Richibi’s Weblog

Just another WordPress.com weblog

Tag: Glenn Gould

a degustation

lemons-1929.jpg!Large.jpg

Lemons (1929)

Georges Braque

___________

watching one of my cooking competition
shows on television the other day, the
twelve contestants were called upon in
pairs to create, each couple, one of the
six elements in a degustation menu

a degustation menu – I raised an eyebrow
at that one – is the same as a tasting menu,
but at a finer, it is implied, restaurant

the theme was citrus fruit, each service
had to highlight one of them, a mandarin,
a lemon, an orange, a lime, a tangelo,
a grapefruit, in that order

my goodness, I thought, a set of
variations on edibles, I was delighted,
not to mention synesthetically
titillated, all my senses were alive

the first course was a mandarin-cured
prawn ceviche, with pesto, something
to tease one’s palate, leaving plenty of
room, however, for what was to follow,
the second course, an equally light
lemon-cured salmon with smoked
crème fraîche and decorative
translucent radish slices, in again but
polite allotments

the third service introduces the protein,
duck with the nearly ever requisite
orange, but with beets, in this instance,
on an underlying sheen of all their
accumulated and colourful juices,
bread, I would imagine, would’ve been
gluttonously required

beef then followed, to fill the second
of the more substantial and filling
elements of the meal, with a lime
reduction and beets

for dessert, the fifth service presented
a tangelo cup with a surprise chocolate
truffle meant to burst in one’s mouth
with iced tangelo flavour, refreshing
and unexpectedly delightful, followed
by a grapefruit sorbet with chocolate
ganache and meringue shards as a
finale

not all contestants reached the heights
wished for, but some were memorable,
much as in any set of, even noteworthy,
variations

here’s Glenn Gould playing Beethoven’s
Six Variations in F major, Opus 34, each
variation is comparable to a culinary
experience, but for piano

listen, compare

these are preceded here by a late, and
haunting, Beethoven bagatelle, his
Opus 126, however, after which the
variations themselves are conveniently
spliced in the editing process to help
distinguish each movement from the
other

Glenn Gould doesn’t hit a note wrong,
but I think Beethoven’s introductory
aria, upon which the variations are
built, and which is repeated at the end
after a coda, or final interpolated wave,
is slow, a more engaging opening
would’ve been, to my mind, more
effective

I also would’ve, however peripherally,
degusted especially the lime beef

R ! chard

psst: incidentally, all Bach’s Cello Suites
are in six segments, their common
theme is dance, each one is a
scintillating Baroque example

Piano Sonata no 17, opus 31, no 2 “The Tempest” – Beethoven

tempest-on-the-northern-sea-1865.jpg!Large

    “Tempest on the Northern Sea (1865) 

             Ivan Aivazovsky

                  __________

                               for Judy, who “glimpses“, she says,
                                   “a kinder world, that [my] missives
                                          provide” – thank you, Judy                            


just as I was being called on the 
carpet for my constant returns to 
Beethoven, none other than Glenn 
Gould should show up, in my 
cavern of wonders, to absolve me, 
or at least to stand stolidly by my 
side

let him talk

had I written, however, his 
observations, I’m sure you’d’ve  
balkedhe’s a product, after all,  
of the priggish pretensions that  
prevailed in my neck of the woods 
at the time, Southern Ontario, a  
product of British Imperialism  
of which I am myself, I avow,  
incontrovertibly subject, but due  
to the strength of his celebrity,  
one is likely to listen to Gould  
more attentively, I’m not 
sufficiently yetsuspect,  
significant, nor influential
 
he is, one way or the other, I concur,
absolutely right

about his Tempest“, though, I’ll say, 
even object, as Stravinsky and John 
Cage did, according to Gouldabout 
the commanding Beethoven, that 
Gould is dripping in Romantic
sentiment here, his rubato in the 
first movement tests the limits of   
our forbearance, and his second  
movement is so slow as to have 
one fall off the page

but his last movement, the allegretto,
is brilliant

Gould’s idiosyncratic, dare I say, 
eccentric, performance will 
throughout, nevertheless, 
astonish, indeed electrify, even,
I’m sure, inspire, watch, listen

and thanks ever, especially, for 
dropping by 


R ! chard

psst: here’s another version of the 17th,  
          to my mind, less self-indulgent, but 
          you be the judge, don’t think about 
          it, just ask yourself which one  
          would you want to hear a next time,  
          that’ll be your, gloriously personal,   
          reply

          enjoy

Piano Concerto no. 9 – Mozart

clown-with-flowers-1963.jpg!Blog

   “Clown with Flowers (1963)

           Marc Chagall

                _______

                                with the greatest respect for all
                                     who read me, and especially 
                                         for those who are least 
                                             convincedthe way also, 
                                                 I note, to a conscious, 
                                                    and entirely personal,  
                                                          aesthetic


let me once again insist that my 
commentaries here are not at all
the last word on any of what I’ve 
discussed, they’ve been merely 
my opinion, according to my own 
particular aesthetic, my comments 
have been rather to excite curiosity
about, for some, an esoteric topic, 
to awaken interest in a field, to my 
mind, strewn with marvels, and 
never to dictate, art, as I often
remind, is in the eye of the 
beholder

I think of myself as company in 
an art gallery, viewing a 
succession of works, musical 
here, expressing notions, either 
specifically to do with the exhibit
or, personal, but somehow related, 
then moving on, just enough to 
whet the appetite, or, of course, 
not

here’s an instance

I’d been waiting for the sales clerk 
to box some fresh pasta for me I 
was buying at an eatery down the 
street when a line of piped in music 
from their overhead system swept 
me off my disconcerted feet, which 
I recognized to be Mozart, but as
I’d never heard him, ever

can you tell me who’s playing that,
I asked the cashier, many stores 
played their own tapes back then,
some still indeed even do, 
19-eighty, at that time, something

he replied, Mitsuko Uchida
what she’d done was to not stress
the bar line, the natural beat, to, 
in fact, eliminate it, so that a flight
of notes went on like an unfettered 
and iridescent miracle, prompted 
by its own irrepressible momentum,
I was flabbergasted

Beethoven later on would do that
nearly consistently

where Glenn Gould would remove 
his foot from the sustain pedal to 
channel Bach while he played 
Beethoven, an atavism, Mitsuko
Uchida was reversing the process
and using Beethoven‘s own 
unleashing of rhythms to shed 
light on her Classically otherwise 
bound Mozart, a telling 
anachronismI nearly screamed

here, in the event, is the next work 
of musical art in my idiosyncratic 
gallery, the richibi galleri, I call it, 
Mitsuko Uchida herself illuminating 
gloriously, as ever, Mozart, his 
splendid, as she reminds us, Piano
Concerto no 9 

thanks so much for stopping by


ever 

R ! chard

Piano Concerto no. 5, opus 73, “Emperor” – Beethoven

v1.bTsxMTIxMTMxNztqOzE3ODE0OzEyMDA7MTEyNTsxNTAw

     All About Eve (1950)

            _______

while I’m on the subject of concertos,
there’s one concerto that cannot be 
overlooked, the very epitome of 
concerti, their summit, apex, their 
very pinnacle, Olympus, compared 
to other less mighty compositions,
Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto,
the piece I would take with me to a 
desert island, used to even walk 
along the seashore in the privacy of 
my headphones nights, after dinner, 
taking in its cadences, its wisdom,
under the moon, the stars, along 
the, however temperamental, 
ocean waters, transported 

indeed this very version of it, Glenn
Gould’s, Beethoven’s, in my mind,  
oracular equal

Beethoven made literature out of 
music, progressed to the point of
delivering a very philosophy, 
Gould took the prevailing 
Romantic aesthetic of the time,
Arthur Rubinstein being a prime
example, for instance, and gave 
us the music of the Information 
Age, the mathematical precision 
of computers, people could hear 
it, perhaps not even knowing how,
why

briefly, Gould eschews – Gesundheit
the hold pedal, the sustain pedal, on 
the piano, he’d grown up on Bach, 
made him his specialty, but Bach
had no sustain pedal on his 
harpsichord, Gould transferred this 
process to later, more rhythmically 
malleable, works, making obvious 
thereby their inner workings, 
something like reading blueprints, 
his interpretations give us the bare, 
and revelatory, bones of these later 
masterpieces, without the sometimes 
facile effects of Romanticism, think 
of rubato, for instance, the ability to 
stretch a note, not possible on the 
harpsichord, but often overused in 
Romantic renderings, a cheap trick, 
like paintings on velvet

Gould would have none of that, he
shows you the composer’s 
compositional brilliance, without 
fanfare, just the facts, no pedal, 
which at the time was completely 
revolutionary, much like computer 
science was thenand algorithms 

here’s something else about Gould,
more savourymaybe, he was called 
in at the last minute to perform this
piece when the planned pianist, of 
considerable renown, wasn’t able to 
make it, Gould hadn’t played it in a 
number of years, but showed up the 
next morning to deliver, the rest is,
as they say, history

that’s All About Eve up there, but 
for pianists, Glenn Gould is Eve 
Harrington, though without her
predatory instincts, nobody now 
remembers the other pianist
unless you were there, interested,  
listening, piano’s Margo Channing, 
even if I named himhowever 
consummately accomplished he 
might’ve been, a man I profoundly 
admire, remains, cruelly, essentially 
unremembered 

imagine


R ! chard

32 Variations in C Minor, WoO.80 – Beethoven

variations-in-violet-and-grey-market-place.jpg!Large.jpg

Variations in Violet and Grey – Market Place (1885) 

               James McNeill Whistler

                          ___________

strolling through my virtual musical park 
today, in, indeed, the very merry month 
of May, I was taken by surprise by, nearly 
tripped over, in fact, a Beethoven work
written in the very year, 1806, of the 
“Razumovsky”s

I’d overlooked it cause it is without an 
opus number, is listed, therefore, as 
WoO.80and is, consequently, easily 
lost in the wealth of Beethoven’s 
more prominently identified pieces,
but it is utterly miraculous, I think, 
and entirely indispensable 

I’d said something about it in an earlier
text, back when I was somewhat more 
of a nerd, it would appear, perhaps even 
a little inscrutable, though it’s 
nevertheless, I think, not uninformative, 
you might want to check it out, despite 
its platform difficulties

the 32 Variations in C Minor are shorter,
at an average of 11 minutes, than Chopin’s
“Minute Waltz”relatively, a variation every 
half minute, where Chopin’s nevertheless
magical invention takes twice that to 
complete its proposition

but in this brief span of time, this more 
or less 11 minutes, Beethoven takes 
you to the moon and back

a few things I could add to my earlier
evaluation, could even be reiterating, 
Beethoven in his variations explores a 
musical idea, turns it in every which
direction, not much different from what 
he does in the individual movements of 
his string quartets, his trios, his 
symphonies, concertos and sonatas, 
with their essential themes, motives, 
they’re all – if you’ll permit an idea I got
from Paganini’s “Caprices” – cadenzas,
individual musings inspirationally 
extrapolated, which, be they for 
technical brilliance, or for a yearning 
for more spiritual legacy, set the 
stage for a promise of forthcoming 
excellence 

this dichotomy will define the 
essential bifurcated paths of the 
musical industry, during, incidentally, 
the very Industrial Revolution, their 
mutual history, confrontation, for the 
centuries to follow, which is to say, 
their balance between form and 
function, style versus substance, 
Glenn Gould versus Liberace, say,
or Chopin, Liszt 

before this, it’d been the more 
sedate, less assertive evenings at 
the Esterházys, to give you some 
perspective, mass markets were 
about to come up, not least in the 
matter of entertainment

Beethoven was, as it were, already  
putting on a show


R ! chard

psst: these alternate “Variations” put you in  
          the driver’s seat, a pilot explains the
          procedures, it’s completely absorbing, 
          insightful, listen

up my idiosyncrasies – a bio

marcel-proust.jpg!Large

      “Marcel Proust” 
 
       Richard Lindner
 
          ___________
 
 
for a bio with which I’ve been asked 
to provide an online poetry magazine 
I’ve been encouraged to apply to, I’m 
submitting the following text
 
I thought you might enjoy it
 
 
Richard
 
           ______________
 
 
my name is Richard Bisson, from
which you’ll intuit my French 
Canadian background, though I 
write mostly in English, with no 
trouble however in French, my 
mother tongue is le français  
 
I am thus imbued, undoubtedly,
with that sensibility, my peers 
have been HugoFlaubert, and
most of all Marcel Proust, whom 
I imbibed for 33 years, in French,
page by page, reading each out 
loud as though it were my own, I 
cannot but be replicating now his 
rhythms, his aesthetic, his view 
of the world
 
it didn’t take me as long to read 
Homer, in the thunderous Robert  
Fitzgerald translation, – a mighty
roar resounding still from the 
ninth century before the Christian 
Era – from him I learned to speak 
from the heart, it’s not one’s style  
one has to master, but one’s 
humanity
 
Robert Browning gave me the 
dramatic monologue as a poetic
device, a gift he’d received from
 
Shakespeare himself, of course,
the unbridled freedom of his own 
literary imagination
 
Carl Sandburg‘s Chicago taught 
me to talk about every wo/man, 
about things even my own folks 
were doing
 
Collapsed showed me that even 
apparently inconsequential acts
can be poetry, poetry in the 
apparently humdrum 
 
Mary Oliver is a strong present 
influence
 
the cadence is entirely Beethoven,
with some help, I must admit, from 
the atonalists, SchoenbergBerg,
and Weberncommas are my bar 
lines
 
 
I call what I do prosetry, a word so 
new my computer won’t even let 
me write it, I’m a prosetrist, this 
word either
 
I want to link everyday experience 
with poetry, make poetry in the eye 
of the beholder, where truth and 
beauty lie
 
if people can see what I see, they 
can see that way themselves, it’s 
something one learns, and it’s all 
in the way one entrenches words 
and ideas
 
I eliminated the word “if” from my 
vocabulary once, for being then
too speculative, it changed my life, 
I’ve replaced it since with the word 
“miracle”, that has also changed 
my life
 
I am 67 years old
 
I live in Vancouver, Canada
 
I consider myself to be, at this 
point in my life, bibliosexual, I
sleep with my books, and we’re
all still getting along just fine 
 
may you be so blessed
 
 
Richard
 
psst: also Anaïs Nin, for the 
          intimacy of her diaries
 
          o, and Woody Allen, for
          giving up before his  
          nihilism and just 
          laughing

Beethoven – piano sonata no.31, op.110 (3rd movement)‏

woman-reading-in-a-garden-1903.jpg!Large

Woman Reading in a Garden (1902-03)
 
 

         _______


perhaps my best teacher ever was
my father, others never questioned
the orthodoxy, spewing out the
curriculum like it was sacred, dead,
untouchable, depriving it of its very
worth

my father was a philosopher, God 
was a question, not an answer, I,
at the time, needed an answer
 
we were sent to a Catholic school,
my sister and I, where God was in 
everything, everywhere, omnipotent,
omniscient, and, like a father then, 
autocratic, industrious, demanding,
not unopposed to punishment
 
sins against the Father could be 
summarized, at that age, briefly,
do not kill, do not lie, do not 
disobey your parents, do not 
cheat on your husband, wife, 
and follow all the rituals of the 
Church, the Ten Christian 
Commandments, brought to 
you universally then by Charlton 
“Moses” Heston, under the aegis 
 
none of these graded offences  
applied to me, really, then, but 
lying, and disobeying one’s 
parents, the others were all so 
remote as to be inconsequential, 
though the Church kept up on 
our family’s abrogations of 
religious rites – non-attendance 
at Sunday mass, eating meat 
on Fridays, worse – while 
nevertheless tending dutifully
to our wayward souls, they told 
us, holding out for a final repentant 
confession
 
we never lied at home, I’d lied about 
something once, and was so daunted
when my father probed, I sweated,
must’ve turned purple, not just red,
of embarrassment, I knew I couldn’t 
use that tactic again, I’d inexorably 
blush, flush
 
who put the Brylcreem on the dog,
he’d queried
 
not me, I trembled
 
my sister stood beside me, might 
not have even known anything 
about it, I can’t remember, though 
I recall her dismay, I think, at having 
been so blithely thrown under the 
bus, or maybe that’s just me 
extrapolating 
 
my dad turned back to what he’d 
been doing, having, I’d understood, 
got his answer, proving himself to 
be to me thereby omniscient, I’d 
have no chance, I gathered, against 
something like that, this turned me 
into a good, an at least conscientious, 
person
 
my teachers, paradoxically, only 
ever took marks off for technical 
stuff, Math, History, French, they 
never taught me lessons   
 
a teacher, once, had asked me to
stand at the head of the class and 
read a passage from Shakespeare,
be Romeo, Mark Antony, Lear, I
can’t remember which
 
“O, pardon me, thou bleeding 
piece of earth, / That I am meek 
and gentle with these butchers!”,
I uttered, fraught with emotion,
“Thou art the ruins of the noblest 
man / That ever lived in the tide 
of times”
 
in my mind and in my body I was 
Mark Antony there, shot through 
with the weight of his friend’s 
brutal death, his own irretrievable 
loss 
 
my teacher laughed
 
what, I asked
 
you’re right into it, aren’t you, he 
replied, and shut me up right there 
to any public display of expression 
 
 
I didn’t stop reading Shakespeare 
though, but by myself
 
later I read Homer, Ovid, Proust,
others, did the same with music 
and art, made countless lifelong 
friends thereby, people I’ve always 
been able to turn to, even just in 
ruminative thought as their stories 
still pervaded me, diligently leading   
still the way, like guardian angels,  
maybe
 
 
 
Richard

at the XVth International Tchaikovsky Competition – Bach‏

"J.S. Bach, Wohltemp. Klav. Bd. I, No. IV. (Extrait) / (Duo de Tristesse)" -  Robert Strûbin

“J.S. Bach, Wohltemp. Klav. Bd. I, No. IV. (Extrait) / (Duo de Tristesse)” (1957)

Robert Strûbin

________

if I’ve been getting on their backs
about their Bachs at the Tchaikovsky
Competition
, it’s that they’re playing
Bach as though he were mediocre
Beethoven, it’s like asking Duke
Ellington to be Pink Floyd, it’s just
a completely different generation,
era

Bach wrote for the harpsichord, a
precursor to the piano, it could not
control the volume, nor the length
of a note, the pianoforte came
along to resolve both issues

therefore before Beethoven, who
made full use of the new invention
and worked hard the pianissimos
and the fortissimos, to degrees that
often became either inappropriate
or too authoritative, indelicate or
obnoxious if you’re not in the mood
– I remember wanting to play his so
solemn 111 at my father’s funeral,
but realized late that the first
movement was not especially in
that situation warranted, nor even
parts of the transcendental, but not
always not obstreperous, adagio –
and thumbed thus his nose at the
aristocracy, who earlier, before
the citoyens had demanded their
rights and when the world had
been considered to be of a
rational, logical order, a clock,
and as regular, would never have
tolerated such impudence

Bach and Mozart do not sway
much from strict rhythm, neither
do they alter volume much at all

so that the constant display of
heartfelt Bach and passionate
Mozart becomes cloying, and
not at all what these Classical
and Baroque masters would
have approved of

nor Beethoven, nor Chopin, for
that matter, whose strict tempo
markings didn’t include much
rubato, ritardandos, which you
could think of as milking a note,
putting velvet on your canvas,
it doesn’t work, the composition
itself unaided by bathos, pathos,
delivers, check out, of course,
Glenn Gould

Andrei Korobeinikov sat me right
down the other night with his
arresting BWV868, thrilling,
followed by more dazzling
pyrotechnics, though he fizzled,
and fractured his Beethoven, the
very 111 I care so much for, I
couldn’t even finish, you don’t
need a velvet canvas behind the
111, neither cloying ritardandos,
just skill, nor tangles of notes,
for that matter

Richard

Glenn Gould‏

Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould

_______


if you think I can talk, listen to Glenn
Gould
tell in spades what I’ve only
ever been able to tell in clubs, or,
as we say in French, trèfles, clover,
a piece of music can say more than
just hello, great ones are oracular,
even transcendent

if ever they made a movie of my life
I want Glenn Gould to play me, even
the wonderful Colm Feore, I think,
couldn’t as effectively manage it

Richard

psst: here’s more, incandescent, Bach,
Glenn Gould playing his signature
piece
, just click

Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (17 )‏


Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:08:23 +0000
To: richibi@hotmail.com
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
 

Richard,

You wrote, ” should there, in the instance, however, be a One, an Absolute, we would not, nor can anyway ever, from our intrinsically divergent perspectives, be able to, in any meaningful way, know It”

Our opinions are not “intrinsically”, but “accidentally” divergent. If they are intrinsic, they would not be affected by changes in our circumstances. But often times our opinions are affected by external circumstances. Therefore, they are not “intrinsic”. For instance, your story about the color of the wall reminds me of a similar story of how the English chemist John Dalton discovered color blindness. He himself was color blind but never realized it until his mother (or aunt) disagreed with him on the color. Without such a defect, there would be no disagreement.

Truth cannot be a sum of opinions or even an unanimous decision of all people. Why? Because the sum of contrary opinions amount to nothing, and the sum of contradictory opinions only lead to confusion, since people are never unanimous about anything.

To use a classic Platonic analogy: If you have a serious disease and want to be healed. Will you call everyone in from the street, hold a public assembly and have them vote for a treatment of your disease? Of course not. You’ll seek out the specialist in the field and have him examine you and give you the proper diagnosis and treatment. Because he possesses the knowledge, whereas the others don’t. Even a grain of truth is worth more than a boatload of false opinions.

Having said the above, however, I agree that the truth may be multifaceted, like the color of light shining through a prism. Because our senses have their limitations, we can only see part of the spectrum, similarly, our rational faculty may also be limited, and we only see the Truth in part. This is why dialogues such as we’re having are meaningful. That we may see the rainbow, while not losing sight of our own color.

“So please your majesty
That we may wake the king: he hath slept long.”
King Lear Act IV Scene VII

 

 

oof, Nemo, again where do I start, I’ll try to
tackle merely Truth here, deconstruct It, so
that we can know what we’re even talking
about
 
what do you mean by Truth
 
 
something corresponds to what it is that
we see, hear, feel, I would think, to be
locked in my head, my spirit, a fundamental
unity, without the support of an underlying
Reality, would be horrible, a profound, and
unbearable, solitude, I don’t want any more
to even try to imagine it, though, in my
youthful invincibilty, I once did, it would
nearly drive me, sometimes, I remember, 
crazy 
 
I would try to guess what people would
say in their next breath and found that
mostly I could do it, that mostly I could
get it right, which didn’t do much for an
outside Reality
 
but, again, babies must learn to separate,
not easily, their suddenly unfamiliar world
from their initially undifferentiated senses,
their identity from what we understand to
be Reality, I’d been merely atavistically
revisiting that fundamental experience 
 
I first fell in love, incidentally, when I met
someone I wasn’t able to preempt, to my
utter fascination, at which point I was
forced to acknowledge not only Reality
but also probably a Heaven, it has
become a condition, I fall in love with
only people from other planets, or, if
you like, dimensions
  
 
so, Nemo, I am also subservient to an
ideal, or even an Ideal
 
but it, or It, is my utter fabrication, though,
manifestly, not an uninformed one
 
my Truth is that ethereal, a bedrock, 
however, of my nevertheless basically 
nebulous view of life, made out of,
indeed, thin air
 
my opinions are therefore entirely
speculative, except for my
understanding of myself
 
I think, according to Descartes, therefore
I am, and of that, of myself, I am not at
all speculative, for I think, listen   
 
 
Truth, incidentally, is a function of our
species, assuming that it is a formal
Reality is akin to placing ourselves,
as we once did, at the centre of the
Universe, we were apparently
egregiously wrong about that, it
seems to be generally now agreed,
I suspect an Absolute, or Idealized,
potential Reality, is asking for hubris,
and too often, incidentally, we get it,
see wars, torture, man’s inhumanity
to not only man
   
 
about the world which has mathematical
dimensions we are mostly in agreement,
two plus two will always equal four in our
rational construct, and Science seems to
flow pretty smoothly from that
 
therefore Truth with respect to matter I
will not question, it is the grid we are all
at least comfortable with, like speaking
the same language, despite its even
basic insufficiencies, these fairly easy
mostly to patch up with persistence
and ingenuity   
 
but Plato’s Truth, Ideal, or Absolute, is
of a more noumenal, spiritual, which is
to say, abstract, order, and as such, like
Beauty, is in the eye of the beholder,
Truth is what we think it is
 
is John Dalton wrong to have seen a
divergent colour, and who could tell
him that his blue was green, his red,
orange, when these were categorically
his impressions, dissent is a matter
merely of concensus  
 
Truth, I believe, is our accommodation,
and is no more than the sum of its
collective parts, the truths that
scientists unearth are Science, not
Truth, Reality, not Wisdom     
 
other worlds would have entirely
different conceptions of the Universe
for being other than we, us
 
we are assuming we have the answer,
Nemo, to imponderables 
 
therefore, not Philosophy, I insist,
but Art, and metaphorical rather
than categorical imperatives
 
see Beethoven for that, and / or Proust   
 
 
Richard
 
psst: according to these two excellent
          programs,
 
                  Bernard Williams on Descartes      
 
                  Bernard Williams on Descartes (cont.)
 
           two parts of an interview with an
           authority on Descartes, I could’ve
           easily been a figment of his
           imagination for sounding nearly 
           word for word, to my surprise
           and delight, very much like him
 
           though he probably wouldn’t,    
           by my calculations, therefore,
           have loved me