Timeless Music

Dear Readers - this post, Timeless Music, was written sometime in the autumn of 2009.  I suppose that I was not quite finished and intended to make changes or add further thoughts.  In the six intervening years I've apparently forgotten what those changes or additional ideas were going to be.

What follows is, word for word, exactly the way I abandoned this article back then - although I've updated links and added the pictures.  Only the last picture is relevant to the subject matter while the others are from a series called Half Grassed.  I'm sad that the argumentative and occasionally bigoted comments on the LA Times story Loving Wagner Anyway don't seem to be available anymore.  At the end there's something I labeled "Footnote".  I'm guessing that was a sidetrack I'd cut out of the essay but hadn't yet gathered enough courage to delete.

In honor of Mixed Meters' Tenth Anniversary which was on September 16, I'm rescuing this and a couple other pieces from obscurity.  While I doubt they will get much attention on the Internet, they certainly will get more than they do in my draft folder.

Six years is the briefest of instants in the realm of the timeless.  This subject matter still seems relevant to me at the moment thanks to the Los Angeles Philharmonic's current Immortal Beethoven promotion.  Go ahead, call him immortal, I don't much care anymore.  Back in 2009 I cared a lot; that was a Wagner thing.

As always, many thanks for reading Mixed Meters - or at least for skimming through quickly.

//David

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How long is "timeless"?

Timeless could mean existing, without change, from the very creation of the universe (whenever that was) until the very end (if it happens). Actually, something that lasts longer than the universe would be truly timeless. Not a useful definition.

How about a geologic timescale? Could Mount Everest be considered timeless? Or, closer to home, the San Andreas Fault? Both features might last only tens of millions of years.

Billions of Years or Millions of Years? I can't grasp much difference. Both are incomprehensible. Understanding a millennium - a mere thousand years - is daunting by itself. And I've lived in two of them.

I'm bothering you with this silly bullshit because the phrase "timeless music" pushes my buttons. I've run across it several times lately in various forms. Anyone can claim that certain music is timeless because choosing which music is timeless is a personal decision. Timeless implies that anyone, in any decade, any century, any millennium, will find the music meaningful. A genuinely timeless work ought to remain so regardless of changes in culture, economics or politics. It's a tall order.

Mostly I hear the phrase used about so-called Classical Music, a term less than 2 centuries old. (Centuries!) Some people claim their favorite, most comfortable, friendly and meaningful Classical music is timeless. They assume others will agree thoughtlessly.

People with similar musical tastes, possibly the result of similar musical education, tend to gather together and agree about which music they think is timeless. That's great. But when they start suggesting that their music will bring personal, civic or cultural improvement to outsiders, I become upset. Such proselytizing does nothing good for the world of classical music.

I ran across a button-pushing use of the phrase "timeless music" recently in a Los Angeles Times letter to the editor. Someone named Mark A. Overturf wrote a response to this editorial about elitism, ethnicity, race and Gustavo Dudamel:

Or why not stop reading race into something as beautiful as classical music? Try going to a concert some night and listening to a world-class orchestra in a world-class venue performing timeless music -- hence the name "classical."

If the author is suggesting that it doesn't matter whether or not Beethoven was black, I'm in full agreement.

I suspect Mr. Overturf is really saying that matters of social class distinction will be more easily overcome if people would only listen "to a world-class orchestra in a world-class venue". His utopian ecstasy is available to anyone if they only have ears to hear. Certainly has a religious ring to it. Religion is an important element of timelessness.

Here's something I wrote in an online discussion about another L.A. Times article. I was responding to a writer named MarK who called Wagner's operas "timeless and universal". (I can't deal with "universal" right now. Please wait for the next rant.) I wrote:

Timeless? How can an opera that was barely begun 150 years ago be considered timeless today? Religions which are millennia old with billions of adherents might, just barely, be considered timeless. But the Ring could completely disappear from the culture in another century.

Needless to say, MarK was not swayed by my argument. (If you read "Loving Wagner Anyway" by Mark Swed, be sure to read all the comments. One rarely encounters such blatant old-fashioned, dare I say timeless, anti-semitism.)

Anyway, in that quote I was trying to compare the relative time spans of a much beloved religion (such as Christianity, now two millennia old and counting) to that of a much beloved classical composer (Richard Wagner - less than two centuries and counting).

Does 2000 years qualify Christianity as "timeless"? It might. Will Christianity still exist in any recognizable form in another 2000? Will any of the basic principles remain unchanged? Possible. But without an argument based on faith no one can be certain.

Similarly, can anyone say that Wagner (or Beethoven or Bach) will still be revered or performed or even remembered after 20 centuries? To suggest such a thing requires a good deal of that pure simple faith.

Personally, I wonder if the talents needed to perform 21st century classical music will even be taught in the year 4000? I suppose that aspiring musicians then, just as now, will want to study what they need in order to get work. Will they have violins to play? Will people listen to mp3 files? Will the army of musicologists have grown enough to determine definitively if Wagner was an anti-semite?

Back here in the present, musical timelessness appears - hardly noticed - in curious corners, often part of a marketing campaign. I guess timelessness sells music with a familiar notion: "this music is good for you."

For example, I received a print brochure for the upcoming season of Los Angeles' own Monday Evening Concerts. It includes this anonymous audience member's quote:

It was really something that could not be described. And for me it verged on a religious experience.

There's no indication what indescribed music is being discussed. But apparently suggesting that an epiphany might be had by buying tickets is good marketing.

Recently I noticed the concept of timeless music at Starbucks. Starbucks once fancied itself a music store but today hawks only a few CDs. Right now they're selling albums by those immortal artists Barbra Streisand and Michael Buble displayed under a placard reading:

Music made to stand the test of time.

I wonder if "standing the test of time" is the first step canonizing "timeless music"? Will MarK or Mr. Overturf agree that Michael Buble might someday become "timeless". (I'm pretty sure they won't.)

I wish the idea of "timeless music" didn't bother me. It does because I am someone who searches for novelty in music. Novelty is getting harder and harder to find. These days I rarely hear anything new that does not remind me of something I've heard before.

There are a few pieces I enjoy hearing repeatedly. I would never suggest that others will react the same way. Certainly my all-too-unique listening habits plus my unusual educational and career background color my opinions about what music is good and which isn't.

I also wish that promoting music with religious overtones didn't bother me. I believe everyone should belive what they want - and everyone else should leave them alone.

Sometimes it is suggested that certain composers are inspired by God. In reality, composers are insecure, neurotic people, working under a deadline, trying to guarantee that each new piece sucks less than the previous one. God has nothing to do with it.

As my friend Armen said once: "I don't believe in Beethoven because there is a God. I believe in God because there is Beethoven." That's his choice, of course - and, because he has flipped the normal cause and effect, I find it a beautiful sentiment. Would that more of the classical music audience thought along these lines.

Personally I believe that the meaning of classical music comes not from the composer but, instead, from each individual listener. Through a process of consensus, so-called timeless music has achieved a kind of default meaning over the years. Eventually people begin to mistake the origins of that default consensus. They imagine it comes from out there, somewhere. In reality its real source is deep within each of them.

I believe that the consensus about classical music needs to be challenged. I hope what we have now is not permanent. I hope new meanings will be found for old pieces. I hope new pieces will find new meanings as well. I hope more of the audience will think independently. I hope fewer people will suggest that their favorite music is timeless. I hope they spend their time enjoying it and being moved by it right now.

I hope for utopia.

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[FOOTNOTE?]

Only old pieces, the ones heard over and over again, become timeless. New pieces are never timeless. ("Never timeless" is quite a concept.) New pieces must be vetted over time to achieve their certification.

Long unchanging drone pieces might seem timeless - but the mere act of lasting a long time is not what is being discussed here. In today's musical climate a piece might last six hundred or a thousand years without the slightest claim to being timeless. There's even a Timeless Music Festival.

Often "timeless" music is actually "timely", meaning it is still relevant in society. Beethoven's Ninth is timely because there are those who need to hear the message of universal brotherhood. Suppose humans actually survive until an age of universal brotherhood. Will anyone have reason to bother with the Ninth again?

Of course, the meaning people find in the Ninth is largely based on its text. Maybe it's Schiller who is actually timeless, not Beethoven.

The one creative artist closest to achieving timeless status is Shakespeare. His plays have the advantage over abstract music because words have more specific meanings than notes. To my knowledge, no one ever suggests that watching Shakespeare can solve the world's ills. I suppose there are people who attend theater with the same fervor of the Bayreuth audience. People seem to need to believe.

Inside the Gas Chambers

For the most part news is not a spectator sport. Only small groups of people directly witness major events. The rest of us must trust the media to find out what happened.

As time passes, people begin to agree that certain events were important. They observe the anniversaries, honor the heroes, slander the villains.  Stories are told, songs sung.  Books are written, movies made.  Lessons are learned, courses organized.  Eventually experts arise.  Starting with petty disagreements these experts argue with one another.  They form factions, wage verbal battles, assert opposite interpretations.  They go to court.  Their interpretations morph into articles of faith.

Beliefs have supplanted facts.

And then even more time passes. The important event is eclipsed by other important events. Direct witnesses die off, as do the rest of us. Generations disappear. The event loses relevance and becomes a dusty academic topic.  Professors vainly try to explain to bored students what actually happened and how anyone could have thought it was so special in the first place.

This process is called History.

I recently finished reading a book, the story of a direct witness to important events of history.  These  particular events were monstrously inhuman, the systematic genocide of millions of people.   Inside the Gas Chambers, Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz is an essential read because it is told by a direct witnesses to the Holocaust, one of the few who was made to work inside the Nazi crematoria and survived the war.  This book deserves our attention because, these days, there are certain people (let's call them "experts") who deny that such events ever happened in the first place.

Shlomo Venezia was a Sephardic Jew living in Greece. In 1944 the Nazis deported him to a concentration camp where they systematically murdered in the gas chambers anyone who couldn't work. Venezia was selected for a special unit, the Sonderkommando, whose job it was to move the dead bodies and burn the corpses.

The book takes the form of an interview, with Venezia responding at length to short questions.  His is not an overview of the huge ideology-driven Nazi murder enterprise.  This is not a grand history. Instead Venezia tells his own tale very simply.  He was one of many mice caught in a large trap.

(Question:) What did you see of the gas chamber when you arrived?

I wasn't one of those who had to take the corpses out of the gas chamber, but later on I frequently had to do it.  Those given this task started by pulling the corpses out with their hands, but in a few minutes their hands were dirty and slippery.  In order to avoid touching the bodies directly, they tried using a bit of cloth, but, of course, the cloth in turn became dirty and damp after a few moments.  So people had to make do.  Some tried to drag the bodies along with a belt, but this actually made the work even harder, since they had to keep tying and untying the belt.  Finally, the simplest thing was to use a walking stick under the nape of the neck to pull the bodies along.  You can see it very clearly in one of David Olère's drawings.  There was no shortage of walking sticks, because of all the elderly people who were put to death.  At least this meant we didn't have to drag the corpses with our hands.  And this was hugely important for us.  Not because it was a matter of corpses, though that was bad enough. . . . It was because their death had been anything but gentle.  It was a foul, filthy death, difficult and experienced differently by each of them.

(David Olère was an artist who also survived the Sonderkommando and documented it after the war in drawings such as this one.)

I've never talked about this until now; it's such a weight, it's so heartrending, that I find it difficult to speak of those visions of the gas chamber.  You could find people whose eyes hung out of their sockets because of the struggles the organism had undergone.  Others were bleeding from everywhere, or were soiled by their own excrement, or that of other people.  Because of the effect that their fear and the gas had on them, the victims often evacuated everything they had in their bodies.  Some bodies were all red, others very pale, as everyone reacted differently.  But they had all suffered in death.  People often imagine that the gas was thrown in, and there you were, the victims died.  But what death it was! . . . You found them gripping each other - everyone had desperately sought a little air.  The gas was thrown onto the floor and gave off acid from underneath, so everyone tried to find some air even if each one needed to climb on top of another until the last one died.  I personally think - I can't be sure but I think - that several people died even before the gas was thrown in.  They were crammed in so tightly against one another that the smallest and weakest were inevitably suffocated.  At a certain moment, under that pressure, that anguish, you become selfish and there's only one thing you can think of: how to save yourself.  That was the effect the gas had.  The sight that lay before us when we opened the door was terrible; nobody can even imagine what it was like.

Shlomo Venezia was an eye witness to history.  In the many decades between the events and the interview I expect he forgot some small details.  I would also expect that his overall story is true, corroborated as it is by so many other sources.

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However, there are doubters.  These are the "Holocaust Deniers", people who argue that no one died in the Nazi gas chambers.  I didn't have to scour the Internet very long to unearth Bishop Richard Williamson as a good example.  Williamson is a piece of work who spreads notions of hate and conspiracy with an aura of calm logical discourse..

The Bishop believes that no one died in Nazi gas chambers.   He believes that they never existed.   As you listen to him talk, notice his emphasis on his own belief.  He has made this issue not about what actually happened but about what and who he believes.  Religion does that to a guy, I guess.

He supports his beliefs with logical-sounding explanations given by experts.  In the video below he argues that poison gas had to be vented by tall chimneys, but wartime reconnaissance photos show no chimney shadows, so therefore - his experts have concluded and he agrees - there could have been no gas chambers.  This sort of argument, where a small inconsistency is used to undermine a large body of fact, seems very common in denial literature.

This small bit of feeble expertise is enough support for Williamson's beliefs.  He doesn't need much support from facts or logic.  I'm sure he'd find some contradiction in historical memoirs like Shlomo Venezia's.  What this cleric is telling us are his beliefs.  In his mind what he believes is more than sufficiently supported by his fundamentalist religious faith and his amply evident anti-Semitism.

Watch him in action.

I'm not here to debate the details of the Holocaust with people like the Bish.  If you're a friend of his don't bother to leave comments.  I won't publish them.

As time passes, each succeeding generation will have more difficulty distinguishing the facts of the Holocaust from the dogma and obfuscations of the deniers.  The lessons of Nazi inhumanity might fade and the resolve to Never Forget could be slowly lost if the Bishop gets his way.  Such a loss will pave the way for history to repeat itself.  How slowly the loss happens depends on how well the deniers are countered right now.

Here's a quote by Robert McAfee Brown from the preface to Night, Ellie Wiesel's Holocaust survival memoir:

Having confronted the story, we would much prefer to disbelieve, treating it as the product of a diseased mind, perhaps.  And there are those today who - feeding on that wish, and on the anti-Semitism that lurks near the surface of the lives of even cultured people - are trying to persuade the world that the story is not true, urging us to treat it as the product of diseased minds, indeed.  They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions.  Perhaps there is is a greater indignity, it is committed by those who believe them.

Reading books like Inside The Gas Chambers and other first hand accounts of the Holocaust are good ways to fight the ignorance and hatred of people like Richard Williamson and anyone who might believe him.

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You can watch and listen to Shlomo Venezia on YouTube (he speaks in Italian, of course.)

Bishop Williamson was excommunicated from the Catholic church in 1988 on a technicality.  Then the Vatican rehabilitated him in 2009.  Later the Pope asked him to recant his views on the Holocaust.  Williamson apologized but didn't admit he was wrong.  Pope Benedict said he should have done an Internet check on Williamson before rehabilitating him.  To its credit, the Catholic church has largely disapproved of Williamson's views.  Here in Los Angeles former Cardinal Mahony banned Williamson from all local Catholic institutions because of his views on the Holocaust.

Read other news stories of Bishop Williamson here.  He was fined by Germany for denying the Holocaust.

Most everything Williamson says in this video about the gas chambers is wrong.  The expert he cites is Fred Leuchter.  The discredited Leuchter was the subject of an excellent movie documentary Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. by Errol Morris.

Williamson's manner and British accent reminded me of Alan Watts, a wise Episcopal priest who spread notions of  Eastern religion to Americans during the fifties and sixties.  The comparison ends there.  Watts' lectures are still very relevant to modern life.

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Nazi concentration camps appear in a previous MM article: Ring Festival L.A. Begins

Death is the subject of What Is It Like To Be Dead, one of Mixed Meters' most popular posts.

Sonder Tags: Shlomo Venezia. . . Bishop Richard Williamson. . . Holocaust. . . gas chambers. . . anti-Semitism

Why Is There No Maximum Wage?

A few days ago I ran across the following photo on Facebook. I immediately reposted it to my own account there with this comment:

Even if it was a billion dollars a year, there ought to be a limit to how much wealth and power one person can accumulate.

This prompted a long, wide-ranging and occasionally coherent discussion of what a Maximum Wage would mean.  The comments proved that people bring a load of pre-formed opinion to this idea. If you're nearly infinitely patient you can read that discussion yourself.

Before you read on however I suggest you take a moment to reflect on your own reactions to this picture and to my comment. Possibly the notion of limiting the amount of money one person can accumulate is anathema to you and you'll have some sort of heart attack thinking about it.

Is there a pain in your chest?  Is your breathing labored?  If so, please realize that my opinions about this subject are not important enough for you to jeopardize your short-term survival.  Please get medical help quickly.  I hope you can afford insurance.

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So, anyway.

In the course of that Facebook discussion I wrote a long comment exploring my notions about why people who are not rich, and never will be, identify with, protect and even vote for extremely wealthy people.  In a Presidential election season such as this one, where fully 50% of the viable candidates made massive fortunes as predatory capitalists, this seems very relevant.

I wrote more about people's beliefs and faith than about economics.  Therefore, it should not be surprising that many of my arguments below are about religion.

Since I spent a lot of time on that essay, I figured I should share it where it might be read by three more people, the entire Mixed Meters' readership.   Enjoy.

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Reading back over this discussion I find myself mystified by the notion which some people hold that they will inevitably be able to manipulate the economic system to become as rich as Midas, or, as it is said, "rich beyond the dreams of avarice." This faith in their own exceptionalism seems to me to be obviously and patently without basis in the real word. All it really takes to convince me of its unreality is a little bit of observation (that most people are struggling just to stay even) and the merest hint of statistics (that there are very very few super rich people - most of whom were born to at least some wealth in the first place).

Of course, I am equally mystified by some people's belief in religion. And the notion that one is destined to become super rich seems (to me) very much like a religious belief. In one, if I work hard and follow the rules, I will be richly rewarded. In the other, if I pray hard and follow the rules, I will be richly rewarded after death in heaven. Some sects have even combined the two forms of reward overtly. Oh well - it's a free country and we have freedom of religion. And indeed a few lucky driven individuals do actually become rich beyond the dreams of avarice I guess. So maybe that means there really is a heaven ... but I doubt it.

And I am mystified by the attitude of certain people toward our democratic government - namely that the government is the problem and is keeping them from their dreams. While I would never suggest that our government or society is perfect, the democratic system seems to have done a remarkably good job of allowing people of different beliefs, cultures, ethnicities and economic status to live together peacefully, pursue their dreams, adhere to their personal beliefs and resolve their disputes. And we've done this by following the basic principals laid down in the Constitution: the most important of which is that by a certain vote we can change the rules and adjust the "eternal" principals in order to adapt our democracy to changing times and conditions. If only religions could be this enlightened and adapt to the modern world just a smidgen more quickly.

And, if all my mystification weren't enough, I'm thoroughly mystified by the notion that the positive things which our government does (those things which are disparaged by some under the name "entitlements") are the deeper source of our problems. Instead I would suggest that these are actually among the highest manifestations of our morality, the positive application of all those abstract religious rules and commandments which get repeated by rote in church and then ignored in the rat race to get rich during the workweek. These "entitlements" are actually the very things that make our society good - or, at least, better - and I believe that our government should do everything it can to preserve, refine and amplify them for the benefit of everyone.

And if our government can come together and agree on positive goals - like health care or a clean environment or the equality of every human - then it can also ask those very few very rich people, those exceptional, lucky, driven, acquisitive, materialistic, rapacious people, to forego a larger part of their accumulated wealth for the benefit of the very society in which they themselves live and which helped them get rich in the first place.

But the reality seems to be that the rich people are busy trying to get even richer - maybe they're greedy for power or in competition to be richer than other rich people or maybe they just don't know when to stop. So it seems perfectly reasonable to me for the government to lay down a marker, a point at which people become rich enough. Get hundreds of millions in the bank and it's time for you to step aside and let someone else accumulate wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

In my opinion if you become a billionaire it's time to retire. If you still need to work after that, then you should be doing it for the benefit of everybody, not just yourself. I know this will not be a popular opinion with people who believe in their own exceptionalism. I am not mystified by their negative reaction to this idea.

So the whole concept seems to distill nicely down to the single phrase which started this discussion: "maximum wage". I like that notion of a maximum wage a lot - because at some point an individual can simply have too much money for the good of everyone. And if money is a religion in America these days, then this idea makes a great article of faith.

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Now for some reference material showing how the U.S. taxation system has gotten seriously out of whack over the years.  Plus more of my comments.

The following chart comes from Wikipedia. It shows the change in Marginal Tax rates over history. Take a look at the column marked TOP BRACKET which shows the tax RATE (in purple) which the highest income earners paid on their income above a certain level (INCOME).

What's really interesting is the column called ADJ.2011 (the tan colored column).  That shows what income the top rate would kick in it at in 2011 dollars if that law applied now.  Last year's dollars are close enough to this years for anyone to relate.    As an example, if 1981 laws applied today, people would pay 70% in Federal tax on any income over $532,000.

Partial History of Marginal Income Tax Rates Adjusted for Inflation Income First Top Bracket Year Brackets Bracket Rate Income Adj. 2011 Comment 1913 7 1% 7% $500,000 $11.3M First permanent income tax 1917 21 2% 67% $2,000,000 $35M World War I financing 1925 23 1.5% 25% $100,000 $1.28M Post war reductions 1932 55 4% 63% $1,000,000 $16.4M Depression era 1936 31 4% 79% $5,000,000 $80.7M 1941 32 10% 81% $5,000,000 $76.3M World War II 1942 24 19% 88% $200,000 $2.75M Revenue Act of 1942 1944 24 23% 94% $200,000 $2.54M Individual Income Tax Act of 1944 1946 24 20% 91% $200,000 $2.30M 1954 24 20% 91% $200,000 $1.67M 1964 26 16% 77% $400,000 $2.85M Tax reduction during Vietnam war 1965 25 14% 70% $200,000 $1.42M 1981 16 14% 70% $212,000 $532k Reagan era tax cuts 1982 14 12% 50% $106,000 $199k " 1987 5 11% 38.5% $90,000 $178k " 1988 2 15% 28% $29,750 $56k " 1991 3 15% 31% $82,150 $135k 1993 5 15% 39.6% $250,000 $388k 2003 6 10% 35% $311,950 $380k Bush era tax cuts 2011 6 10% 35% $379,150 $379k

I think it seems entirely reasonable that someone who earns over $2,500,000 in today's dollars should pay 94% of their income above that level to the government - just as the chart says they did in 1944.  There was a war going on then also.

I'd even think it appropriate if current extreme earners paid 79% of their income over 80.7 million dollars - like they they were asked to do in 1936, at the height of the depression.

These days the politicos are talking about simply repealing the Bush tax cuts - and raising that top rate by less than 5% - not even to 40%.  A paltry request.

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Here's more background info - an article entitled The Great Capitalist Heist: How Paris Hilton's Dogs Ended Up Better Off Than You by an economics professor named Gerald Friedman.  The article begins with Paris Hilton's new $350,000 two-story house just for her dogs.

More importantly the article covers the history of how top 1% in the United States convinced the rest of us to let them become even more wealthy.  Here's a quote:

By the time it was finished, [Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors]'s house had swelled to 32,000 square feet, the size of the Taj Mahal. Even at Taj prices, cost mattered little to a man whose net worth is estimated by the Wall Street Journal at $8 billion -- with an income in 2010 of over $1 billion. Cohen’s payday is impressive, but by no means unique. In 2005, the 25 hedge-fund managers averaged $363 million. In cash. Paul Krugman observes that these 25 were paid three times as much as New York City’s 80,000 public school teachers combined. And because their pay is taxed as capital gains rather than salary, the teachers paid a higher tax rate!

Just in case you're skimming, yes, one man "earned" over $1,000,000,000 during a single year.  Compare this to my original comment with the "Maximum Wage" picture, that there ought to be a limit to how much wealth one person can acquire.  Most likely Stephen Cohen paid less percentage of his billion as tax than you do on your income.  Why shouldn't he have paid at least 80% or 90% of everything above, say, $100,000,000?

Here's another quote about how the federal regulators during the George W. Bush administration let the financial industry nearly destroy our entire economy:

Acting with the virtual consent of Congress and the president, in 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission established a system of voluntary regulation that in essence allowed investment banks to set their own capital and leverage standards. By then our financial regulatory system had largely returned to the pre-New Deal situation in which we trusted financial institutions to self-police. Advocates of deregulation, like Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, were unconcerned because they expected banks and other financial firms to limit their risk for fear of failure. Either they misunderstood the incentives facing company managers, or they did not care.

Remember that in 2004 we had a Republican president, a Republican-controlled Senate and a Republican controlled House.  The country (by a narrow vote) had put wealthy Republicans in charge of our government, and they declared open season on fiscal prudence.  The damage that was ultimately done to the economy has yet to be repaired.

In reality I have no expectation that the damage done to this country by inequality of income can be undone.  But it feels good to rant about it.  If you've actually read this whole article you deserve a tax break.

And in conclusion ... here's my final comment in that long Facebook debate...

As for entitlements, I believe that anything the government can do to promote health, education and environment for all the people is money well spent. It's even worth going into debt for. But it would be better for the entitlements to be paid for by taxes paid by a large healthy educated employed citizenry. And it would be better for those who earn more than enough to pay a higher rate of tax. Such progressive taxation existed during some of America's most prosperous times. And, unsurprisingly, as the top tax rate has dropped, since Ronald Reagans first cuts, the inequality in our country has only increased. How could it be otherwise? Only fools would believe it when greedy rich people spin yarns about how we will flourish while living on the trickle-down crumbs.

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The original "Maximum Wage" photo was posted on Facebook by The Other 98%.

Wikipedia has a discussion of Maximum Wage.

Maximum Wage Tags: Maximum Wage. . . income tax. . . progressive taxation

What Is It Like To Be Dead?

People on the Internet are apparently interested in pictures of dead animals.  Mixed Meters' most popular picture is of a dead squirrel.  It's been copied several dozen times.

Death fascinates.  And no death fascinates a human more than their own.  Most everyone, I'm sure, wonders how they will die.  They also wonder what life will be like after that. 

Post mortem our physical processes stop completely.  There will be no sensory perception.   There will be no seeing or feeling or hearing or touching or tasting anything.  No moving, no breathing, no thinking.  All sense of time will stop (which is a good thing: who wants to be aware of their own body slowly decaying?) 

But this question persists.  People want to believe in "something more" - there must be something besides our daily comings and goings in the vast and varied world, overfilled as it is with endless wonder, intense beauty and incredible depths of mystery.  We conclude that all that great stuff is not enough.  There must be more.  We humans demand more.  The little self inside each of us - our consciousness - comes to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that it will exist forever.

So we grasp any notion which makes it seem that "me" will survive "my death" regardless of what will actually happen to "my body".  We really need to convince ourselves that part of us, the essential internal awareness part, won't just disappear because of small inconvenience like, say, passing away.  Religions even have names for this everlasting body part: they call it the "soul" or the "spirit".  Too bad it doesn't really exist, whatever it is. 

I have found my own answer to the 'what is it like after death' question.  I find it kind of comforting.  My answer seems logical (to me).  It's simple.  It is rooted in a certain past experience which every single one of us has absolutely had already.  But before I get to that, I need to blather on a bit.

People who prefer not to think about this question for themselves might chose to subscribe to a pre-formed answer.   Predictably, such answers come from religions.  There are a lot of religions available.  Most of us got our religion, complete with beliefs about the afterlife, from our parents.  It was chosen for us.  Each religion has well-established dogma designed to comfort the living as they contemplate their own or their loved ones' "life" in the afterlife

If you subscribe to such dogma, hey, good for you.  I believe everyone should be free to believe whatever they want - no matter how little effort they spent adopting those ideas in the first place.  Someone else has thought this through for you already.  Might as well take advantage.

Suppose you happen to be a Christian.  Have you ever wondered why it is that you believe that you'll go to heaven after your death rather than be reincarnated into another body?

I came across an interesting anecdote about the origin of the Christian belief in heaven.  It was in a book called Ghosts of Vesuvius by Charles Pellegrino.  On page 262 he discusses the Council of Nicaea which, I'm sure you remember, was called in the year 325 by the Christian Emperor Constantine to decide issues of faith:

Most Christians of A.D. 325 believed in the enlightenment of imperfect human souls through successive reincarnations. ... 

To settle the reincarnation debate, two votes were held in Nicaea.  In the first vote, the bishops were asked to choose between the afterlife taking place (a) in the kingdom of heaven or (b) right here on Earth, by cyclical rebirth.

The first vote weighed in against the earthly reincarnationists, whereupon Constantine ordered the immediate execution of those who had voted for a belief in an earthly kingdom of God.

He then held a second vote: (a) afterlife in the kingdom of heaven or (b) afterlife in an earthly kingdom of God?

The second vote was unanimous, of course.

... The reincarnationists ... were subsequently declared "heretics" and ... were purged from existence.

So, apparently, Christianity chose its deeply held vision of an afterlife (the belief that, if we're good, we go to a land of fluffy clouds where we sprout wings, wear white robes and practice the harp) through the dual processes of democracy and mass execution.  I hope your faith is enhanced by knowing that other people voted and then died so you could believe in heaven.

Actually I encourage people to invent their own ideas about post-death.  The world would be a better place if everyone did this for themselves.  We're free to just make up answers.  These days no one needs to die in order to create new notions about post-death life because there are no more Roman Emperors to off you if you choose wrongly.  Well, maybe there are still a couple in theocratic countries.

Of course I don't expect you to agree with my ideas and I pretty certainly won't think much of yours.  Curiously, all our answers can be correct.  Yes, every single answer, no matter how much they contradict one another, could be absolutely correct.  This is because there is no hard evidence to the contrary.  The dead have been very lax about sending dispatches from beyond the grave.  A few crackpots claim to have had near-death experiences, but they all seem to return with the same ideas they started out with.

My own ideas about afterlife focus on the origin of our consciousness, specifically how we came to be aware of the passage of long periods of time, especially lifetimes of time.   For my little "me" (or, if you will, your little "me") to think it would exist forever it first has to have some awareness of the successive stages of its own life.

It might be useful to compare our self-awareness with that of other animals.  As an example, take our dog, Chowderhead.  He knows who he is and seems to realize that time is passing.  He has a remarkably short attention span.  Maybe he remembers what happened yesterday.  I doubt that.  Maybe he expects that there will be another day tomorrow, a day just like today, although I doubt that as well.  Does he remember being a puppy?  Does he know that he's getting older?  Does he know that he will die?  Not likely.

So it's easy to reject the notion that Chowderhead expects to have an afterlife.  People may believe that "all dogs go to heaven" but this idea did not come from the dogs themselves.  When Chowder encounters dead animals he thinks of them as things to eat.  For example, dead squirrels.

Other animals are smarter than dogs.  According to this webpage, there are four animals who live in close proximity to us here in suburbia who are brighter than Chowderhead: rats, pigeons, crows and, of course, our neighborhood squirrels.  Squirrels must have some conception of longer periods of time because they store nuts to use as food during the hard Southern California winters. 

We humans were apparently not classified as "animals" in that intelligence list.  Chimps and dolphins came in first and second.  I have no clue whether chimps or dolphins are smart enough to know that they will die.  It would be interesting to know whether they have invented a conception of life after death.  Possibly not, because dolphins and chimpanzees do not have the advantage of another essential tool in afterlife belief: culture.

Living chimps or dolphins cannot consult the wisdom of previous chimps or dolphins.  Without autobiographies or biopics detailing the lives of accomplished members of their species (Flipper and Bonzo come to mind), they cannot contemplate the story of an entire dolphin or chimp life.  Without constant statistical analysis of their activities, they have no way to know what their life expectancy is.  

What's more, dolphins and chimps have no way to leave their own thoughts to future generations as yet unborn.  Do they even know that millions of years have passed encompassing countless generations of creatures just like them?  Do they realize that they will have descendants who will live through the same stages of life that they had?

Whatever the answers to those questions about other animals, we human animals definitely know all about this stuff.  We realize that humans just like us existed in the past and others will exist in the future.  We are acutely aware of famous ancestors, perfect beings in every way who are worthy of emulation, Buddha and Christ, Beethoven and L. Ron Hubbard, who seem to have survived death because their creative ideas have become important landmarks in our culture.  If they can live on in our memories through those ideas, why can't we make up some as well?

It is through our culture, our books, cave paintings, our People magazines, that we humans are able to learn about the lives of other members of our species, either long dead or recently passed.  Human history has been one increasing torrent of media - starting with a few storytellers whose work was eventually written down into various bibles and epics, all the way to actual torrents of files on the Internet.  Maybe we modern men and women need an afterlife just to finish reading all the books and watching all the movies we won't have time for before we die.

Our cultural tools have made us acutely aware of the cycle of life: birth, growth, marriage, reproduction, retirement and, ultimately, the senior citizen discount at Denny's.  In fact, my generation of Americans - I'm what you call a "baby boomer" - has intensified this notion through our shared life cycle.  We are going through it together.  We were all young at the same time, more or less.  Now we're all turning Sweet Sixty together.  In between, we obsessed about life stages - for example in this book which is subtitled Predictable Crises of Adult Life.  I remember reading it in my twenties.   

All this cultural memory and veneration has allowed us to develop our conception of human lifetime.  We realize that each of us is born, lives a life, learns from his or her elders, accomplishes things great or small, possibly reproduces, eventually grows old and dies. We learn about this as children. It's easy to ignore at first; eventually we realize that it's happening to us.

As I have found out over the last few years, it becomes impossible to ignore.  If I try to convince myself that my recent milestone birthday represents only half of my life, then I must somehow believe that I will eventually become the oldest living human on the planet.  A lot of self-denial goes into growing old.

It's inevitable that the cycle will complete and each of us will die.  To avoid thinking about it, we seek an escape clause, a way out.  Why shouldn't we be the exception?  Why shouldn't some part of us avoid death and live on?  Why shouldn't believing make it so.  Of course it should, because my little "me" feels so unique.

We know that time will continue after we die.  Other people will live on.  Civilization with continue, economies will rise and fall.  Wars will never end.  How, we ask, can all this possibly happen without us?  It doesn't seem fair.

I'd like to point out that there is a segment of the life cycle which is often overlooked: one more stage in the sequence of birth, life, death and after death.  That stage is the period before we are born.  (Or if you're one of those people, before you were conceived.  Either way works for me.  I think I'll go with "born".)

Do you remember before you were born?  Not likely.  Once again, there are crackpots who claim memories of past lives, but I think their ranting is easy to ignore.  Because it's a free country you can choose the crackpot you prefer to believe.  I wonder why are you are still reading this.

Anyway, let me point out that each one of us was born once.  Time existed before we were born.  During that pre-born time events happened: other people were born, they did things and then they died.  We have no direct experience of those people or of those events or of that time because ... well, because we weren't born yet.

During the time before our birth we did not experience the passage of time.  Our embryos had to form and start to grow brains and nervous systems to make us capable of perceiving time.  Our pre-birth is one pitch-black endless instant of nothing happening.  It is an experience we all had - although none of us remember anything about it.  

And if you can conceive of what is was like to be you before you were born, then you should have no trouble imagining what it will be like to be you when you are dead.  Yes, that's my idea: being dead is exactly like not being born yet.

That's all I wanted to say.  To me, it seems pretty obvious.  I find it reassuring to know what to expect of being dead, because I've already had that same experience before I came into existence.  The notion makes me feel much better about living and, eventually, dieing.

If my idea didn't instantly strike you as an excellent explanation of what is going to happen after you die, then I apologize for wasting your time.  No matter how old you might be at this very moment, you have only a limited amount of time left to live.  It's a really good idea not to waste any of it.

---

Here's a Mixed Meters post about a living squirrel - complete with video and music: The Squirrel In Mike and Lynn's Aviary

      

Birth and Death Tags: birth. . . death. . . afterlife. . . dead squirrel

Ice Cream Wishes

A lot of this post deals with Yoko Ono.

One night many years ago when I was a freshman in college I spent what seemed like hours, stoned out of my mind, standing in front of the menu board of the school's late-night snack bar, The Tea Room, trying hard to pick the perfect munchie-crunching taste treat.

Suddenly There It Was - Chocolate Marshmallow Ice Cream!! I knew instantly that it was my favorite flavor even though I can't remember ever having tasted it before that night.

And so it was - Chocolate Marshmallow was indeed my favorite flavor of ice cream for many years afterward. When I arrived in California I found that chocolate marshmallow ice cream was called Rocky Road and made with bits of real marshmallows. How bizarre. Yuchh. It had been the swirls of sweet marshmallow creme inside the chocolate which sealed my passion. Life went on and new flavors replaced chocolate marshmallow on top of my fave list.


Years later -- many years later -- at Tutti Gelato, a small ice cream spot hidden away in the corner of an off-street courtyard in Old Pasadena - I again studied the menu, completely straight this time, searching for the perfect after-dinner taste treat. Here's a picture of the menu. Click it to enlarge. What would you have picked?


My choice? A combination of mascarpone and sour cherry gelato in a cup. In my mind the smooth creamy cheesy mascarpone and the tart bright citrus sour cherry instantly became the perfect flavor combination - just as chocolate and marshmallow had years before. I decided that I must have it.

Alas, they were out of one flavor (or the other). I returned to Tutti Gelato many times over the years - okay it was about a half dozen times over two years - and either they were out of one flavor (or the other) or they were too busy or I was too stuffed after dinner or something.

But then, a couple weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, just at opening time, I scored the perfect cup of gelato: half mascarpone and half sour cherry. Here's a picture I took just before my first highly anticipated bite.


Disappointment. The mascarpone wasn't cheesy enough. The sour cherry wasn't terribly sour - more like a watered down cherry soda flavor. My taste bud imagination had let me down big time. I was highly dissatisfied. Plain old chocolate would have been so much better.

To be fair Tutti Gelato serves great ice cream and sorbet. I would not hesitate to suggest that you try it. The problem was that I had imagined such a high level of unobtainable perfection in the synthesis of flavors.

Disillusioned, I wandered around that off-street courtyard (click here for satellite view). In the courtyard there's a Crate and Barrel at one end, a trendient Italian restaurant at the other. There's a micro-brewery and a Johnny Rockets and a sushi bar. There's a movie multi-plex. There are a couple more even more trendient boutiques and a sculpture of plexiglass workmen digging a trench. Click on the next picture for a panorama shot of the whole courtyard.


What I found in the middle of the courtyard that Sunday was an ongoing interactive art project by Yoko Ono. It's called Wish Tree. Here are Yoko's old fashioned fluxian instructions:

Wish Piece by Yoko Ono (1996)
Make a wish
Write it down on a piece of paper
Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree
Ask your friends to do the same
Keep wishing
Until the branches are covered with wishes

Each tree has a little set of steps so the top branches can be reached. Pencils and little tie-on cards are provided. From a distance the trees look like they are blooming a lot of white flowers. In my imagination the cards were provided in many different colors: chocolate, sour cherry and the like.


Here's some description of the project at Yoko's website. She tells of tying wishing papers to trees as a young child in temples in Japan. The notion of supplicating the higher powers with a words on a small piece of paper probably exists in many religions. Here it is, in action at the Western Wall, serving an important function in the religion of U.S. presidential politics. The ancient Jews didn't have many trees to tie their wishes to. But they had plenty of rocks.


I wandered around the courtyard reading peoples wishes. No one folded their cards as Yoko instructed. Most, as is predictable, ask for health or wealth for themselves or for loved ones. Peace for the world. Love. A few, however, were much less predictable. I snapped photos of my favorites.

I wish I had a rocket propelled corgi! Adorable.

I wish for my sunglasses to make me look sexy!

I wish to swirl forward

I wish I had another wish - Nathan

I wish I wans't dyselxic

I wish for the chance to make a difference with
my music and go to music school - Melinda

(Poor Melinda. Someday she'll find out how little effect music has on the real world.)

A lot of ice cream!
(I suggest you avoid combining mascarpone & sour cherry)

How to make marshmallow videos: here (yuchh) or here (yuchh yuchh yuchh)

Search for the phrase "chocolate marshmallow ice cream"

Mascarpone and Sour Cherry Tags: ice cream. . . gelato. . . Wish Tree. . . Yoko Ono. . . Pasadena CA

Reach for the Sky

I've been following two Pasadena "photo-a-day" blogs. One is Pasadena Daily Photo. The other is the sky is big in pasadena (yes, written all in lower case)

I post many pictures of Pasadena also, both here and on Mixed Messages- although I would never consider the ritual of posting something every single day. Whenever I feel like it is my way.

the sky is big in pasadena included this wide picture of a church steeple shot from Colorado Blvd. facing south. I happen to have several pictures of that same steeple taken from the parking lot facing east. It's a fascinating ornate gothic copper-toned crossless phallus presumptuously reaching for the sky. Probably it inspires shock and awe.


Closing in on some details.


An Escher-esque corner of the church. I remember playing a concert of music by Arnold Schoenberg in that church in 1974 or 1975. Possibly that was my very first visit to Pasadena.


I couldn't resist this parking lot shot. (No, that's not the real license plate number.)



View this location in Google Maps. The Street View feature is active for this spot - but not terribly interesting.

I think this is the church's website.

Mixed Meters' pictures of Pasadena City Hall.

Click any picture to enlarge.


Steeple Tags: church steeple. . . Pasadena church. . . Colorado Boulevard. . . First United Methodist. . . architectural details. . . The Rapture. . . Truth About Darwin