Opera, Francis Crick and futility of existence

I hope I do not miss anything this time...

I'm listening to opera: Wagner, Puccini and Mascagni. I've heard this cd almost a million times. It was the first cd I bought in life. Sure, I liked classical music before, but there were no cds, and I listened to LPs. So once I bought my stereo with a cd reader, I bought this "The Best of Opera," a collection that gradually I learned to love it.

Do not know music more powerful and brighter than the overture of "The Master Singers of Nuremberg," by Wagner. It is absolutely perfect. And has many other beautiful pieces in this album. Excuse me, but who does not know classical music, does not know the true beauty in form of sound. It is a kind of person who has not experienced in musical terms the best that humanity can offer.

But there are more: Francis Crick died, one of two fathers that discovered the DNA molecule. Who does not know a little about science does not give a damn about it, but for many people his dead is a great loss. Crick is one more of the great men of twentieth century. He was great not only in genetics, where he worked little. He was particularly great in areas such as neurology, where he sought to understand the human brain, a long research career.

Thinking about Wagner, Crick, operas and books, and works and researchs, about time and memory, I wonder about the futility of life. For billions of people on this damn planet, for the most part, Wagner and Crick did not mean anything. Wagner had spent months composing each note carefully, grinding his work, researching his mythological theme, and all that could be a composer, he left a legacy that can only be enjoyed in a small portion of a small human group. All admit that he was great, that Wagner was a monster of the nineteenth century, but nobody knows anything about his work. Nobody heard anything about him. And if someone heard, turned the nose up. And about Crick, nobody knows, and all his work, the result of thousands of hours of reading, research, thoughtfulness, wit and intelligence, distilled in the form of books and articles, are relegated to a handful of privileged peolple who have the chance to meet a small part of what a great man thought,  a lind of man which there is not one in a hundred million. Brazil, with its mass of humanity,

I feel privileged.

I feel a healthy jealousy to be like the greats.

That a century from now someone might say: humanity does not know the works of Rosenvaldo, but those who know are privileged because they have the best that humanity can produce about that topic.

I wanted to be the reason for this privilege. Just do not know how ...

But wait a time...

Stillborn

The text was a stillbirth. I was talking about nice things, but I lost everything. This is what might be called virtual legitimately terrorism: Al Qaeda does not need hacking, he simply needs to learn from the staff of the UOL to do real shit. Ah!, this trashy vagabund site...

Digital void: second try...

Here we go:

I said that the Internet has suffered from a lack of creativity from its users, because I've been doing some research with Google and was attended with a dozen pages about "Charles Spurgeon", I did not know who he is or was. I had read a sentence in the first chapter of his book "The University of Success" by Og Mandino, but I did not know who was Spurgeon.

The research showed me that he was a famous British preacher who lived in the nineteenth century. The problem is that there were dozens of pages with the same text. Just one copy of each other.

Someone once said that after Microsoft Windows, nothing is created, everything is copy and paste. I think that's true, and even more on the Internet.

I tried also something about James P. Carse, and I was surprised at how many phrases that people use, often out of context, or even in a context totally wrong. I thought it was a brazilian vicious, because brazilian people are lazy, but the pages in English are also repeated to infinity.

This business, use phrases from famous authors, is relatively dangerous. I think the Internet could be better exploited, and that people should think about and discuss the canned ideas with many authors present us. I say this because if we take any two books, I'm sure you'll find them absolutely contradictory guidelines. Even in the text of only one book, of only one author, there are terrible contradictions. Follow any orientation without doing a little meditation on its meaning can be dangerous. The greatest danger is that we do not perceive the contradiction at first glance, and even after much rereading. The contradiction is subtle, therefore dangerous.

Where are the critical readers of the globalized world? Nobody ever contests Og Mandino. Where can I find a text about a Mandino lucid text written by someone who read it, thought about it and realized that what was written was not quite the right thing to do? Okay, viewpoints are viewpoints, but it is very important to have different viewpoints and not just simple phrases and simple sentences extracted from books by authors who maybe we do not know who they are. Just a curiosity, I found that Mandino was an alcoholic, became a millionaire and died in 1996, and that César Romão, Brazilian writer, is almost a disciple of his. I never read Romão, but nevertheless I was not tempted to read him.

But whereas we're talking about reading, and to criticize, I suggest you to read Irving M. Copi and his delightful and instructive (and thick) book "Introduction to Logic". I guarantee that after reading it, you will have a new vision of what you've been reading around, and also guarantee you will have a new idea of ​​Sherlock Holmes. You do not swallow more phrases without first giving a thought about it. If you want to read Copi, be brave and try to solve the exercises he proposed . Your mind will blow (and will be sharp!)...

Meanwhile, I keep doing my research in this digital void, wich Internet gives us. Okay, it could be worse.

This text, my friend, was different in words, but have the same content. The former text was better written, more beautiful and poetic, but time ran out and I lost it. If this second text was not so good, you thank UOL webmaster, a genius who created the time limit that force us write running...

Ah!, how much desire to see this portal in Mexican hands, a man that will do a good job, or a Spanish businessman. UOL has passed: it grown, matured, but did not work. Like a fruit, I think it will die rotting in the dead branch in which clings to stay... a pity...

 

Terrorism and the digital void

I'm disappointed with UOL. I lost one text again because some Tyrannosaurus, a pig's spirit, a miserable bastard stuck daring to be a webmaster decide that we can not write our blog as long as we want ... the text is born, growing, getting cool, and then a unwanted asshole message warns us that our time ran out and then we lost it all, and a damn password is requested I do not know why the hell stupid necessity that someone has to trouble our lives.

Alright. Let's try again. I'm not going to close my account on UOL today. It will not be necessary: some more days, or later, comes a Venezuelan or Mexican tycoon and buys UOL and put these incompetent webmasters on the street. And then the thing will be really good.

I'll try to write my text again ...

Orkut and conceptual horizons

At last, I got, through a trick, make the top of the screen where you type text for our blog appear ... it was missing, and I can imagine that is only one more bug from UOL programmers, always failing. But okay, here I am ...

I've just been invited to join Orkut, Google's friends group. I made my profile there and wanna see what happens. Nothing much, just the reputation of being something quite ripe for web standards. I invited my brother and see if we join the gang of our childhood and adolescence only in one place. I feel it hard, but we will try. I still think there is nothing more practical and efficient than traditional e-mail, but even so, I'll try the Orkut. Fernandão, from Fernandão Homepage, which sends me jokes every day via email, who invited me. He is a nice guy. Thanks, Fernandão!

And also I keep entertained with Money. Finance is not easy and this work will consume many hours of my sweat.

I've been taking a look at a possible upgrade of my computer which I write. I have a lowly, but faithful, Pentium 266 (believe!!) that works truly. It no owes nothing to any more modern machine, except for games that are heavy to run, and the damn XP, but this I do not use. Indeed, neither games I play, then it do not make any difference to me. My old Pentium has about eight, ten years of use, but it don't lets me in bad situation, except in some extreme moments. But I have to think about upgrading my technological apparatus, because now it's cheap. Let's see, maybe I buy something out there.

I finally read "Finite and infinite games" by James P. Carse, and found it was a self-help book, but it is not. It is philosophy, and very hermetic. This book have his twin brother, or anti-brother, "Respect your limits," by Ricardo Peters. These books are about a philosophy impregnated with religion. They are writers, theologians, philosophers or theologians, or something. But it is not easy reading, and Carse style is repetitive and unclear. It leads to anything, except the concept of horizon. In fact, what the limits of a horizon? He is versatile and changes according to our point of view. In this case, the visual horizon is used as a metaphor for what should be our intellectual or philosophical horizon: open, changeable, without limits. Therefore, Peter's book, which obliges us to respect our limits, is a kind of counterpart of Carse's book. But I can not further comment on the subject, because I need to read some contemporary philosophers, which I did not do yet. there is a hermeticism in twentieth-century philosophy that reeks of Hegel, which I detest, which was detested by the sage Schopenhauer, and that even at the time they both lived in the same country. Heidegger, Witgeinstein, Sartre, these guys seem to still somewhat confused in their philosophies. Sartre's not much, but Heidegger, yes. Maybe a few more books later and I can better understand this "Finite and infinite games". For now, the lesson that remained is conceptual horizon. But it's something.

I bought a Natalie Cole's cd, Unforgettable, and it is not a big thing, except for two or three songs. Unforgettable is the best, no doubt more by Nat King Cole to Natalie. She has a voice no strong enough, but it's cute, and everything is ok.

Why do I feel a shiver when I hear the Wagner's overture "The Master Singers"? Why classical music is so good, so much better than everything else? I think the only thing that compares in impact to a drum in an orchestra are guitars from Metallica and Slayer and Sepultura. Any other music owes a lot of power and strength. Jazz is a luxury, but it's only it.

I go to sleep. It's cold, and this is rare in Goiania, Brazil. I have to enjoy and drink a lot of chamomile tea and others flavours I bought last year, hoping the cold that never came. Extremes aside, my teas are not so old, but they are not eternal. They need to be drunk while they may have the ability to produce some flavor, else certainly I will have only a cup of hot water that tastes like dry grass. Not bad, but it is not enough.

As Carse, or, saying good-bye in Carse' style : I will not sleep, I will wake up to my dreams ...

Them or us

Or better: "Them or us". This Frank Zappa cd is just great.

Before I thought the "You are what you is" be the craziest, but this "Them or us", from 1984, is pretty cool. It has some great songs. For example: the first, "The Closer You Are," is a 50s beebop, perfect. The second, "In France," is a joke. The singer is kind of stuttering, it seems that I can see his face, his teeth forward. The third, "Ya Hozna" is very, very bizarre. The sound is heavy, a very good guitar, but the voice is from another world. A macabre set of voices singing something in reverse rotation. A storm from hell. And, of course, the seventh, "Stevie's spanking," where Stevie Vai (pronounced 'ai' like 'i') simply explodes on guitar. But not only: it has a great "Frogs with dirty little lips" and all the other nine, a total of fifteen great songs. I recommend!

I've been putting Money in order. I know I'm capable to do difficult things, but this is only a proof of my potential. I'm really good, when I decide to be. I will get everything I want, because I know how to control myself.

I did not sleep this night, and I'm writing when I should be sleeping. I'm hungry and have a headache, but it's obvious! I'm pushing it.

I'm reading "Finite and Infinite Games." Is life really a game? Who knows? But I can not read much this book. Money takes all the time.

I bought a rubber dumbbell with a garish orange color, and with a Beep-Beep inside, to BJ, my dog, my black german shepherd. He becomes crazy with the toy. BJ is a good dog. Black dog ...

It's it. I bought a soul music hits cd, very cheap, and other with hits of Ella Fitzgerald, and other with sounds of rain, everyone here at Extra Supermarket, in Goiânia, Brazil. But after I comment on what I thought about them.

Now I go to sleep, listening to my digital rain ....

What forbids me...

What forbids me to do what I need to do?

"Be careful only to youself and nobody else. We bring our worst enemies inside us."

Charles Spurgeon. I do not know who he is, but I know who was Frank Sinatra, I'm hearing now, a wonderful duet with a woman also surnamed Sinatra. Nancy Sinatra is her name. Does your wife? His daughter? I do not know, but the duet is wonderful. As Frank was lucky to have a voice so beautiful and is so charismatic. He died in his ninety-eight years with an Amish beard worthy of Abraham Lincoln. Great, this Frank Sinatra!

But back to Spurgeon, who I do not know who is or was, but he makes a forceful warning against our internal weaknesses. But this is not new. The famous 'watch and pray without ceasing' Biblical is nothing more than a warning to be vigilant with ourselves and our thoughts, and not only that: we need a helping for us to succeed. She, the Bible does not say just to watch, but asks that we pray to God. I mean, watching is not enough.

In fact, we are volatile as leaves in the wind.

Walking through a crowd around a bus stop, in a urban bus station, I could see how everyone is able to focus on their daily problems. They embark at all costs. They squeeze themselves like sardines, because they have to move on with their lives. They have to get to the job, or at school or at home, at all costs, and nothing thwarts it. They can not lose precious minutes waiting for a bus less crowded. They are stubborn. Where is the volatility in this?

It's they are obstinate for the wrong goals. Easy targets are almost always wrong targets. Right targets, yes, are difficult and require patience and strength. So, the mob on the buses are not concentrated?

No. They're just moving on.

And my goals? Are they difficult? Require much concentration and willpower?

And Sinatra? He sang so naturally ... where was there stress in your life? It appears he to have lived as a feather, singing, dancing and making love for decades, as anyone ... Really? Am I mistaken, or he faced the addiction of drinking? I do not know, but other lives always seems easier. I also wanted mine could look easy ...

Indeed, it seems ...

But is not.

This does not mean I'm not struggling to make it really light and beautiful like a Sinatra' live. No, I will not become a singer, though not a bad idea. Fate no rewarded me with a beautiful voice like Frank. But I'll go ahead anyway. I'm going, as he says, making my way, and, who knows, when I have my ninety-eight years, I can say, like him, 'I made ​​my way', or 'I did my way ".. .

I know it will not be easy, but I'll make it look like it was ...

Yes, it is my way...