BB post; GB; FRDB 9/2011

There is no evidence of an actual, concrete God or gods, just personal intuitions, speculations, feelings, a strong desire for ultimate meaning and purpose; plus, the God-meme is deeply embedded in human culture and tradition, in fact it may even be in our DNA to a certain degree, although I wouldn't bet money on it. Just a thought. But because there is no evidence for it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. God may exist, in a way which no human mind can comprehend. Spinoza wrote that the nature of God surpasses human understanding. It requires genuine humility to consider this proposition, and I enjoy considering it. Considering it doesn't mean I believe it. God may or may not exist, and I will probably never arrive at any certitude about it, in either direction, pro or con.

But, there is evidence of a self, of the ego, of autonomous agency. Generally speaking, we know who we are, what our name is, when and where we were born, and all of our memories pertain to things we have experienced in the first-person, and this first-person narrative is almost always linear and coherent; and, amazingly enough, our knowledge of ourselves and the facts of our history almost always coincide with what others know about us, and with what is recorded as hard data.

The self, the ego, the "I", are not substantive, or material in any way: they are items of subjective experience: qualitative, abstract, but nonetheless, they are real, in the same respect that language, forms of music, the concept of currency, are real, despite the fact that they are human inventions and do not exist as tangible things in reality.To posit the idea that there is no self, there is no "I", is perfectly fine, as long as you clarify what you mean by that, and as long as you really understand what it means. It does not mean that there is no positive sense of personal and distinct identity in a human being, and it does not mean that people do not consciously and with deliberate intent go about the living of their lives.

Telling someone there is no god may or may not be true. Telling someone there is no "self" and there is no "I", may be true, but only if those terms refer to material entities posited as existing independently of the physical body. If they refer merely to qualitative, subjective aspects of human experience, then telling someone the "self" and the "I" do not exist would be patently false. Ergo, if you tell someone that they have no self, and that the "I" they use in speech refers to nothing but a phantom, an illusion, then you should fully expect that person to take offense, unless you are willing to clarify exactly what you mean when you say such a thing.

If a person takes issue with something you tell them, bear in mind that it may not be because their fragile egos have been hurt, or because they are narrow-minded, stupid, afraid, uneducated, intolerant, or any of those things; they may be taking issue with you for the simple reason that you have said something which does not make sense to them, either because they do not understand it, or it is out of context, or it is phrased improperly, or because it is simply false.

Opposition to your philosophical, moral, ethical, political, even personal issues, may be just as intellectual as they are emotional. One of the hardest things to do in this kind of public discourse is to distinguish between a reasoned argument and an emotional argument, and to recognize that an argument can be (and usually is, for most of us) both emotional and reasoned. If there were an exhaustive, objective study made on the topic of bulletin board discussions, I would bet a week's pay that most people try their hardest to keep their emotional feelings at heel while participating in them. Of course there are trolls and crazy people all over, but I have faith in my species and I do believe that most of us are doing our best.

A good quote, in remembrance of Servetus

To kill a man is not to protect a doctrine, but it is to kill a man.

—Sebastian Castellio, Contra libellum, # 77, Vaticanus

From a letter to Olivia, 9 March 2011, re: Spinoza

...I know about those melancholy states. As it happens, Spinoza has much to say about such states, and I found myself agreeing with just about everything he wrote on the subject. His system of thought was as much about mental health and happiness as it is about God and the nature of the universe, in fact he is considered by many to be one of the first in that particular area of life-management, mental health, and self-help. If you can, look online, or in the library or bookstore, for two short early works by Spinoza called, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being. These are the only two that I have read in their entirety so far and I am thus far very pleased and sometimes astounded by the fact that this man composed his work about 350 years ago, and that he lived only to the age of 44. What an amazing scholar he was, a good man, enlightened, a master teacher. I used to say that if I could go back in time and meet only one person, it would be a toss between Gustav Mahler and John Keats. But now I can safely say that it would be my master, Baruch Spinoza.

Bear in mind, Spinoza's God is not the emotionally-driven, jealous God of the Bible, but a holistic, naturalistic Being who is Creator-and-created at once and in-One, the all-encompassing, intelligent architect of the Cosmos and of every living thing that ever was or will be. His God is one that surpasses human understanding, but Spinoza goes about his proofs of the existence (and absolute necessity) of this Being with such surety and skill that I found myself utterly consumed in the process. I, who have always been a defiant atheist, a libertarian, a defender of freedom in all of its kicking and struggling forms, types, and manifestations, gradually found myself being overwhelmed by an intellect far greater and also far more benevolent than my own. It was easy to submit my heart and mind to these ideas, written by a man nearly four centuries ago, especially since my life's experiences had prepared the way already. If conceding to the profound and beautiful intellections of a human being could bring me such a measure of peace and contentment, then try to imagine how fulfilling, how absolutely joyous, is my submission and total surrender to God. It is only in this complete surrender that I have finally found my freedom, my true happiness, my purpose.

I can't define this God, can't tell you His name, or anything like that. This is not a Sodom and Gomorrah type God I am embracing here, but a holistic, cosmic, eternal, inexpressibly magnificent, benevolent, and perfect Being who has everything in perfect order, despite appearances. In recognition of such a Being, taking stock of one's imperfections is the easiest thing to do. None of us are perfect, we are all flawed. No state or government can be perfect. We humans make mistakes, small ones and GIANT ones. But we are coming along. We are learning. We are getting closer and closer to the Source, the Divine Ground, as Huxley called it. Enjoy the journey and be at peace!

BB Post: as Embers of Servetus. More on ego, autonomy, consciousness

While it is certainly true that consciousness and behavior, and brain-function in general, is far more complex than most people realize, I don't think even the brightest people in neuroscience and neuropsychology have a good enough handle on the brain to be able to justify the hypothesis that the subjective sensation and intuition of conscious autonomy is an illusion.

There have been many studies over the past few decades, most notably by Benjamin Libet, which indicate that the sensation of being conscious of making a choice actually occurs after the brain has already made the decision: that the sense of autonomy is a sort of constantly updated narrative conducted by the brain to afford a feeling of self-control and free agency when in fact there is no control or free agency (freewill). Despite the seemingly overwhelming data giving credence to this idea, I don't buy it. And there are still plenty of well-credited scientists and psychologists who don't buy it either.

 I'm with thinkers like David Chalmers and John Searle when it comes to consciousness and behavior: I think what causes consciousness in the brain's mechanism is not yet understood, in fact I think we are far from grasping it. This is what keeps the field of A.I. in a sort of limbo: the inability to manufacture anything like sentience or consciousness in a machine. I believe nature's technology is many orders of magnitude more advanced than man's technology, and it's sheer arrogance to think that since we can't fully understand how consciousness, high intelligence, and free agency arises in humans, then the normal (not to mention manifestly common across generations, nations, and cultures) sensation of autonomy and self-generated action, as well as the ego and sense of self and identity, is "an illusion".

Natural vs. Human rights

Ack! for the love of Pete!

I self-banned at my favorite shit-shooting forum because it was taking up too much of my time and I wanted to force myself to stay away: but my silly neurons and dendrites will have none of it, so here I am viewing a thread about 'natural rights', and so far not a single contributor to the thread has recognized the distinction between natural right and human right. Before I continue, YES! the concept of a 'right' is man-made, and nature does not traffic in 'rights'. Rights, like language, like currency, like modes of musical composition, are the inventions of conscious, thinking, reasoning beings, and are not inherent in, nor intrinsic to, nature. This we know, but since certain people seem to suffer from amnesia every single time the subject of rights comes up, we are forced to reiterate and remind everyone of this fact from the start, in the hope that some tiny seed of this fundamental truth might take hold and find root in the rich and balmy soil of the brains of our potential interlocutors.

Now, a natural right to exist is that which every living entity possesses, and by this we mean only that all such entities are given leave to sustain and promote their existence by whatever means necessary; by 'whatever means necessary' we mean just that: a natural right to exist is the right to kill and eat other entities, to seek, exploit, and horde resources, to act, in whatever way an entity can, to survive. There is no question of privilege or entitlement, no penalty or punishment, no moral quandaries, no ethical responsibilities or considerations whatsoever. Might makes right, in nature. The laws that govern the overwhelming majority of unreasoning, living organisms in the cosmos are force and happenstance.

So much for the definition of 'natural rights'. Now we come to the definition of human rights. These rights are also called civil rights, individual rights, etc. Man, as an intelligent, rational, reasoning being, is not provided by nature with certain instincts particular to most other animal species: he has no inherent, automatic knowledge pertaining to how he must act in order to survive. He has drives, urges, and predilections, but these are not instincts, as many incorrectly assume. A bird knows how to make a nest by virtue of instinct; a man may well desire shelter and dryness and warmth, but he is not provided with the knowledge of how to build a house, an igloo, or a tepee. He must learn this knowledge for himself, and such information is remembered and passed down, rather than being encoded and inherited genetically.

That being the case, as man began to become civilized he reasoned that since he is not endowed with certain animal instincts he must be allowed to abide by the governance of his own mind, he must be at liberty to learn and to seek out the means for his survival, and to pursue whatever course he chooses that seems adequate to ensure that those means be attained; however, this right which man grants to himself, by virtue of inter-subjective, voluntary, social cooperation and agreement, carries with it a necessary negative aspect, which is that he may do only that which is rational and reasonable to sustain his own life, and not any action whatsoever, as it is with his natural right, which, it needs to be stressed, he still possesses, with respect to his dealings with lower animals who operate solely in the realm of natural right. Natural rights, or, the laws of nature, do not have this negative aspect. That is the distinction between the two terms, right there. If an individual wishes to possess the right to his life and to the pursuit of happiness, he is obligated to understand and obey the restraint which the negative aspect of that right imposes upon him, which is, that he may not interfere with nor violate the right of any individual to possess and to benefit from that very same right which he himself wishes to possess.

And so it goes, yadda yadda, etcetera, and so forth. Why can't people get this straight?

7/25/2011

On Morality; BB post

Originally Posted by G: Since I've realized that I was a moral nihilist I have no longer claimed that anything is moral or immoral. But this does not, as I have found, interfere with things like, say, vegetarianism which I practice. One can be entirely empathetic with other sentient beings without the idea "killing sentient beings is wrong" or "eating meat is wrong." Thoughts?

 

My opinion is that you've set up a false dichotomy, i.e: if there are no objective, moral absolutes, then there is no such thing as moral or immoral. But this is obviously not the case since you can empathize with other organisms, and that empathy is the result of a real quality you possess which we call morality. I would call it a moral sense, as some philosophers have named it. That there is no hard, brute fact called morality to examine, and by which to measure degrees of the intuitive beliefs and suppositions we call morals, is not a problem, as there are no hard, brute facts about a great many qualities which are nonetheless real qualities, experienced across the board by the greater majority of humans throughout history: love, hope, fear, grief, etc.

Take language itself: languages are human inventions. There are no absolute, objective linguistic facts against which we measure the utility of speech. We have modes of speech which have developed over vast periods of time, and complex grammars built up around them, fixed rules that are in a certain sense objective, in that they apply to all users of language regardless of subjective feelings or perspective (for instance, "shovel" is a noun and a verb in English whether I like or not), but which are nonetheless human inventions that exist only by inter-subjective social agreement and custom.

I think the sort of thinking implied in the OP is a remnant of religious thinking, and not the other way around as many would suggest. If you think about it, what fuels religious thinking, and in particular modern Christian reformed theology, is the idea that only God is perfect and absolute. Humans fall short of the perfection of God in every sense; they are crippled from the start by an inherent predilection towards reckless and "sinful" behavior. Since they can never know moral perfection, they are fatally and irrevocably flawed and can have no moral guidance other than obedience to the moral law set down by this mysterious and perfect Lawgiver.

The thing to remember is that there is no perfect, personal lawgiver*, and that Nature doesn't traffic in morality. Morality is a human invention, and is thoroughly unnatural. We should be proud of the fact that we've invented it and that we are able to live up to it at least some of the time.

To say that without absolute, objective moral facts there is no such thing as morality is the same as saying "without God, all is permissible." It's an old lie that needs to be put to rest.

**Methinks I was in error there. 18 July 2011 GB

BB post: as Gulielmus Beta : Free will/dubious phrase

Yes, I think the phrase free will is dubious in and of itself (in and of itself does not mean separate from [as in not including] any of its specific definitions, but that it contains or is comprised of all of its definitions, hence its dubious-ness). It arouses doubt and uncertainty because one cannot be certain in what sense it is being used. One of the reasons there is such debate over the phrase free will is precisely because it has so many definitions and means a variety of sometimes vastly different things. For instance, the accepted definition among at least a few of us in this thread: the ability to consciously choose from among two or more realizable options, is much different from the compatibilist definition ventured by a few, which refers chiefly to an action which is not compelled. While these two definitions are substantially different, each is useful in its own way, and the fact that they are not in agreement doesn't take away from their respectful usefulness. But to just toss out the phrase without defining it, there is not a great deal of usefulness there. If there were no threads here on the subject, and a person started a thread which began, "Do you believe in free will?", the first thing to be at issue would be: what exactly does free will mean?

I think we could say that a great many common terms and/or phrases are dubious in and of themselves and often require a good deal of pinning down. Take the word God. God is a famously dubious term and there is a different definition of God for practically every individual; yet this doesn't mean that a Calvinist's definition of God is dubious or non-useful to the Calvinist nor, for that matter, to the person with whom she is conversing. It is useful insofar as it conveys a particular, generally well-defined Being.

Your last question: "How does the term ''free will'' relate to the drivers of human behaviour?"

I would say that free will relates to the actions which are the result of those drivers, and not the drivers themselves. Or more simply: it is not a driver of behavior, but is an attribute of behavior. I have these "drivers" all at work in my brain, and I have a set of wants, desires, predilections, predispositions, what have you. Out of this comes the act of choosing. The act of choosing is free in that while I will necessarily choose one option, which option I in fact choose is not necessarily forced upon me nor inevitable. The act of choosing involves will in that it is an act of conscious intent. Hence, free will.

BB post: as Gulielmus Beta : Mind/body/dualism

In my many discussions of the mind/body problem, extending to off and online activity over the past 15 years, I have resolved only recently that there is no mind/body problem. The duality, mind and body, exists, insofar as we have an objective existence as a physical body which can be observed and analyzed by others, and a subjective existence which is internal and private, and cannot be literally shared with another person. We can share our subjective experiences by way of communication: conversation, philosophy, and poetry, for example, but we cannot literally allow someone else to experience what we experience inside ourselves.

This duality is sometimes embraced wholesale, as it was by Descartes (I think) and by people who believe in a soul as distinct from but operating in conjunction with a body. For some this soul is God-given and does not arise by any biological process that can be remotely identified or understood, and yet to others the soul or spirit refers simply to consciousness and its abstract, intangible content, its workings and motivations.

I have come to believe that the best approach to the mind/body problem is to understand that a whole person, a sentient, intelligent human being, is the consummation of its objective and subjective components, its quantitative and qualitative "parts". i.e: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is not the mind and body operating in some distinct and/or independent fashion; it is both, operating together to form a unified entity or being. In this sense it is a trinity, or tri-unity.

This triunity, or union of three, can be observed in so many different things, not just organisms. Take a chair. A chair is at first an object made up of parts in an organized fashion. It has quantitative parts: wood, nails, varnish, leather (and these extend to statistical properties which are not material but nonetheless objective and not subject to opinion: size, weight, height, breadth); and it has qualitative parts or properties: it is pleasing to observe, as a piece of art or design; it has a function, a utility; it has a name, a purpose. The chair is neither its physical, or concrete parts alone, nor its abstract parts (which could not exist without the ordered design of its material parts, except as concepts in the mind about a thing called a chair, which would require by necessity having seen a chair or having invented the idea of a chair), but is all of these material and non-material components and properties taken together to form a whole.

If we extend this way of looking at things (and I admit that is all this is, a way at looking at things) to something like the Christian concept of the Trinity, it is more than a little illuminating.

Amazon review of Jethro Tull Aqualung

I'm about to piss off a lot of Tull fans, which is ironic really seeing as I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Tuller and have been for twenty-nine years. Here's my opinion: I don't think Aqualung is anywhere near the best Tull album. In fact, Aqualung would rank pretty near the bottom if I were to make a list of Tull albums from favorite to least-favorite. The only ones to rank below it would be Too Old to Rock and Roll Too Young to Die, Under Wraps, Catfish Rising, and Dot com. Nor do I think Aqualung is representative of the band's music as a whole. In fact, I regard it as being somewhat atypical in regard to their total output. Furthermore - and this complaint has a lot to do with my previous statement - I think the sound quality, at least on the album's original release, was pretty lousy. As far as I'm concerned, the albums on both sides of Aqualung suffer from a similar problem: Benefit is only slightly better than Aqualung, although it's dismal on certain tracks (Play in Time, Teacher), and Thick as a Brick is only a marginal improvement on the previous disks. I don't know how or why it happened, but A Passion Play, though scarcely a year later than TAAB, marked a return to the excellent sound engineering found on Stand Up, which had practically gone missing for three years. Before I continue, I know these are unusual statements to make, but I've been saying them for a long time and I stand by them. Also, Ian Anderson himself has said that he was not happy with how Aqualung sounded, and he has also intimated (particularly on the interview contained on the CD reviewed here) that he doesn't regard Aqualung as his strongest work and often seems as mystified as I am over the fact that Aqualung became so much more famous than any other Tull album, at least in certain parts of the world.

I love Ian Anderson and his band as much as anyone. In fact, I can say without reservation that Tull is my favorite band. My admiration for Anderson is very profound. But that being said, there seems to be a struggle going on inside the man, a struggle between creative genius and genuine humility, between fierce individualism and a "collective soul", to steal a phrase. Despite the obvious talent and the will to succeed, there was a man who was slightly unsure of himself. This insecurity manifested itself quite frequently in Jethro Tull's music, and I think Aqualung might be a good example of it. In the late sixties and early seventies there was a harder edge coming to pop music, a more menacing and troubling approach: the infancy of heavy metal. I have little doubt that Anderson was aware that groups like Zeppelin and Sabbath were at the forefront of this metamorphosis from the placid naivete of flower-power to the industrial angst of metal, and I can't kick the feeling that Aqualung was Tull's first, and perhaps only, real foray into the darker side of rock music. If there was ever a riff that could be considered a classic template for heavy metal, it was the opening riff of Aqualung's title track. There was nothing remotely similar to it on Benefit from one year before, and the heavy tracks on Stand Up were indeed heavy but still firmly rooted in blues. There was nothing bluesy about the song Aqualung, nor in much of anything on the rest of the Aqualung LP; but there is plenty of music that is dark and heavy: Aqualung, My God, with its sinister riff, Cross-Eyed Mary, Hymn 43, Locomotive Breath, and the better part of Wind Up. Note that in these songs there is a lot of single-note riffing as opposed to chordal, which was something Zeppelin and Sabbath did a great deal (Dazed and Confused, Heartbreaker, Immigrant Song, Black Dog, Black Sabbath [song], Wicked World, Behind the Wall of Sleep, Electric Funeral, Faeries Wear Boots). Needless to say I wasn't the least bit surprised to read an interview where, when asked what would have happened if Tony Iommi had stayed with Jethro Tull (the Sabbath guitarist had "joined" Tull very briefly, couldn't stand it, and quit), Ian answered: "Then every Tull album would have sounded like Aqualung." This statement is of particular interest since Iommi, of course, never played on Aqualung and had nothing whatsoever to do with that album, or any Tull album.

Ian was uncomfortable with the studio where Aqualung was recorded and in my opinion this is more than evident on the end result of those sessions. I find the sound on Aqualung to be quite shallow and thin, and maybe this was because of a lack of confidence in Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond's playing, who, according to Anderson, was a fledgling on the instrument? Also consider, this was Clive Bunker's last outing with Tull. According to what I've read, he was becoming uncertain about the musical direction in which the band was heading, and I feel that this uncertainty could have somehow been transfered into the recording process. Not that the drumming is mechanically sub-par, just that Bunker is far less present on Aqualung (and Benefit, now that I think about it) than he was on the first two Tull albums. Listen to Dharma for One, Cat's Squirrel, New Day Yesterday, and Nothing is Easy. Bunker is absolutely up front and bristling on those tracks. As an example of what I mean when I refer to the bleak sound quality from this particular period, compare the versions of Teacher offered on Benefit, where it originally appeared, and on Living in the Past, where it re-surfaced on that early compilation. The version that appears on the latter album was re-engineered and is far superior to the original version. You don't have to be an audiophile to hear the difference. In my opinion, it would have been nice if the same set of ears that produced that better version of Teacher (it might have been Ian, I don't know) could have worked the same magic over the Benefit, Aqualung, and Thick as a Brick albums in their entirety (not that TAAB is all that bad, but it wasn't as good as it could have been).

This re-casting of Aqualung is an improvement on the original, and I have to admit that I warmed to the songs a fair bit more than I usually do (of course that could have been the Rumplemintz), but it could be that there is too much deficiency in the original tapes to ensure a top-end sound no matter what magical wand is waved over them. The bass lacks punch and presence (Oh for Mr. Cornick a la New Day Yesterday!), the drums are not immediate or forceful, the voice lacks resonance and depth, I feel in large part to Ian's wanting to sound snide, sarcastic, and rebellious: it's higher-pitched and somewhat hollow. This snide, sneering tone is present on certain parts of TAAB, but is almost altogether gone on A Passion Play. I am referring to the aural, emotive quality of Ian's voice here, not lyrical content, though obviously the latter effects the former.


To hearken back to what I was saying about Ian Anderson's essential humility (in a healthy, not religious, self-loathing, sense) and what appears to me a small degree of uncertainty in regard to his muse: I think Aqualung was by and large an experiment in a musical genre from which Jethro Tull was subsequently to depart completely and in which I doubt they ever felt completely comfortable or honest. TAAB has none of Aqualung's metallic tone insofar as the music itself is concerned, and APP is miles away from it, so far in fact that it's not even hard rock let alone tentatively heavy metal; but while this is true there are quite a few times through the years when Ian seemed to be more persuaded by the fact that he was a pop icon, a position to which he might have felt duty-bound to stay at least ostensibly true, than by his own purely musical instincts. The Album "A" comes to mind, which seems like a response to the flimsy, keyboard-saturated music of New Wave; as does Under Wraps, which has our beloved Ian creating still more technologically-oriented soundscapes in order, it seems, to escape the Celtic, folksy, bucolic image Tull engendered automatically in people's minds; then there was Crest of a Knave, where almost anyone can detect the influence of Dire Straits. I put Aqualung in the category of Tull albums which, though very good and even excellent in many respects, were in some significant ways more the result of external influences and trends than of true artistic inspiration. Of course all of this is merely conjecture based on impressions I get from the music and from things Ian Anderson has said over the years, and I could be completely wrong about all of it; but If I could name one album which I *believe* to be one-hundred percent sterling Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull, it would be Songs from the Wood.


Even in old interviews when he was a young man I get the feeling that Ian was far too humble to do himself justice. At one point he says something to the effect, "Why should people pay more to see me than to get a hamburger? I know I wouldn't." When he introduces his songs in concert (see Youtube) he often seems apologetic and reluctant to play them, and acts surprised when the audience cheers like crazy as the number begins. I saw one video of a live version of Minstrel in the Gallery where Ian appears to be hesitant to even utter the title of the song, and looks around shifty-eyed once the words come haltingly forth as if waiting for audience approval, or for some heckler to raise a stink. An artist as original, intelligent, and talented as Ian Anderson shouldn't need a nod from anyone. All the critics and hecklers will recede into oblivion where they rightly belong. This doesn't include me, of course, since I never stepped out of oblivion in the first place.

Amazon review of Jethro Tull Crest of a Knave

The more Tull reviews I read the more I'm convinced of how futile the whole enterprise is. The one thing that is undoubtedly true is that music appreciation is a subjective matter and the stupidest thing to do is hold our fellow listeners in suspicion or contempt simply because certain sounds cause vastly different reactions in them than they do in us. In this spirit I approach Crest of a Knave, and in particular this re-mastered edition. To echo what someone else mentioned in reference to these Tull re-vampings, simply raising lows and highs doesn't make for a better sound. Through most of these tracks the kick drum is over-bearing and thumping, and the cymbals are hissy. It's been a long time since I heard my vinyl copy of this - which went missing several years ago - and I never owned it on CD, but I don't remember having such impressions before. Enough about that, on to the music.


I'm often surprised, even baffled, by the disparate opinions of my fellow Tull fans, but I have to remind myself that my opinions are probably stranger than most. For instance, while I like Budapest well enough, I don't think it stands head and shoulders above the average Tull song. I find it sparse and far too lengthy, and never mind who it sounds like. There are better songs on this album. One of the songs not included on the original LP, but which did appear on the CD version, which strikes me as something very fine is The Waking Edge. This is a country song. Not folk mind you, but country, as in American-style country and western. If you don't agree, go back and have another listen, particularly to the chorus. You'll have to skip the lengthy intro which runs to a minute and a half, and which, quite frankly, is an example of the kind of superfluous musical foreplay which makes a lot of progressive rock music intolerable to me. At 3:42 there's a beautiful solo, on bass guitar of all things. Not because it's a country song, and therefore highly unusual for Tull, but because it's a good song plain and simple, I think it's one of the highlights of the album.


Steel Monkey is a solid rock song, full of energy and muscular keyboards with Martin's false harmonics, reminiscent of ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, sprinkled all through-out. Jump Start and Farm on the Freeway are both strong tracks, particularly for the flute and guitar breaks which fill out both songs and in which Ian and Martin display the musical chemistry that makes them one of the most entertaining duos in rock music. Said She Was a Dancer is simlar to The Waking Edge in that it's country-fied, wistful, and laid-back. It includes some of Martin's best guitar work and shows that he is equally adept at both a heavy, distorted sound as well as one which is perfectly clean.


One of the regretable things about CDs is that you have to judge the whole album as a single unit from beginning to end. With records you had the album split into two sides and the artist was compelled by necessity to make each side function as a thing-unto-itself, and subsequently you had some sort of symmetry, or asymmetry, between the two, some sort of co-dependence or relation. The first side of Crest, on vinyl, ending with Said She Was a Dancer, constitutes a very solid Tull side. On the other hand, side two was not nearly as satisfying or coherent. You had the soft and sprawling Budapest followed by the decent but not terribly strong Mountain Men, and concluding with Raising Steam, perhaps the weakest track of the bunch. Not much of a consummation or climax, artistically speaking. The earlier CD version offered two more songs than the LP - Dogs in the Midwinter, The Waking Edge - and these tracks, although the former is not bad and the latter is excellent, even if they had been part of the LP's second side wouldn't have made side two as strong as side one. This was the last Tull album I ever owned on vinyl and maybe that's why I'm ruminating on this two-side issue.


At any rate there has always been something off kilter with Crest for me, and because of this I don't think it's absolutely top-shelf Tull, nor do I think it could have been. It's a new Ian Anderson vocal style for one thing. He doesn't sing on Crest as much as he speaks in tune, and he sounds like somebody else so often that it's actually a bit embarassing. One has to realize that he was about forty when Crest was recorded and one must face the fact that aging takes its toll on a person's voice, and particularly on a person who sings professionally. Getting down on a forty year-old man for not being able to belt it out like he did when he was twenty is like getting down on him for having a few gray hairs. For this reason I don't blame Ian for his more subdued style: I'm simply being honest when I say that it makes for a product which will inevitably be less magnificent than vintage Tull.


I also have to say that I like Part of the Machine more than any of the songs on Crest. The guitar and flute breaks are nothing short of brilliant. It's quintessential Tull, but unfortunately it can't be judged as an integral part of Crest of a Knave since it was never included on it. Had it been, it would have made Crest a better album.

Amazon review of Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick

Critics, amateur and professional alike, have made such frequent use of certain terms that they've lost all of their potency and are little more than cliches. The terms I'm referring to have been used in reference to Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick probably more often than any other pop-rock record, with the possible exception of one: A Passion Play, also by Jethro Tull, which directly followed TAAB. It isn't that the terms pompous, pretentious, or self-indulgent, are without meaning, or that they are totally inapplicable to the aforementioned works, it's simply that those three terms, to name a few, are so hackneyed that it surprises me when someone who seems intelligent and informed uses them nowadays in a review, in the very same way it would surprise me to see a fine poet use the simile "red as a rose", or "soft as silk" in a new poem. As any reader of poetry knows, those two cliches are completely impotent to a modern ear, they convey nothing, they do no work, for the simple reason that they are worn out with use and are so familiar that as soon as the eye and ear register them they are passed over and given no attention at all.


Jethro Tull's 1972 follow-up to the tremendously successful Aqualung album, Thick as a Brick, is one of the great grand-daddies of early prog and is to many minds perfectly representative of the so-called excess and self-indulgence of seventies art-rock, or whatever you wish to call it. In my opinion progressive rock was, unlike today, literally progressive at that time. The bands that flourished in the seventies were moving things forward at a truly amazing pace, and in that decade the biggest acts in rock were all unique, in that there was something about them, musically speaking as well as theatrically, which set them apart from everyone else and which was in its most genuine sense inimitable: Tull, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Queen, Yes, Floyd, to name a few. When Punk came along you had bands that were basically conservative to the core, bands that insisted on bringing rock and roll back to its roots. Those young tories had had quite enough of rock and roll as art, they were tired of poetic, narrative song lyrics, musical experimentation, innovation; they wanted the old anger, the bad reputations, the snotty, leather-jacketed, three-chorded rebellious conformity. There were some great punk bands, like the Clash for example, but overall punk seemed much more like a social movement than anything else and music was a tool, an expedient means of making a stink, whereas with prog and other types of forward-moving rock music of that era, music was an end in itself.


As for self-indulgence: it's precisely because of this trait that we have some truly outstanding art to consume and enjoy, and it's the opposite of it which results in so much flimsy and ephemeral aural debris coming over the airwaves. I'm not just referring to bland top-forty crapola, but to many a recording artist across the popular-music spectrum, from rap and hip-hop to so-called alternative rock, industrial, and metal. Unlike the premier artists of the seventies, you could play mix-and-match with personnel from many of these bands and you'd hardly know the difference. Everyone wants to look the same, sound the same, create the same effect, convey the same emotion. I can't flip through a music-mag anymore without seeing the same angry eye staring out from under the same barbed eyebrow, the same f-you finger sticking up from the same tattooed forearm. Who is impressed by these flagrant concessions to conformity anymore? These people are not self-indulgent, they are selfless, in the worst possible sense, and selflessness doesn't enhance creativity, it puts a stop to it. That isn't to say there isn't some great music being made. There is; but many of the prevalent musical genres, rap, hip-hop, and all the various sub-genres of metal in particular, are so deeply infused with the punk esthetic of angry, mean-spirited uniformity that one has to wonder if there is any real concern among them about taking music into the unknown.


When Thick as a Brick was issued it was virtually unheard of in the pop music industry. It's easy to use twenty-twenty hindsight and see that songs of epic proportions would become the norm for prog-rock acts throughout the decades to come, but you have to put yourself in 1972, when this sort of thing was only just getting underway. Not only was TAAB in most respects a novel and momentous release, it was also a great risk. Aqualung was tremendously successful, and Thick as a Brick sounded nothing like it. Aqualung was fraught with heavy, memorable riffs. Thick as a Brick was a spacious and evocative piece of music, a single song that gathered momentum as it went, and there was almost no heavy guitar at all, let alone any of those catchy riffs. Naturally such a piece of work makes certain demands of its listeners, and because of those demands many people have decided that TAAB is a pretentious and pompous record. How dare Ian Anderson think we should spend forty-five minutes of our time listening to something he dreamt up in his moments of self-delusion? Not that I think TAAB should be everyone's cup of tea. If you don't like it you are entitled to your opinion, and your opinion is probably as good as anyone else's. As I said in another review, it's senseless to render judgments about one another's tastes in music (and here I mean music strictly as music, not as socio-political posturing or fashion statement), since music appreciation is firmly in the realm of the subjective; but what bothers me is labeling a record as pretentious and pompous simply because it doesn't cater to your particular tastes, or because you haven't got the time to give it a fair listen, or, worst of all, because those terms are so common and easy to use.


To be fair about it, there are some things about TAAB which I don't like. For one, it seems too fast-paced, which might sound ironic considering the song's length, nor do I think the production was top-notch. Also Ian Anderson had not yet gotten total control of his voice and his singing is full of youthful bravado and that pinched, sarcastic tone that we hear all over Aqualung. Contrarily, there are some more subdued, delicate passages throughout the piece, a particularly notable one being the "Do you believe in the day" section on side two. TAAB is the first outing for what was arguably Tull's best line-up, but in my opinion the truly great period for the band was to commence the following year, in 1973.

Amazon review of Shyamalan's film Unbreakable

I was initially disappointed with the climax of this film. My heart sank, not so much because of what had occurred in the movie but because I felt that my growing admiration for M. Night Shyamalan had been seriously damaged. The climax felt trite, contrived, and thoroughly unrewarding. I felt for a moment that the things Night's detractors had said about him were true. That is, until I took the DVD out and decided to give what I had just seen some serious thought. After a few minutes the realization sank in: the climax to Unbreakable is the only conclusion it could logically have come to, given everything that precedes it and given the themes it develops. In this way it is nearly on par with The Sixth Sense.

Ostensibly, this is a film concerning the relationship between David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the lone survivor of a train derailment, and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a collector and afficianado of comic books. Elijah believes Dunn to be the superhero he has been looking for all his life, the exact opposite of himself, as Elijah has been afflicted since birth with a medical condition which causes his bones to break very easily. The story follows Elijah's efforts to convince Dunn that he is truly a superhero. But in Unbreakable, as with most of Night's films, there are many different stories and themes inter-acting with one another. On the simplest level, it's a story about a superhero, his classic reluctance to attain to his role due to a quiet humility and a lack of selfish ambition. It's also a love story, and, as is typical with Night's masterful storytelling, there are several love relationships being examined: father and son (Dunn and Joseph), mother and son (Elijah and his mother), and husband and wife. Intertwined with that there is a story of frustration, anger, resentment, and evil. Since this is a film about opposites, there are equal glimpses into the workings of good and evil, and the various types and magnitudes of both. On the side of the good we see the common love of parents for their children, the sacrifice of a promising career and great success for the sake of romantic love, and the selfless intervention at the scene of a horrendous crime to save the innocent. On the side of evil we see petty theft, barbarous torture and murder, and calculated, catastrophic massacre.

I could go on and on about the possible themes treated in this amazing film. The one that really jumped out at me is the old argument between Freewill and Determinism. How Elijah Price comes to be the person he is is brilliantly executed, especially in a flashback scene where his mother entices her son to go outside and get a gift she has left for him on a park bench. The gift turns out to be a comic book, and Elijah's mother tells him that she has bought many of them. So Elijah is rewarded for his virtuous effort of going out into a dangerous world by acquiring access to a fantasy world where heroism and virtue are delineated with vivid clarity. But being the intelligent child that he is, Elijah also sees that for every hero there is a villain, for every act of good, a contrary act of evil; for every good thing, a bad thing: a balance. It is not for nothing that when Elijah opens the gift the comic book is upside down. He will see things upside down at another point in the film, and there is a strong thematic purpose behind it, as there is a strong thematic purpose in his interest, even obsession, with comics. 

What has this to do with freewill versus determinism? A lot. Was Elijah's personality mapped out for him by his initial circumstances? Certainly his medical disability is not his choice, but to what extent does the vulnerability and weakness caused by that disorder effect his character, his life choices, his destiny? Some would say a great deal, others would say his choices were entirely his own despite the disadvantages he was beset with. It's a huge ethical issue which goes far beyond the parameters of a simple superhero flick. And it's an issue which in bygone days I thought I was decided on, but which now leaves me entangled in doubt and wonder.

Unbreakable is also a study in the struggle for identity and sense of purpose, and in this respect it has something in common with the later film, Lady in the Water. Unbreakable is a darker film, but ultimately, no less hopeful.

Amazon review of Shyamalan's The Village

M. Night Shyamalan (hereafter referred to as Night) has got himself into pickle, and I suppose maybe it's his own fault. Many people are going into his movies with the single-minded purpose of figuring out the "twist", and in the process are not paying enough attention to grasp the more important things. In a sense Night reminds me of the guitarist Buckethead, whose genius shines through the presence of a KFC bucket turned upside-down and an expressionless white mask, at least for those who can look past the bucket and realize that it's irrelevant and only a problem for those who insist on seeing the gimmick instead of listening to the music. Night is known for this gimmick of the surprise ending, and people are ignoring the virtues of his films because they are too focused on the gimmick.

**This review will contain spoilers so please read no further if that is an issue for you.**

Okay. There are two major revelations in this film, one of which occurs late in the film and the other which occurs at the end. The first revelation, that the creatures - "those we do not speak of" - are not real, is something which I more or less assumed early on. I immediately made a connection with these creatures and the myths of religion. I admit that I didn't know that this myth of the creatures was fabricated by the village elders. Many people consider this a silly premise, even a preposterous one, but given that we live in a world where our ancestors (our elders, if you will) actually have fabricated a massive lie about a mysterious realm populated with demons and a real-live Satan to boot, I find it completely plausible. Not only plausible, but entirely realistic. History is full of efforts by well-intended groups of people to isolate themselves and their loved-ones from the outside world by creating micro-utopias and religious and/or ideological communes of one sort or another. Why people have difficulty accepting this premise is completely beyond me, especially since the film goes to great lengths in exposing the inherent flaws in similar premises and why they almost always fail.

The second revelation (or "twist", if you must), which is that the film takes place in modern times, is almost entirely irrelevant and adds nothing of great importance. It changes nothing. We already know everything we need to know by the time this revelation occurs, and the story is all but finished. We already know that this community has isolated itself from the outside world because of the disillusionment and fears of those who created it, because of the wild hope that their new world will be purer, better, and safer. When I saw the modern vehicle pulling up to Ivy, the blind girl who is the hero and central character of the film, I wasn't racked with any great surprise. It was a "meh" moment. I didn't care much, to tell you the truth. All I cared about was if the driver of the vehicle could help Ivy complete her mission. That's it.

And why is that? Well, because one of the things this film is is a love story, and a triumphant one at that. Ivy is in love with Lucius Hunt, and he is in love with her, and he needs medicine to survive two stab wounds given to him by another person who also loves Ivy, but with a different kind of love, as Lucius is about to explain before being stabbed. As anyone who has seen enough of Night's films knows, or should know, Love, with a capital "L", runs like a bright thread through all of them (at least the ones I've seen). Romantic love, familial love (the deceased mother and living daughter in Sixth Sense: two words to remind you of one of the most moving scenes in movie history: "Every day"), and deep, spiritual love (with and without the religious connotations). It bugs me to no end that in all the criticism I've read about Night's movies, so much is written about the damn "twist" and so little about the power of Love. What's especially touching about Ivy's love for Lucius is the way she has to draw him out, to make him speak his feelings. She is the great strength in the community, despite being blind, and the scene on the porch where she gets Lucius to confess his love for her is one of the most satisfying scenes I've ever watched in any film. Adding to the poignancy of this unspoken love is what is going on between Alice Hunt and Edward Walker (Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt). Lucius is speaking at one point to his mother, Alice Hunt, and mentions that Edward Walker is in love with her. She asks her son how he knows this, and he replies, "Because he never touches you." Again, a hair-raising line and a magnificent reflection on what it's like to harbor feelings of love for someone and not be able to tell them, a feeling with which I am painfully familiar.

Early on there is a scene which stands in stark contrast to all of this: a scene where Ivy's sister confesses her love for Lucius Hunt boldly and without restraint. It's an early reminder that no matter how we try to insulate the people we love from being hurt, our efforts will very often - if not indeed always - go for nothing. The scene serves to remind people that the dangers of the world do not merely consist of evil people or evil creatures with dark intentions. Even Love can be dangerous, and in fact often is. Not only dangerous, but fatal. Enter one of the other pivotal characters, Noah Percy. Noah has some sort of mental deficiency and his behavior is often reckless and erratic. Ivy Walker is about the only one who seems to have a calming effect on Noah. She has power over him, and only later on do we realize that Noah has his own deep feelings of love for Ivy, feelings which become a dark and dangerous force equal to that of any evil mythical creature. Noah is the person who stabs Lucius, because Lucius threatens Noah's relationship with Ivy. It's not for nothing that Night has Noah dress up as one of the Covington Woods creatures in order to terrorize Ivy on her painstaking trek through the woods to the "towns" and frustrate her efforts to bring back medicine to save Lucius. He is showing how even innocence and love can be corrupted into something deadly and evil, and why we don't need to invent supernatural agents of terror, nor even supernatural agents of Love, for that matter, since the very real and natural Love that we are capable of as mere humans is sufficient to make us do virtuous and heroic things (as well as terrible things). This reminds me of a wonderful few lines spoken late in the film by Edward Walker, when he and the elders are beginning to realize that their utopian dreams may have been somewhat misgiven (I am paraphrasing, and may not have it exactly right): "Love moves the world. The world bows before love, in awe."

To sum up, the Village is a film which offers many things to think about: is religion a good thing after all, can any utopian system actually work, is it a good idea to smother our loved ones in good intentions and keep them from living full, normal lives, and can love really save the day, when all is said and done? I believe it can. Thanks, Night, for this great and thought-provoking piece of work.

Most perfect poem? Here's my nominee

The Beautiful Changes, by Richard Wilbur.

State's rights

I have said a few times that rights apply to persons, not groups, but given the existence of things like state's rights, I most likely spoke in error, although there is plenty of dispute about just what state's rights are and how they could or should be exercised.

Also, in case someone cares to remind me that a right doesn't actually exist anyway and that the concept of a right is a human invention (like the late George Carlin in one of his routines where it seemed he thought he'd discovered something):

No shit?