Continuing with Best American Essays 2006, I finished reading the essay, Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood by Michele Morano, which first appeared in the Crab Orchard Review. It is written with a very creative structure interweaving a grammar lesson about the subjunctive mood with a poignant story of a failed relationship with a suicidal boyfriend! You can read an excerpt at the author's page but the last few sentences of the essay are lovely and reproduced here..

The subjunctive is the mood of mystery. Of luck. Of faither interwoven with doubt. It's a held breath, a hand reaching out, carefully touching wood. It's humility, deference, the opposite of hubris. And it's going to take a long time to master.

But at least the final rule of usage is simple, self-contained, one you can commit to memory: Certain independent clauses exist only in the subjunctive mood, lacing optimism with resignation, hope with heartache. Be that as it may, for example. Or the phrase one says at parting, eyes closed as if in prayer: May all go well with you.

Also, earlier in the essay:

In language, as in life, moods are complicated, but at least in language there are only two. The indicative mood is for knowledge, facts, absolutes, for describing what’s real or definite. .....

.... The indicative helps you tell what happened or is happening or will happen in the future (when you believe you know for sure what the future will bring).The subjunctive mood, on the other hand, is uncertain. It helps you tell what you could have been or might be or what you want but may not get.

I have previously read and blogged about Aubrey de Grey (see this compilation post) but I just ran into a talk by Aubrey at TED.

Listen to him discuss his postulate that..

...the process of aging is merely a disease -- and a curable one at that. De Grey, a computer scientist and biogerontologist, believes humans could live for centuries, if only we approach the aging process as "an engineering problem." He outlines the seven basic ways people age, and how to "solve" each one. And if we get to work now, he says, humans alive today could live to be 1,000.

Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life by Hugh Brogon......

.........“illuminates the life of Alexis de Toqueville, the French writer whose exploration of liberty and democracy in "Democracy in America" remains the premiere analysis of the early American political system and its guiding political philosophies.” - via metacritic.com, where the book has a high rating of 85, the second highest score for recent non-fiction books behind Claire Tomalin's biography of Thomas Hardy (metacritic score of 86.)

I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

I am continuing with reading the Best American Essays 2006 and find some essays simply not really worthy of being in a Best of the year collection (eg: Susan Orlean's essay, Lost Dog, from the New Yorker.)

However, that cannot be said of the poet Alan Shapiro's essay, Why write?, first published in The Cincinnati Review. The essay should be read in its entirety but I'll quote one particular paragraph that gives as good an explanation as any for the question asked in the essays title. It quotes from something another great poet, Elizabeth Bishop, wrote in a letter to Anne Stevenson.

"Bishop writes that what we want from great art is the same thing necessary for its creation, and that is a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration. We write, Bishop implies, for the same reason we read or look at paintings or listen to music: for the total immersion of the experience, the narrowing and intensification of focus to the right here, right now, the deep joy of bringing the entire soul to bear upon a single act of concentration. It is self-forgetful even if you are writing about the self, because you yourself have disappeared into the pleasure of making; your identity — the incessant, transient, noisy New York Stock Exchange of desires and commitments, ambitions, hopes, hates, appetites, and interests — has been obliterated by the rapture of complete attentiveness. In that extended moment, opposites cohere: the mind feels and the heart thinks, and receptivity’s a form of fierce activity. Quotidian distinctions between mind and body, self and other, space and time, dissolve. Athletes know all about this nearly hallucinatory state. They call it being in the zone. They feel simultaneously out of body and at one with body."

Ok - I am tempted to quote one more paragraph from the essay, where Shapiro writes about spending time with his friend, Tim Dekin, during the last few days of the latter's life, sorting through some of the latter's poems to put a manuscript together.

"Though fly-fishing is the occasion of the poem, the subject is really acceptance of mortality, failure, and loss, and the value of joy in all its elusiveness.

The poem is also about writing, the moment of creation, when we forget all else but the task at hand, when preparation and luck coincide, when the burden of the past and the future lifts and exhilration comes, what Tim calls "Delight being. Joy being... my childhood's earliest familiar." The poem itself, he implies, the writing of it, is both the crumbs that lead us as adults back to that childhood paradise and the measure of how far we've traveled from it. When the moment passes and the poem's written, when we rise from the desk to return to the world awaiting us - our tangled loves and commitments - the exhilaration is nearly indistinguishable from "unfathomable loss.""

Funny how though I have not written enough to feel the exhilaration, I often feel unfathomable loss, huh? :)

Practice maketh perfect maybe but the innate talent in these kids is amazing..

a violin virtuoso

a young tabla ustad

a great voice

jazz pianist

another pianist

These and more at this Mefi thread

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“If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth.” -Sydney Smith (quote from this page)

Just started reading Best American Essays 2006 and came across a couple sentences in Poe Ballantine's piece 501 minutes to Christ*, which I would classify as quotable quotes.

"Like pornography, the news is a lurid concoction that panders to the basest emotions."

True indeed of much of what is on TV these days!

Another good quote (written in the context of a crazy woman, narrating weird tales to fellow passengers on a bus, being on the wrong bus...but I think it applies more widely to life in general!)

"I suppose the joy of finding an appreciative audience is better any day than some feeble notion of a destination."

Also, a few sentences from the Introduction by the editor, Laura Slater, that one can appreciate in our darker cynical moments: (emphasis mine)

"Sickness is the natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future.

The essays in this volume are powerful, plainspoken meditations on birthing, dying, and all the business in between. They reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness......"

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* I just found out that the essay can be read online (pdf) for free at its original publication in The Sun Magazine. Do read it...the author takes you on a wild weird ride on the kind of journey we'd never take, to places we'd never go to...and yet can associate with its basest moments! Isn't that what reading is all about? :)

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature. - Cicero

1) Life in 4 pictures (more of the artists work here.) Poignant and conveyed in such a beautiful way!

2) 3-D Glass-Art

3) The International Illustrated is a free e-zine, collaboration effort of international illustration artists around the world to create and submit an artwork on every issue’s topic. - via

4) Paper Art

5) I'll add something here later...gotta run!
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Many more interesting art work, if you be so inclined, at a post where I compile interesting art and photography from around the web.

Perusing through the Pulitzer prize winning pictures by Renée C. Byer (found via Amit Varma's blog today), I got all teary-eyed by the time I got through the first half a dozen pictures!

A dose of perspective early in the morning as sulky-me wakes up to another day... this one supposed to be special in some way because its a birthday and all! And what a day it's already been - between the pictures and the Stephen Dunn poems I read this morning! (The poem that resonated the most is reproduced below for your pleasure. A great beginning and a delectable ending... hallmarks of a good great poem - not the rest of the poem was any less enjoyable! Now I know what tristesse feels like!

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Emptiness

I've learned mine can't be filled,
only alchemized. Many times
it's become a paragraph or a page.
But usually I've hidden it,
not knowing until too late
how enormous it grows in its dark.
Or how obvious it gets
when I've donned, say, my good
cordovans and my fine tweed vest
and walked into a room with a smile.
I might as well have been a man
with a fez and a faux silver cane.

Better, I know now, to dress it plain,
to say out loud
to some right person
in some right place
that there's something not there
in me, something I can't name.
That some right person
has just lit a fire under the kettle.
She hasn't said a word.
Beneath her blue shawl
she, too, conceals a world.

But she's amazed
how much I seem to need my emptiness,
amazed I won't let it go.

(c) Stephen Dunn
Published in his book of poems, Everything Else In The World.
The poem previously appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Prairie Schooner .

While listening to some jazz music on Last.fm, I heard a piece just now called Shuba Yatra*, from the album, Outdones by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and though what I heard was NOT jazz, in my opinion, my interest was piqued as it sounded like Indian classical music, mixed in with some western classical music. (*You can listen to it on Rhapsody - free subscription required.)

I had never heard of Bela Fleck and so looked him up. Seems, Bela has associated with musicians from around the globe -- hear, for example, the album Tabula Rasa, with the musical genius Vishwamohan Bhatt and famous erhu player, Jie-BingChen)...and that explains the Indian music influence!

Anyways, their Greatest Hits Of The 20th Century album should be a good introduction to their music though there is a good sampling of a live performance available at the Internet Music archive.

Do read this post from the Presentation Zen blog.

Happiness, decisions, & the paradox of unlimited choices

It is a follow-up to a previous post at the blog and mentions a presentation from TED on the "liberating effects of constraints." It also mentions a 2004 book, The Paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz, where he put forth ideas on how pursuing the maximizing of choice is not as liberating as one may believe but in fact is a cause for unhappiness.

Aah... don't we all ride the satisfaction curve!

Also read this Business Week article the post links to…
Creativity Loves Constraints ...but they must be balanced with a healthy disregard for the impossible.

…and a response to the article: Opportunities, Constraints and Barriers affect Creativity

Also see this great cartoon - Less is More is Less

April is celebrated (not by all!) as National Poetry Month since the Academy of American Poets started

My myriad interests and lack of focus will prevent a poem-a-day feature that many sites are hosting for the month, but here is a quote that signifies the importance of poetry in my life.

Poetry exists not to simplify our sense of life and death but to absorb its complexities and mixed tones. - W. S. Di Piero

Reading Amit Varma's post, I had to look up the word tristesse since it is a new word for me. In doing so, I found there is a book called Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan. (Btw, Webster gives the meaning as melancholy.)

Thanks to amazon.com reader, I gleaned the first para of the book...which moved me and left me feeling tristesse, if you will.. (Maybe that's what they call non-coital tristesse, Amit?)

A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today, it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

Even in translation, that was something! Never heard of the author before today but makes one want to read more!

Disclaimer: Maybe it was not the words that moved me. Maybe, I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Am spending the morning surfing as I listen to Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, and Ella...oh...Ella....God Bless her soul!

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Updates:

1) The wiki entry for Francoise Sagan, says Bonjour Tristesse means "Good Morning, Heartache." So, what am I feeling - melancholy or heartache? I think it may be nothing that serious - just ennui.

2) Also, wiki enlightens that and the title Bonjour Tristesse is the French translation of this Billie Holiday song. Nice coincidence!

3) The wiki article also tells us about some of the troubles she had in the last years of her life before her death in 2004 due to tax evasion problems with the French government...sad end to her life!

4) Here is a Paris Review interview with the author.

Just saw a feel-good kinda pod on current.tv and so thought I'd blog about it instead of the usual depressing stories from Iraq and such (which I have tried to ignore for some weeks now!)

Unfortunately, the video is only for tv and not available for viewing on their website. The song that went with the video was very appropriate and it was an enjoyable three and a half minutes of watching.

Anyways, here is the webpage for this meme.

Sometimes, a hug is all what we need. Free hugs is a real life controversial story of Juan Mann, A man whos sole mission was to reach out and hug a stranger to brighten up their lives. In this age of social disconnectivity and lack of human contact, the effects of the Free Hugs campaign became phenomenal.

Actually, the video is on youtube and is linked to at the above page and seems the music/song that I quite liked is by a group called Sick Puppies. Also, according to the wiki page for the Free Hugs Campaign:

The video on YouTube was released on September 22, 2006 and has over 40,000 ratings at an average of 4/5 stars, and over 11.1 million page views, over 21,000 comments and has been favorited over 65,000 times (as of March, 2007), making it the 12th most viewed video on the site. The video clip was voted "Most Inspirational" in a YouTube poll released on March 27, 2007.

Picture at the website shows that the guy's already made it on Oprah too. Obviously, I'm a little late advertising his effort! :)

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Update: The phenomenon has spread outside of the countries where "Juan Mann" started this i.e. Australia and England .... including, the US (picture 4 in slideshow at the link), Italy, Switzerland, Taiwan, and with not-so-good results in China.

Of course India has the original 'free hugger'.. Mata Amritanandamayi, the "hugging saint" but I am trying to imagine the stares one would get if one tried this in a mall in Mumbai, India. Hmm... the possibilities.

Like I had written before, I had indulged in some wishful thinking about wanting to see/hear live some of the great names in West African music....

...well, earlier this week, en route to my dentist's office to pick up some x-rays, I noticed that Toumani Diabaté and his Symmetric Orchestra are going to be playing at the Somerville theater here in the Boston area. I HAD to go to this event and at $28 a ticket, some would say it was a steal to see the world's finest (video) kora (a traditonal instrument in Malian music, essentially a 21-string harp-lute) player from Mali and his assembly of very talented musicians from Mali and other West African countries around Mali.

Much joy comes anticipating the concert... I'll blog again about the experience soon. In the meantime, go hear some of the songs and see a video from their recent album, Boulevard de l'Independence, which was apparently 'recorded in two weeks' worth of all-night sessions in Bamako'. Also at the site is a preview of Toumani's collaboration with Ali Farka Toure, In the Heart of the Moon - which was recorded over "three unrehearsed, improvisatory two-hour sessions at the Hotel Mande, on the banks of the Niger river, in Bamako, Mali."

Also at the Somerville theater, on April 21st the great Mali singer, Salif Keita will be performing. I am very tempted to buy tickets again despite the fact that it is almost sold out and available tickets are in the very last few rows of the theater. For now, listen to Keita's haunting voice on this song, where he sings with Cesaria Evora, Cape Verde's finest and most popular female vocalist.



Incidentally, Cesaria Evora will also be performing in Boston at the Berklee Performance Center in June.

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See previous posts on music from Africa - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Heard the Mali group, Tartit, on Andy Kershaw's show on BBC Radio. The playlist for the weekly show provided a link to Tartit's page on myspace.com, where you can enjoy four of Tartit's songs.

Such joy...some day I need to go to Timbaktu!

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also see previous posts on music from Africa - 1, 2, 3, 4