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The Musicians’ Brawl

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“The Musicians’ Brawl” by Georges de la Tour (1593-1652)

This afternoon, I dropped in to the Getty Center to refresh my store of images. The one that stuck in my mind the most was a 17th century canvas entitled “The Musicians’ Brawl” by French painter Georges de la Tour.

There’s a lot happening in this picture. There are five figures depicted, all very nearly on the same plane. From left to right, we begin with an old woman who is appalled by the fracas. Moving rightward, we have a bearded blind musician with a knife in one hand and a hurdy-gurdy slung on his shoulder. He is being confronted by another bearded musician with a shawm (a predecessor to the oboe) in his left hand and a wedge of lemon in his right, which he is squeezing in the eyes of the hurdy-gurdy player not entirely believing he is blind.

Continuing to the right, we have two musicians who are spectators. The bearded one is barely paying attention, while his mustachioed companion stares drunkenly out at us while clutching his instrument. That rightmost figure is, to me, the most memorable one in the painting. He is clearly chuckling and looking at us with slightly glazed eyes.

I will never forget that drunken facial expression. It is the painterly version of an earworm.

Rock Schlock and Barrel

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When I was young, we didn’t have a working radio. As a result I didn’t have any fave rock groups as I was growing up. By the time I was introduced to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Doors, I was well into my twenties.

Even then, I never really liked the whole rock ethos, that whole thing where gaunt hippies pranced onstage while wielding electric guitars. Moreover, I never liked electric guitars. So, in effect, there never was a time when I could say that so and so was the music of my youth. I never had much music of any kind in my youth.

Then, when I was in my thirties, I discovered classical music right around the same time the compact disk (CD) came into being. A few years later, I finally learned to drive at the age of forty and discovered the classical music stations KFAC-FM and KUSC-FM. KFAC switched to Pop Music in 1989; so all I ever listen to on the radio today is KUSC.

Come to think of it, I never listen to Pop Music either. I have never yet heard any Taylor Swift songs. What floats my boat is Mahler, Sibelius, Bruckner, Dvorak, and Wagner.

I guess that makes me rather atypical for my generation. My cohort is busy listening on PBS to Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. Fortunately, I’m okay with that.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

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Soviet Writers Arkady (1925-1991) and Boris (1933-2012) Strugatsky

They were by far the greatest science fiction authors who ever lived. The two brothers produced a string of masterpieces (the greatest being Roadside Picnic, or Пикник на обочине) that are unlikely to be surpassed, ever!

I am currently reading two of their novels whose chapters are artfully interleaved. They wrote Ugly Swans (Гадкие лебеди) in 1972; in 1986, they wrote Lame Fate (Хромая судьба) and shuffled the chapters together. Reading it is an amazing experience. I’ve finished about 40% of the nested novels at this point. I haven’t even encountered the science fiction yet, though I feel it is lurking and waiting to pounce.

Among the brothers’ works I have read are:

  • Space Apprentice (1962)
  • Far Rainbow (1963)
  • Hard to Be a God (1964)
  • The Final Circle of Paradise (1965)
  • The Second Invasion from Mars (1967)
  • Prisoners of Power (1969)
  • The Dead Mountaineers’ Hotel (1970)
  • Roadside Picnic (1972)
  • Definitely Maybe (1977)
  • Beetle in the Anthill (1980)
  • The Time Wanderers (1986)

Many of the Strugatskys’ titles have never been translated into English. I think that, ultimately, they will all be. I can think of few Soviet writers working in any genre that have such a large and consistently excellent body of work.

There are only a handful of science fiction writers I admire. After the Strugatsky brothers, there are Stanislaw Lem from Poland and, in the United States, Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak.

Epitaph on the World

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Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

We know his Walden, even his essay “Civil Disobedience.” But do we know his poetry? Probably not, though some of it is pretty good, such as this short number:

Epitaph on the World

Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
’Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when ’twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.

Meditation Lite

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Not the Picture in Everyone’s Mind

Picture in your mind a person engaged in meditation. Based on Google Images, that picture is usually of some earth mother with long flowing hair sitting cross-legged in the lotus position, with the hands outstretched over the knees making some frou-frou sign.

If I had to look like that when meditating, I wouldn’t be able to meditate at all. I have had my left hip replaced some quarter of a century ago, and I cannot sit comfortably in that position.

When Martine and I showed up today for the Mindful Meditation session at the Central Library, we just had to meditate while sitting in a chair, preferably with our eyes closed as we concentrated on our breathing to clear our minds. Looking around at the people attending, we none of us looked like earth mothers—just the usual assortment of people looking for a few minutes of peace in their lives.

The Mindfulness Education Center at UCLA which conducts these Thursday meditations has an effective procedure for guiding people through the minefield of stress and an overactive mind.

Curiously, their website shows an image of an earth mother in the prototypical lotus posture. Go figure.