The Saunterer

James Wines on what should be in public spaces

    How right it is that James Wines approaches city planning from the point of planning to let people interact:

    There are some very basic classic ingredients you should have in a public space. Shade, clusters of large trees, areas where people can go and be romantic and private. It’s really like orchestrating a drama. The people watching people is the raw material, much more than the concrete or the trees. The main thing is to understand that people are actors on the stage, they are spontaneous actors and you want to let them create their dramas.

    (Quoted from page F6 of the 21 July 2016 issue of The New York Times.)
    For a brief biography of James Wines, click here. For images of or relating to James Wines, click here.

Rosalyn Tureck on never letting yourself forget your purpose

    Here is how Rosalyn Tureck put it:

    They knew I was serious about my music. Succeeding at it was a normal, natural event. I felt no pressure because I knew my direction and the family simply let it lead me. Glamor, exploitation, special attention were out; work was in. Brilliant-Liven and her husband were extremely disciplinary and extremely serious-minded musicians; they never let me forget my purpose. The whole idea was that, as a musician, you just devote all your energies to your work. I had to be a serious student of music, or none at all.

    (Quoted from page 324 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    To hear Rosalyn Tureck teaching and playing, click here.
    For a brief biography of Rosalyn Tureck, click here. For images of or relating Rosalyn Tureck, click here.

Agénor de Gasparin on being smart without a heart

    This is how he describes it:

    Intellectual progress, separated from moral progress, gives a fearful result: a being possessing nothing but brains.

    (Quoted from page 131 of A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness, by J. De Finod. D. Appleton and Company, 1903.)
    For a brief biography of Agénor de Gasparin, click here. For images of or relating to Agénor de Gasparin, click here.

John Adams on why democracy is doomed

    If we could look ahead a hundred years we might well find that the United States of America has split into several countries. A country with a mix of ideologies is waiting to fall apart. Another reason that dooms democracies is that they work poorly for overpopulated countries. Countries jammed full of people are often ruled by dictators, and when did the sensibly populated Iñupiat last riot? John Adams suggested another thing that dooms democracies:

    Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation.

    (Quoted from page 406 of The Political Writings of John Adams, Regnery Publishing, 2000.)
    For a brief biography of John Adams, click here. For images of or relating to John Adams, click here.

Max Planck on how science advances

    Not only science but education, religion, and most social institutions advance the same way as science does:

    As Max Planck once suggested, science advances one funeral at a time.

    (Quoted from “Gravity’s Black Rainbow,” by Lawrence M. Krauss; page 83 of the September 29, 2016 issue of The New York Review of Books.)
    For a brief biography of Max Planck, click here. For images of or relating to Max Planck, click here.
    Lawrence M. Krauss is Director of the Origins Project and Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.

John Powell on young people and the lyrics of pop songs

    We were among the unquestioning seventh graders who recite a phrase in the Lord’s Prayer as “and lead us not into Penn Station,” and so weren’t surprised in Sauntering upon John Powell’s paragraph:

    Mind you, we don’t always listen to lyrics carefully—and even when we do, we often misinterpret them. This is particularly true of young people, who are the target audience of most pop songs. A survey carried out in 1984 offered people four alternative meanings to pop songs. Only one of these interpretations was true and had been verified as such by the songwriter. The songs in question were fairly obvious about the message they were trying to put across. They included, for example, “You Are the Sunshine of My life” by Stevie Wonder and “Trouble Every Day” by Frank Zappa. The young people (they were all under thirty) who participated in the study got it wrong on average three times out of four—which is the same success rate as picking answers at random without even hearing the songs. Another experiment found that only one third of the people questioned could correctly identify the fact that Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” was about sex; an equal number of people thought it was about sports and exercise.

    (Quoted from page 21 of Why You Love Music by John Powell. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.)
    For a brief biography of John Powell, click here. For images of or relating to John Powell, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on progress

    The more means that society invents, the more people set themselves to use them to achieve ends. Yet good ends are limited so we end up applying the flood of means to gaining ends artificial to genuine human being, which is the idea behind Thoreau’s remark:

    The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.

    (Quoted from page 232 of Walden and “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” by Henry David Thoreau. Signet Classic, 1960.)
    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Jean Sibelius on the worth of critics

    Are you thin-skinned when people criticize you? Take Jan Sibelius’ advice:

    Never pay any attention to what critics say. . . . A statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!

    (Quoted from Jean Sibelius, by Tomi Mäkelä. The Bobdell Press, 2011)
    For a brief biography of Jean Sibelius, click here. For images of or relating to Jean Sibelius, click here.
    A Finnish musicologist and pianist, Tomi Mäkelä is a professor at Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Germany.

Bernard Berenson on feeling more than one can express

    Bernard Berenson tells of those wonderful experiences we all have from time to time for which we have no words, as being in nature or seeing a painting:

    I wish I could analyze this strange element of pain that almost dominates in the intense pleasure I get from beauty of a fine landscape. I think part of it is due to my inability to express myself. I feel more than I can hold, and my emotion finds no outlet. I should be so happy if I could describe it, the purple hills, the golden haze, the strange almost colorless sky, and then the sunset, and the sudden fall of a purple covering over the whole face of nature, and at last when the color comes out again just distinguishable under the new moon.

    (Quoted from page 48 of The Bernard Berenson Treasury, Simon and Schuster 1962.)
    For a brief biography of Bernard Berenson, click here. For images of or relating to Bernard Berenson, click here.

Frank Sinatra on Billie Holiday’s influence on his singing

    As Frank Sinatra told it,

    With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the U.S. during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me.

    (Quoted from “The Way I Look at Race, by Frank Sinatra. The July, 1958, issue of Ebony.)
    For a video of Billie Holiday singing, click here.
    For a brief biography of Frank Sinatra, click here. For images of or relating to Frank Sinatra, click here.
    For a brief biography of Billie Holiday, click here. For images of or relating to Billie Holiday, click here.