Currently Playing Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar" By Dmitry Shostakovich, Ladislav Slovak, Peter Mikulas see related

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A comment from a colleague of mine: If having intercourse is having sex, then we could define 'outercourse' as everything you do when you're not having sex.

Kids, what are you up to here alone? nothing, just having outercourse.

A joke my mom sent me. The original is in spanish so I have taken the liberty of translating it, knowing that it will loose the picardy of the original words. Still, the message gets through, hehe:

-A group of women on a vacation trip decided to stay in an only-women motel. The sign on the front read: "Only for women, satisfaction guaranteed..."

They went in and ask the concierge for a room. He told them: "There are 5 floors in this motel and each one catters to a different crowd. Stay in the floor that suits you the most, but once you've gone up a floor you can't go back to the previous one" They smiled and went up.

As they arrived to the first floor a sign read: "This floor has men who are not very attractive or intelligent and are not very good at making love". They laughed and went up.

On the second floor the sign on the hall said: "The men on this floor are not attractive, not very good at making love but they are very intelligent". Without hesitating they went up.

The third floor read: "All men here are reasonably good at making love, they have beautiful bodies, but they're not very intelligent". Although bitten by a sudden temptation, they went up one more floor.

The sign on the fourth floor read: "The men on the fourth floor are gorgeous. They have beautiful bodies, are excellent lovers in bed, and are extremely intelligent" Their eyes sparkled in enthusiasm and couldn't help giggling, but were dying of curiosity to see the fifth floor, so they all went up.

The fifth floor read: "There are no men on this floor. This floor was made to prove that there is nothing on earth that can satisfy women". They slept on the fifth floor.

Cheers.

Teaching is harder than I had expected. It's easy to explain and teach a particular subject or performance technique. Easy to have control of a classroom and make them pay attention (not by force and terror of course). Easy to go and talk about what i'm supposed to talk, give marks, exams, projects, and all that bullshit. But how on earth can you teach people to be passionate about what they do? how do you make them understand that everything is related? Nothing can be studied and understood out of context. You can't talk about music without talking about politics, history, sociology, aesthetics, philosophy, religion, language... to infinity. The individual cannot exist without the general, and frightfully enough the opposite is also true. How sad is it to have someone fail your course!! Because in a way it's also your failure. You failed to communicate, you failed to give a perspective, you failed to share a part of you with someone. Yes, communication is a 2-way street, I am aware of that and I don't blame myself entirely. Still... can't shake that awful feeling. How do you make them understand that this is their life? You get out of life what you put into it. If all you care about is money, then THAT is what you'll get, nothing more. If you're not passionate about your career, then why do you do it? stop lying to yourself. Is it the same in other aspects of your life? do you love someone without being passionate? do you wake up everyday and just drag yourself through life? How can we be just spectators in our own comedy? What scares me the most in life is to realize one day that I'm not who I want to be, that i'm not doing what I want to do. How can you walk through a pasar malam and not wonder about the people lying on the floor asking for money? how can you see a materialistic idiot arrive in his expensive car, expensive cologne and expensive suit, looking down on everyone and venting his 2cent absurd, racist and elitist opinions on every subject on the table, and not wonder about it? how can you ask a girl out just because she's hot? what if you have nothing to talk about? how can you love someone and not be ready to give everything? how can you play a piece of music and not have your heartbeat beating to the music's pulse? (hey, it's just a metaphore, although you never know...)

I have a confession to make: my life is ruled by horrible contradictions. Here I am, locked away in my room, as in the last 7 or 8 years, working fevereshly on my music. And it is a great contradiction because I write and I write all the time, but I don't show my music to anyone. No one is playing it, I'm not sending it to any competition, orchestra or ensamble. Simply because I find no interest in getting it played, judged, misinterpreted. Because I know it is impossible that they could understand it. They won't see the meaning behind the notes, they can't see how painful it is for me to write it. Why would I be interested in pouring all my heart and brain into a piece of music to then have it played for evil audiences? fat and ignorant rich ladies, adults with a teenager mind, people whose only thirst in life is for money and power. People who could never be able to understand the anguish behind Poe's words, the obsession of Dostoyevski's mind, the sadness in Bach's notes, or the sordid protest of a Shostakovitch symphony. Why would I be interested, I repeat, in writing music for them? they won't know, they won't understand, they'll misinterpret. No, I don't write music for you or them, I only do it for myself. Even these words are not for you, are only for me. Surely if you've read this far you already have judgements and you've probably already scoffed a couple of times. What a bitter man must i be ah? not really, hehe. I do find enormous pleasure in what I do, and I have found people in my life with whom I can bond and share. Not many, true, but i prefer quality over quantity. Solitude can be an excellent friend and companion. I don't like to pretend, and our social norms teach us to pretend according to the situation: funeral, bar, disco, school, church, workplace, home, political rally. Na, I don't like to pretend. Sometimes this world causes me pain. And here I am, still writing music... I am fully aware of the contradiction, but I cannot do anything about it. Not writing music is not an option. I feel like Sysiphus carrying the stone; i even wrote a string quartet about it, just to be able to feel the pain in this dark irony that is my life. God must be a comediant. Yet I am happy, very happy. Some things make up for it: good people, good conversations, good concerts, a nice joint (...), 2 hours alone with your guitar, a melody buzzing in your ears, a walk on the beach at night with a nice smelly clove cigarette. You get out of life what you put into it... hmmm... this has been such a trip. Nice to let stuff out sometimes...

My 10 most amazing moments in music: (in random order)

1-The Jewish melody in the 2nd movement of Shostakovitch's 8th string quartet. Even in horrid war times there's always been people capable of human compasion... Such intensity... it has made me cry more than once.

2-The second theme in the 1st movement of Mahler's 5th symphony. If music could be translated into words this would say: life is so painful, so unfair, yet there is so much beauty in it...

3-Bach's horn suspensions in the 1st Brandenburg concertos. Hail thy master!!

4-F minor piano prelude from Bach's 1st book WTC. The master got so sentimental he had to make the harpsichord (pianoforte) shed tears.

5-The monumental isorhythmic climax on the 1st movement of Shostakovitch's 2nd piano concerto. How else could you make people get the message?

6-The whole 2nd movement of Shostakovitch's 10th symphony. Pure horror. Music grabbing you by the throat. How much suffering must we go through until we understand? how many more dictators and criminals? how many more wars?

7-'Joie du sang des etoiles', from Messian's Turangalila symphony. A  feast for any instrospected spirit.

8- Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. The second section of the adagio... brrr.... so macabre... so sarcastic...the 1st violin's glissandi, the celesta, the piano punctuation... on a higher note: how can one not feel for this man? his last pieces have such a longing in them. Why do we all have just to conform with life, accept it as it is even though we know some things are not right. The eternal human tragedy of Don Quixote: to live insane but die sane.

9-The simultaneous exposition of Beethoven's awe theme and joy theme in the last movement of his 9th symphony. Yes, the human heart and spirit will always be stronger!!!

10-Cannot make up my mind for this one... a few candidates: Britten's War Requiem, lacrimosa. Brahms 3rd symphony, 3rd or 4th movement!!! hmmm... Bach's C minor organ passacaglia, Beethoven's op. 132 string quartet in A minor, hmmm.... all B's ah? i didn't noticed.. hehe. Well, let's change that: Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms? 1st movement. How about his (stravinsky) Oedipus Rex? it hardly gets any better than that. Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. The list goes on and on....