Category Archive: RELIGION
Will be Damned
Portrait by Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl (1815)
Arthur Schopenhauer (born 22 February 1788) “Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways – is nothing.” Arthur lived in shadowlands; His hated mother washed her hands Of him, and his suicidal Dad’s Echo – so he read Upanishads And Kant, forming a new world-view As bleak as stout, and yet he grew Into determined…
Continue Reading →Valentine’s Day
"The Morning of St Valentine" by John Callcott Horsley
TVC will, as usual, celebrate St. Valentine’s day with a fancy dinner and a private viewing of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Unlike the poor sainted martyr, the idea on his day is to lose one’s heart, not head. Here’s a little from Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto that featured so sweetly in “Picnic” to enliven the day…
Continue Reading →Look Homeward, Angel (Vale Della Reese)
Della Reese (July 6, 1931 – November 19, 2017) had a 60 year odd career as singer, actress, TV host and Minister of Religion. These talents combined in her most most lasting work, as Angel-in-Chief Tess in the series Touched by an Angel. In the first episode of Touched by an Angel that I saw, the lovely angel Monica (Roma Downey) was talking to a troubled woman out the front of her house at night. The woman’s sadly neglected child was inside playing with matches (we knew it but the mother didn’t and somehow the angel didn’t either). When a handsome…
Continue Reading →Parsifal Swans in to Sydney
"Give me an hour, and you'll forget all about that silly mug..." (Temptation of Percival by Arthur Hacker, 1894)
(Concert version, Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, 14 August 2017) We landed in Sydney secure in the knowledge that Jonas Kaufmann was already here and in fine form. Out initial impressions of Sydney town c. 2017 were as favourable as always, except for the subsequent days when “strategic, environmental burn-offs” doused all in plumes of thick blue smoke, smoke much less tasty than that found second-hand in a cigar bar. In any case: Parsifal. This, Wagner’s “work of farewell to the world” has managed to become P’s favourite Wagner Opera, despite Tristan, despite Meistersinger, yes, even despite the Ring. Its music is so…
Continue Reading →Fetch a Rope!
Historical sex charges are problematic. These types of antique sexual allegations are awfully easy to make, awfully serious, and awfully hard to refute. There always are metaphorical torches carried in the streets (in the middle of the day) for those charged. People write with relish at the thought of a show trial; they say they have always known the truth about the accused, whom, while ladled with qualifications that “X denies the charges, which are yet to be proven,” nevertheless are pinned with labels such as “paedophile” and “monster.” These witch hunts (“Gee, a high-placed religioso is charged, so let’s throw him in a pond to see…
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