Modern "art"

[acptulsa]

I was referring to modernism in the classical tradition.

I know, and you're right, it's a plague. I find it irritating when someone refers to what they're doing as "modernist" or "modern", like they're the end-all and be-all, cannot be improved upon, just made time stand still. It's arrogant.

For example, when the Nevada class moved battleship design beyond the Dreadnought era, they became "modern battleships". They also made them so large and expensive that they couldn't justify their cost unless they could be everywhere at once, and oceans are too big for that. So, yeah, they are the most modern of all battleships. Doesn't make them any less obsolete.

It's like modern and modernist are adjectives applied by the people trying to kill the genre. And, yes, if you're more interested in being ostentatiously modern than in designing or composing something to serve its purpose well, you are liable to do just that.

Gershwin and Copeland are more modern than the "modernists", and a damned sight better (you're used to me disagreeing with you by now, AF). So, for that matter, were the Moody Blues. Music survived those modernists, and it'll survive the corporate hiphop hijack too. But it sure is a breath of fresh air to tune in a college station, and escape the Official Approved Nationwide Playlist. This corporatocracy sucks. No wonder nooses make them so nervous.

 

[ClaytonB]

 

[ClaytonB]

I know, and you're right, it's a plague. I find it irritating when someone refers to what they're doing as "modernist" or "modern", like they're the end-all and be-all, cannot be improved upon, just made time stand still. It's arrogant.

For example, when the Nevada class moved battleship design beyond the Dreadnought era, they became "modern battleships". They also made them so large and expensive that they couldn't justify their cost unless they could be everywhere at once, and oceans are too big for that.

It's like modern and modernist are adjectives applied by the people trying to kill the genre. And, yes, if you're more interested in being ostentatiously modern than in designing or composing something to serve its purpose well, you are liable to do just that.

Gershwin and Copeland are more modern than the "modernists", and a damned sight better (you're used to me disagreeing with you by now, AF). So, for that matter, were the Moody Blues. Music survived those modernists, and it'll survive the corporate hiphop hijack too. But it sure is a breath of fresh air to tune in a college station, and escape the Official Approved Nationwide Playlist. This corporatocracy sucks. No wonder nooses make them so nervous.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to acptulsa again.

 

[ClaytonB]

Yes, exactly this.

The destruction of the arts in all it's forms was the opening salvo of the Marxist revolution that we are in the middle of right now.

And I know it sounds impolitic to even mention it, but the fact of the matter is that the ones who were the driving force of this destruction throughout academia and the conservatories were Marxist Jews.

What puzzles me to no end is why?

By the time of Schoenberg's escape to the US, Stalin had already come to power and before that Lenin and the Bolsheviks made it clear there was no love lost between them and the Jews, as they carried on the "official" anti-Jewish government policies of the Tsars before them.

Why do/did Jews embrace a political philosophy that despises them?

While some of the greatest minds of free individual/small l libertarian thinking has come from Jewish scholars, the vast majority are, and remain, committed leftists.

Ask yourself sometime why were the Brownshirts burning books and whose books were they?

Don't make the mistake of blaming the fall-guys. Go read the lyrics to O Fortuna. Who speaks Latin today, and has for thousands of years?

 

[acptulsa]

Don't make the mistake of blaming the fall-guys. Go read the lyrics to O Fortuna. Who speaks Latin today, and has for thousands of years?

I like Carmina Burana. I've never gone to the trouble to look up a translation of those blue lyrics; I doubt that would improve the experience for me. But I like it.

Frank Zappa played rock to finance his addiction to modernist classical. His lyrics, while often hilarious, reflected his contempt for the rock-'n'-roll audience, but I have a whole lot more appreciation for his work as a rock-'n'-roll consumer than as a classical audience. He should have followed his own advice more often, in his rock, when tempted to attempt to compose classical, and definitely when it came time to name his children: Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar.

 

[ClaytonB]

 

[acptulsa]

https://twitter.com/Missus_Massacre/status/1614645338828328960

 

[osan]

Sad to say we all, in our youth, probably mocked them, for being stuffy and uptight.

I didn't. Seriously. I never cottoned to the casual modern view of things. Oh, I dressed like an ass in high school, but not because I was rebelling. Very much the opposite, I was doing everything I could to become invisible, for reasons I will not go into here, save to say it all revolved around the traumas of years previous.

That's what happens to a society that takes it's "virtues" from idiot teen agers and women.

This is very well put. As I was growing up, I was perplexed by this acceptance of raving idiocy by "men". It really did beat the band. It's a shame the band didn't break out the iron bars and go to work, but I guess everyone was trying to be "tolerant", which in itself should serve as an object lesson in the effects of good ideas applied incorrectly.

“As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.” Isiah 3:12

Even in those days...

I am old enough to remember when women wore dresses and gloves to go shopping and people dressed in their Sunday best to take a train ride or an airplane flight.

Not sure I ever mentioned this, but I will risk redundantly nauseating everyone and making them hate me.

My biological parents were not very good as parents. They were, in fact, pretty horrible; so much so that I ended up being raised by a Norwegian family until I was 9, and that ended only because my mom died. Yes, they were my real family so far as I was concerned and I loved them and their circle more than I could ever find the words. My mom was dressed impeccably at all times, save maybe when she was working her garden at the North Presbyterian Church in Flushing.

My dad was an instrument maker who was so good at his profession, he was one of ten or twelve assigned to build the gyros for the Norden bombsights. He went to a machine shop every day dressed in a suit and tie.

Every Sunday I went to church, like it or not, dressed to the nines in a suit and tie. We all went to school dressed similarly, and this was NYC, PS184, before the filth of the ghetto had brought its cancer to those environs.

Having been brought up that way, long years later my biological mother asked me to come to her church in Freehold NJ for Christmas service. By that time I'd not set foot in such an event in decades, but I obliged. In those days my stable of business attire was dominated by twelve piece-built suits made for me by an old Jewish fellow, Mr. Bernstein, not to be confused with my silversmithing master Professor Bernard Bernstein. He was in his mid-80s, had his business in the garment district, and was such a stereotypical Jewish immigrant's son. Imagine the accent when he told me "I'm gonna make you such a suit..." I spent $56K on twelve of the most impeccably tailored sets you've ever seen, and I did it as a business investment, the goal being to always be the best dressed man in the room. It paid off and I knew it when Ed Whittaker, CEO of Southwestern Bell shook my hand, looked me up and down and said "nice suit".

So I got all gussied up in a charcoal gray woolen suit for the Christmas service and drove with my mother to the First Presbyterian Church of Freehold, a beautiful brownstone edifice in a town of great affluence. As I walked in, I was astonished at what I saw. Other than the ushers, I was the only person in that place who was properly dressed. People in shorts and flipflops... ON CHRISTMAS! Kids running about with their asses hanging out, the parents making no effort to reel them in.

You take a close look at the people in an airport lately?

Do I have to?

Can't tell the passengers from the bums anymore.

Sure you can: the bums are better behaved. My wife could tell you stories of what she must endure on her flights, especially those domestic.

When did you get so poor it kept you from taking the trash out.

The effects of degeneration in everything around you: why should I care?

This will get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.

People better start to straighten the fuck up, before we find ourselves in a Chinese concentration camp.

You kidding? We're already in a camp. Just because the cage is expansive and gilt, it makes it no less a cage.

 

[A Son of Liberty]

That was the very specific and deliberate intention. Get the proles down and keep them that way because contrary to all the big talk of equality, tolerance, respect, etc., the powers of that bereft philosophy were all about poverty, death, misery while the elite live in luxury. The "left" is everything lefties hate with bitter venom. The irony can't be cut with a chainsaw.



My entire family lived that $#@! for forty years. My great uncle Desmond was executed by the filthy Russians in '46. They made my great aunt and her two children, my cousins, watch. Both my cousins committed suicide and my dear great aunt died of a broken heart. Imagine that. My grandparents and my father were persecuted because they were aristocrats, as were virtually all of my other cousins because most of them were also aristocrats. My mother's father spent two years in a gulag in Siberia. His first three days were spent buck naked in a pit in the dead of Siberian winter. He wasn't expected to survive, yet he did. When he came home, his 6' tall frame weighed less than 70 pounds.

My family was destroyed by the filth of communism, which is one reason I need to keep myself on a short leash when I see these ignorant $#@!s spouting their hatred for America as they demand socialism, arrayed in their Che Guevara t-shirts, because I do at times want to unleash what was once a formidable ability to punch a man hard enough to cause him to never want to be punched by me a second time... that, or just beat them to within inches of their lives with an iron bar. They have no knowledge of the truth of the feces they think are gold. They need to see places like Recsk, a Hungarian gulag where people were treated in ways that had nothing to do with being human, by people who had no right to be regarded as such, but only as devils fit to be flayed alive.



This is absolutely essential for subjugation to occur. Where there is beauty, there is life. Where there is life, there is knowledge of what is good, and beauty reaffirms life itself and leads people to truths that Theye absolutely do not want anyone seeing precisely because they lead one's eyes away from Themme. Theye demand to be regarded as your God. They are evil and as far as I am concerned should be killed to the man.

I know of very few people who even begin to understand the depth of the evil of those who wed themselves to such wickedness. It appalls me that it is so uniformly tolerated, all complaining talk notwithstanding.



The power to create is a power of independence, a characteristic Theye cannot and will not tolerate. Besides, the creation of beauty reminds Themme of just how ugly they are, how barren of real creativity, for all they have is their treachery. Therefore, the reminders must be wiped away.

Tyranny, especially of this comparatively modern variety, is all the proof I need that the Devil is ever so very real and he lives inside every single one of us, just as is the case with God.

It will be most interesting to see what, if anything, develops in the wakes of all these various revelations such as twitter, Biden's unauthorized documents, etc. It is all organic, or is it theater? I dare not yet believe it is the former.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to osan again.

Wonderfully said, sir. And thank you for sharing the tragic story of your family...

 

[acptulsa]

Oh, and I'll contradict my contradiction here: I happen to like Aaron Copeland.

Appalachian Spring and Hoe-Down are my favorites.

No contradiction there. He wasn't Gershwin. He liked Gershwin, but he wasn't Gershwin.

Let's see if I can remember the quote. "Why do you want to study with me? Why do you want to be a second-rate Copeland when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?"

 

[Anti Federalist]

Having been brought up that way, long years later my biological mother asked me to come to her church in Freehold NJ for Christmas service. By that time I'd not set foot in such an event in decades, but I obliged. In those days my stable of business attire was dominated by twelve piece-built suits made for me by an old Jewish fellow, Mr. Bernstein, not to be confused with my silversmithing master Professor Bernard Bernstein. He was in his mid-80s, had his business in the garment district, and was such a stereotypical Jewish immigrant's son. Imagine the accent when he told me "I'm gonna make you such a suit..." I spent $56K on twelve of the most impeccably tailored sets you've ever seen, and I did it as a business investment, the goal being to always be the best dressed man in the room. It paid off and I knew it when Ed Whittaker, CEO of Southwestern Bell shook my hand, looked me up and down and said "nice suit".

So I got all gussied up in a charcoal gray woolen suit for the Christmas service and drove with my mother to the First Presbyterian Church of Freehold, a beautiful brownstone edifice in a town of great affluence. As I walked in, I was astonished at what I saw. Other than the ushers, I was the only person in that place who was properly dressed. People in shorts and flipflops... ON CHRISTMAS! Kids running about with their asses hanging out, the parents making no effort to reel them in

We have traveled the same road my brother.

My festering youth was spent in Belmar NJ, and went to a couple of years of high school in Asbury Park, which was still mostly a smoking ruin of a ghetto after the riots in 1971.

My father died, pretty much alone and forgotten (that's a shit show I don't even want to get into right now), in a nursing right down the road from that church.

And while I never had a job requiring a suit and tie on a daily basis and am certainly no fashion plate, I always try and dress appropriately.

My Jewish tailor story: Many years ago, around 1998 I guess it was, I had a wedding to attend. Having no good suit that fit I decided to splurge and visit a local men's shop in Portsmouth NH, called Stuart and Shaynes. I was going to do what you did, have a fitted suit made by a custom tailor.

So myself and Mrs. AF went over and are looking around, one of the staff asks what I'm looking for, I tell him, and he asks, what size are you?

So I rattle off my dimensions, which at that time were somewhere in between Andre the Giant and the circus fat guy.

Remarks Saul The Tailor; "Oy! That's not a size, that's a condition!"

Two aisles over, I hear Mrs. AF go down in a gale of giggling laughter.

I huff out of the place, dragging my wounded pride behind me, and a bought an off the rack at JC Penny for a third of the cost.

Stuart and Shaynes has long since gone out of business, replaced by some hipster tea bar.

Two things still trouble me about that event:

Could that one lost sale have been the start of a chain reaction that shut that store down?

Mrs. AF still busting my balls to this day over that smart ass remark.

 

[osan]

We have traveled the same road my brother.

My little bro, the spy, just got engaged to a fabulous lass. We got to talking and some of my current "issues" came up. She notified me that she had had about the same conditions in her childhood. I felt less alone.

I know that the crap that descends upon us give us character, but to be honest I am not sure I'd not rather be a mite more boring. Carrying shit around can be tiring at times, even if it keeps one strong most of the time.

My festering youth was spent in Belmar NJ, and went to a couple of years of high school in Asbury Park, which was still mostly a smoking ruin of a ghetto after the riots in 1971.

Well, the 70s were a shit era. All the worst remnants of the filthy hippies remained. I don't think the ready availability of LSD and the like did the youth of our generation any favors, though I am a firm believer in the potential benefits of such substances when properly employed. The problem comes when people treat it like a big joke. I see the same problem with sex. If there is nothing the left did that deserved credit and perhaps even praise, it was the sexual liberation of humanity. Unfortunately, they took things too far and turned sex into a cheap sport. For that, may every lefty rot in hell. Profaning the sacred is an act that gets me wanting to go for my sidearm, most especially when it is being disseminated to those too young to understand what is happening. The destruction of innocence is something to which I have borne more witness than any human being should. It is the one thing for which I believe perpetrators should be killed swiftly, coldly, and with neither hesitation, compunction, remorse, or mercy. It is an unforgivable evil.

My father died, pretty much alone and forgotten (that's a shit show I don't even want to get into right now), in a nursing right down the road from that church.

The one in Freehold?

Two things still trouble me about that event:

Could that one lost sale have been the start of a chain reaction that shut that store down?

Let us hope so. There is no need make such remarks, even if they are deserved. Especially if they are.

Mrs. AF still busting my balls to this day over that smart ass remark.

Sounds like you got yourself a good one.

 

[acptulsa]

Oy! Tailors now.

I have a philosophical question. Is it possible to hijack a thread that was split off of another thread because it was a hijack?

I don't care if the flight was supposed to go to Houston, and I don't care about that other guy with a gun that wants to go to Havana. Fly this thing to Newark!

I don't know. I kind of lost interest in suits when pinstripes disappeared. Have you shopped for one lately? It's like, what if I want to wear it someplace besides a funeral...?

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

Why on earth would you say this?

I think that's answered by what I wrote above.

 

[Anti Federalist]

The one in Freehold?

Yes, First Presbyterian Church.

The old man was at "The Manor" rehab and nursing home.

Both on West Main in Freehold about a half a mile apart.

Rte 9 and 33 run in between them both.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

The issue is not breaking the rules. Tasteful rule-breaking is the essence of great art. Part of that is cultural as each successive generation breaks the "rules" or conventions of prior generations for artistic effect. From the time of Vivaldi in the 17th century down to the late-romantic composers of the early 20th-century, classical music was constantly breaking rules and conventions to a greater and more daring degree. Wagner unlocked harmony to a degree that made much of the atonality of the late-romantic era inevitable. Composers had unlocked a broad palette of expression that was no longer limited to the earlier harmonic formulas, and Wagnerian composition was so free in its harmonic structure as to make non-stop "rule-breaking" possible, throughout an entire composition.
...

I am not a huge listener or player of classical music, so I would say my knowledge is academic at best, namely a college course on the history of music (and a similar course on art). As soon as the topic of atonality comes up, I think of Wagner, and his chord extensions past the standard triad. The professor really focused on Wagner, and that stood out to me. I have forgotten about the others that followed in his footsteps. Mahler comes to mind maybe?

The funniest part of the discussion on Wagner was a girl who angrily questioned the professor, "are we talking about Wag-ner or Vaug-ner?!"

My final presentation in the class was about Eddie Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen, so you know where I was coming from.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Oy! Tailors now.

I have a philosophical question. Is it possible to hijack a thread that was split off of another thread because it was a hijack?

I don't care if the flight was supposed to go to Houston, and I don't care about that other guy with a gun that wants to go to Havana. Fly this thing to Newark!

I don't know. I kind of lost interest in suits when pinstripes disappeared. Have you shopped for one lately? It's like, what if I want to wear it someplace besides a funeral...?

How about another split?

 

[acptulsa]

How about another split?

Gentlemen, we have just been trolled by a moderator.

 

[A Son of Liberty]

I think that's answered by what I wrote above.

There just are not too many people on this planet. This is a Malthusian lie, and on top of that it is an utter absurdity. You could quite comfortably fit every single human being on the planet within the southeastern region of the United States, and they could probably live rather comfortable and prosperous lives there.

This is a lie perpetuated by Malthusians, and by people who live in overpopulated hell holes reeking of urine and garbage who think that the world they see from their eyeballs to the horizon is the only world that actually exists. They have never driven from, for example, Topeka to Denver, or from Fargo to Tacoma, and have seen the VAST swaths of open space that exist in the United States, ONLY, is not a reality. There are great expanses in Russia, China, Australia, India, Argentina, etc., that humans have not only not inhabited, but whom have never even significantly touched.

This is one of the worst lies that the globalists have perpetuated upon us - that there are "too many people" on this planet. Fcking think for a second. Get out of your urban ghetto and see this planet for once before you go making such absurd pronouncements.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

There just are not too many people on this planet. This is a Malthusian lie, and on top of that it is an utter absurdity. You could quite comfortably fit every single human being on the planet within the southeastern region of the United States, and they could probably live rather comfortable and prosperous lives there.

This is a lie perpetuated by Malthusians, and by people who live in overpopulated hell holes reeking of urine and garbage who think that the world they see from their eyeballs to the horizon is the only world that actually exists. They have never driven from, for example, Topeka to Denver, or from Fargo to Tacoma, and have seen the VAST swaths of open space that exist in the United States, ONLY, is not a reality. There are great expanses in Russia, China, Australia, India, Argentina, etc., that humans have not only not inhabited, but whom have never even significantly touched.

This is one of the worst lies that the globalists have perpetuated upon us - that there are "too many people" on this planet. Fcking think for a second. Get out of your urban ghetto and see this planet for once before you go making such absurd pronouncements.

While I do not disagree that there are vast expanses that are empty, not used etc. I do not agree with the rest of what you imply. Instead of having that argument directly, is it a goal to have more population always ? Isn't it inherently better for every human being if there's more earth available per person ?