron theory. This dropped nonchalantly! -

Tell me about it, I said and thought: Gotcha!

- No, he retorted, you better spin the yarn so I can make corrections when needed. There you are, I will never win! He knows me better. Sometimes I think he knows my thoughts before I think them!

- Ok, I said, lets see, it all begin with...

- Wait, he interrupted, and settled down between two of my ideas, sinking in the spot as if it were a soft armchair, close here and start anew. So I am doing...

Do you open your eyes?
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Le nozze di Figaro - Cecilia Bartoli
Topic: Soliloquies

Silly question!!

Of course I open my eyes!

Not that silly, blind people open their eyes, too.

It does not warrant you see. It only prove you can exercise your eyelids muscles.

Reality is less real than it tries to make us believe, and it is only because we are trying to understand the system we live in with our brains, which are part of the very system, that we seem not to get the true.

Something like if we would try to lift our body taking it from our ankles. You must be outside the system to have a chance to change it somehow.

How about having a mind outside the brain? outside the system. Yes, it could be useful but there is a catch. This mind must use the brain as instrument to its designs and then, in we go into the system again!

Beautiful! so we cannot "understand" our reality.

Maybe, to make it clear and following the best way of Univac and in its metallic voice we hear the question: "Define «understand»"

Under stand: To be upright on one's feet on something which is below, a base. To have a support for knowing. There is no way we can have a support for knowing reality.

We can only "know" reality from the information we receive from our five senses into our brain, and you know they, the senses, are unreliable and it, the brain, is judge and part.

How near is near?, how warm is love? How silly am I? What color is your time?

All this seems so inconsistent, I can touch things and people, I can feel feelings, that "must" be reality!, then again, I can have dreams which are so "real" I can vow they really happened.

Conclusion: We can experience reality, we cannot understand it.

Science says it can "understand", can it? or does it only "interpret" it?

Words, again we are in the need of definitions. The never-ending game of life!

Explaining the unexplainable
Mood:  quizzical
Now Playing: Astor Piazzolla - Milonga del Angel
Topic: Soliloquies
Can you hear the inner voice?

It is always asking...
Those questions, that inquisitive probing. The old "W" queries.

Reality is a foggy sea where our selves sail, each one of us in a different boat.
Some are full of lights and contraptions to send signals, other with just a positioning light and a small flag.
We drift along.
Sometimes we are so near one another we think we can communicate and start to send frantic signals from our decks.
From the other boat seems as if there was an understanding and it sends signals back.
After a while we feel we are communicated, but are we?
Up to a point, maybe, enough to drift along, to feel we are not utterly alone, it is possible to exchange tokens, but we cannot, ever, to board the other boat, to feel the "other" reality.
Questions stand alive, scorching us as a burning iron:
Why am I estranged this way?
What is the reason of this severe exclusion?
How can I feel other people feelings, share their tenets, know what "red" means, really means, in their minds, and why I cannot do it!
Cool!

Like it or not we must treasure second best, that poor imitations of true sharing: friendship, partnership, love, or worst yet "third best" hugs, kisses and that being so near but never near enough! poor sad, frantic signals sent from our loneliness.

Is this all that there is? Is madness the ruler of this happenstance?
If you tell me that you believe this, I must take it as true, but is it? How I, or even you for that matter, know it is true. Have you dived into the deep inners of your consciousness? Have you probed all possibilities?, or this belief is only the product of disappointment, an expression of rage against the unassailable fortress of the unknown. Do you think the unknown exists? Can I say I do not know the unknown and still look into my own feelings?

Seems so sad but no, it is not so...
Cheer up, in this reality there is no eternity, nothing is forever and that is good!

At sea, far away
Mood:  suave
Now Playing: Anibal Troilo - To my parents
Topic: Soliloquies





This was home for some time.

Free space, great view of the sea, fish, salty smells, and waves.

Ninety five miles from mainland and solitude make the day to day chores important.

A babel of Portuguese, Indonesian, Chinese, Thai, some German, a tbsp of Spanish, several flavors of English... and Pidgin, of course, when you could not find any other tool for communication.

Sometimes, father Poseidon wanted to know what were those weird biped doing on the platform, so it raised tall waves, asked Eolo to roar with high gales, and Zeus to send rain as a heavy curtain and thunderbolts to see better. Awesome and scary, those who did not work on the deck run downstairs to the cozy and covered entrails of the platform.

When the full moon started to rise on a calm sea everybody was on the deck, it was (is) a sacred view. Casta diva in her pure splendor.

I wondered many times, we were coarse, hard men toiling in a difficult and dangerous task but the mystic of a full moon mesmerized us as if we were a bunch of poets with a sensible soul, but then again, maybe we were and we had it.