Tag: Ervin's Thoughts

37. ON JEWISH CULTURE . . . AND HUMOR

I’ve been writing about Jews and the Bible, and Jewish culture . . . which brings me to the matters of  jokes and humor and silliness as expressed in different cultures.  As far as jokes go, University of California folklorist Alan Dundes has written some wonderful books about the folklore of humor . . . and humor in folklore . . . across different cultures.  Jewish humor, in particular, comes in various forms: there’s American Jewish humor, which is largely based in stereotypes (focus on merchants and money, marriage, my-son-the-doctor, mothers and mothers-in-law, big noses, Jewish princesses, hypochondria, God in the desert, etc.).  There’s also Eastern European Jewish humor, which is based in irony and a darkish view of the world; but of course that sensibility was fermented in a rather pessimistic and oppressed culture.   ‘Authentic’ Jewish humor is dark dark dark.  And, not surprisingly, Western European Jewish humor is colored by the culture of the specific country in question: Germany, Spain, France, England, etc.  I am having trouble imagining Scandinavian Jewish humor, although I assume that there must be some.  I’ve heard German humor; I honestly don’t understand much of it . . . although Germans laugh a lot at it anyway.

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Anyway, here’s an example of ‘authentic’ Eastern European Jewish humor.  

Two men are talking.

One says: “Life is hard”. 

He pauses thoughtfully, and then he continues.  He says: “Life is so hard . . . that death doesn’t seem like such a bad thing”.

After a bit more thinking he says, with finality: “In fact, life is so hard that it’s better to never have been born”.

His friend listens, and says: “You’re right.  But how many people are so lucky?  Maybe only one in ten thousand!”

See?  It’s pretty dark.

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Here’s another, less dark and more stereotypical, Joke:

A Frenchman, and Englishman, a German, and a Jew are mountain climbing.  [This is how I heard this joke; notice how it’s three Nationalities vs. a Religion?  What, there are no English, German, or French Jews??!?]  About halfway up the mountain they take a lunch break and discover that they’ve forgotten to bring any water along with them.  They’re really parched and thirsty.  And there’s no other water anywhere near.  The climbers begin to imagine their favorite thirst quenchers.

Weak from dehydration, the Frenchman says: “I . . . must . . . 

have . . . wine!”

Panting from thirst, the Englishman can barely croak out: “I . . . must . . . have . . . tea!”

The parched German says: “I . . . must . . . have . . . beer”.

The very thirsty Jew says:  “I . . . must . . . have . . . diabetes!”

Sorry about that.

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And here’s one from Alan Dundes’ book on Eastern European Jewish humor.  It lacks the stereotypical touch but makes up for it by being a bit on the dark side:

A man stands in front of a house in one of the less respectable neighborhoods in Bratislava.  He knocks on the door.  No response.  He knocks again, more loudly.

A second-floor window opens and a man sticks his head out.  “What do you want?”, he asks.

“I’m looking for Goldstein, the baker”, he replies.

“He doesn’t live here”, says the second-story guy.

“What’s your name?”, asks the visitor.

“Goldstein”, replies the man at the window.

“Are you a baker?”, asks the man at the door.

“Yes”, replies the man above.

“Well, how can you tell me that Goldstein the baker doesn’t live here?”, asks the visitor.

Goldstein looks around at the decrepit surrounding neighborhood, and says: “You call this living??”.

Better be careful next time you go to Bratislava.

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Have you noticed that the funniest people, the ones with the most active sense of humor, wit, etc., are the ones who’ve had the worst childhoods and the most difficult life experiences?   If you pay attention, I think you’ll find this to be true.  Who else would have a NEED to see life through that kind of lens?  I believe that the same principle applies in general to the historical difficulties and challenges that have resulted in national, ethnic, etc. humor.

As far as Jewish humor is concerned, I learned about its origin recently from a lecture from one of the faculty in Ethnic Studies at U.C. Berkeley.  It’s an interesting story.

The Jews, as we all know, had been dispersed all over the Western world: all over Europe, and over into Eastern Europe.  That’s known as the Jewish Diaspora.

In the 1500s there were a series of brutal pogroms in Eastern Europe.  (A pogrom is to Jews what race riots and lynchings have been to Southern blacks.)  Those pogroms were a problem for the Jewish community because they couldn’t figure out what they had done to offend God sufficiently that he allowed this to happen.  Seriously.  The Jews thought that if they could stop annoying God he’d stop hitting them over the head with the Cossacks.

They thought and thought and debated . . . through the filter and lens of the Torah, of course . . . and finally decided that they’d offended God by laughing too much.  So they decided to outlaw comedians.  Really.  I am not joking here.  They banned all comedians and revelry makers.  Go figure.  They thought God would like them more if they were serious people.

However, no people can survive without some  form of humor.  So the Jews allowed one category of “humorist” to exist: the bodchan. That’s pronounced bud-Hun, with a guttural “h”.  The bodchan  was the Medieval king’s jester’s evil twin; his job was to make fun of people.  The bodchan  said unkind things, especially at weddings.  He goaded people.  He would insult them.  Think Don Rickles; Don Rickles would have made a superb bodchan.  I’ve seen him in action and he was amazingly quick with his pointed jibes.  Anyway, in the past, at Jewish weddings, the bodchan would, for example, reduce the bride to tears with his descriptions of how she would soon be a wrinkled old hag with grey hair, brought down by disease and illness.  And ditto everybody else.

Well, you get the point.  For a long time, that was the only permitted Jewish humor.  Make people hurt until they laugh.  Or cry.  Well, life was hard, so why not?

From that, there arose an ironic sensibility of the world that mellowed a bit over the centuries . . . and by the time America made a place for such a thing in Vaudeville it had morphed into a very wry and self-effacing form of communication.  It had the bite and irony of containing a bit of truth, but now without sounding so horribly bad.  Think Henny Youngman (“Take my wife . . . . . . . . please”) or Rodney Dangerfield (“My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery people would stop dying”.)  That kind of humor worked because those narratives were based in living life, and witnessing its imperfections and disappointments from up close, rather than in the more simple-minded two-dimensional stereotypes, wit and puns, putdowns, or outright insults.  Oscar Wilde exercised tremendous wit and cleverness, but he was merely brilliantly ironic; his material wasn’t dark material.  He hadn’t suffered enough to do that.  As for me, I’m very comfortable with Jewish ironic humor.  My brain comes up with that kind of stuff.  I believe that the fundamental building blocks of the universe are Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Irony.

Anyway, that’s the history that such a sensibility all came out of.  Isn’t that interesting to know?

Speaking of Rodney Dangerfield, whose self-ironic humor I’ve always liked . . . his spin on humor touches on a form of rhetoric that the Greeks called paraprosdokion (sometimes spelled paraprosdokian).  Paraprosdokion, as I’m certain you all know, is a form of rhetoric in which there are two parts, and in which the second part denies or undercuts the first one.  Or modifies it in a subtly humorous way.  A lot of American humor used to be of this type: comic one-liners or two-liners that had a comically self-contradictory feel.  Like Rodney Dangerfield’s delivery.  Will Rogers and George Allen were pretty good at it too.

Here are some examples of paraprosdokion.  They range from the funny to the not-so-funny:

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way.
So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

He has hit rock bottom
and has begun to excavate.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather,  
not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. 
But it’s still on the list.

Light travels faster than sound. 
This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

If I agreed with you
we’d both be wrong.

They hired a band that was so lousy
that every time a waiter dropped a tray we all got up and danced.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit;
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

I have so much
to be humble about.

I was brought up to respect my elders. 
I’m just having a hard time finding any these days.

Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says “If an emergency, notify:”
I put “DOCTOR”.

I didn’t say it was your fault,
I said I was blaming you.

I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with “Guess” on it…
so I said “Implants?”

I’ve had a wonderful evening. 
Unfortunately, it wasn’t this one.

He took umbrage
when I called him a thief.

Behind every successful man is his woman.
Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

If at first you don’t succeed . . .
well . . . then maybe sky-diving really isn’t for you.

I want to make you feel at home,
even though I wish you were. 

I discovered I scream the same way whether I’m about to be devoured by a great white shark
or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.

Some cause happiness wherever they go.
Others whenever they go.

I used to be indecisive.
Now I’m not sure.

I always take life with a grain of salt,
plus a slice of lemon, and a shot of tequila.

When tempted to fight fire with fire,
remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

He was at his best when the going was good.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Some people hear voices.  Some see invisible people.
Others have no imagination whatsoever.

I’m a Scorpio,
so I don’t believe in Horoscopes.  

Where there’s a will,
I want to be in it.

He started out with nothing,
and through sheer hard work and determination made his way to the very highest point on the Bell Curve.

I was approached by a man who told me he hadn’t eaten in three days. 
I said to him, “my dear man, you must force yourself”.

If all the debutantes from Vassar were laid end to end . . .
well, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

Nothing is better than having dinner with you. 
Much better, in fact.

I’m glad you’ve rested your case. 
It’s weak.  It needs the rest.

He really turned the situation around
a full 360 degrees.

I think you should put your money where your mouth is,
and ignore the fact that money has a lot of germs.

He started out with nothing,
and has retained most of it.

Never wrestle with a pig. 
You’ll both get filthy, and the pig will enjoy it.

If you have a stack of applications on your desk, throw the first ten of them out.
You don’t want to hire unlucky people.

Sex at age 90 is . . .
like trying to shoot pool with a rope.

He put out a good vibe. 
I mean, he squelched it completely.

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More later.

25. MARTIN LUTHER AND THE LAW [2/2]

and SOME AMERICAN HISTORY,  or “KEEPING PEOPLE IN LINE” vs. “HELPING THEM”

MUSINGS, NO. 25, written in 2022  

Part 2 of  2

I’ve been talking (writing?) about incompatible views of the proper functions of government . . . and the mindsets that support such incompatible opinions.  This is a continuation of that topic.

Those incompatible mindsets are formed early in life, and they are formed entirely unconsciously.  No kid sits down to think about the ethics of abortion, for instance; he/she learns that from how his/her parents feel.  Ditto re: households in which the power structure is patriarchal, or dictatorial, or hierarchical, or egalitarian, or racist, or whatever else.  Those attitudes are installed — and deeply so — by age four or five.  Whatever you may ever go into therapy to deal with, it’ll go back to then.  Everything else is simply a metaphor, or vehicle, for those early-learned attitudes and mindsets.

Here’s something interesting.  It was only relatively recently that, in our own history, anyone in authority thought to make sure that “the people” had enough to eat; up until then it was most certainly every man for himself.  You know, Social Darwinism and all that.  This new idea came to the fore with the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt — out of the desperate straits of the Depression.  Roosevelt rolled out help and aid programs of all kinds: the New Deal, the Works Progress Administration, social security and health care . . . etc.  The Republicans have been fighting that mindset ever since.  

I think of them as the “Throw People Off The Raft” Party.

Historically, it was the Roman Empire that first had the idea that the government had a responsibility to ensure that the people had enough to eat.  Isn’t that amazing?  They were the first.  

But they had to.  They were, after all, managing a “tribe” in which most members didn’t know the others, and certainly weren’t related to any of them, and would have had no reason to look out for any of them.  Without a “government” to hold things together, all the groups and tribes and factions would be at each other’s throats in no time.  And Rome itself was huge . . . and needed a steady food supply.  It was like the United States is today, actually — with the added bonus that our government is, under Trump, alienating all of our former allies while simultaneously having anal sex with Russia, our former biggest enemy.  Wow.  Even science fiction types couldn’t make this stuff up.

The IDEA that the government should make sure that the people had enough to eat was, in fact, the Communist idea also.  It didn’t turn out to work that way in Russia, as we all know.  Still, the Scandinavian and European countries have “Socialized Medicine”, and that seems to be working better than our own paltry efforts at national “non-Socialized” health care.  As far as the Republicans go, their platform is that people should get the health care that they can afford, and in the last political campaign Mitt Romney actually poo-pooed working people’s idea that they thought they had a right to health care.  

Well, it’s hard to miss the complete absence of any sense that the Republicans, as prosperous citizens, have ANY responsibility for their less prosperous fellow citizens.  They see the government as TAKING THEIR MONEY AWAY FROM THEM in the form of taxes . . . but without wondering what things such as medicine, education, health, and services to the community [that paid the taxes!] the government might use it for.  It’s just too difficult a concept for them.

It makes one ill.  But on the other hand: wow.  Who knew that Franklin Roosevelt was a Communist!?  Well, he was!  He made efforts to distribute to the people what the people needed, both in the second half of the Great Depression and World War II.

And still, all that considered — insofar as it is a good and decent idea for a government to look out for its citizens — our own Republic didn’t lift much of a finger to help with the feeding-everyone effort while the Communists were advertising that that was their ultimate goal.  Our own ruling class saw doom and upper-class bankruptcy in the Communist scenario, and the U.S. fought the Communists and their egalitarian ideas tooth and nail.

Well, we all know that “Communism failed”.  It might have done so anyway, of its own internal complications, and without our help.  But we don’t know that.  We did help.  And our help was MASSIVE: we opposed, fought, resisted, propagandized, disinformed, misinformed, undermined, blackballed, vilified, and attacked Communists and Communism in every way we could, and justified our every move by pointing to their nefariousnesses.  Any government under that kind of assault will not be free to develop in peaceful ways.  

By “our own ruling class”, as I mentioned above, I mean pretty much anyone who made a lot of money by hook or by crook and has become part of “the American way”; that is, after all, the principal social message that any and all schools will have taught.  Or, if they didn’t teach it, they certainly never examined or questioned the principal pillars of American though.  These are the “we’re-the-good-guys” trope, the “right-to-get-ahead” part of the American Dream, and the Sanctity-of-Private-Property promoters.  

That has of course spread far and wide: and the propaganda got so thick that you could be lynched in the South if someone called you a Communist.  Under the highly alcoholic senator Joe McCarthy many people got persecuted, prosecuted, fired, blacklisted, boycotted, injured, etc. for thinking Communism was a good idea.  Yes, we all know that Communism failed. But the idea of it was nonetheless excellent: that everyone chips in and participates in a classless society.

The main idea was that You Should And Will Get Yours (“from everyone according to their ability to everyone according to their needs”) . . . but You Shouldn’t And Will Not Get Anyone Else’s.  Here, if you’ve noticed, the 1% has gotten the 99%’s share.  The financial world certainly stole a bunch of everyone else’s in the 2008 fiasco . . . and no one has rectified any of it.  Nor will they, from what I can see.  Well, neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump hinted that this was going to be a plank of their platform, in the past election.  And I don’t hear whispers about it in the election to come.

Well, the F.B.I. was going to take care of the Communist problem; its mandate was to oversee Domestic law and order.  (The C.I.A., born out of the earlier O.S.S., had the task of overseeing Un-domestic law and order.)  It was, therefore, the F.B.I.’s main job to get rid of all the domestic Communists (well, the ten most wanted criminals too, but mainly the Communists).  

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However, the F.B.I. allowed the Communist party to remain active in this country.  Yes, it did.  

And why did it do so?  Well, mostly because it needed bad guys.  The F.B.I. understood that once the Communists were gone it would have no reason to exist.  It would be out of a job.  There weren’t enough “ten most wanted” people to keep that many F.B.I. people employed.

I was told this many years ago by an old Communist fellow who knew this history.  I’ve never read about this, by the way; and neither have you. Why would we have?  It’s simply the most credible political strategy scenario imaginable.

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How things have changed.  I was saying that individuals will have internalized the imperative to uphold the function of the Government to “keep things in line”, as far as their sociopolitical lives go.  This will have been internalized as a rule for running their own personal and family lives as well.  

THE CURRENT SITUATION:

I’ve created a life for myself via making guitars.  I learned it by exercising hand skills, perceptual skills, analytical skills, and experienced common sense.  I have the sense that I now live in a world in which hand skills and common sense are less and less needed.  Well, electronic devices and computers have taken over.  By the same token, I seem to live in a world in which following one’s conscience and common sense of humanity is less and less the thing to do.  Especially by those who have influence and power they feel the need to defend.  Exercise of conscience and common sense appear to have been replaced by “following policy” or “following the rules”.  This seems to me quite true in the realm of politics — particularly the politics of the Right — as well as the corporate (financial, manufacturing, medical and scientific) sectors.   

You know, “carry out the Policy and don’t complicate things or waste time by being nice, empathetic, helpful, or a bleeding heart to people”.  

I probably sound like I’m overstating this, but that last part is very absent in today’s politics.  All you have to do is listen to any current official’s explanation of how the government has to separate illegals from their children.  And there’s Kelly Ann Conway’s famous “alternate facts” spin.  They mean it.  This is these functionaries’ job description.  It has to be, because of party policy.  And they’re paid to carry it out.

I wrote about this aspect of the plight of “illegals” in my last newsletter.  “It’s Disneyland for the kids”; someone actually said that . . . as the children live in cages without their families nearby, and “supervised” by people assigned to feed them, make sure none of them get too sick or try to escape.  The official line is: “well, we don’t want to do that, but it’s unavoidable; the main thing is that we have to keep the nation safe.”  Basically, it’s “we have no choice”.  I keep on hearing that on news programs.

I got an interesting email in response to my thoughts, from a friend; he wasn’t happy with the separating of families and children but, but he did make a point of letting me know that these people were here illegally and that we were merely sending them back to their own countries.

I don’t wish to start fights with people.  But it seems to me that this little conversation contains two entirely separate issues.  On the one hand, well, yes, they’re not here legally, and something ought to be done about that.  On the other hand — and I seem to be emphasizing this one in my own mind — how does that entitle anyone to mistreat them?  

I don’t need to tell you that the countries that many of the refugees are coming from (Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Syria, Iraq, some African countries, etc.) are DANGEROUS to live in, do I?  I guess that my thinking focuses on how untenable it is to live in those countries, as opposed to the fact that those people were born in those countries and should stay there if they don’t have the papers with which to immigrate here.  Would that life were that easy and hold on as I peel my blood pressure off the ceiling.  

As I’ve written before, my family and I are/were Hungarian immigrants.  We left Europe after the second world war, along with millions of people who had been displaced by that war, whose lives had been destroyed, and who wanted a new beginning.  In our case we left Hungary and went to Austria.  Then we moved to England.  Then we moved to Cuba.  Then we moved to Mexico.  No one wanted us. 

Is this sounding familiar? 

We did arrive here in the U.S. “legally” in 1959, after 14 years of wandering.  World War 2 was over as of 1945.  Plus, I think my parents knew we’d get in if we waited long enough (the U.S. was “the good guys” back in those days, much more than it is now).

I don’t think it works like that for the refugees I just mentioned, though.  Their nations are quite active areas of poverty, disease, and civil war.  And it is largely civil war that is supported by various world powers – us included.  That’s really different than the situation my parents and I faced.

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After World War II Cuba was one of two countries on this side of the Atlantic that accepted refugees without quota limitations.  The other was Ecuador.  So, those who didn’t want to rot away in some European internment camp flocked to Cuba or Ecuador, just to have a place to rest until they could figure out what to do with the rest of their lives.  Those became staging areas.  And from them expatriate Europeans moved on to Canada, the United States, Latin America, Palestine, Australia, back to Europe, or even Africa.  My family and I were part of that flow of humanity.  And we knew what it felt like to be strangers in a strange land, whom no one wanted and who would have been persecuted as “illegals” had we snuck in somewhere.  A lot like today’s Muslims and Mexicans.  These can be considered this administration’s M & Ms.   And they don’t have staging areas like Cuba and Ecuador to escape to.

Eventually, my family and I got green cards.  And here we are.

Here’s a question that I don’t have a good answer for.  An awful lot of Americans are from immigrant stock.  How can they feel this way about the next wave of people who are on that same track?  

What’s that?  What did you say?  Oh, we’re white and they’re not?  They lack the skills and education the U.S. needs?  Yeah, that explains it.  And they hate the U.S.?  What was I thinking?  And of course we did take in the Jews, the Italians, the Irish and the Scots of “the Celtic migration”, and other Europeans; these have been here a while and have by now become “American” – everything that the wanna-bes are not.  Pardon me for saying it but, from what I can see, that includes not being white.  Darker skinned people may or may not hate the U.S. . . . but what they all mainly want is to be able to feed their families and live in peace.  

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Just so.  As I try to put all these pieces together so that they make some sense to me I’m left with the conclusion that beauty, sympathy, charity, and kindness toward others seem to be quite useless in the minds of . . . well . . . Evangelicals, xenophobes, anti-gays, Tea Party people, America Firsters, and such.  They’re certainly useless and pointless in the struggles against the people who are now being labeled as bad and dangerous.  At least, that’s what it seems like from what I’m seeing and hearing.  

I probably sound very facetious in saying this, but I’m being straight.  It really doesn’t matter whether anyone thinks I’m saying that those are bad people or not; that’s beside the point.  I’m saying that the “nationalists” seem to think*** like that.  The qualities I named seem to not be useful to those people.  If they were useful or valued, well, they’d use them.  Would they not?

*** “Think” is such a silly-sounding word.  Try saying it to yourself a few times.  Doesn’t it sound like someone clanking a fork on some plumbing pipes?

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Aldous Huxley, in his book Brave New World, describes a futuristic society in which everyone kowtows to Big Brother; everyone participates in the daily five minutes’ hate that is directed against whoever big brother doesn’t like that week.  Once a week, everything stops for five minutes and people focus their hatred on someone or some group.

Behold Fox news and Rush Limbaugh.

Man, those scare me.  Hatred, hatred, hatred.  It’s like Germany before World War 2.  Can we be reassured by the fact that the current White House’s [Donald Trump’s] staff has already many times the turnover that Adolph Hitler’s staff did?  It’s like a tire that’s had sixty or seventy re-treads.  If anyone has any helpful insights into this, I’d be interested in hearing them.

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HERE’S SOME HUMOR ABOUT SOMETHING USELESS:

Paddy, the Irishman, walks into his favorite pub one afternoon.  Well, he’s not actually walking; he’s limping and dragging his leg.  

He’s covered in scrapes and black-and-blue marks.  His arm’s in a sling and he has a bandage wrapped around his head.

The barman looks at him in shock and says, “Paddy!  What happened to ye?”

Paddy replies, “Tim O’Malley gave me a beatin’ ”.

The barman, still shocked, asks, “what did he beat you with?”

Paddy replies, “he beat me with a shovel”.

“Well”, says the barman, “ ‘tis a fine beatin’ he gave ye, I can see.  But did ye no’ have anything in your hand you could defend yourself with?”

“Aye, I did”, says Paddy.  “Mary O’Malley’s breast.  ‘Twas a thing of rare beauty . . .  but I have to tell ye, honestly, t’was useless in a fight”.

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The Harvard-like Test

This is based upon typical graduation requirements at Harvard.  Try to finish within 5 minutes.  When you are done, count the number correct and see how you compare to others. OK, here we go…

1. Is there a 4th of July in England? Yes or no?

 2. How many birthdays does the average man have?

 3. Some months have 31 days. How many have 28?

 4. How many outs are there in an inning?

 5. Can a man in California marry his widow’s sister?

 6. Take the number 30, divide it by 1/2, and then add 10. What do you get?

 7. There are 3 apples and you take two away. How many apples are you left with?

 8. A doctor gives you three pills and tells you to take one every half an hour.  How long will the pills last?

 9. A farmer has 17 sheep. All but 9 of them die. How many sheep are left?

10. How many animals of each sex did Moses bring with him on the ark?

11. A butcher in the market is 5’10” tall. What does he weigh?

12. How many 2 cent stamps are there in a dozen?

13. What was the President’s name in 1960?

NO CHEATING

So how do you think you did?

(Answers below.)

TEST ANSWERS:

1. Is there a 4th of July in England? Yes or No?

     Yes. It comes right after the 3rd.

2. How many birthdays does the average man have?

     One (1). You can only be born once.  The others are birthday anniversaries.

3. Some months have 31 days. How many have 28?

     Twelve (12). All of them have at least 28 days.

4. How many outs are there in an inning? Six (6).

     Don’t forget there is a top and bottom to every inning.

5. Can a man in California marry his widow’s sister?

     No. He must be dead if it is his widow.

6. Take the number 30, divide it by 1/2, and then add 10. What do you get?

     Seventy (70); thirty (30) when divided by 1/2 is 60.

7. There are 3 apples and you take two away. How many apples are you left with?

     Two (2). YOU take two apples . . . therefore YOU have TWO apples.

8. A doctor gives you three pills and tells you to take one every half an hour.

     How long will the pills last?

     One hour. If you take the first pill at 1:00, the second at 1:30,

     and the third at 2:00, the pills have run out and only one hour has passed.

9. A farmer has 17 sheep. All but 9 of them die.

     How many sheep are left?

     Nine (9). Like I said, all BUT nine die.

10. How many animals of each sex did Moses have on the ark?

     None. Moses never had an ark.

11. A butcher in the market is 5′ 10 tall.  What does he weigh?

     Meat … that is self-explanatory.

12. How many 2 cent stamps are there in a dozen?

     Twelve (12). How many eggs are in a dozen? TWELVE … it’s a dozen.

13. What was the President’s name in 1960?

     George Bush. As far as I know, he hasn’t changed his name.

So, how did you do?

13 correct………GENIUS…you are good.

10-12 correct….ABOVE AVERAGE…but don’t let it go to your head.

7-9 correct……..AVERAGE…but who wants to be average?

4-6 correct……..SLOW…pay attention to the questions!

1-3 correct………IDIOT…what else can be said?

0 correct…………CONGRATULATIONS, you are a certified MORON

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – <> – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

HERE’S A RIDDLE FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT.  IF YOU’RE LESS THAN 12 YEARS OLD YOU’LL  HAVE FIGURED  IT OUT EASILY.  IF YOU’RE  30 OR OLDER,  IT MAY WELL STUMP  YOU:

A COWBOY RIDES INTO TOWN AT NOON ON FRIDAY.

TWO DAYS LATER, HE RIDES OUT OF TOWN, AT EXACTLY NOON, ON FRIDAY.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

FRIDAY IS THE NAME OF HIS HORSE.

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – <> – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

21. MARTIN LUTHER & THE LAW [1/2]

(Or: “KEEPING PEOPLE IN LINE” vs. “CATERING TO THEIR NEEDS”)

“Newsletter” No. 21, written in 2020

Part 1 of  2

I’ve been writing on and off about Martin Luther, the mental and spiritual spark plug behind the European Reformation of 500 years ago.  His influence lives on in various versions of social belief and outlook, among American Evangelicals of all stripes, and in the Alt Right, and among Neo-Conservative groups.  Not to mention in newly re-emerging conservative, racist, and nationalist groups all over Europe.

Luther’s most earnestly argued contribution to society appears to have been his championing of the rights and privileges of the Authoritarian Personality.  Luther stood for the position that everyone should be subject to the governing authorities.  Well . . . one would need to understand the historical context within which this idea first lifted its head, in order to more fully understand that dictum better than this single bald sentence can explain anything.  However, I can give you the short version.  

Luther himself left a record that shows him to have been an explosively belligerent, intransigent, and uncompromising defender (propagandist? shill?) for his view of things.  His message was that Faith alone would save one, and that otherwise the proper function of government was to Impose Order.  The proper function of government was NOT to be Helpful, Sympathetic, or Supportive of its citizens’ various human needs.  

In other words, “Governing Authority” was there to keep those in line who had insufficient Faith and/or trust . . . in . . . uh . . . God, and also the government authority.  That’s rather circuitous, but I think Luther’s message really did boil down to this.  And it certainly is more fun for whoever is in power and authority.  Well, Authoritarianism certainly was the European model for civic behavior, as well as for child rearing, all the way through my parents’ generation — particularly in the Germanic countries.  I believe that it still is so in the Germanic countries . . . and no doubt other ones as well.  

My own family is European and my father treated all of us as his personal property.  Well, that’s exactly how and what he’d been taught.  His job was to “impose order” by getting the rest of us to obey him.  It was NOT his job to advise, act as a model, to support us personally or emotionally or sympathetically or morally, nor to philosophize or problem-solve.  He didn’t have much of a clue about any of that that.  But of course, he wouldn’t have: he was brought up in exactly the same way — but with much more physical punishment than he imposed on me.  So kudos for him for acting better in that way.  He merely frightened the shit out of me.

For my father and people who have been brought up as he was, everything is a struggle for power and control . . .  and even survival . . . precisely as even the smallest thing appears to be for Donald Trump.  He has NO sense of scale, perspective, boundaries, or proportion.  He has to be Respected and Obeyed.  For him, being criticized by a nine-year old seems to hold the same charge as being dissed by the leader of another nation.  Never mind that the nine year old is not likely to have nuclear weapons.  

NARCISSISTIC INJURIES

There is the concept of the “narcissistic injury” in contemporary psychology.  This is code for “a psychological injury that is so massive that it makes one feel that one has ceased to exist”.  This probably sounds fanciful, and a mere sentence like what I just wrote doesn’t at all do justice to the reality of the experience.  But I’ve seen such things happen and can vouch for the fact that they really do exist.  

I think it’s likely that most people have seen a bit of this kind of thing but have had no category of experience or knowledge to put it into.  If you’ve ever seen anyone in a mindless rage that they are powerless to stop, or seen someone completely collapse into a helpless puddle, then you’ve seen a narcissistic collapse too . . . perhaps without understanding what you were seeing.

Some people have so little sense of self, and have a personality that is so fragile, that it takes rather little to make them feel that they have ceased to exist.  As I said before, such sentences really don’t convey what that’s like. But, really: one’s sense of self and one’s sense of existing in the world disappears completely.  That is what the psychological literature is actually describing.  One minute one might be cooking dinner and the next thing one finds one’s self in an internal black vacuum of nothingness . . . in some dimension for which there are no words . . . just as infants have no words.  

Or, imagine that you’re in a department store surrounded by hundreds of objects, merchandise, things, colors, sounds, etc.  Then, POW!  It’s all gone and you’re in a large, empty, silent, and dark room . . . or in a room that’s chaotic with too-bright, colors, changing shapes, and loud sounds.  Either way, you have the primitive mental powers of a freaked out five-month old.

The adult person who is caught up in a narcissistic injury may in fact talk or rant, but that’s not the feeling state.  I repeat: the feeling state is that any coherent sense of one’s self will have completely vanished.  It’s just that one can have tantrums in which he can now throw loud words about, and also flail around uncontrollably, and even harm people.  Also, as I said before: this is impossible for someone who is a stranger to such mental states to imagine; but believe me, it happens.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – <> – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

HERE’S A RIDDLE FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT.  IF YOU’RE LESS THAN 12 YEARS OLD YOU’LL   BE ABLE TO FIGURE IT OUT EASILY.  IF YOU’RE 30 OR OLDER, IT MAY WELL STUMP  YOU:

A COWBOY RIDES INTO TOWN AT NOON ON FRIDAY.

TWO DAYS LATER, HE RIDES OUT OF TOWN, AT EXACTLY NOON, ON FRIDAY.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

     – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – <> – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

More later, along with the answer to the riddle.

 16. A LETTER TO WELLS FARGO BANK [June, ’18]

This was written in June of 2018

I don’t know if I’m just getting grumpy in my old age, or if I just am tired of all the lies that I soak and marinate in every day via all the media. Oh, you know: 

I’m your friend; I’m here to help you. You just have to . . . 
    buy me; 
      eat me; 
         drink me; 
           smoke me; 
             admire me;
               be happy with me;
                 have faith in me; 
                   be beautiful with/for me; 
                     fuck me; 
                      own me; 
                        trust me;
                         use me;
                          wear me; 
                           be loyal to me; 
                             send me a check;
                               have a nicer car; 
                                vote for me;
                                 keep up with me;
                                   be more with it; 
                                   etc. etc. etc.
                                    etc. etc.
                                    etc.
                                    etc.
                                    etc.
                                    etc.
                                    etc.
                                    etc.

Anyway, I went to my bank two weeks ago, to make a bank wire transfer.  As it happened, I was directed to a newbie bank officer with whom to do the necessary paperwork.  Being a newbie, he was accompanied by a (female) supervisor who helped him through the various steps.  I’d never met either of them before, and between the three of us we did this task in about 20 minutes.  The next day I got a follow-up email telling me the status of the wire transfer.  The email said:

“Good Afternoon Ervin,

I just wanted to follow up with you in regards to the wire we processed yesterday at the banking center. As we discussed it will be going out Monday due to it being late in the afternoon. And I wanted also to thank you for your continued business with us.  Your relationship is important to me and I appreciated having the opportunity to assist you. My goal is to help you succeed financially and to provide you with an exceptional level of service, while ensuring your service requests are met. 

If you have questions, or would like assistance or information please call me using the information below.  

Thank you. We appreciate your business.

(The guy’s name appeared here, without a “yours”, “sincerely”, or other sign-off word or phrase)

I sent him the following response:

Hi, Mr. ________;

Thank you for getting back to me, and I appreciate your help in the matter of the international wire transfer.

 You emailed me the standard politenesses about appreciating my business and eagerness to assist me. It’s nice of you to say things like that; but if you’ll forgive me, that is not my experience of Wells Fargo bank. I’ll tell you up front that this is not your fault; it’s just that banking at Wells Fargo is unpleasant for me. 

 Over the years I have seen Wells Far-to-go turn from a reasonably friendly bank full of people whom I’d see every time I went there into a building that is perpetually full of strangers.  I’ve seen tellers, officials, loan officers, managers, personal bankers, credit card staffers, portfolio advisors, etc. come and go countless times. The parking lot attendants have longer tenure.  There’s only one person left that I recognize from long ago: ______; and she’ll be retiring soon.   _____ has been around for a while, and so has that very nice ______ (?) fellow whom I sometimes bring a coffee for.  But everyone else is a stranger to me.  

I met you and Ms. _____ for the first time only last week, over the matter of the bank wire transfer.  You greeted me when I walked through the door.  In the past three months I’ve been greeted at the door by three other people whom I’d never seen before and have not seen again.  As things are going, both you and Ms. _____ will both soon leave and I’ll never see either of you again.  The very nice connection I made with her will disappear forever.  Wells Fargo is not really there to help me, I’m afraid.  If it were, there would be familiar faces for me to feel comfortable with, and to have built up some familiarity with and create some sense of community.  Frankly, I have a more personal relationship with my grocery store checkout person, whom I at least see most times I go there.  But this is not your fault. 

A bit of history: I’ve banked at that branch of Wells Fargo since before you were born.  As I said, you and met for the first time only last week.  I am twice your age and I come from a different generation and culture than you do.  It would be polite for someone in your position to address me as Mr. Somogyi.  You have, as far as I’m concerned, no license to do differently.  

It’s a bit awkward to point this out but, while it is common in this culture to casually call people by their first names, ours is a professional/commercial relationship in which we are not friends or equals.  You don’t know me; I don’t know you; and you are paid to deal with me.  As a matter of fact, Wells Fargo makes the money with which it pays you directly off my patronage, and that of others like me.  I’m fairly responsible about things like how people address one another; I was brought up to call my elders Mr. or Mrs., or even Ms.  You may not have noticed that I am at least three times your age.

Please forgive me for this longish letter; you’ve done almost nothing to deserve it.  You are not responsible for the bulk of my frustrations.  I’m sure you have your own troubles.  But you should have some idea about manners.

Years ago my bank branch was full of visible and audible activity.  Now, when I walk in it’s almost deserted.  There are two (or occasionally three) tellers at ten teller’s windows.  The other seven or eight windows look like cemeteries waiting for a visitor.  That’s probably because everyone is doing electronic banking.  But I’m old-fashioned and I go to the bank.  And these days that feels sort of like sitting next to the girl no one wants to dance with; the effect on me is somewhere between disconcerting and creepy.

Mostly, however, it’s not that the bank is inefficient or thoughtless or greedy; your employer is a criminal.  You work for a criminal organization.  Wells Far-to-go claims to be benevolent and civically responsible, but it famously opened MILLIONS of unauthorized accounts for its customers without their knowing about it.  It didn’t really have to do that, you know; but it did because it could.  It refunded the money, of course (or claimed it did); but it did so unwillingly and under threat once the secret was out.

My honest opinion is that Wells Fargo’s board of vastly overpaid directors should rot in a Nicaraguan prison.  A few people did lose their jobs over that act of out-and-out piracy, but not much more than that happened.  Wells Far-to-go participated in the financial debacle of circa 2008; it also has financed and continues to finance all kinds of corporate projects that devastate the environment and is PRIMARILY focused on making money for its already moneyed customers. Its mortgage track record ranges from unsatisfactory to horrible; I know that from experience and from others who have spoken with me.  I also have a friend who is a financial attorney, who has spoken with me about having had way too much experience with how utterly shabby, shady, and corrupt Wells Far-to-go’s behaviors and policies on the whole have been.  

I’m embarrassed to be one of Wells Fargo’s customers.  Not that most of the other big banks are any different.  But I don’t know of any more benign bank to put my money into. 

You are a youngish man trying to make his way through life and who has found a career with this institution.  And you are simply doing your job. I mean you no ill or disrespect whatsoever.  As far as I know, you are not dishonest and you are not in a position to engage in malfeasance.  You should, though, observe the niceties of acknowledging your elders with some politeness; and in your job most of the elders you meet are not your friends; you’re engaging in monetary transactions.  I’ve met people at that bank over the years that I’ve honestly liked.  However, I’m unable to like Wells Fargo itself. 

Once, a long time ago, the bank had mounted a promotional campaign that advertised business loans to small and struggling community businesses. Being young, and starting a struggling small business, I applied for such a loan.  The bank official I spoke with seemed to be kindly disposed toward the young and naive young person I was at the time, and told me straight out that despite what they say in their advertising the bank has little to no interest in that kind of activity, and wouldn’t loan me anything.  Those weren’t his precise words but that was EXACTLY what he said to me.  Ditto with my mortgage some years later: Wells Far-to-go said yes almost right off the bat, of course; and then it said no.  In the world of sales, this is called bait-and-switch.

Today, a bank wire transfer should go through to any place in the world in microseconds.  I’d give the paperwork, etc., 24 hours, max.  As it is, I was told that it may take five to ten business days . . . during which, in addition to the fee that I was charged, Wells Fargo gets to use my money gratis for that length of time.  As far as service goes, whom exactly is that a service to?  Well, it is business as usual, is it not?

I may or may not see you next time I go to the bank.  If I do, I’ll offer to bring you a cup of coffee.  Ditto Ms. ________.  Nothing of what I’ve been writing is your or her fault . . . although, as I intimated above, I’ve been subject to the bank’s various business practices for as long as you’ve been on this planet (and I think Ms. ________’s lifetime too).  Finally, Wells Fargo has made money off me every month and every year of that time.  Coffee-wise, I usually go to the place up the block; they have decent coffee.

Respectfully (toward you, not the bank), Ervin Somogyi

What I’ve Been Up To, February 2019

I try to stay away from the news these days.  The lies and lying really get to me.

Speaking of lying, there was a t.v. series called Lie To Me, starring actor Tim Roth, a while back.  He played an expert in reading body language and facial expressions, who was brought in to solve a crime or mystery when something really bad had happened.  Roth figured out who the bad guy was by interviewing people and following out those kinds of facial and postural clues.  It was an interesting show; particularly because in explaining how various body and facial tics indicated lies, photos of various real politicians’ faces (when they were being interviewed, questioned, or just speaking) were used in illustration.  My God but our leaders are brazen and mendacious.

———————-<>——————–

Having mentioned actor Tim Roth, I want to say that he starred in one of the best movies I’ve ever seen . . . and that no one has ever heard of.  I found it by accident surfing channels late one night.  It’s titled “The Legend of 1900” and, as I said, nobody has ever heard of it.  But it’s a GREAT movie.  It’s about a piano-playing prodigy who is born in the year 1900; it’s basically a romance, but without any actual romance — and with a cameo by actress Melanie Thiéry, who is one of the three most achingly beautiful females who have kept their clothes on that I’ve ever seen on a screen.

The musical high point of the film is a sequence in which the famous Jelly Roll Morton (“the Father of Jazz”) challenges the Tim Roth character to a public piano-duel.  That sequence is to die for.  Give yourself a treat some evening and watch this gem.

 ———————-<>——————–

         On a different level entirely, I want to show you an image of my “Diospyros” guitar.  Diospyros is the generic name for ebony, and this guitar is made up of lots of ebony tiles mixed in with contrasting tiles of Yellowheart wood.  Overall, the pattern looks a bit like all the Midwest farmland that one flies over and sees if one looks out of the airplane window; or, on a different scale, a stylized version of the fitted-together-cobblestone streets one finds in Mexican towns.

 

This guitar was, in fact, inspired by exactly that: the appealingly geometric look of the fitted-together cobblestones one can see on Mexican streets.

         There’s a bit of a story behind this, of course.  Part of that story has to do with how I notice, and get distracted by, the visuals in the world around me.  I notice patterns, colors, textures, proportions, disproportions, continuities and discontinuities of line, evenness and unevenness, and all kinds of beauty in things no one else seems to notice.  Textural stuff REALLY grabs my eye.  This propensity really gets in my way when I’m trying to get anything done; so I try to hide when I’m working so as to get away from interruptions.  Interruptions REALLY kill my focus and concentration.

         Anyway, I was in a relationship with a woman some years ago.  As I was married at the time it was, technically, an adulterous relationship — although my wife knew about it and really didn’t care.  The marriage had, how should I put it, passed its “discard after . . . “ date.

         This lady and I went to Puerto Vallarta for a week’s . . . uh  . . . romantic getaway.  Puerto Vallarta has long ago been converted into a tourist trap and is not nearly so pleasant a place in which to spend time as the travel industry might want you to think.  The tourist hotels are about a mile out of town and isolated from the riff-raff. Those resort buildings are magnificent, impressively large, and soulless. They also jettison an awful lot of sewage directly into the ocean, not far from the town.  Charming, that.

Puerto Vallarta is picturesque but has the scuffed and worn look of something that’s fallen on hard times.  It’s right on the ocean; but the beach sand itself is a shockingly narrow strip . . . and it’s brown and looks dirty; it looks like a brown sugar truck had a major spill there.  (The tourist hotels, in contrast, had imported tons of white sand that really does look nice, although the overall effect is that of an incongruous patch of white off in the distance, in the middle of an otherwise brown landscape.)

The main industry in the town is tourism, of course: the stores, restaurants, tours, crafts objects and imported merchandise, street vendors, etc. are all geared to that.  (The crowning touch is that in order for the government to protect its tourist income, Puerto Vallarta is policed by soldiers from a nearby army facility who are armed not with pistols and rifles, but with machine guns.)

—————–<>——————

It was during this romantic getaway that I found out that I didn’t really like the woman I was with.  She was . . . well, let’s just say that we were appallingly mismatched.  It was sort of like going on a romantic hideaway trip and discovering that your partner is a transvestite.

This lady was smart, attractive, and, among other things, a competitive scrabble player.  For months, she beat me every time we played.  I didn’t really mind; I like words and playing with words, and I didn’t have anything riding on whether I won or lost.  And, in any event, the more we played the better I got and the closer the gap between our scores became.  We took the scrabble set down to Puerto Vallarta and it was while we were down there that I beat her at scrabble for the first time.  MAN, WAS SHE PISSED!  Outraged, in fact.   And she had a major tantrum.  Such . . . uh . . . misbehavior for such a seemingly trivial reason . . . well, it was pivotal for me.  The relationship went quickly downhill after that.

In any event, after that tantrum, rather than to hang out with her, I walked around Puerto Vallarta a lot.  As I walked, I noticed beautiful visual patterns and textures everywhere.  I hadn’t quite realized until that week how much these things impinge on me; but IT WAS VERY PLEASANT for me to simply walk around and see the sights.  I looked at wrought iron work on the houses, the colors of the buildings, the cobblestoned streets, iguanas for sale, etc.  I learned a bit about Puerto Vallarta itself, too.

For instance: there are insect in that region that live in hidey-holes at the bottoms of small craters that they make in the dirt; if you go out of town you’ll see lots of these little conical craters in the soil.  These “V”-sided craters are about the size of a walnut, and their sloped sides are lined with VERY FINE sand.  Being fine sand, these craters are a lighter color than the surrounding dirt, and are therefore not hard to find; but of course insects don’t care about color.  Anyway, when another insect walks into one of these conical depressions the sand all around is so fine that it cannot get its footing and it slides down to the bottom of the dip; then the insect jumps out of its hole, grabs the unsuspecting victim, and eats it.  This predator is called a “Lolita” by the locals, by the way.

Who knew Puerto Vallartans were so literate? Anyway, it was fun to look and learn.

         Fast-forward some years. I came into possession of a coffee-table book titled ARTEFACTOS, which has lots of photographs of arts and crafts artifacts from Latin America.  One of the photos was of a beautiful cobblestones street of the kind I’d seen in Puerto Vallarta, where squarish and rectangular-ish stones (rather than more rounded or oval ones) were fitted together.  Wow.  That image just jumped out at me.  And I filed that away as something that I could do something with at some point.

         Fast-forward a few more years to when I had a hankering to make a guitar for myself — for no other reason than that I wanted to do something different from all the usual stuff. Enter the idea for the Diospyros guitar. The attached image is of this instrument.

I have to tell you that carrying this project out was VERY time consuming . . . but I didn’t really mind.  Just like losing at scrabble.  I was chasing something new simply because I really wanted to do it.  And I could. And eventually the Diospyros guitar was completed.

———————-<>——————–

The thing of it is: it probably never would have been made had I not disliked that girlfriend as much as I did and stumbled on the otherwise invisible beauties of Puerto Vallarta.  (I mean, who ever goes anywhere to look at pavement?)  I have to tell you that in a weird way I feel indebted to her; the Diospyros came about, in part, with her unwitting help.  I have more than once been struck by a philosophical sense of how an irritant can ultimately become a pearl.

———————-<>——————–

Speaking of “philosophical”, I had a Mondegreen experience with that word some years ago.  A Mondegreen is a mishearing of a lyric or poetic line in which one imagines that something quite different has been said.

The Mondegreen originates from a Scottish ballad where the hero of the narrative is slain . . . “ and . . . [they] laid him on the green”.  Someone heard that as  “. . . and Lady Mondegreen” instead . . . and thus Mondegreens were born.

Anyway, when I was in High School there was a popular Harry Belafonte song called “Island in the Sun”.  It’s a Caribbean tune that goes:

 

This is my island in the sun

Where my people have toiled since time begun

Though I may sail on many a sea

Its shores will always be home to me

Oh island in the sun

Hailed to me by my father’s hand

All my days I will sing in praise

Of your forests, your waters, and shining sand . . . etc. etc.

The song goes on to the phrase  “. . . and Calypso songs philosophical . . .”    And that’s when I Mondegreened.  I thought Belafonte was singing “Calypso songs full of Soffy Cal”.  I couldn’t figure out what Soffy Cal was.  For years I thought it might be some exotic Caribbean substance.

O.K. I’ll clam up about that now.  It’s just getting too nacreous and chatoyant around here.

 

More later.

 

-Ervin

Internet Lutherie Discussion Forums

November 12, 2018

 

Someone asked about why I don’t post photos of current builds, comments, updates, etc. on the lutherie discussion forums.  Well, there are several reasons.  Mostly, I just don’t have the time.

I think that the Acoustic Guitar Forum is mostly a good thing; it gives individuals a chance to show off their latest work and get comments and information and support.  I particularly am impressed by the postings such as one that I saw by JESSUPE (Jessupe Goldastini).  What a painstakingly original and unique piece of work he’s accomplished!  I have myselfposted my thoughts on various internet sites in the past.  I did quite a bit of this some years ago on the ANZLF (Autralia/ New Zealand Luthier’s Forum), as well as on this one, and on a third one the name of which I’ve forgotten.  These were mostly good experiences.  But spending time on internet forums at this point in my life is not really for me; they can really soak one’s time up.  And, frankly, not everyone behaves well.

Aside from all that, I have put everything I know and think about how guitars function, into my two books.  My information is all there.  Really: I’ve kept very little back except the specific thicknesses of my guitar woods.  This is largely because there is no specific target thickness: each guitar top is a bit different in thickness.  This is itself because I’m going for a specific stiffnessevery time, not a thickness.  Each piece of wood is a little bit different, and it’s meaningless to give one number that would include tops for Jumbo guitars, and OM guitars, and OO guitars, and everything in between . . . that would furthermore include no information at all about bracing, string gauge, scale length, voicing procedures, doming, selective thinning within the same top, and the specifics of wood selection.  PLUS: there are by now fully two dozen HOW-TO books that will give one or another specific number for top thickness.  So the best I could do is to give an average thickness.

GOOD VS. BAD TEACHING

I produced a DVD a few years ago of a lecture that I gave in which I listed and explained the factors that are responsible for a guitar’s sound: voicing work, bracing, materials stiffness, and vibrating modes of guitar tops.  I laid out everything that I’ve discovered and use that I consider important.  I even brought some guitar bodies that had been voiced to different degrees of completion, and tapped on their tops to illustrate the progression of tap tones in my voicing work.  Such tap tones audibly reveal how a guitar top “opens up”, and I find them indispensable as guides.

At the end, when the audience was asking questions, someone asked if they could see the final shapes of my bracing (that was producing those tones that had reflected my voicing efforts).  I responded that he’d have to take my voicing class to see that level of the work. That may have been a mistake, and I got some blowback from it as the word spread that I was stingy and secretive with my work.  I regret having sounded so flip and glib.  I wish I’d had the presence of mind to have said the following — or something like it:

“I’ve described every principle and consideration that I find important in dealing with guitar sound: wood stiffness in guitars, optimal bracing, top vibrational motions, torque and string pull, an evenness of the vibrating gradient, the Cube Rule of stiffness, guitars as projectors and as diffusers, and top doming. [NOTE: this stuff is all in my books.]  I’ve told you what I think, and why I think it, and I used visual aids and diagrams. I’ve talked about how I came to discover these important things, and even what mistakes I made along the way.  And, mainly, these are precisely the factors that I work with as I make guitars the sounds of which everyone likes.  Now, if I just show you the shapes and profiles of my bracing . . . youwillimmediatelyforgeteverythingIsaidandgohomeand copywhatyou’veseenmedo.  And that, in my opinion, is really bad teaching”.

I said above that it may have been a mistake for me to refuse to show my final configuration of voiced bracing to the audience member who asked to see it.  That’s half of it.  The other half is: Are you kidding me?; you expect me to show you what it’s taken me four decades to figure out, just for the asking — and then criticize me when I say no?  Pal, I just told you ALL the things that I think about in order to do the work that I do.  I owe you that because I promised to speak about these things.  But I draw the line there; that SPECIFIC stuff is entirely proprietary. I do not owe you to show you the specific fruits of forty-plus years of my learning curve just because you’ve bought a $10 ticket to a presentation I’m making.

I wish to be a cheering section for the honing of one’s own thinking skills.  Also, I know something important that a lot of younger people don’t: things acquired without effort or equitable exchange — sort of like sex on demand — have no significance.  You can stop reading now, by the way; I will post further postings on this matter but they are merely additional commentary.

 

 

Some [More] Thoughts About the Environment, Sex, and Hillary Clinton

May 20, 2018

Hi again.  I want to repeat that you don’t have to read all this stuff.  Or, if you do, try to pace yourself.  And if you find this material interesting it’s perfectly all right with me if you share it, or part of it, with your friends. Or not.

I’ve been rambling on about maleness and femaleness.  I think that ideas of maleness and femaleness are as deeply hardwired into our language as they are hardwired into our minds.  As I suggested, it seems that the very word “environment” reeks of maleness.  At least, that’s how it seems to have started out; these days there’s a bit of an ecological spin to it.

Ditto “patriotism”, which word is much on the political forefront these days, if only in the negative.  The thing about both “patriotism” and “environment” is that they are such fundamental ideas that it never occurs to anyone to question them or see how they fit into the scheme of things.  Instead, people consider that the scheme of things fits into them: they are that basic.  Yet both are man-created concepts, and both of them seemingly trace back to maleness. “Patriotism” comes from the root-word “pater”, meaning “father”.  Patriotism = loyalty to the fatherland.  That root also gives us a whole slew of other words that begin with “pater” or “patr”. Many of them are pretty arcane, but we still use “patriot”, “patrician”, “patrimony”, “patriarchal”, and “paternity test” in everyday discourse.  We also “patronize” people.

In view of that root, what’s the deal with naming a woman “Patricia”?  Also, Athena was the Patron Goddess of Athens and the Patroness of the Arts.  Read up on Athena; those words are used.  But aren’t these all examples of those . . . uh . . . oxygenated moron things?

Given the discouragement that people feel with both the world and with government in general, I’d offer a gentler alternative to the forced, self-serving, ugly, and debauched version of Patriotism that people are rabidly claiming for themselves and/or hysterically accusing others of lacking or betraying.  Become a Matriot.  Believe in the gentler, healthier, and more nourishing principles.  “Matriot”, of course, comes from the word “mater”, or “mother”.

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton, the most hated female of our generation.  It’s true.  People HATE her.  I was listening to an interview with author Amy Chozick, who has just released a book about Ms. Clinton.  Ms. Chozick has put a lot of research and work into her book and ran plentifully into people’s attitude that, well, a woman might be a good president . . . but not that one.  Anyone but her!  A lot of people, women included, have a visceral hatred of Hillary Clinton.  Perhaps you are one such person.

Interestingly, and disturbingly, many people can give no reason for their hatred when asked; they just are adamant in their kneejerk revulsion of her.  Pointing out that such irrationally held opinions are not based in anything real, or documented, or even dispassionately looked at does not seem to help.  Fact-checking is lost on them.  Hillary is literally the most investigated and accused-of-malfeasance person of our generation and no one has ever found anything to charge her with nor found her to be culpable of except being stiff and unspontaneous. Well, Trump did once comment (on national television) that Hillary urinates, and he labeled her as being disgusting for doing so.  So there’s that.  The fact that Trump has such feelings about bathroom breaks is the surest proof that neither Melania nor Ivanka ever urinate.  He couldn’t stand it if they did.  But it’s very odd that he didn’t comment on those Russian prostitutes . . .

                             . . . well, you know . . . when in Moscow . . . arrgkh . . . .

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  uh . . . . . . . . . sorry.  I lose a bunch of brain cells every time I think of that sort of thing.  But no one censured Mr. Frump for his narrow-minded stupidity nor his lack of grace.  And people do HATE Hillary.  There is something seriously wrong here.

I’ve had some conversations of my own with people about these matters, and while I haven’t come away with any greater clarity I do sense that these are still hot topics a year after the election.  People are very frustrated with both Hillary and the Democratic establishment.  Interestingly, to me, almost all the conversations I’ve had were ones in which I was told whom to blame for the mishandlings of Hillary’s presidential campaign.  Or commenting on Hillary’s various failings as Secretary of State.  As though the whole thing was a massive tactical error on someone’s part . . . and without commenting on the incredible peccadillos of the opposition, the big picture, context, political history, Trump’s political track record of minus zero, etc.

Notice that I’m not saying this or that party is right or wrong; to even try to go there will inflame the situation further.  I’m commenting on how polarized the matter is.

That is soooo weird and troubling.

You might ask from where do the Republicans get their ideas that Hillary is    crooked, traitorous, dishonest, untrustworthy, repellent, and/or criminal?  In my next newsletter, a doctor with a flashlight will show us exactly where those ideas come from.

More later.

Some Thoughts About Gender and the Environment

May 10, 2018

I learned a new word the other day: androcracy (pronounced an-DROK-ruh-see).  It means a system ruled by men.

Androcracy indeed; we’re all familiar with that.  “Andro” is the Greek root for “male” or “maleness”; the Latin root is “vir”, as in “virile”.  I’m under the impression that the Greeks also used “vir”, however, so I’m a bit confused on this point: Socrates’ wife Xantippe was famously a sharp-tongued scold and nag, and she was referred to as a “virago”.

Well, I suspect she had reason to be.  Her hubby seems to have been gone all the time, talking philosophy all day long with other men, and in general building up his resumé as a great thinker.  But not being a hubby. From everything I’ve ever read, he ignored his wife; he basically fled from her. He didn’t work as far as I know, and I don’t know what he could have brought home money-wise to make his wife happy (my guess is that he owned land and lived off his rents).  As far as I know there’s never been any mention of whether he had children, although he probably did. Somehow, I doubt that Xantippe started out as a virago.  Well, to the best of my knowledge domesticity was not a priority of any sort in Greek society; what was a priority was the polis, or community.  At least, it was so among the citizens.

Well, certainly the male citizens; slaves and foreigners (called “exenos” in Greek, from which we get the word “xenophobia”) didn’t count.  On top of that, in those days, women weren’t only not part of the social or political picture, but once they married they weren’t part of any picture at all — except maybe in mythology.  They became invisible. At least, that’s what historians have concluded from the remaining writings, folklore, statuary, stories, etc. about Greek daily culture. Greek daily culture, as far as any extant literature or records show, was very male-centered.  As a matter of fact men loved and adored each other in ways that would be viewed as very suspicious by some moderns.

There may have been heterosexual domestic life aplenty, but that’s the kind of thing that is so ordinary that no one ever puts any of it down on paper.  At some future time archaeologists may be trying to decipher the American sense of normal domesticity by referring to surviving historical documents like our Tabloids’ reports on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s marriage, novels by the likes of Ayn Rand and Norman Mailer, media fare such as Divorce Court and Judge Judy, and things that Donald Trump and Woody Allen said.

“Virility” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: “the period in life during which a person of the male sex is in his prime; mature or fully developed manhood or male vigor; power of procreation; male sexual potency; strength and vigor of action or thought”.  Hmmmmm. I guess women must not have any of those attributes, urges, or capacities. Not if the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t say so, and it doesn’t mention women at all as far as this kind of thing goes. So I guess there’s no doubt about it: virility is entirely a guy thing.  Interestingly, I haven’t run across any female version of this word. There’s “chastity”, which is a behavior solely attached to women who aren’t fully developed in their womanhood nor frisky in the procreative department. Its male counterpart is “celibacy”, which is sort of an anti-virility stance.  But there’s no female counterpart to “virility” that doesn’t border on sluttiness, at least that I know of. Women aren’t supposed to want to fuck.  Surely Stormy Daniels is an aberration.  Of course, perhaps she doesn’t want to be a sex object but merely does it because it pays the bills.  You know, like most people’s jobs.

I’m sure that the word “virgin” — which of course means a woman who has not yet had sexual relations — connects in some way to the “vir = maleness” trope.  I mean, they seem to have the same root. The Latin root for “virgin” is supposedly “virgo” or “virge”, but Virgo is also the name of a constellation; and that word is really not all that different from the Latin root for “male”.   Hmmmm. “Virgo/vir” might be something like the similarity between the words “male”/“(fe)male”?

Even Spanish has this odd similarity: “hombre” and “hembra”.  

How come they couldn’t come up with different words for genders that everybody since the beginning of time has agreed are not the same thing at all and perhaps not even from the same planet?

Maybe “virgin” was originally something like “vir + gen“, or “vir + gyne”, indicating that the male essence, when added to the primordial female essence, would start a process to bring some other essence into life and being.  “Gen” is, after all, the root word for beginnings, growth, creating things, procreation, starting things, giving life, and of course generating things.  

On another level (in medicine) we have mutagens, things that start mutations. Androgens are chemicals that stimulate maleness.  Organisms in which gender is not easily identified as being either male or female are androgynous (i.e., male/female).  And, more recently, there is the genome . . . the blueprint that everything starts from or begins with.

“Virtue” doesn’t exactly mean “manliness”, but it does mean something like it.  VIRTue, VIRTual, VIRTuous and other words in which there is a “T” after the “VIR” come from a different root: virtus, meaning excellence, position, or link.  The Oxford English Dictionary devotes almost an entire column to the many meanings and attributes of “virtue”, so it can mean lots of things.  Two of them, however, are “chastity or purity on the part of a woman” and “the display of manly qualities”. So I think we’re still in the same polarized male/female ballpark here.

Getting back to plain old vir: “triumvirate” means ” the rule by/of three men”.  Ergo, virology must be the study of men and maleness, no?  

Well, actually, no.  That word, and also virus and virulent, seem to descend from the root “virulentus”, which means “poison” or “poisonous”.  It’s very suspicious to me that the roots of “man” and “poison” are so similar. Once again, couldn’t they find some other word that actually sounded different???   

We’ve never had a triumgynate.  We’ve never even had a gynate of any sort.  We’ve only had gynecologists . . . who have virtually (there’s that pesky “T” again) all been men.  Go figure.  It does help to explain why the Greek Myths don’t mention the story of Gynocles and the Lion, or Androcles and the Lioness.  Still, everything comes from Mothers, so my mind wants to play with the word origin (origyn makes more sense to me than origen).

Well, mothers indeed: everything does come from them and out of them.  The root word for “mother” is mater . . . as in maternal, maternity, alma mater, matricide, matrimony, matrilineal, matrix, etc.  I don’t think the word “mattress” comes from that root, though. “Mater” gives us the word material.  “Material” is that out of which everything comes.  Everything is made out of, or comes out of, material.  Everything does really come out of the mother.  Likewise, the matrix also has mother-like characteristics.  It is that which holds and contains everything, and within which everything exists, and out from which things come.

Getting back to vir, I wonder if, somehow, the environment secretly refers to . . . all the men around us?  Or all the maleness around us?  How arrogant is that? Yet, there must be something to it.  In ancient Greece once a woman was married the world hardly ever saw her again.  Men did see prostitutes (the Greek word for which was “porne” by the way, from which we get pornography) out in the open – although certainly not in public places where The Men congregated to see and be seen, to be men of affairs, to discuss the matters of the world, do business, participate in the affairs of the community, vote, hang out and network, gossip and socialize, talk of poetry and war, hear the latest news, etc.  I’m pretty sure that the agora (the open public space in the community) was an all-male environment – as was, as I mentioned, most of the remaining literature and whatever historical record that has survived from those times and that culture.  (I suspect that Greek women were agoraphobic in the contemporary feminist meaning of the word.)

I mentioned that the focus of Greek socio-political thought was the polis, the community.  It was the adult Greek male’s responsibility to participate in community events (for a fuller account of this, read some Edith Hamilton or H.D.F. Kitto).  Polis gives us the words “political”, “policy”, and “metropolis”, and maybe even “polite” and “police”.  Those citizens who kept to themselves and did not participate in the affairs of the community were called idiots.  That’s where the word comes from.  Idiot comes from the root idio, which means by itself or from itself.  An idiot was someone who kept to themselves and didn’t participate in the community’s social, political, military, and economic affairs and culture.  It’s the same root as in the words idiopathic and idiosyncratic – which describe a condition or phenomenon that is its own, that arises out of itself, and is not connected to a prior cause.  Idiom, too; an idiom is some figure of speech or phrase that came about by itself by way of grammatical accident or convenience, but without being beholden or connected to, or deriving from, other words, roots, or common speech.  “Idiotic”, likewise, bespeaks of: “man, you’re on your own on that one; no one else is on board with it or is even going anywhere near it.  That’s all yours”.  

Finally, does it not seem to you that, in a way, matrix is just as apt a word as environment is?  They both refer to the . . . uh . . . vessel, membrane, or context that contains and holds everything — both literally and metaphorically.  Except that it is a female/feminine counterpart to “environment”.  The fact is that we exist in the Matrix of the world just as much as we exist in an Environment. Well, I think there must be some very good reason why the word patrix does not exist.  Anybody out there agree with me?  Do I see any raised hands? Hello?  Anybody there?

More later.

What I’ve Been Up To: November ’17 to March ‘18 – [4/4]

March, 2018

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS  (NOTE: YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ THIS PART; IT’S RATHER A DOWNER)

Hi:

As I said, these are new thoughts for me, and I’m still mulling them over.  It’s . . . complicated.  It’s even more complicated than that.  Yet I think that these are accurate assessments. I also think that the things I’m describing will be my most important legacy.  My guitars will be sought and bought and sold at high prices, and many people will make more money off them than I ever have.  And maybe some day someone will write a book about me.  

But the air will be foul; the water will be putrid; the oceans will be dead and full of plastic (there is reputedly an “island” of plastic the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean; currents have carried the waste from many nations there).  Most of the species of animals [we don’t actually know how many there are; new ones are being discovered all the time even now] will be gone; Nature’s food chain will have been COMPLETELY disrupted; the rivers and the land will be polluted. Shame on us.

I can hear some of you thinking, oh, come off it; sure that’s all a little bit true; but it’s not ALL true. Don’t be such a bleeding heart.  Well . . . I think that a little bit of any or all of this is way too much.  It’s not really what I signed on for.  Or, you might also be thinking, oh stop being such a purist; everybody and every country that can does things like that.  Hmmmmm.  Is this helpful?

See, the thing is, I actually think about this stuff.

I quipped in my last posting “that if Trump and Kim Jung Un don’t destroy us first”.  This is a thought that I find utterly horrifying . . . and possible. Trump himself, before he ran for office, was described in one of the New York magazines as being “a wounded monster”.  That he is. He’s a psychopath and a narcissist. I don’t know what Kim Jung Un is, but he’s scary too.

Let me explain what the above terms mean.  The DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) is the Bible of the mental health field; it contains the diagnoses, and language that can be used to describe the inner workings of someone who has come to attention of the mental health network.  When I was in grad school studying clinical psych we were on DSM III-R (Third version, Revised). That got replaced by DSM IV; and we’re currently using DSM-V. The diagnoses and categories of mental abnormality have shifted; for instance, homosexuality was classified as a mental disease in DSM-I.  That has changed, of course.

In DSM-III-R sociopaths and psychopaths were considered to be different categories.  The difference was that a sociopath would lie, cheat, manipulate, charm, and worm his way to getting what he (or she) wanted.  The psychopath would feel no compunction about harming you to get what he wanted, if you stood in his way. In DSM-V these categories have been blended into a single one, with the sociopaths and the psychopaths simply being on different parts of a spectrum that encompassed all such personalities.  

While Republicans may disagree with this it is clear that Mr. Trump lies, has no interest in nor skills in governing, has no conscience or impulse control, is pathologically thin-skinned, and is vindictive and malicious.  And dangerous. He frightens me; he’s essentially no different from Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Joe McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, or Putin.

Equally troubling is that no one in the media seems horrified.  They just keep on reporting on business as usual, while the comedians keep getting paid for mocking plentifully but impotently.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

This all leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.  So I’ll tell a joke of sorts.

A company CEO is dealing with taxes at year’s end, and tells his accountant to prepare the necessary paperwork.  The accountant spends two weeks getting all the numbers together and delivers them to the boss, and says that it’s all there except for a $200 discrepancy that can’t be accounted for.

The boss says to go back over the figures and find the source of the error.  The accountant goes back to work to look through the numbers, receipts, bills, invoices, payroll records, etc. again.

A week later he reports back to the boss, saying that he can’t find the reason for the discrepancy.  He says, “Boss, I don’t get it. You’re paying me a lot more than $200 to find this thing. This company makes more than a million dollars a year.  So what’s the big deal about this $200?”

The boss says, “well . . . I know we make more than a million dollars a year . . . but the truth is that I don’t really understand a million dollars.  But two hundred dollars: THAT I understand!”

Ecce Trump.  He doesn’t understand the job he got voted into his office for.  But an eight-year-old schoolgirl criticizing him? THAT he understands.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

I grew up in Mexico.  I remember being in a park one day, when I was young.  I had to go to the rest-room building. When I got there I saw that, like many construction projects in Mexico, this one had not been completed: it was a large bare room without toilets or sinks or toilet paper or any other bathroom paraphernalia . . . and the floor was completely covered with piles of human shit.  People had found a bare spot, squatted down, and dumped their load.  I didn’t make that mess; but when I listen to the news I feel like I have to go into a room like that.  That’s sort of what I feel like these days. I didn’t go into that particular bathroom, by the way; I held it in.  

I’m holding it in on different levels and in different ways, these days.  And as I said, when I started out making guitars many years ago . . . I had no suspicion whatsoever of any of this ever being so.

Wow.  If I were a real Buddhist I’d be in the present and not concern myself with this stuff.

More later,

Ervin.

Thoughts About Creativity, Technical Work, and the Brain – [2/2]

Speaking of the internal cues that signal “it’s all right; it’s done and you can stop now”, I am reminded once again to Donald Trump. He has a big mouth and constantly demonstrates that he lacks any sense of propriety or boundaries – even a sense that things might be precariously out of balance and dangerous. And he cannot stop himself; not now… or ever. He’s missing any sense of “it’s done; you can stop now” — which is, in everyday life, a person’s ordinary and necessary sense of closure and satisfaction in things large and small. Trump doesn’t have that self-regulating function.

Living life like that, carrying a nameless discomfort around day and night, year after year, without it ever reaching orgasm (release or closure), must be a living hell. It does go a long way toward explaining Trump’s chronic insomnia. And maybe his compulsive licentiousness. He lacks the capacity to feel satisfied, even with his own prior decisions— although they are decisions in only the most primitive and unreliable sense of that word. Clearly, when one gives such people power they become dangerous. And one wonders why that person’s supporters have allowed that to happen, and for what reasons.

On the other side of the divide, people who are technicians (as opposed to those who rely heavily on internal cues) use precisely those left-brain tools: they stop when they have met the explicit requirements of their job assignment or task. Are they “right” or “wrong” to do this? Neither. They’re just following a different brain-map and a more or less mechanical set of “assembly instructions”. If we were looking at two guitar makers operating out of these different mindsets then we could say that one would essentially be making a sculpture and would stop “when it was done”, while the other would be using the Numbered Instructions Model, and would stop when the instructions ended. If these individuals were painters then one would essentially be painting from a live model and the other would be painting by numbers — much like Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara had been doing when he was managing the Viet-Nam war; he’d been head of General Motors before then and his idea of running the war was to run it exactly like he’d run General Motors.

In the half-brain version of the previously given example of Engaging With An Enemy, the resolutions to such a task are unsatisfactory indeed. If you needed to engage with the enemy and had only a calculating brain, you’d very probably make up your mind that only one result was acceptable and go for it without flexibility, re-evaluation, or room for new input. Ecce Robert MacNamara – as well as General William Westmoreland and, later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. If you had a Trumplike brain you would be announcing a new goal for the challenge every week and the troops in the field would be spinning their wheels until at the next election. The ineptness shown in these examples is breathtaking.

If these are silly examples they are also tragic ones, but they go to something that is equally basic to a certain kind of guitar making. For instance, my students have had a few breakthrough experiences in exploring this in their own guitar work. They’d ask me for an opinion of a bridge or rosette that they’d made… and perhaps be surprised that I was sort of lukewarm in my reception of it. We’d then sit down and discuss what I was seeing vs. what they were seeing — and what that was all about.

Those sessions never fail to be interesting: these individuals will have never yet been asked to sit down and simply look at something— and I do mean simply look at the thing, and think about it exactly as it is in the moment in and of and by itself, and how its various parts fit together, and how it fits into its own greater context, and certainly without anyone telling them what they should think about it.

They may have read books on how-to, or heard lectures about aesthetics, history of design, or concern with market value or the luthier who made a particular guitar, or had been made aware of other people’s pre-judgments and aesthetics (and unconsciously making these individuals into points of reference for how they should think about their own work)… but they had never been asked to think for themselves and have a sense of what they themselves really thought. I ask that one just look at something and get a sense of what it really is, and what one likes about it or dislikes about it, as it is at that moment… without me suggesting to them what they should think… and then talk to me about it.

About the political thing: it is clear to me that in that realm, too, people have never been allowed nor encouraged… to… uh… simply… think… for… themselves. But that is a great way to get in touch with a sense of whether “it’s done, I can relax now” or not.

Anyway, who knew that guitar making and politics were so intimately connected?

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