The Saunterer

Clara Thompson on maturity and marriage

    Love and marriage are supposed to go together. What about maturity and marriage? Clara Thompson tells:

    The fact that one is married by no means proves that one is a mature person.

    (Quoted from “Changing Concepts of Homosexuality,” by Clara Thompson, pp. 249-61 in A Study of Interpersonal Relations. Patrick Mullahy, ed. Hermitage Press, 1949.)
    For a brief biography of Clara M. Thompson, click here. For images of or relating to Clara M. Thompson, click here.

Caroline Lejeune on retiring

    For the sake of better mental hygiene and a happier future, Caroline Lejeune advises wiping away all thoughts of your past work the day you retire:

    I learned a lesson about retirement that was certainly true for me, and might be a help to many other people. When you finish with a job it is wiser to make the break completely. Cut off the old life, clean and sharp. If your mind is tired, that is the only way. If your mind is lively you will soon find other interests.

    (Quoted from Chapter 22 of Thank You for Having Me, by Caroline Lejeune. Hutchinson, 1964.)
    For a brief biography of Caroline Lejeune, click here.

Wynton Marsalis on how jazz is democracy

    As Wynton Marsalis explains it,

    In American life, you have all of these different agendas. You have conflict all the time. And we’re attempting to achieve harmony through conflict. Which it seems strange to say that, but it’s like an argument that you have with the intent to work something out, not an argument that you have with the intent to argue. And that’s what jazz music is. You have musicians and they’re all standing on a bandstand. Each one has their personality and their agenda. . . . So you have that question of the integrity, the intent, the will to play together. That’s what jazz music is. You have yourself, your individual expression and then you have how you negotiate that expression in the context of that group. And, it’s exactly like democracy.       

    (Quoted from page 192 of Musique et language chez Rousseau, by Claude Dauphin. Voltaire Foundation, 2004.)
    For a brief biography of Wynton Marsalis, click here. For images of or relating to Wynton Marsalis, click here.
    For a brief biography of Claude Dauphin, click here.

Václav Havel on responsibility

    How to live responsibly? Follow Václav Havel’s precept:   

    Responsibility cannot be preached, but only borne, and . . . the only possible place to begin is with oneself. It may sound strange, but it is true: it is I who must begin. One thing about it, however, is interesting: once I begin -- that is, once I try -- here and now, right where I am, not excusing myself by saying that things would be easier elsewhere, without grand speeches and ostentatious gestures, but all the more persistently -- to live in harmony with the “voice of Being,” as I understand it within myself -- as soon as I begin that, I suddenly discover, to my surprise, that I am neither the only one, nor the first, nor the most important one to have set out upon that road. For the hope opened up in my heart by this turning toward Being has opened my eyes as well to all the hopeful things my vision, blinded by the brilliance of “worldly” temptations, could not or did not wish to see, because it would have undermined the traditional argument of all those who have given up already: that all is lost anyway. Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.

    (Quoted from page 164 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Václav Havel, click here. For images of or relating to Václav Havel, click here.

Samuel Butler on where to live one’s life

    Live in the human race. How? By living in others. While Samuel Butler gives it a religious slant, it holds perfectly for atheists:

    We had better live in others as much as we can if only because we thus live more in the race, which God really does seem to care about a good deal, and less in the individual, to whom, so far as I can see, he is indifferent. After we are dead it matters not to the life we have led in ourselves what people may say of us, but it matters much to the life we lead in others and this should be our true life.

    (Quoted from page 263 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Samuel Butler, click here. For images of or relating to Samuel Butler, click here.

Arthur Schopenhauer on what music is

    Thinking of classical music, Arthur Schopenhauer equated it to “auditory fantasy,” saying it this way:

    Music is the revelation of the inmost dream image of this world.
   
    (Quoted from 97 of Art Music, by Matthew Del Nevo. Transaction Publishers. 2013.)
    For a brief biography of Arthur Schopenhauer, click here. For images of or relating to Arthur Schopenhauer, click here.
    For a brief biography of Matthew Del Nevo, click here. For images of or relating to Matthew Del Nevo, click here.

D. H. Lawrence on the spirit of place

    Can a spirit so prominently exist that it is a reality? D. H. Lawrence gives an example:

    Every continent has its own great spirit of place. Every people is polarized in some particular locality, which is home, the homeland. Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great reality.   

    (Quoted from page 5 of Studies in Classic American Literature, by D. H. Lawrence. Heinemann, 1964.)
    For a brief biography of D. H. Lawrence, click here. For images of or relating to D. H. Lawrence, click here.

George Mallory on why go climbing mountains

    George Mallory has said something more definite than “Because it is there.” This:

    It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

    (Quoted from the front matter of The Conquest of Everest by George Lowe and Huw Lewis-Jones. Thames & Hudson, 2013.)
    For a past post on The Saunterer – “George Mallory on the purpose of life” – click here.
    For a brief biography of George Mallory, click here. For images of or relating to George Mallory, click here.
    For a brief biography of George Lowe, click here. For images of or relating to George Lowe, click here.
    For a brief biography of Huw Lewis-Jones, click here. For images of or relating to Huw Lewis-Jones, click here.

Charles Susskind on machines that make music

   When I was a child visiting a great uncle’s house, he’d let me pump his player piano, a curious machine where songs were coded in rolls of paper, the notes and their duration punched as holes. Different rolls had different sequences of holes, giving different songs. I assumed they were made by imitating, note for note, a person playing the piano. Once the holes were put in a master roll, mass duplication followed, like the printing press except not type but holes. Now, Sauntering in a book by Charles Susskind I learned there is more to it. The holes can be punched anywhere; music can be written for machines that no person could play.

    Mechanical means of producing music have a long history. The barrel-and-pin music box dates back to the 18th century. The barrel organ and perforated-roll pneumatic instruments (of which the player piano, the calliope, and the merry-go-round orchestrion are more recent examples) are not much younger. In 1813, Beethoven composed The Battle of Vittoria (also known as the “Battle Symphony”) for the panharmonium, a mechanical orchestra constructed by his friend Johann Nepomuk Malzel (1772–1838), who later invented the clockwork metronome still used by musicians to fix tempi; and in the 20th century, ranking composers such a Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) and Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) have written for the player piano, fascinated by the possibilities of piano music for an unlimited number of fingers.

    (Quoted from page 73 of Understanding Technology, by Charles Susskind. The John Hopkins University Press, 1973.)
    For a brief biography of Charles Susskind, click here. For images of or relating to Charles Susskind, click here.
    To hear the orchestrion (it plays like an orchestra) programmed by Pat Metheny, click here.

Betty Smith on how one of a thing may be beautiful but many of it not

    A friend (hello Masae!) has asked us if we got to see many meteors in August’s Perseid shower. We said we saw only one, but not to feel sorry. That one is at center stage in our memory. Seeing ten would have cluttered the stage, the beauty of our one diminished.
    A curious thing happens when beauty becomes a commodity, Betty Smith tells:

    There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up plots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly . . . survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.

    (Quoted from page 69 of Lucky Break, by Howard Junker. Heinemann, 1969.)
    For a brief biography of Betty Smith, click here. For images of or relating to Betty Smith, click here.
    For a brief biography of Howard Junker, click here. For images of or relating to Howard Junker, click here.