Bifurcations and Musings and Alan de Botton

Big Frank has been thinking lately of a previous post of his on bifurcations: there are two kinds of everything and you can pretty much divide it all into either one or the other. Well, it is somewhat of a simplification, but that does make things much easier. So here are a few more with musings that follow with relevant excerpts from Alan de Botton.

(1) There are two kinds of views on why things happen to you: that there is a reason for everything, or that it is all sort of willy-nilly - happenstance. It seems, in Big Frank's experience, that there are more and more people, especially new age types, Christians, eastern philosophy followers, and fatalists who believe that everything that happens to them is for a particular reason. This seems to be most emphatically believed by those at the two ends of life's spectrum - the fortunate and the unfortunate. Those on the fortunate end - take lovers who have first met - they can go on at some detail about the coincidences that led to their meeting (proof in their minds of it being their destiny). Alain de Botton in his great novel "On Love" writes of the meeting of two lovers and their subsequent belief in the inevitablility of their being together by listing coincidences:

"Chloe and I seized upon a host of details, however trivial, as confirmation of what intuitively we already felt: that we had been destined for one another. We learnt that both of us had been born at around midnight [she at 11:45 p.m., I at 1:15a.m.] in the same month of an even-numbered year. Both of us had played clarinet . . . Both of us had two large freckles on the toe of the left foot and a cavity in the same rear mlar. Both of us had a habit of sneezing in bright sunlight and of drawing ketchup out of its bottle with a knife . . . -- small details perhaps, but were they not grounds enough on which believers could found a new religion?"

However, being something of a philosopher, the guy in the novel could not help, in retrospect, in casting some scepticism on this view: "For me to have clung to the idea that Chloe and I had fated to run into one another on an airplane in order then to fall in love implied attachment to a primitive belief system on the level of tea-leaf reading or crystal-ball gazing. If God did not play dice, He or She certainly did not run a dating service."

(2) OK, here's another one. Big Frank has noted that there are two kinds of people who date: those who believe that good prospective relationships are discovered - sparks, chemistry, magic etc. , and those who believe that they are constructed over time through mutual efforts. It's sort of like the difference between prospecting for gold and working a steady job to get rich. Both have the same goal, but what a difference in how to get there.

(3) Big Frank will end this very short list that centers on bifurcation and love with another bifurcation set forth by Alan de Botton. He groups love into two categories: mature and immature:

"Preferable in almost every way, the philosophy of mature love is marked by an active awareness of the good and bad within each person. It is full of temperance, it resists idealization, it is free of jealousy, masochism, or obsession, it is a form of friendship with a sexual dimension, it is pleasant, peaceful, and reciprocated [and perhpas explains why most people who have known desire would refuse its painlessness the title of love]. Immature love on the other hand [though it has little to do with age] is a story of chaotic lurching between idealization and disappointment, an unstable state where feelings of ecstasy and beatitude combine with impressions of drowning and fatal nausea, where the sense that one has finally found the answer comes together with the feeling that one has never been so lost. The logical climax of immature [becasue absolute] love comes in death, symbolic or real; the climax of mature love comes in marriage, and the attempt to avoid death via routine [the Sunday papers, trouser presses, remote-controlled applicances]. For immature love accepts no compromise, and once we do not accept compromise, we are on the road to death. To someone who has known the pinnacles of immature passion, to settle for marriage is an unsustainable price -- one would rather end things by driving a car over a cliff."

Bill Frisell: the Epicentre of Modern American Music

Big Frank listens to lots of music. However, rarely does a day go by when Bill Frisell is not in the mix, and often it is only Frisell. He is a technical wizard, and genre-bending genius, a spell weaver, and able to combine (like few others) sorrow and joy in all his songs. You cannot go wrong with any of his CDs. So go pick some up and you will be hooked. My favorites are"Good Man Happy Dog", "Gone Like a Train", "East West", and "The Intercontinentals". Chris Jones in his BBC review of Bill Frisell's latest CD - "History, Mystery" hits the nail on the head: "the whole album [History, Mystery] stands as yet another testament to the man's place at the very epicentre of modern American music."

Bill Frisell has the artistic ability to capture the full range of emotion in his playing and his compositions. It is unusual to listen to music that captures in one song both the sorrow and joys of life; Bill Frisell does that. This is music that can be listened to and can feed you both when you are high and when you are low. Listen and you will see.

Here he is playing in Warsaw. He’s playing “Live To Tell (that’s right a Madonna song from her 3rd CD “True Blue”) Listen to Frisell explore this song!
July 3, 1993 Warsaw, Poland
with Kermit Driscoll-Bass,
Joey Baron-Drums http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYc2jR5yGDs&feature=related

This song is so sweet: Probability Cloud is included in his latest CD: “History, Mystery”
July 1, 2006 Salzau, Germany
with Ron Miles-Cornet, Greg Tardy-Reeds,
Tony Scherr-Bass, Kenny Wollesen-Drums
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JwZlu2mR84&feature=related

Bill Frisell really like to play 'Shenandoah", you can find it on many of his CDs.
April 4, 2004 @ The Berkeley Church, Toronto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svzv-YkUzdk&feature=related

Here Bill Frisell is playing with the Ginger Baker Trio~
'Ginger's Blues'

Yes, it is the same Ginger Baker who played in those great rock bands, Cream, and Blind Faith! The Ginger Baker Trio put out two great CDs in the mid 90s: "Falling Off the Roof" and "Going Back Home".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QulP-tmf9_Y
Sept. 29, 1995 Deutsche Jazz Festival
Frankfurt, Germany
Ginger Baker~Drums, Charlie Haden~Bass
Bill Frisell~Guitar

A Man Of Constant Sorrow

This is an amazing song. Most of you readers probably became familiar with this song from the film “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” in which the Soggy Bottom Boys (a fictitious band plays it (the real players Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, and Pat Enright). The song dates back to 1913; written and first performed by Dick Burnett under the original title of “Farewell Song”. Here’s a list of musicians who have recorded it: The Stanley Brothers; Ginger Baker’s Air Force; Waylon Jennings; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Rod Stewart; Jerry Garcia; Bob Dylan; and Jackson Browne.

Click here for the link to the song from “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” http://youtube.com/watch?v=ifdgrfr0Bkk

Click here for the real Soggy Bottom Boys with Alison Kraus: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7shqV6sh5zY&feature=related

And the best for last. Listen to Ralph Stanley; his cry and moan as he sings this song is so poignant and beautifully sad. A great great version of a great great song.

Ralph Stanley: http://youtube.com/watch?v=GBDe7rySveQ

Why does this song touch so many? Big Frank doesn’t have the answer, but it’s in the words and the tune both. The melody is combination of singing and almost a moan. The Soggy Bottom Boys have the lead singer doing the first person lyrics (“I have no friends to help me now”) and the other two joining in for the chorus joining in the echo in the third person (“He has no friends to help him now”).

The man of constant sorrow may come from the Isaiah 53, a Catholic interpretation of which has it prefigure the sorrows of Jesus. If this is true then the man of constant sorrow is in fact a Christ figure – one most considered worthless.

Isaiah 53:

“Comfort and salvation are coming to us through a man of sorrows—a despised man, a rejected man, a man people considered worthless.”

Man of Constant Sorrow

I am a man of constant sorrow
I've seen trouble all my days
I bid farewell to old Kentucky
The state where I was borned and raised

For six long years I've been in trouble
No pleasure here on earth I find
For in this world I'm bound to ramble
I have no friends to help me now

It's fare thee well my own true lover
I never expect to see you again
For I'm bound to ride that northern railroad
Perhaps I'll die upon this train

You can bury me in some deep valley
For many years where I may lay
Then you may learn to love another
While I am sleeping in my grave

It's fare you well to a native country
The places I have loved so well
For I have seen all kinds of trouble
In this cruel world, no tongue can tell

Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger
My face you'll never see no more
But there is one promise that is given
I'll meet you on God's golden shore

Change That Idiom

Idioms are words collocated together that become fossilized. Their meaning is fixed in a way in which you cannot deduce the meaning of the group via each of the words. For example if one were to read the phrase: "the elephant in the room" it would simply mean a large animal with a trunk in a room. Of course this idiom does not mean this. Rather it is the group of words working as a team that has a very set meaning. For example: "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours", has nothing to do with backs or scratching - rather the phrase in totality means "you do something for me and I will do something for you". Of course, this is no problem for native speakers who learn these expressions effortlessly as they grow up. However, for those learning English as a second language these idioms can be a problem. So let's make them more tansparent. Let's start with:

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

We all know the saying, and we have all been in the situation. There is some topic that is screaming to be addressed but nobody says anything. Maybe there is some kind of taboo against addressing it, or it might be embarrassing. Of course, if it really were an elephant then you would not be able to ignore it, because elephants don’t just stand there, not for very long periods of time. Well, maybe if it were sleeping then it might stand for a few hours, but eventually it is going to become a topic of conversation when it starts smashing the furniture or tossing you or your conversation partner out the window. So that saying, predicated as it is on the seemingly and incongruously obvious, really ought to have a different thing representing it. Think how confusing this is for the earnest learner of English as a second language. He's thinking - "it can't mean the topic that's being ignored, because sooner or later an elephant could not be ignored." So it should be an object that is out of place, but not one that can act to require comment. It should be something that could be ignored indefinitely, like a giant rock, or a tree, or an automobile. Those are all big things that would dominate the room, and they are things that stands out – they’re not supposed to be in the room. However they could be ignored despite their seemingly obvious presence. With this small change the expression makes more sense and will be much more easily understood by all those who are learning English as another language. So let’s change that saying to”the boulder in the room”.

Congratulations Gina!

Big Franks’ daughter graduated from high school today. Big Frank usually doesn’t do a lot of personal (well, at any rate overtly personal) stuff on his blog, but today is different. This is for Gina. Her graduation is a transition from youth to the bridge leading to adulthood. She’s heading off to university and then the big wide world. She is in many ways much better prepared for this next step than Big Frank was at that age. We don’t need to go into all of Big Frank's youthful inadequacies, rather Big Frank would like to celebrate Gina’s successes. She has her heart in the right place, has devoted her time to the right activities, did the academic work and got the good grades (much better than her dad), excelled in her extracurriculars, made lots of wise choices, learned from her mistakes, and made herself and her dad very very proud.

Big Frank’s wishes for Gina (with apologies to Polonius):
Keep your excitement in discovery; it’s a never-ending road that leads to destinations that you never imagined, but that will continue to reward. Remember the joy that being connected to lots of people brings; build on that knowledge and extend your connections to others – it’s one of the few ways that you can increase your happiness. Remember that instant gratification is soon followed by the search for the next; take gratification rather in the pursuit, and acknowledge that the attainment is not the end, rather it is the engagement that matters most. Use your intuition to guide you in the large matters of life: listen to your inner self; you rationalize at your own peril. Use your mind to demonstrate your knowledge and your sanity; use your intuitive insights in the major decisions you will face. Understand that boredom is not something to run away from, not something to cover with TV blather, or false stimulants. There will be times in which you will need to wallow through mind-numbing chores, empty spaces, gaps in activities: wallow – don’t evade. Pay attention to language – if you can’t say it, if you can’t explain it, if you don’t know the exact words then you don’t know it. Expand your vocabulary, avoid clichés, know what you speak of, and think before you speak. Pay back is for loans not for mistreatment: the best form of revenge is to not be like that. Those that have harmed you or mistreated should not be given space or time in your life – change the channel. Keep your capacity for daily, hourly engagement with life. You choose who you are with, what you do, and what fills your mind and heart. Choose wisely and treasure them. Hold fast to your empathy, but be guided in your actions by self-interest, in the true sense of the word, for what is not good for you cannot be good for others. Your success in life is measured by how you feel right now. Acknowledge the joy that accompanies you: it's always here.

Big Frank Wonders (ten times)

Big Frank has been wondering about 10 things:
1. What happens in the holes that oil is extracted from. They must be very large and empty. Will they collapse? And when they do, will anyone notice?
2. In two hundred years, when all the oil is gone and they look back on the vehicles that we drove around burning this black gunk; will they find it romantic as we often think of the time when people road in horse-drawn carriages, oblivious of horse manure .
3. Look around at all your possessions and think where they will be in two hundred years, keeping in mind how many possession you now have that your great-great-great-great grandparents had. Then go back 10 generations - there is nothing left.
4. People who fall in love and then fall out often say, “That was only an illusion.” I wasn’t really in love with the other person – rather with my vision of them, or their façade. Does that mean the feelings were not real?
5. How many times have you heard people say that people are “like” animals? In fact, of course, people are animals. Why do so many of them want to divorce themselves from their kind?
6. We have more than 200 species of bacteria living on us. And it has been calculated that a human adult houses about 10 to the 12th power of bacteria on the skin, 10 to the 10th power in the mouth, and 10 to the 14th power in the gastrointestinal tract. In fact humans have 10 times more bacteria riding on them than they have cells. Have you ever thought that there are more of them in/on you than there is of you (1)?
7. Cosmologically spinning off the previous rumination: what if our universe were a bacteria on an organism on a planet in another universe that is in fact just another bacteria on an organism on a planet in another universe etc. etc.?
8. Your perception of “reality” is not there in here: not you out there. Your perception of reality is just that; it is your brains simulacrum of what’s out there – it’s like an artists rendition of reality. Here your brain is the artist. Have you ever thought that, in fact, it’s more you than it.
9. We are familiar with the concept and the job of “greeter”. However, there is no opposite – no fareweller or good byer. Why not?
10. Why is it that "how are you?" is replacing "hello" or "hi" as a greeting? Perhaps it has something to do with, in English, our discomfort with single word communications. How about stretching the "hello" out with to a more comfortable length with something like, "Hello there"? Then it would remove the false inquiry (nobody really wants an answer to "how are you")?