It irks me to read an advertisement for those seeking an exceptional life – especially in Country Life magazine! For one thing it is exceptionally bad poetry. What in the world does it mean anyway – an exceptional life! Exceptionally what? And to whom exactly are the retailers directing their product? Isn’t life exceptional enough already? If it isn’t, do they really think they have the elixir to make it so? How exactly do they intend to reach the apogee? I dread to speculate what they imagine those fleeting ingredients may be. I’m sorry, but if you haven’t figured it out yet, the buzz of Acts 1 – 6 in this drama we call life only gets better! And we’re not relying upon storehouse commodities. Continue reading →

While it persists throughout the year as a masterful musical composition, my abiding affection for Handel’s Messiah noticeably escalates when approaching Easter (though I doubt it ever was intended to coincide with that particular event on the Christian calendar). I can happily listen to it every day until then. The work was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. The conjunction of the scriptural text of the oratorio with the King James version of the Bible and Psalms included in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer has a stimulating effect as well. It is consistent with the Church of England with which I have communicated through the Anglican church similar to the Episcopal church in the United States of America. Continue reading →

Jeremy Bentham (15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Bentham defined as the “fundamental axiom” of his philosophy the principle that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalizing of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment and physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights. Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights (both of which are considered “divine” or “God-given” in origin), calling them “nonsense upon stilts”. Bentham was also a sharp critic of legal fictions.

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Roberto Cacciapaglia (born 1953 in Milan) is an Italian pianist and composer. His compositions blend electronic experimental music with the classical tradition.

Cacciapaglia is a well-known, influential and imposing artist from Milan, Italy, his full legacy extending not only over the field of electronic music, but also into avant-gardism, into a (decidedly) different language of rock, into computer-based music or natural experimenting, into classical opuses and into concept-filled fresh, generic art-leaning language.

Cacciapaglia first studied composition at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, in his hometown. From there, he moved towards defining his studies in orchestral art and computer/electronic music. Collaborations with several TV stations or such networks were at the base of his approfoundation into the electronic field of music. In his music, Cacciapaglia generally blurs (or melds, better said) he line between classical and electronic, between orchestral and soloistic designated playing, between fully-researched and improvised music, between tradition(al) and emotion-driven ingenuity. Much of what he offers is down with avant-garde impulses and with an artistic superior code.

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“Those who knew him, whether friendly to him or not, always anticipated that he would play a conspicuous part in public life. It is seldom that men produce so great an immediate effect by speech, unless they, in some degree, lay themselves out for it; and he did this in no ordinary degree. He loved to strike, and even to startle. He knew that decision is the greatest element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with all the decision he could throw into them, never so well pleased as when he astonished anyone by their audacity. He presented the doctrines in the most startling form of which they were susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to consequences offensive to anyone’s preconceived feelings. All which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of what are called Benthamites or Utilitarians had its origin in paradoxes thrown out by Charles Austin.”

Excerpt From
Autobiography
John Stuart Mill

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The Coronavirus pandemic has indisputably altered trade. Yet newly cultivated habits have already hardened. Granted the scope of change is narrowly confined to the elemental issues of shelter, food and rest, not exactly the topics of raging contest or indescribable novelty. Nonetheless I pine to establish routine. In the interest of ceremonial spirituality I have kept breakfast to ingredients unadulterated by contaminants such as salt, sugar or condiments; viz., sliced green apple, wedge of Brie cheese, steel cut oats and strong black coffee. I have for the nonce abandoned the superfluity of whole blanched almonds. We have in the past several days interrupted the integrity of our diet by having succumbed to prepared Chinese food which I mistakenly purchased upon our return home. Last night we exhausted the bowls – including the Oreo cookies and most of the brittle (both further evidence of my psychological abuse at the grocery store). Call me old fashioned but I adore raw foods – certainly anything other than processed food. Thankfully His Lordship thought to purchase some fresh salmon filet which we’ve already prepared in the microwave.

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Not certain which entertains me more, Roberto Cacciapaglia (“Wind Song“) or the prospect of sleeping in the parking lot of an Enmark convenience store (as two of our favoured acquaintances recently did to avoid the potential contamination of a hotel on their way home to Maine from Longboat Key). Talk about polarity of expression! It demonstrates the discord of the new and lingering circumstances.

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We have willingly incarcerated ourselves. The lock-up is oddly no punishment – at least for the moment. We have uninhibited liberty to commit ourselves both gleefully and brazenly to our preferred and cosseting preoccupations. Among them are reading, writing, TV, listening to music, playing the piano, answering emails and naturally – cooking! It helps today that Old Man Winter is taking what I hope will be his last swipe at us – polluting the atmosphere and earth beneath with tiny swirls of white flakes. The weather makes public exhibition uninviting! I will concede that before the frozen crystals melted they exacted a captivating presence. It does however prescribe my limit for snow.

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Getting back home is not the private affair it once was. Slipping under the radar is quite impossible. Even the Headmaster of my former boarding school St. Andrew’s College has sent me an email as a reminder that, “If you are returning to Canada, the government has requested that you self-isolate“. His solemn interest no doubt primarily affects those parents with children who may be coming back from a “March Break” before delivering their son to school. This unique vacationer’s stigma has unwittingly attached to the singular act of returning to Canada – pointedly without qualification of the infection from specific social gatherings such as a cruise, staying in a large hotel on the Mayan Riviera or attending birthday and cocktail parties (none of which I hasten to add has any resemblance to what has engaged us for the past month at least). We arrived back in Canada on March 21st which aside from being close to the First Day of Spring is indelible in view of the historic importance of the global epidemic from which we are all sheltering in one way or another. Nonetheless today was outstanding in spite of the guilt we carry as threatening foreign agents!

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Turning 16 years old is unquestionably a big deal!  It has to be very close to the most significant birthday of what hopefully will be many more to follow! The singularity of one’s important birthday can however be more than the day itself.  Birthdays – like other experiences in life – acquire their significance not only from what they are but also from what they are not. It especially behooves one on his or her sixteenth birthday to set into motion the transition from youth to adulthood. While this may not fulfill the ambition for a welcome prize or gift upon turning 16, permit me to advance that there is no greater beneficence than the encouragement to accept life’s struggles and to make the very best of them you can. Curiously the unwelcome and unanticipated evolution of events can miraculously shift into what are the most memorable. And let there be no mistake, your memory of the day will far outlast any other gift!

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