Music and the Philosophy of the Will

Good evening, dearest of friends. On this evening we are going to discuss Music and the Will.

I have this hypothesis about Music and the Will. It is probably wrong, but I will tell it regardless. It is this: that the musical establishment, ever since the days of Wagner, has been utterly devoted to the philosophical primacy of the Will. Might I add, that this is stupid. Thus I mean to approach my hypothesis from two angles, first that there is plain evidence for this, and second that it is stupid. The former shall be dealt with by analysis of example, the latter shall be granted as being perfectly obvious following the analysis.

For a while, Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche were friends. In fact, they were friends even unto the very moment they stopped being friends, but that moment was far too late; the damage was done. Now, Nietzsche occupies a prominent place in Will-centered philosophy. On a popular basis, it is likely fair to say that he is their king, verily, their Superman. Being a member of the populace, a villainous and ignorant armchair philosopher (a vile sort of being for whom there is no excuse if he takes himself seriously), I shall run with this view. Sophistry, the villain's sincerity and the fool's jest, is the only real duty of the armchair philosopher, after all, so it is no wonder Nietzsche is so beloved by him. I shall play the fool, by the way.

Behold how I have provided an entire paragraph devoid of substance. In no way did it address anything that it was supposed to address, even freeing itself altogether from the advancement of my hypothesis, which I remind you is probably wrong. I am off to a great start. In fact, prospects are excellent for my doing the same in this paragraph, but I digress. Because of his association with Nietzsche, Wagner, the founder of what the musicologist calls Wagnerism, became associated with the primacy of the Will. Wagnerism then also found itself yoked to the Will, and Wagnerism, if I may say so, formed the ideological base for twentieth century music, in embrace or opposition, but mostly in opposition. I have decided to Will myself the right to say so, for whatever that is worth. Of course, it is not worth very much at all.

Wagnerism is known for obscene grandiosity above all else. It is known for other things, as well, like chromaticism, but I do not wish to acknowledge those things today. Some other day I will acknowledge them. Vague statements are usually more accurate than detailed statements, so I will cling tightly to vague statements, if that is all right. I will it to be all right, for whatever that is worth. Wagner is also remembered for attempting, in his long, long operas, to synthesize all the Arts in to one glorious whole, but that did not work out all right. Wagner, so I am told, only successfully composed music, whereas his libretti, costumes, sets, and the like were incompetent. I have neither read nor seen the latter three (as the verb applies), but my experiences with the former have been second rate.

I believe, then, that Wagnerism was a colossal failure, and so did many others. Tchaikovsky took no delight in Wagner, saying after the premier of Der Ring des Nibelungen that the end was comparable to being released from prison. He was probably right, as the four Ring operas take somewhere in the area of fifteen hours to stage, so they usually are spread out over three or four nights, as was the case then. The French impressionists (and their friend Satie), it might be argued, were essentially anti-Wagnerian. I am not going to argue it myself, I am merely going to say so. So was, on essentially those same unstated grounds, the Second Viennese School, which gave the world twelve-tone atonality. Really, it existed before that (a la Liszt's Bagatelle sans Tonalite), but they actually put it to extensive use. More on this later.

Recalling the hypothesis, mostly because I have forgotten about it, I say again that the twentieth century musical establishment was and still is dominated by the philosophy of the Will, which I have thus far claimed originated in Wagnerism. That is really the sum of it. The rest was just senseless babble. Wagner, then, tried to will his atmosphere (or something like that) upon his audience, and it worked on some. Mahler and Strauss, our Apostles of Wagnerism, certainly thought it was swell. By the way, a favorite phrase of mine, "The Music of the Future," is best remembered for its association with Wagner, especially in his lifetime. It seems to have been accurate. At least, it fits with my hypothesis, and that is what really counts. Wagner perhaps wanted to will his vision on the Future. Fair enough, I say. It fits. Wagnerism has survived, and it yet survives, primarily in film, musicals, and other such arenas long despised by at least the elite of the musical establishment. Sometimes Wagnerism is done far better than Wagner ever could have done it, but usually not.

Rather than proceed onward to the twentieth century now, I would like to delve farther back in time, say, to the beginning of the Romantic period of music. The arbitrary musicologist, who is an idiot, marks this in 1828 (late March, I believe), for that is the death of Beethoven. I declare it to be "around 1800," in the lifetime of Beethoven and, more importantly (in literature), Goethe. Beethoven, though, the musicologists tell us, was the first musician to successfully form an independent career out of music, which was rooted in the beginning with performance upon the pianoforte. That is all about Beethoven. How about Liszt? Pianists like to say that Liszt was the greatest pianist of all time, even though there is no objective basis for this. What is best? Perhaps he willed the most out of the pianoforte, just as Wagner is supposed to have tried to will the most out of the orchestra. Liszt was Wagner's father-in-law, by the way, and his dear beloved friend, only two years older than Wagner. But what about Liszt? Liszt was worshiped as a pianist above all else. Look at the simplistic line I have drawn, which points out that the preeminence of the performer (think of Paganini on the violin, contemporary to Liszt), is a creature of nineteenth century Romanticism. Sure, it had been around for a long time in opera, but I will to ignore this point in favor of my own.

Now it is safe to address the twentieth century, and I will begin by stating that I shall state no more upon the French impressionists (and their friend Satie), as I love them far too much to include them in my denouncements. I will also include among them Scriabin, even though he was perfectly distinct from the French impressionists and a Russian, like his schoolmate Rachmaninov, who was entirely different from all of them. Also, all of them would certainly frown at my calling them impressionists, especially Debussy. Regardless, hooray for their anti-Wagnerism, and do not apply my comments on the Second Viennese School to them in any way. Speaking of the Second Viennese School, I comment upon them now. Actually, no. I thought I would comment upon them, but I will not. I tried, but it did not work, so I will to ignore them, too. That is the nice thing about the Will. By the way, please apply all the comments I would have made about the Second Viennese School also to the later minimalists, such as John Cage. It is the same sort of thing, an attempt to minimize the Will of the composer. The audience must will a great deal, though, in order to like what it is hearing, and in the name of pomposity, many will successfully. Even I have often willed successfully in this way.

Let us get this train back on the tracks. What I really wanted to talk about is the musical establishment, and how it is obsessed with the Will. Up to here, I have attempted to draw a case wherein will-centered philosophy formed the backbone of the twentieth-century musical establishment. Objectively, I have failed, but fortunately, we can all will otherwise. Will to believe! Will to extrapolate all the other points I would have made in the assembly of a coherent argument! Nietzsche never once, to my knowledge, made a coherent argument, so why should I? Nietzsche, by the way, was much more Artist than philosopher. It makes sense, then, that will-centered philosophy would be embraced in Art, as it is an Artistic creation. Furthermore, it is appropriate that existentialism and its crippled spawn, relativism, should also themselves come not from philosophy, but from Art. Need I say more than that Sartre and Camus were were both writers of fiction? I do not mean that exclusively, but still. Perhaps that is all that needed saying, but I do not will to throw the rest out. Why? That is both the point and the fatal flaw, now is it not? Will to apathy!

So the other day I was playing Satie on the pianoforte, and the musical establishment wanted me to give the piece a more definite conclusion, which Satie did not provide. I am inclined to think that the inconclusiveness was the whole point that Satie wanted to make, and that by creating an illusory conclusion we are falling into his joke, but the establishment will have none of it. The establishment, in the tradition of Liszt, gives the performer, the willer, primacy. Forget the poor stupid composer and his directions! Just feel it, and feeling, Will. Thus I put in a nice ritardando and a healthy diminuendo, but that was not enough. That unresolved chord at the end needed a crescendo, but the pianoforte necessarily must diminuendo on a sustained note. Will to grammar! I was told, therefore, to play an imaginary crescendo. How does one do this? Why, by willing it, of course! Build up emotion within myself, I was told verbatim. Then apply increased pressure to the keys (which were already pressed) and to raise my wrist so that it looks like I am playing louder. Last, I was told to create tension in my abdomen. Basically, I was told to will the belief upon both myself and any listener that there is a crescendo on that final chord, when in fact it is just the opposite, and I thought that that (taken in full seriousness) was approximately the stupidest thing I had ever heard; however, I did not say so. I tried to will a crescendo.

Then today the pianists gathered together to listen and comment on one another's playing, and O the willing that took place! All of them felt like something should have been the case which was not. They all wanted to feel some other thing, like mystery or organics in the performance. Play it with a different color, or give your phrases a rounder shape. Thus they all willed to hear these things, these things that have absolutely nothing to do with music, being category mistakes, and they insisted that the performer will them into the performance. The primacy of the performer alone is enough to show the dominance of will over, say, reason in Art, if the composer is supposed to have set down rational commands for his idea.

What is more telling, though, than a final historical note, if nothing else for the sake of symmetry. The recently dead Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote a composition (whose name I cannot remember) which consisted of a number of short phrases arranged haphazardly around a page of music, which the performer would play in whimsical order until one of them was played twice. This gave complete primacy to the performer in terms of musical form, much like a cadenza in a classical concerto would do with content, except that was not degenerate.

Let us now forgo a sound conclusion, for I will it to be so. It is obvious now that the philosophy of the Will rules in music, except that in the preceding mess that was certainly a fact obscured. Will to clairvoyance!

One of Saite's directions in the third Gnossienne was "with clairvoyance." Satie knew the truth. I will that interpretation upon him, for he is much too dead to argue otherwise. This is good because I am probably wrong.

Rage and Reverie of an Astrologer

Friends! Friends! We are out at sea, but do not worry, for we are on a pleasure yacht a number of years ago. How nice is the silent sea air! Behold the gentle music of the waves as they dance in the pale moonlight! Look now at the shoreline there in the distance under the nighttime sky. Can you see it? Can you see that the burning countenance behind a thousand hellish flames lords over the steel skeletons which writhe from out the darkest depths of the earth? I have seen it. Do you hear also the death agonies of the lonely souls within, crying out hither even unto yon? Only every day to these frightful screeches seep through the walls and windows. At sea these at least are gone. Far enough at sea, so too are the flames, but there we must face the black countenances of the Old gods forgotten in the deep and dark places of the earth.

Yet seas of flame will not do. Looking downward, I wish for naught but the gentle flicker of a fire lovingly built, neither the illusion of day blazing without end nor the nebulous night in all its obscurity. You my friends and I, come to a field among the forest with just such a light, and I render my eyes unto the cloudless heavens. This happens some fewer years ago. The Queen has retired on this blackest of nights, and so the great multitude of the Spheres creep forth from their hiding places behind both the earthly and celestial lights to themselves shine instead. The Queen is kind in this way; she, with perfect regularity, gifts us all with such a display of her domain. The flames from out the Stygian crevices of the earth will do no such thing lest they be themselves closed once and for all.

We travel alone some weeks ago, standing in a glistening, frozen field at midnight. The infernal lights clawing mercilessly at the skies and many a Bean-Sídhe (but shadows of dreams upon a darker night!) haunting the roads and sidewalks, I await a moment's peace. Alas, all around is not stricken with dead silence, and the towering flames yet rage. The kindly Queen sends her regal glow through an icy grove of now luminescent trees, which in turn reflects off the glass landscape itself. Admiring these things, I wander into blacker regions beneath the hill by the hedgerow, where I stand a bit longer before walking slowly back to the warm glow of the ever-burning, delusional daylight. There is no reason to build ourselves a friendly fire tonight.

Sailing on the good ship House

"My boat sails stormy seas,
battles oceans filled with tears.
At last my port's in view,
now that I've discovered you."
-The Moody Blues

What a fine night it is my friends! On this night we celebrate the Vernal Equinox, up at the old stone circle in the woods. Yes, there have been many seasonal adventures lately, and I would like to share a selection of mine.

Let us begin on 7 March. You may notice that I make a habit of posting photographs of snow, and this last snowfall is no exception.















Of course, this begs the consideration, what happens when all that snow melts, thereby saturating the ground immediately before a great rainfall?

I answer; something like this happens:















Ordinarily, that is my front yard, but not on 19 March. Notice the tops of trees, which are now the bottoms of trees. It was a grand day for tree-climbing (with swimming), but I was never good at either of those things.

It was not, however, a grand day for mail, for here is the household mailbox around noontime, shortly after it reappeared from beneath the waves:















The mailbox shifted by a considerable angle during the course of the day, by the way.

Here is one of my favorites. These are ducks. (m r ducks.)















I am very fond of ducks, I am always happy to see them, and I always have been. My friends might like to know that "duck" was the first coherent utterance I am known to have made.

Later in the day, as the waters subsided, the fun was not yet over, for the air grew cold.
















Yes, that is snow.

Naturally, you must be wondering what residue this all left behind. Well, here you have it:















That is the neighbor's mailbox in the front, with a couple of neighbors' flooded yards visible off into the distance.

Now, I looked for a while this afternoon for a fish in a puddle or in some other such strange place, but I did not find one. There were a couple of dead ones in the street this morning, but I did not witness those myself, and they were eaten away by birds by the time the camera and I went on our adventure. I shall search again tomorrow, possibly with a net and rubber boots.

This has been a selection from the full collection, except the first one of the snow. My mother, not I, took that one. I hope this has been a pleasant exhibition. Until next time, I wish you well.

Midnight Feast at the Temple of Springtime, Part II

Excellent! Most excellent! Here is the scrawl, which would certainly interest me if I happened to be reading my weblog. I would like to take this opportunity, though, to comment upon several points which I did not make yesterday, mostly musical points.

Looking upon the music, the first thing the astute reader likely notices is that it is written in colored ink, but there appears to be only limited significance to the color in which a particular note is written. Usually when a composer writes in colored ink, he is doing so to sort out musical complexity in a perfectly visual and obvious way. Well, astute reader, you are absolutely right; my color choices are completely arbitrary, the colors meaning no more than that I thought that a particular color better expressed a particular melody or harmony than the other colors at my disposal. I would have liked to have had gold, orange, or yellow ink, though, because I needed it upon many occasions.


Why, though, did I use colors at all? Well, when I sat down to work, I realized quickly that there would be no writing without a pen, so I wandered over to the old pen and pencil drawer to find one. As I sifted through the selection, black ink was for whatever reason hiding from me, but all these colored pens were right there. After a moment of frustration, I was given a revelation saying that I should use colorful ink, and it would be aesthetically pleasing, so I did. Only after removing several colorful pens did I find a black pen deep within the drawer, and all was very well.

The next notable point about this music is perhaps the vast quantity thereof labeled "Rubbish," which was done on the grounds that those sections were rubbish, and that I was required to write something else in their place. This is not a novelty. The kind and gentle readers may recall many scribbled-out sections in the previous postings of this variety.

Now, on to some musical matters. First, it is very G minor, as the doctor says. Nearly all the modulations are closely related to G minor, from D major to Bb major to C minor. This piece, then, is notably more diatonic than the previous two I have placed upon these internets, and this is fine. The diatonic system is an excellent system, even now, despite what the twentieth century might have us believe. The twentieth century, I hope, shall be something serious Artists giggle upon in the coming years, by the way, just as the philosophers often and ought to giggle upon it now.

Second, I ask you to look at all the patterns in threes and the multiples thereof. The first and last bits (thesis and synthesis) have their triplets, and the middle bit (antithesis) is written in 12/8 time, a time signature I have long burned to use. It requires that the beat be divided by fours into dotted half notes, just as common time would do to quarter notes. Also, as I mentioned in passing, there are supposed to be implications of ringing bells in many places throughout, especially in the middle section, which is essentially supposed to represent the ringing of bells. The most evident instances of this chime in twelves, signifying midnight. I also call to attention the left hand chords in the transition between the middle and third sections and at the conclusion. These are bells, very directly, some of which sound in terms of Scriabin's mystic chord. Scriabin, I remind the readers, frequently employed a color system as a basis for his composing, and he created a keyboard instrument that played colored lights rather than music.

So we have the introduction, then the first section, and then we have the second section, and then the third section, which is supposed to synthesize the first two sections. I am told that excellent music must be a synthesis, and that this is why it is artistically bad to jazz or to rock or to roll. I do not entirely agree, but a successful synthesis is good art every time, unless of course it is a synthesis of asinine ideas, in which case we have craft and not art. I trust that the readers appreciate these ramblings, for "it's such a fine line between stupid and clever" (David St. Hubbins). The synthesis is, of course, the use of those patterns in three underneath a superior variation on the first section. This is the aim of the great sonata form, to produce a thesis, antithesis, and then a synthesis in the exposition and development, and then to place the completion of the synthesis such that the recapitulation (a shortened exposition, essentially) creates the golden ratio upon that point. That last part I made up, but it is true, I think. Of course, the whole piece most basically is based upon the first four tones of any major or minor diatonic scale, and that provides a consistency that holds the whole together, for whatever it happens to be worth.

There are more comments I could make, but they are profoundly dull, and I could never hope to fully analyze this music, lest I sit down, theoretical texts in hand, to do so, and I am certainly not ever going to do that. The last thing I would like to point out is the last page, and how most of its notes are signified by arrows. It all made perfect sense last week, but now it is almost comic. It is a good thing I produced the final version the next day, with very visible changes. Also, my signature and the date 12 March 2008 are cut off the bottom, along with a comment about my days actually shifting at 6:00 am for reasons explained yesterday.

To conclude, I offer thrilling news, which is visible on the left hand of the weblog for easy and frequent access. It is a page with musical things on it, and for my knowledge thereof I blame Henry. In order to listen to these things, then, I place the link once more right here. In the name of Friendship, I implore you, please enjoy these things.

May each breath be a well of delight. Good day.

Midnight Feast at the Temple of Springtime

So here it is, and as always I shall provide a commentary as to why I felt the need to bring it into existence.

I began to work on it on 1 March 2008 in the afternoon and evening after two events had taken place. First, I received in the mail a letter explaining that I had been accepted to attend the Conservatory upon the coming of autumn. This was a very happy bit of information. Second, I was left all alone at home for several hours, and I decided to spend those hours playing with music. During that time I conceived a number of ideas for a very short piano piece about triumph and festival, which turned out to be less short than I had thought.

The next day, being Sunday, I continued my work for a short while, making progress, and I did the same on Monday morning. Monday morning, as I recall, allowed for the opening of the house's sliding doors, and the smell of springtime came in, and so I began to associate the music with the coming of Springtime. This is good, for all Artists love the coming of Springtime.* For years (also four years) I have tried to write a successful Frühlingslied, but no good. As far as I am concerned, this is it. Monday, though, did not last, as I had to return to Oxnard in the early afternoon.

I worked further on Wednesday 5 March, transcribing my incomplete handwritten copy into the computer until I ran out of notes. Wednesday was another Springtime day, and I did this with the window open. I also began to realize the inevitability of including Springtime in the title.

My next spurt of productivity came on Friday 7 March afternoon after I found out that not only had the snow (otherwise welcome) put a stop to my glorious weekend plans, but also it was going to trap me in Oxnard for a full week. This made me very melancholy, as I very much love to see my friends and family on the weekends. Thus I worked on the music, specifically page three and the first half of page four, to take my mind someplace else, and that worked fairly well. Over the weekend I would continue to edit these notes and proceed through page five. I did this largely in the dead of night, making my sleep transition with the time change even more difficult. Also, in this section, can you hear the chiming bells?

With the beginning of a new academic week on Monday 10 March, I found that I had very little time to muse and compose, but fortunately I had made that very little time able to exist at all by reading over an excessive reading assignment (100 pages of Dead Sea Scrolls and scholarship thereupon, interestingly enough) on Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday, then I was able to ponder greatly upon and write a bit of the concluding section, but on Wednesday 12 March I took up my pens (five of them) and finished, at the expense of certain other tasks. Technically speaking, I finished at about 12:30 am after that Wednesday, but my days shift at 6:00 am, so in my world it was still Wednesday 12 March, the twelfth day of the third month in the vicinity of midnight. We can observe now in the music thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, making it philosophically sound Art.



On Thursday, I announced that I would have the music up by the afternoon, and I was wrong. I spent most of that Thursday being very busy (Thursdays are eleven hour days, and that Thursday was a thirteen hour day), and all my free time was devoted to transcribing into the computer and editing the music I had finished the night before. I did finish this before Thursday ended, but then my scanner for whatever reason did not care for pages three and seven, so I put off the task further. Now all is in line, and here it is.

Now, as any responsible musicologist will tell you, it is terrifically unwise to think that events in a composer's (or in my case, bard-minstrel's) life in any way correlate to his music, and that is very sagacious advice. This, however, is an exception, because it pretty well correlates exactly to the goings-on in my world around me and even more the goings-on in my head in more ways than I have discussed here today. In our next installment, I will be providing the handwritten original and (if all goes according to plan) a method for listening to this and other musics of mine within the bounds of these internets. Blessings upon you, O noble friends.

By the way, page three will print without any trouble or colossal waste of ink, as should page seven. I tested three, anyway, and upon seven I have merely assumed, but, as always, we know what that will do.


































Note
*These are instances of Springtime music:
Vivaldi, The Four Seasons
Beethoven, "Pastoral" Symphony (no. 6)
Grieg, "Last Spring," "To Springtime," "To Spring"
Sinding, "The Rustle of Spring" (Sinding was a friend of Grieg's, by the way.)
...to name all the ones I can think of right now.

Return of the Music of the Future

Later this evening there shall appear upon this weblog some groovy new music. I would be posting it now, but I have places to be, being as important as I am. That being said, do come back later when there shall be nice things prepared.

Edit: (7:16 pm) Really, I promise! I have to be lectured again in a moment, I am sorry.

Edit again: (1:39 am) My scanner is not cooperating, and I am already late in such engagements as sleep and diligent study. Friday afternoon--nothing stands in my way.

Edit again again: (A new day, well past my bed time) I told you a lie. I am still sorry. It will be up eventually. Every day I have said to myself, "I have these happy ideas of laughter, as well as this music, which I would like to present to my friends, for it shall make smiles," but I fail to bring smiles. More smiles later, I say!

The Light of Divinity Released from the Melons, Ascending to the Seventh Level of Heaven

O good readers, I made three errors on the paper "Postexilic Judean Politics from Persian to Ptolemaic Rule" which have since been pointed out to me.

Read it. Read it well, and increase your wisdom by the product of two nearly sleepless nights.

My comment follows, but I must trumpet my confession of these most abominable sins.

First, I referred to Zerubbabel as a king. This was a foolish thing, and you should have seen it, most holy readers, knowing all the intimate details of even relatively minor characters in the books of the minor prophets. Shame on you.

Second, Hyrcanus did not commit suicide until long after I said he did. It is irrelevant to the analysis, but I fixed it.

Third, Solymius was the brother's name, not the daughter's, whose name is not given. Forgive me for being unable to differentiate between Greek male names and female names all the time.

Everything, as far as I know, is well now, at least with the paper.

In which geometry utterly annihilates arithmetic in the name of reason.

Good afternoon, wise and benevolent readers. Today we are going to discuss geometry and arithmetic, whose historical quarrel knows few bounds. Even today, individuals can easily be classified as geometrically-minded people and arithmetically-minded people, and these people surely despise one another, or at least they have grounds to do so, for as a rule, geometry is good and arithmetic is bad. Furthermore, geometrically-minded people are good, and arithmetically minded people are bad.

This truth has proved itself to be empirically true time and time again. For example, the tuning of musical instruments based on an arithmetic invariably leads to a irregular intervals, whereas the use of a geometric sequence, as in well-temperament, leads to a rational and equal sequence of pitches, liberating the musician to modulate freely. Is that not a delight? Of course, that did not stop certain silly arithmeticians from complaining about the diminished purity of their precious harmonic intervals, but who wants a dishonest and irrational purity?

Another instance of this conflict was observed by Thomas Malthus, who purported that while food supply increases arithmetically, population increases geometrically, the implication being that mankind is doomed to starve, and by "mankind" I mean those lacking the resources to purchase food freely. Not long after this came the Irish potato blight, which was observed to have made only the dogs fat. Very cleverly, the British looked to Malthusian ideas and refused to do much to help the Irishfolk. While this worked out fine for the British and the dogs, both profiting on the deaths of Irishfolk, the Irishfolk evidently turned at times to the eating of grass, in the style of cattle, which typically did not work out very well. For this reason, those of us descended from Irishfolk, which includes myself and a large proportion of those around me, should have a particular distaste for arithmetic. Arithmetic starves Irishfolk!

So thus far we have seen that arithmetic not only seeks to undermine Artistic principle, but it also just may kill you. Just imagine, on that first point, the application of arithmetic over geometry in the visual arts. Art the formal arrangements of beauty not geometrically founded? What would become of the Golden ratio, the arrangement which defines all Life, from veins in leaves to the human body itself? What would we make of the hexagon, the arrangement of non-organic nature? Arithmetic is a denial of the Divine Art of Creation itself, and thus arithmetic also necessarily leads to spiritual death.

It comes as no surprise that the arithmeticians rule the world, inheriting the establishment from the legacy of the British empiricists of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. Incidentally, the Irish strike back at this with their own Royal Irish Academy, which in fact acknowledges that Art might be a rational subject matter after all. Regardless, I am very sorry to report that, with little doubt, you, O kind and gentle reader, were educated on the basis of arithmetic. Do not shoot the messenger, that is me; it is not my fault, and I have suffered these things, as well.

At least the Greeks knew better, but as a result we have difficulty adapting to their geometric mode of thinking, which I remind you makes far better philosophical sense. The sooner we turn to geometry, the sooner we realize that this whole universe is defined in terms of the number three, from the three dimensions of space the trigonometrically expressed motion of waves to (I at least believe this to probably be true) the trinitarian nature of the human being, consisting of spirit, mind (or soul), and flesh. In conclusion, whenever I make comments about the sacredness of the number three, I am serious by exactly the ratio of phi.