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[ by Charles Cameron — with a definition that places poetry and the drama as a subset of music ]
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L’shana tovah!

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Christopher Rouse just died. I knew nothing of him, but already I love his Gorgon:

May he rest in peace.

Ligeti, Mysteries Macabre with the astounding Patricia Kopatchinskaja:

Furiously at play!

Kopatchinskaja it is, I guess, who writes:

Temperature and ocean levels go up. Whole world regions dry out. Hundreds of millions will have to leave, migrate, millions will fight wars, no end being in sight. Can we go on listening as usual to Buxtehude, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch, Bruckner?

and at last Teeth — with the Ligeti from the late ’70s as context, the stunning Roomful Of Teeth plays Caroline Shaw‘s Pulitzer-winning Partita:

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Music, it would seem, is the chosen placement of sounds, random or chosen, from the field of all sounds, in some form or container within which they may bounce and reverberate.

Note that under this definition, the barnyard’s sounds may sound (Ligeti, children’s rhymes), as may silence..

the words of operas and masses..

Note too, that under this definition, plays and poetry are a subset of music, also.

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L’shana tovah!

[ by Charles Cameron — a gender-bender for our times, and a caution against messianic projections on all too fallible humans }
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Either way, Donald Trump:

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To be frank, I don’t think Trump is either one — but Biblical excuses made by or on behalf of those Evangelicals who favor Trump‘s policies, and particularly his choices for the bench, are worth considering on their own merits.

King David notoriously slept with Bathsheba after sending his friend, her husband, off to die on the front lines, and yet G*d seems to have favored and used him. Similarly, Cyrus wasn’t even one of the Chosen People, yet he seems to have been one of the people chosen.

An aside — while I’m not sure if he originated the idea, it’s interesting that David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians, named himself “Koresh” — “Cyrus” in Hebrew — and gave himself the title “sinful Messiah” because he felt both convinced / convicted of his sinfulness and called to a salvific, nay messianic, purpose. Esther? She was Jewish herself and beautiful, and protected the Jews from a holocaust back in the day.

David exemplifies the leader with a shady, nay adulterous and murderous, past.

Cyrus is the unbeliever in a G*d who uses him for his own purposes. And Esther is a ruler who preserves the Jewish people in a time of trouble.

Each analogy in turn has its merits — yet as regular readers here know, while I’m an enthusiast for thinking via analogies, I’m also concerned to bring critical appraisal to them. I have to admit I don’t see a Cyrus, David, or Esther here, and tend to think the long history of messianic projections by enthusiastic crowds, and messianic pretenders who came and went, should be a caution for us.

Trump looks to me like a man, is all. I wouldn’t trust him, and I don’t even trust myself.

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Sources:

CBN (2016), Chaos Candidate: Is Trump a Modern-Day King Cyrus?

WaPo (2019), Holy Moses. Mike Pompeo thinks Trump is Queen Esther

[ by Charles Cameron — i don’t know about you, but wondrous strange stuff passes before my eyes daily, as in a dream — here’s a sampler ]
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First off, two graphics too good to miss:

From my friend Rabbi Lobel:

and via David Metcalfe:

I should probably stop there — the two of them are so stunning. But I need someplace to park some other recent items that caught my attention..

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Then, a chyron ouroboros so brief as to be stunning:

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And here are a couple of other tweeted ouroboroi —

Lying about lying. https://t.co/wk7ecqrOI2

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 29, 2019

And this one with the added distinction of coming from a Q-source:

You’ve been Q’d pic.twitter.com/aeZ58rbiUH

— Nancy Q Sutherland (@NancymkQ) July 30, 2019

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Best game as metaphor for politics meme:

Best folk religion image — Holy Child, Patron Saint of Gas Thieves

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BTW, does QAnon get it’s Q from Quelle, German for source and popularly abbreviated Q in New Testament studies, where it is the “hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus’ sayings” (Wiki) on which Matthew and Luke draw for materials not found in Mark?

Or as I suggested to Ali Minai a day or two ago:

the letter Q is what you get when you try to construct a Moebius strip on a plane surface.

Don’t get me started on Borromean rings..

And is there a Q in that initial snake graphic, at the head of this post? Thus I bite my own tail..

[ by Charles Cameron — two instances of somewhat unexpected balance ]
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Here, first, something you’ve already seen — the Maastricht bookstore in a restored church, arguably an instance of word being made flesh:

and the gardens now surrounding the clay court on which the French Open is played:

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Sources:

Marcus Fairs, A shop in a church by Merkx + Girod Architecten

Gerald Marzorati, How the French Turned a Tennis Court Into a Garden

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I say alchemy because marriages of hard and soft, above and below, word and flesh, have it in common that they bridge significant metaphysical divides — like the fall of the Berlin wall, to take a political equivalent within living memory — and thus perform a healing work.

Tikkun olam.

[ by Charles Cameron — religious violence and sexual abuse scandals from a perspective grounded in comparative religion ]
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Two images from my feed a couple of days ago, similar enough that they make a (visual) DoubleQuote:

The Atlantic, Abolish the Priesthood

WaPo, Sri Lankan government blocks social media and imposes curfew following deadly blasts

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The first image above comes from an article in the Atlantic about child sexual abuse by members of the Catholic priesthood and accompanying cover-ups by the church hierarchy.

The Atlantic, Abolish the Priesthood

The abuses are horrific.They are horrific, horrific.

My grouse here is that articles such as this focus on the Catholic Church, although Billy Graham’s grandson claims the situation is similar if not worse among Protestants; sexual abuse of spiritual authority and cover-ups are also found in so-called “sects” such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and in other religions altogether:

Vice, Billy Graham’s Grandson Says Protestants Abuse Kids Just Like Catholics

The Atlantic, A Secret Database of Child Abuse

Tricycle, a Buddhist magazine, Sex in the Sangha … Again

And if that’s not enough — consider this list of non-religiously specific sources of sexual abuse the Feeney Law Firm, LLC encounters in its practice:

Feeny Law Firm, Sexual Abuse and Assault Lawsuits

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The second image above is from a Washington Post piece of April 22nd, about “the aftermath of suicide attacks that killed hundreds of people” in churches and hotels across the island. The coordinated attacks were claimed by ISIS, but appear to have been locally planned and executed.

Executed: what a word!

My plea here is simple: that extremists should cease targeting followers of other religions in the names of their own various religions.

As I’ve noted before, attacks here in the US and abroad have included:

The Gurdwara (Sikh temple), Oak Creek, WI, 2012

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, NC, 2015

The Tree of Life and New Light synagogues in Pittsburgh, PA, 2018

The Al Noor and Linwood Mosques in Christchurch, NZ, 2019

and violent extremists can be found claiming affiliation to these religions:

Judaism

Christianity

Islam

Hinduism

Buddhism

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Violence in the name of religion — whether personal violence as in sexual abuse or political violence as in the case of terrorism — is both human and deeply abhorrent. Understanding how widespread the human urge to violence in fact is will tend to put our recriminations against any particular religion into a clearer perspective. Religions, too, can benefit greatly from acknowledging, and not hiding, the shameful skeletons in their various closets.

As David Ronfeldt would say: Onwards!