We' ll meet Again

Music Day is a connected set of free public events which takes place each year on the 21st June with events in over 120 countries and 700 cities around the world, not including France where there were too many events to count!  Down under we did our small part today around the piano to sing a few old songs.  

A reminder of the late Dame Vera Lynn who passed away just a few days ago aged 103.  

Just to look at the pictures and will bring back good memories.  

The outpouring of the best of ‘British’ gratitude.

Australian pilots were billeted out on weekends to British families. 

The concern and care was legendary according to my late father – a bomber pilot in WW2. 

The ‘Homes of England’ became a refuge, a sanctuary of warmth and stiff upper lip. 

Don’t worry about the bombs, siren going off, bloody nuisance, those bloody Germans, finish your cup of tea first son. 

My father’s often spoke about it, almost in reverent tone, not one to normally show his feelings. 

We also did a zoom rehearsal with open door singers on 

Wednesday evening.   

   

Colour blind

Maybe it’s time to change some of our iconic symbols in western culture to more fairly represent the truth. 

For instance the pure white light of innocence or virtue assumes light itself is white. But as many would know, we actually see white light waves as the colors of the rainbow. For the distinguishing feature in our minds eye in our brain is the different wavelengths. 

The differentiation in the brain depends on the wavelength which then denotes the different colors as we perceive them. When all the light waves are seen together, they make white light.

From universal black colored beginnings, evolution’s flexibility enabled skin pigment types to lighten in some regions due to climate, but they all depend on that same multi colored suns rays.

I have always liked to see the colors of the rainbow (reflecting universality) in sacred symbols and things.  

Nietzsche’s existential view of life

Once U3A classes can resume I am thinking of running a course on the enigmatic philosopher Frederick Nietzsche.   

The proposed structure of the course is as follows:

Firstly to do justice to his work I will be providing a brief history of his early life and his influencers. It is virtually impossible to understand a philosopher like Nietzsche unless you have some comprehensive background behind his era and the forces that shaped his thinking.

In my introduction I will aim to shed some light on the common threads –for instance why he considered society and religion to be decadent and how those issues might have relevance to today’s world.  A precursor to modernity?

What is evident in reading Nietzsche is the vitality and robust nature of his writings which seek to tear down the accepted conventional wisdom. Bear in mind the conventional wisdom that merged Greek rationalism with the traditional Hebrew way of thinking began with St Paul and had held sway for roughly 18 centuries. Nietzsche sets out his objections in his uniquely strident conversational manner written in a series of aphorisms. He forms an alliance with a psychological based perspective that rallies against any philosophical structure which involves the rational listing of values and the accompanying virtuous life enslaved to those principles.

In what is considered the beginning of western democracy in Ancient Greece he is voraciously opposed to the ideas of Socrates and Plato which he describes as decadent. His alliance is attuned to the Homeric ancient Greeks.    

I aim to explain the reason for his thinking (without necessarily agreeing with all of it) by reference principally to ‘Twilight of the Idols’. The full text is available here. 

The question to be discussed is how that might apply to contemporary problems. What were his key ideas and do we see any residue embedded in the modern world.     

There will be ample opportunity for interesting discussions on why Nietzsche regarded the ancient Athenian Greek philosophers as decadent.

One of his crucial concepts was of Eternal Recurrence and what it means according to Nietzsche- the question arises is this a helpful and a realistic way to stoically accept life as it is or not? E.g. Love of fate. Nietzsche-rallies against the Christian idea of freewill and moralising – providing an opportunity to discuss his spiritual psychology which encapsulates a healthy free spirit as he puts it to operate principally in an instinctive basis. But when he talks about the instincts he doesn’t mean the natural impulses as we would interpret it but rather the intuitive spiritual sense that frees us from any sense of artificiality contrived forced style of morality. Hence one of his works is aptly named ‘Beyond Good and Evil’.  

According to Nietzsche there are no facts, only interpretations as he would have it. In other words the world as an illusion and how we live within it to say yea to life. 

So that Nietzsche talks about becoming more than human- The question is- is this a fanciful notion or a living life to the full? Is the concept of greatness a hollow claim or an invitation to aspire to a more meaningful inspirational life?  

He is aghast at the current view on morality and one can discuss the principles he espouses to show cause as to why he thinks this view of morality it is the enemy of the natural world in which we reside. Other topics I am considering are as follows:  

·       The antichrist and how Christianity became decadent.    

·       Kierkegaard explained with comparisons to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky.

·       Comparing the 2, which Philosopher, if any, do you relate to or see eye to eye. 

As can be ascertained this is an early structural outline and any comments are most welcome.   

The Greatest Showman Cast - This Is Me (Official Lyric Video)

What has become a feature of Choirs generally is they are rehearsing remotely via social networks and compiling

virtual shots with members singing together from the amalgam of individual remote inputs. That final product involves quite a bit of editing. At Open Doors, the choir is embarking on a virtual recording from the song ‘This Is Me’ from the Greatest

Showman. How it works is we all received a backing track via an email with instructions as to where to save our video, on the designated Google drive. To participate you need two devices such as an IPad and a lap top. From the laptop you listen to the backing track to sing your part and record yourself via the camera and sound on your IPad. You use ear phones linked to the Lap top to ensure the IPad video recording of you doesn’t pick up any sound from the backing track. Quite a challenging thing to do but after many attempts and deletions I finally got it mostly right according to Anne’s rather good ear.
It will be interesting to hear the finished product as a recording and see how many people participate. 

Colour in the courtyard

 

On a bleak day to add a little bit of colour I took this picture. 

I decided to also add a few colourful quotes from Nietzsche.

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”

 “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

 “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”

 

Wishing you were here somehow

Hello here is the recording of my song number 17, which has occupied a bit of time whilst hibernating so to speak at home.

Wishing you were here somewhere

I have been leaning a few songs for mini concerts for future aged care and related gatherings and this one is from the Phantom but it still has some rough edges. The piano accompaniment was by way of recording for me by a friend (one of her favourite songs ) and is in the original key as sung by Christine in the Phantom. I downloaded the sheet music and put it in her letter box, so she then emailed me her piano accompaniment. 
I recorded myself with the accompaniment playing on my  desktop computer just using Voice memos . 
The song was composed by Lloyd Weber  for a soprano so you might have to cut me some slack. 

Wattle reflections

Eltham, where I reside North East from Melbourne, is mostly soft clay, and its evocative panorama was painted by the early Impressionists.  

Prints are displayed along varied walking tracks to the Yarra River. 

It is home to many mud brick homes, artists and  writers. 

Due to suspended silt carried downstream from erosion and run-off, the Yarra River is known as "the river that flows upside down". 

I have composed a few rhymes to capture those aspects mentioned.

Warrandyte River Walk

Crunch of gravel underfoot

Dust baked on a river’s track

Yellow tree spray on display 

shimmer in the river’s eddies

Wind brings a haunting rhyme

Resounding chords of a lost dreaming

When sky turned black, when rains came

It washed away the old bush track

Camped by the river, 

on the plain or in the scrub

Tribes still remember a great flood

As their mother earth rebounds.
Game is plentiful-they dance again
To the tune of the great hunt.

Gone now like the first spring floods

Gone the nulla, the sling and the spear

Replaced by the gun

No longer
 

Yarra River & Eltham
Impressionists captured in scenes to behold-

a river panned in the quest for gold

The valleys, streams, the eucalypt scent

In verses free flowing from our poets lips.

The Bellbirds ring out in parks where we play and

the Magpies warble a carol each day

In gullies of wattle, under ghostly grey gums

From the tiny streams to the river beyond

As soil crumbles down the steep slopes

It joins the fast current, over sharp rocks

Down over rapids, flows upside down

Ever onwards over her sacred ground

Yarra Wattle

The river mirrors in the first spring rays

Wattle blooms in the morning haze

So Withers heeded nature’s spring call

In vibrant colors, captured natures fine lace

In rivers scenes that have stayed the course

Through war, through peace and all our strife

The colors, the refection’s, endless seasons repeat

And now Withers pictures, just prints on the banks

Put spring in our steps, wattle pride in this place

Crystallizing Reality? [Official Film]

Quite an interesting video that explores a lot of ideas about consciousness that are fascinating, but still amount to a number of hypothesis's. If you can believe in the idea that information is reality, than the apparent discrepancy  between quantum mechanics ( free will to create your own meaning ) and big  picture physics ( determinism ) could be explained by some information residing in another dimension to which we may never be privy. 

You cant prove that any more than you can disprove it.  It is the belief of some  and not of others along with variances on the themes connected with the slippery concept of consciousness.    

Creation of the Universe - Symphony

Will the lighthouse, shining above
Still shine its light on us
From he heavens above,
In explosion and song
The ONE true light of love

Research to the rescue

As one would expect, in a few delusional individuals, there is the re surfacing of ideas that seek to entirely discredit the validity of the current test results for COVID - 19.  

The same sort of theories put forward  previously that the moon isn't real and the planet was in the grips of shape-shifting alien reptiles. But some have had the last laugh, becoming wealthy as sought after authors.  

But we need not be dismissive, as such people, who appear to be delusional, may well stumble across some idea worth exploring, as a consequence of one particular obsession or another.
There have been ideas floated that the current testing is fatally flawed and the deaths attributed to the virus are erroneous, posting they are due to other causes and are greatly exaggerated.

But what has made the current testing regime more reliable, was the completion in 2003, after 13 years of research, involving the ability to identify the sequence of the human genome- the genes that make up you and I. The principal mover was the US, but there were significant international teams in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and China.
Modern day advances made possible by this project into understanding gene sequencing. has allowed scientists to trace and monitor the COVID-19 pandemic faster than any previous outbreak. However, there remain gaps in our knowledge.
One of the tools developed, called Genome Detective, can take the raw data from the sequencing machine, filter out results from non-viruses, piece together the genome and use that to identify the virus. It does not rely on any prior guesses or hypotheses, so it can even identify viruses that have not been seen before. This was used to confirm the first case of COVID-19 in Belgium, identifying it as a SARS-related coronavirus.
‘You can see from the sequences how the virus spreads, the speed at which it's spreading and estimate the number of people that are infected.’
Professor Anne-Mike Vendome, KU Leuven, Belgium

One gets the impression of those who seek to discredit the current testing methodology don't grasp the very nature of a virus, since the interesting point about a virus is it cannot exist for long outside of a host. Rather, they depend upon borrowing from the hosts DNA or RNA to replicate and thereby cause wreckage of one kind or another within the host.  
Genes are simply molecular blueprints used in the construction of cells, tissues, and organs. The environment within each cell serves as a ‘contractor’ who reads and engages those genetic blueprints and is ultimately responsible for the character of a single cells ‘awareness‘of the environment, not its genes that sets into motion the mechanisms of life.
But of course, the outcome of the virus invasion is use the cells sequencing to accommodate its spread, in the case of the COVID -19 into the lungs, which become starved of oxygen.

Being in poor health means the body is a weakened position, as it is already engaged in fighting off other illnesses of one kind or another and hence one is more likely to succumb to the virus invasion.

But for the most part the arrangement for our interaction with viruses are concerned works well, as in the human gut they protect the body from cancerous cells that otherwise would cause havoc. On planet earth there are astonishing number of viruses distributed amongst life, inclusive of our oceans, which are mostly harmless. The problem arises when we start to infiltrate ancient forms of co- existence in animals, to expose ourselves to a virus or a mutant version to which we have no immunity. More funding is needed into research in this area and education to the dangers inherit in consuming exotic rare animals, to ban their export and consumption, since the current virus seems to have been derived initially from bats.