Maestro Górecki died ...

Mikołaj Henryk Górecki was one of the greatest composers of our time. He certainly was famous on the worldwide scene for his „Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” that was a global hit comparable only to popular music hits. But all his works, including those commissioned by Kronos Quartet place him among the giants of music like Olivier Messiaen, Charles Ives, Arvo Part, John Taverner or Giya Kancheli. He practiced something I call, by the term I coined: „rich minimalism” — where the musical language is simple but the meanings and depths are rich.

If you haven't heard about Górecki, it is also for the fact that he was very modest and private person who always shunned publicity.





Here is the Górecki's obituary published by Guardian.

Nemesis by Philip Roth

After „The Dying Animal” by Philip Roth, I knew that he is a great and deep writer.

However — his latest novel „Nemesis” is one of the best books I ever read.

It is a story of young man, the teacher of physical education and passionate javelin thrower. The story is set in 1944 during one of the worst American polio epidemics. As he could not go to the army, the hero was already discontent of himself when the plot of events related to the epidemics and the events of his personal life caused a major self oppression and the unbearable conviction of guilt.

It is a great book about insecurity a man can experience, about guilt and punishment and about human rebellion against G-d due to overwhelming sense of undeserved suffering of many...

And ultimately it is a book about the triumph of human freedom of choice...

In his short book, and in the simple words, Roth once again comes to the main theme of Job's bible book (without, of course, any direct reference to it) and to the most important problems that face humans — without pathos and sanctimonious deliberations...

THE great novel.

Sebastian Horsley dies ...

I'm depressed and devastated.

It's no more than a month since I was in a concert in London's HMV with Current93 and his guests.

The concert announcer was famous English celebrity and artist, Sebastian Horsley.

See his intro:




He died two days ago...

What more could I say...

---

Few day passed and our sorrow is no less.
What we know now is that he hasn't take drugs for long time recently, but the funeral of his long friend Michal Wojas turned him into it: „The 47-year-old reportedly hadn't used heroin for several months but the death of his close friend Michael Wojas triggered a fatal drugs binge.”

Let me add Sebastian Horsley's own quote:

„I have been punished by a God I don't believe in and he has thrown me off the cross for impersonating his son, for being an atheist, and for being a disaster. I have made a complete fool of myself.”

[9news: Horsley generated a storm of controversy after he had himself nailed to a cross in 2002. His hands were torn during the process after the foot support he had been standing on collapsed.]

A Little Book on Stillness

This is my second Echart Tolle Book, and third listening to his unpretentious voice speaking out simple truths we know, but we used to forget...

"Stillness speaks" is indeed short, as compared to "The Power of Now". Yet it is good, concise summary of Tolle ideas. In some sense it is about one idea, that is elaborated deeply in both of his books. This simple idea can be expressed in saying: "We are not our minds". Tolle rediscovers truths known to almost all great meditative traditions of all religions, to tell, in simple words, that beyond and below our discursive and noisy stream of thought, there IS certain realm, that exists, but which existence is of different dimension than the existence of forms in this world.

Yet this simple idea is fruitful and deep. Tolle elaborates on it, and the consequence are far reaching, from appreciation of meditative practice, through betterment of our relations, to the overcoming of suffering and death.

As I stressed in my two previous reviews, the true value of Tolle is in his simple language, modest approach to difficult problems and intellectual honesty. So don't expect here cryptic expression of some mysterious truths. This book is about things of common life and common experience - that are, as it often happens, concealed by our talkative and blusterous culture.

As I said before, I do not quite agree with Tolle's approach to past: "Past and future are thought forms, mental abstractions. The past can only be remembered Now". While his view is reasonable, the negation of the existence of Past, the frozen world of our good and bad choices, is to me, unnecessary....

Quote from "The Journey into Yourself"

I did not know that I would be captivated by Eckhart Tolle simple words...
After "The Power of Now" I bought "The Journey into yourself" - the recording of long, 9 hours lecture Eckhart gave at one of his seminars.

I made short transcript of short passage that reflects his thoughts.
I did so because they were quite close to thougts of one of my friends - who was practicing monk and buddist. And they are close to deepest level of understanding in all mystical traditions I met...

I could make some errors, hope my readers and Eckhart will forgive me:

"The empty space is left behind by death, whenever a form dissolves in your life. It may be an actual death or it may be a loss of something that happened to be important to you. If you can face that hole that is left behind by the form that is no longer there, it is a temporary hole into the dimension of formless, now I could almost say, into God, the formless one life, the formless, timeless one consciousness, that underlines all manifestation. It momentarily shines through whenever there is a hole in the tapestry of physical existence.

There is a kind of tapestry of forms, and in this tapestry of forms, which is gigantic, regularly, and at all time (...) holes open up continuously and are replaced by something else, but if you can be aware of the holes, of the openings, something shines through them that has not to do with a form but with essence of all forms.

And it is enormously peaceful. There is enormous peace and aliveness there, and that is the grace that lies concealed in any kind of death, accidental death, seemingly premature death, in any kind of loss…
(...)
And then you cover up the hole with reactions immediately, so that you do not have to face emptiness…. So when emptiness comes in your life, that is a beautiful, potentially , a beautiful opening in which you can actually find yourself, You find yourself by not resisting that, and so you begin to welcome death when it comes because it is inseparable part of this world of form.

But when we look at death and judge it from a point of view of an identity, a sense of self that is identified with form – and from there death looks horrible!"

No more words for tonight...

Of Love and Death – The Dying Animal

Philip Roth is an American writer. Born in 1933, he is the author of many famous books. To name a few: “Goodbye, Columbus”, “American Pastoral”, “The Human Stain” and “The Plot Against America”.

“The Dying Animal” explores those corners of human mind where the lust and sexual desires live.
The main character of the book is the aging man named Kepesh, an intellectual celebrity, amateur pianist and university scholar.
Divorced when was still quite young he kept his solitude as a virtue, a freedom and ... the ground for endless sexual adventures with his young female students. His life was well arranged, promiscuous and easy-going until, at age 62, he meets Consuela, a beautiful offspring of Cuban emigrants. Initially his desire for her is almost only bodily, almost fleshly and full of fetish obsession about her breast. But as Consuela demonstrates her freedom – he almost falls in love with her. This love reveals itself in a strange way – in his morbid jealousy for her, for her friends, boyfriends and even brothers. I say “almost” because during the affair with Consuela he maintains the sexual relations with his previous lover. Reading the book it is very hard to judge if Kepesh was only an animal with sexual desire to Consuela, or if he truly loved her, but was intimidated by his senescence, generation gap etc...

There is also an interesting part about father-son relations. Kepesh – the bad father, who forsook his son when he broke his marriage, has, nevertheless, an important role in boy’s life.

The book ends in completely unanticipated and tragic way – shocking the readers at first. However, in the tragedy and uncertainty of the book climax lies its most important virtue – the reflection on, sometimes insecure and full of abeyance, yet true love and caring, the love that has a power to fight the death. That is my rendering of Kepesh final indecisiveness – contrary to many reviews I have read...

Blindness ... A paragon of bad story

After 13 hours of listening to Jose Saramago's "Blindness" I came to the following conclusion: How fortunate was I, that for so many years I have been reading and listening to mostly good books with largely prevailingly stories...

Unfortunately, Blindness is not a good story. And I'm sure of my firm opinion. It's totally fictional novel about an epidemic that causes total blindness of the population of some unnamed country.

Well, as for the initial setting it was quite interesting - it could be a ground for serious deliberations on human nature - particularly under severe conditions. At some moments, I had the feeling that Jose Saramago was close to great prose and deep analysis of what can happen to man under ill fortune and severe calamities. Some remote recollections of stories from death camps resonated in parts of the book ...

However, everything there was too far from the really deep thoughts and considerations, to deserve appraisal. The moral notion of so many scenes is unconvincing. The considerations of some sexually oriented behaviour of blind people - quite offensive, to say the least.
The book ends with totally naive sudden recovery of all people from the blindness - almost like a happy end, with merely a shadow of unknown fate of one of the main characters.

Unfortunately, I also found a lot of tedious and flat passages - was this the result of poor translation? That I do not know. Maybe, in its original language, the book written, despite everything, by a Nobel price laureate, could defend its merits... Maybe....

I regret to write such review, but - I had no choice - this what my heart dictates...

"There were wooden teardrops and an oaky smile"

Without an exageration I can say that it was one of the best books I ever read...

I finished the reading (i.e. listening) in cold Paris, March 2009 walking on the dark streets of this city. And the first thing I did after I finished was to go back to the beginning and to start it again....

"First the colors. Then the humans" - this is how it starts, the story told from the perspective of ... death personified. The narration brings some far but strong recollections of that used by Norman Mailer in his "The Castle in the Forest", but don't take it as criticism - in fact it is a praise....

What makes Zusak's book such increadible experience? First and foremost - his vacabulary, his parlance, his prose poetry. Bacause of these, you loose the sense of reading the novel, and you feel like you are reading the poetry...

"I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away. "

"The girl loved that-- the shivering snow"

One of my friends told me, when recommended the book couple of weeks ago: "I did not know how one could live through the words as it is in the book" ...

But there is also something else. The book has deep meaning and strong message. It is about the most dark period of human history - Nazi Germany. It's about Jewish persecution and Holocaust. But it is also about forgivness, about love, about the simple fact that not all Germans were Nazi and not all Nazis were killers. It's about life in hard times, and about difficult greatness.