Music For The Day

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

The haunting choral piece “On The Transmigration Of Souls”, by John Adams, commissioned in the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 as a tribute to the victims and those who were left behind.

 

Performed here by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

From the Wikipedia entry:

In an interview Adams explained: “I want to avoid words like ‘requiem’ or ‘memorial’ when describing this piece because they too easily suggest conventions that this piece doesn’t share. If pressed, I’d probably call the piece a ‘memory space.’ It’s a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions. The link to a particular historical event – in this case to 9/11 – is there if you want to contemplate it. But I hope that the piece will summon human experience that goes beyond this particular event.”

The title itself carries a certain heaviness of thought and meaning. According to Adams, “Transmigration means ‘the movement from one place to another’ or ‘the transition from one state of being to another.’ But in this case I meant it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience.”

I was present at the world premiere performance by the NYPO at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, in 2002. A very moving experience.

Happy Gibraltar National Day!

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Rather than continuing their futile and unwanted efforts to pick off British territories close to their shores, perhaps certain countries should be focusing on more pressing domestic problems much closer to home (a 27% unemployment rate, for example)… Should it not tell these countries and their jingoistic leaders something that despite the potential benefits (and lack of future harassment) that could come from being governed by the country closest to their shores, the Gibraltarians and Falklanders overwhelmingly choose to associate with Britain? That should make certain leaders extreme pause for thought, not go running to the UN.

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

A retro one this time, from the 1997 movie “Good Will Hunting”:

 

Even when I was at Cambridge I never saw a guy try to pick up a girl using the “let me dazzle you with memorised passages from a pretentious textbook” approach (though that is not to say that it never happened).

Plagiarism – how not to do it.

Kerry Gaffes; The Russians Blink

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Andrew Sullivan seems as taken aback by this new development as I am, but it appears that John Kerry’s apparent gaffe may actually have opened the door for a new, potentially better outcome in Syria – Assad turning over Syrian weapons to the international community in order to prevent a strike. It is both sad that no one seemed to think of this idea before John Kerry misspoke at the podium, but encouraging that a properly international resolution to the chemical weapons issue (though obviously not the Syrian confict) could be reached without the need for anyone to start lobbing Tomahawk cruise missiles. Assuming that the US State Department doesn’t go too far in walking back Kerry’s off-the-cuff words, this could be just the framework that everyone needs in order to fix the problem while saving face at the same time.

Andrew Sullivan's avatarThe Dish

US Secretary of State John Kerry Visits The UK

In his latest stream of unpersuasive self-righteousness, John Kerry today threw out an idea. Instead of threatening an imminent military strike, Kerry actually got creative:

Asked if there were steps the Syrian president could take to avert an American-led attack, Mr. Kerry said, “Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week — turn it over, all of it, without delay and allow the full and total accounting.”

He was, apparently, just being hypothetical. The State Department had to walk him back:

“Secretary Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons he has denied he used,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said in an e-mail to reporters after Mr. Kerry’s comments. “His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with…

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Semi-Partisan Survey – On Syria

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

I want to poll my readership on the divisive issue of Syria, and the appropriate international response to the use of chemical weapons against civilians in that country.

 

Of course, raw numbers and binary choices are not much use without the rationale behind them, so please take a minute to justify your opinion in the Comments section below.