Pursuing praxis

This is why I like Metallica.

Metallica (Black Album, 1991)

Wherever I May Roam

…and the road becomes my bride
I have stripped of all but pride
So in her I do confide
And she keeps me satisfied
Gives me all I need

…and with dust in throat I crave
Only knowledge will I save
To the game you stay a slave
Rover wanderer
Nomad vagabond
Call me what you will

But I’ll take my time anywhere
Free to speak my mind anywhere
And I’ll redefine anywhere
Anywhere I may roam
Where I lay my head is home

…and the earth becomes my throne
I adapt to the unknown
Under wandering stars I’ve grown
By myself but not alone
I ask no one

…and my ties are severed clean
The less I have the more I gain
Off the beaten path I reign
Rover wanderer
Nomad vagabond
Call me what you will

But I’ll take my time anywhere
I’m free to speak my mind anywhere
And I’ll never mind anywhere
Anywhere I may roam
Where I lay my head is home

But I’ll take my time anywhere
Free to speak my mind
And I’ll take my find anywhere
Anywhere I may roam
Where I lay my head is home

Carved upon my stone
My body lie, but still I roam
Wherever I may roam

Don’t Tread on Me

Liberty or death, what we so proudly hail
Once you provoke her, rattling of her tail
Never begins it, never, but once engaged…
Never surrenders, showing the fangs of rage

Don’t tread on me

So be it
Threaten no more
To secure peace is to prepare for war
So be it
Settle the score
Touch me again for the words that you’ll hear evermore…

Don’t tread on me

Love it or live it, she with the deadly bite
Quick is the blue tongue, forked as lighting strike
Shining with brightness, always on surveillance
The eyes, they never close, emblem of vigilance

Don’t tread on me

So be it
Threaten no more
To secure peace is to prepare for war
So be it
Settle the score
Touch me again for the words that you’ll hear evermore…

Don’t tread on me

So be it
Threaten no more
To secure peace is to prepare for war

Liberty or death, what we so proudly hail
Once you provoke her, rattling on her tail

So be it
Threaten no more
To secure peace is to prepare for war
So be it
Settle the score
Touch me again for the words that you’ll hear evermore…

Don’t tread on me

Through the Never

All that is, was and will be
Universe much too big to see

Time and space never ending
Disturbing thoughts, questions pending
Limitations of human understanding
Too quick to criticize
Obligation to survive
We hunger to be alive

All that is, ever
Ever was
Will be ever
Twisting
Turning
Through the never

In the dark, see past our eyes
Pursuit of truth no matter where it lies

Gazing up to the breeze of the heavens
On a quest, meaning, reason
Came to be, how it begun
All alone in the family of the sun
Curiosity teasing everyone
On our home, third stone from the sun

All that is, ever
Ever was
Will be ever
Twisting
Turning
Through the never

On through the never
We must go
On through the never
Out of the
Edge of forever
We must go
On through the never
Then ever comes

All that is, ever
Ever was
Will be ever
Who we are
Ask forever
Twisting
Turning
Through the never

Never

Nothing Else Matters

Nothing else matters

So close no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don’t just say
And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know

So close no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don’t just say
And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they say
Never cared for games they play
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
And I know

So close no matter how far
Couldn’t be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No nothing else matters

My Friend of Misery

You just stood there screaming
Fearing no one was listening to you
They say the empty can rattles the most
The sound of your voice must soothe you
Hearing only what you want to hear
And knowing only what you’ve heard
You you’re smothered in tragedy
You’re out to save the world

Misery
You insist that the weight of the world
Should be on your shoulders
Misery
There’s much more to life than what you see
My friend of misery

You still stood there screaming
No one caring about these words you tell
My friend before your voice is gone
One man’s fun is another’s hell
These times are sent to try men’s souls
But something’s wrong with all you see
You you’ll take it on all yourself
Remember, misery loves company

Misery
You insist that the weight of the world
Should be on your shoulders
Misery
There’s much more to life than what you see
My friend of misery

You just stood there screaming
My friend of misery

It gets a whole page unto itself. (Also so it doesn’t screw up the formatting of this page.) Looking at this picture goes with listening to the finale to Stenhammar’s 2nd piano concerto. Who, you say? That’s what I said yesterday. Trust me, it’s a gold nugget well worth your hunt.

A tangent to my reading in Rand’s ITOE, applied to music:

I played piano for my best friend when she was here just before Christmas. Her comment was, "I have no idea how you remember all those notes." Truth is, I don’t remember them. If you plunked the music down in front of me and told me to sight read it cold, I’d be screwed. Sure, I read the notes and memorized them initially, but now it’s to where I remember the shape of the chords, the position on the keyboard, the required movement from one to the next, and the associated sounds (before, during, and after), which together ensure I play the correct notes. They are totally subsumed under this umbrella of integration by experience.

Now I think, pairing these observations with a re-reading of her theory of concepts, that there’s a parallel between run-of-the-mill concepts, and music. If concept formation requires a collection of percepts from which you abstract the commonalities, yet discard the variations in those commonalities (what she calls measurement omission, generally speaking), that’s a lot like learning a chord by figuring out all the separate notes, and then integrating them into a whole, where all you have to do is remember the whole in order to remember the many. (This way you don’t "blow your crow"). And you do this iteratively - you take these integrated, conceptualized chords, and link them together into phrases, establishing the transition from one chord to the next, till you remember the phrase as a whole, and picking out a single chord requires mentally disassembling the phrase. And on and on, abstractions on abstractions, conceptions of conceptions, till the whole piece becomes folded within a few key concepts that act as starting points, all within your crow.

Because there’s no way I could ever remember all those notes, even though I can play them no problem. Problem solved :o)

My fascination with Rachmaninoff is probably closer to a long-distance love affair than hero worship. And I’m fascinated not just because Rand mentioned his 2nd piano concerto in The Fountainhead. I loved, loved Rachmaninoff long before I’d even heard of Ayn Rand. We go way back.

In any case, this is a 3 CD set containing his four piano concertos, the impossibly brilliant (and uncharacteristically lighthearted) Rhapsody, and the well-loved Tchaikovsky piano concerto no.1. The composer, conductor, soloist and orchestra are all Russian. I don’t know if that makes this a "better" recording than others (Horowitz, Rubenstein, and Rachmaninoff himself come to mind), but these recordings are my worn-to-death favorites, if only because they are the ones I own.

Admittedly, the 1st and 4th concertos are not well known and are hugely overshadowed by the 2nd, 3rd and Rhapsody. They’re conveniently placed on the same CD and are probably best listened to as historical or biographical bookends.

The 2nd piano concerto is paired with the Tchaikovsky concerto on one disc, which has much heuristic value, as magnificent as both are. Tchaikovsky sounds, well, wonderfully Tchaikovskyish, with strong clarinet overtones and synchronized instrumentation for melodic emphasis, which remind one of his ballet scores. His opening lines were also mentioned by Rand in The Fountainhead. Overall, it is a spectacular piece, as I’m sure others have said here already, so I will not elaborate more. I will lightly criticize the last three notes - so unoriginal! The 3rd movement is exhilarating, and he ends the upward sweep with three predictable notes. But it’s just a little tarnish.

Immediately compare that with Rach’s 2nd. Through and through, in all his works, he is original, his own. You can hear influences from Beethoven, Chopin and Tchaikovsky in his 2nd concerto, but his complexity combined with superb musicality, lyricism and controlled but pure emotion make him a master of the instrument, the format, the genre. I have read elsewhere that Rachmaninoff knew the piano better than nearly any other composer - certainly better than Chopin and Tchaikovsky - and I think the piano soars more under his pen than that of anyone else. Rach’s 2nd is a very romantic piece, combining the heroic elements Rand surely noticed, with wistful longing and introspection, determination and heady, exuberant drives towards a highly satisfying climax.

My favorite however, by far, is the Rach 3, and certainly not because of the movie Shine, although that movie aptly pointed out the Mt. Everest-like scale - technically and emotionally - of the piece. To give you an idea of the technical difficulty involved: some say the Rach 3 is the most technically demanding piano music there is. Ever. A student asked Artur Rubenstein when he started learning the Rach 3. At eighteen, he said, though he was still learning it some 30 years later. And, on a personal note, a former piano teacher of mine played Rach’s 2nd as an undergraduate to rave reviews; he told me a few years later that he hoped to *attempt* the Rach 3 sometime in his lifetime. That is the magnitude of technical difference between the two.

As for the music itself, what can I say? It touches an essential cord within me. Here, Rachmaninoff *knows* me, and makes my soul’s essence audible - the somber, brooding struggle with personal doubts and demons (Rand would be appalled by Rachmaninoff’s lack of self-esteem! His letters are a stark contrast to his music), the spark and burn of motivation, inspiration, the joy of epiphany, and the ebb of energy and recollection of brooding. And that’s just the first movement :o). The 2nd movement is characteristically slower, reflective, lyrical, featuring the flute, but Rachmaninoff’s genius and passion shine through as he (somehow) smoothly interrupts this to bring back a spur of energy, which is slowly, then quickly, flung into joyous, striding - no, galloping - confidence, conquering the doubts of the first movement. There are a couple recursions that I feel ambivalent about; on the one hand, they seem to interrupt the straight-line course of conquest that I love; on the other hand, they serve to underscore how vitally important and beautiful that clarity of purpose is, and make me all the more appreciative when it returns. The concerto ends like a fist slammed on a table and someone saying, "Yes! We will do it!" How to top that? I can’t conceive of it.

The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was written a couple decades later, around 1936. There are a few influences from more contemporary music, but Rachmaninoff was a romantic through and through. The structure of the piece is entirely different - perhaps I’m not used to the rhapsody format - with 26 fully connected variations. Again, there is the technical originality, musicality, lyricism, and a wide emotional spectrum, all of which are well-integrated, to be expected from Rachmaninoff’s unsparing critical judgment and insistence on perfection. The tone is completely different from his other works, however, especially towards the end. One wonders if he was thinking of the antics of his grandchildren, or had found some internal fountain of youth, because I find the tone not a triumph *over* something, just triumph, joy, and a wink of humor for their own sake, like a child shouting and dancing that he loves being alive.

For those wondering if this is a living Concerto of Deliverance, and why Rand didn’t name this or the 3rd as such, I’m on the fence. In my listening of the pieces, struggle is not entirely thrown off in Rach’s 3rd the way I imagine in my version of Halley’s 5th, and the absence of struggle in the Rhapsody precludes it from being delivered from something. Nevertheless, I find in Rachmaninoff’s music the affirmation, refueling, motivation and exhilaration that I imagine in Halley’s music. And in classical, instrumental music existing today, Rachmaninoff’s as close as it gets, and it’s pretty darn good!

On the factual observations that 1) most people do not play the piano, 2) many who do play do not play the specific Rachmaninoff pieces that I know*, and 3) few, if any, instruments are physically played the way a piano is, I thought I’d take this perceived opportunity to describe how it feels to play a Rachmaninoff prelude.

The easiest way to describe Rachmaninoff is by contrast, and for that role I pick Bach. Bach likes to twist my mind in knots, the musical equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your belly. Playing a simple sounding counterpoint "Invention" of his can be so mentally trying that it becomes physically exhausting. And that’s for a single string of methodically placed notes for either hand. And for what? A mathematically intriguing, pedantic bit of background music. Perhaps it’s because he only had a harpsichord to work with, and not the modern piano-forte (which deserves a whole blogpost unto itself). But he sounds, to my impetuous ears, so mild-mannered he could be mistaken for being whole-heartedly boring. I wonder, what was the man like when, having received a fat commission for his latest clever creation, he was embarking on an evening of riotous celebration with his compatriots and a pretty lady on his knee? If only he had had a pen by him then.

Thankfully, there is Rachmaninoff. My first characterization of his music is: easier. Melodies with song and purpose in them, that impress on my memory and make me want to get on with playing the piece, like jumping into the driver’s seat of a roller coaster. To look at the page, his music can be formidable - blobs of black ink crowding out the white spaces, soliciting my attention, demanding courage, taunting the size of my hands. I think of Rachmaninoff and I think of chords that are, literally, a handful, galloping up and down the keyboard in great big clomping strides, or, broken into single notes, carrying the piece smoothly along, like the spokes of a wheel.

Considering the intellectual aspects of playing Rachmaninoff, my first inclination is to describe Rachmaninoff as emotional compared to Bach’s detached intellectuality. One simply cannot succeed in playing Rachmaninoff with anything less than a heart brimming over with emotion. But then, what does it take to translate my feeling into the corresponding sound? The only road is through my mind, and upon realizing that I discovered that Rachmaninoff is as fully intellectual and demanding as Bach. Over-eagerness must be tamed, disciplined, funneled; pathos must be meted out in strict time, never lagging, but never indulging; triumph must be articulated crisply and clearly, no detail overlooked as one crosses the finish line. Hours spent repeating the same three measures pay off when a single thought of "More!" effortlessly translates into a brighter melody, or higher contrast, or surging tempo, with no regard for the intricate dance of my fingers. Only after all the particulars have been consciously integrated at each level, from the notes to the fingering, rhythm, dynamics, phrasing, and overarching message, can an emotional edict produce a work of art.

And, even after all this mental effort, there’s a final bit of justice in reaping the reward that is playing Rachmaninoff well. Not only must I be mentally prepared, I must physically work for it every time I play. He’s a taskmaster at the piano, demanding strength, flexibility, speed, precision, and coordination. I’ve felt the same fatigue from playing piano as from a speed workout at the track - painful, aching exhaustion pushed on by sheer desire; a thumping heart, measured breath and beads of perspiration; the noodley weakness in my fingers and arms; and a numb, happy mind knowing - hearing - that I’ve earned my prize.

That’s Rachmaninoff.

* Prelude in c-sharp minor, Op. 3, no. 2, and Prelude in g-minor, Op. 23, no. 5