The delusional indifference of an all too influential pope

On January 25th, 2009, Pope Benedict revoked a 1988 excommunication of four bishops, including British bishop Richard Williamson, who during a recent interview on Swedish television denied that 6 million jews were murdered during the holocaust.  He maintained that the number of jews killed was a few hundred thousand, and that not one was killed in a gas chamber.  Williamson also has an outspoken history of supporting conspiracy theories, believing that both the assassination of President Kennedy and the terrorist attack of September 11th, 2001 were both staged by the government in order to enforce a police state.  

Anyone can just apologize about the Holocaust itself.  In fact, Germany has done that.  To this day, there is no monument to mark the exact point of where Hitler perished in Berlin, and denying the Holocaust is punishable by up to five years in prison.  Prime Minister Angela Merkel also recently demanded that the pope condemn anything belittling the Holocaust.  This where the pope remains indifferent, and to this day he has not mended international outrage by apologizing for the reinstatement of Richard Williamson nor has he resolved to take a harder stance on Holocaust denial.  If he does not apologize, he will, much unlike his predecessor, be remembered as a man who, like the nazis, believe Jewish people to be divinely inferior.  The difference between Pope Benedict and the Nazis is he doesn't go out of his way to exterminate them.  But for all we know,  perhaps nothing of that sort ever happened according to him.  

Critical thinking in music

As a performer, be it instrumentalist or conductor, when playing someone else's music, the presentation of music is not about how the said performer plays, but how the performer translates what the composer has written to the sound produced.  Each composer needs to be approached with a different mindset; a fresh openness to portraying the music according to the emotional instincts of the composer, not the performer.  This is a very meticulous function, but also a spiritual one.

Conducting in particular is essentially based on this.  Lots of people are trained to analyze the forms and harmonies of scores and read the whole page at once, but the conductors job is to understand what the purpose is of every note in the score.  The conductor needs to find out what emotions the composer is evoking, and how to portray those emotions and simultaneously take the music the directions it needs to go.  Complete humility is required to think this hard.

When I perform or write my own music, I keep this in mind as well.  The hardest thing as a jazz drummer is to not be even the slightest bit self-indulgent.  Every member of the jazz combo has to find the point right in between being trying to direct the music by being overly showy and letting the rest of the ensemble carry you somewhere.  This requires a constant and neutral focus on the development of emotions and sounds that are created by the group.  

Critical thinking is one of the core values of musicianship.  Open mindedness about musical ideas must always transcend one's ability to perform the notes on the piece of paper.

Nazi Germany and the Mind of Pope Benedict

Harvard Professor Daniel Jonah Goldhagen notes Pope Benedict's inability to discredit what he he learned from the "formative period of his life."  It was during his adolescence that Benedict joined the Hitler-Jugend.  Nevertheless, like many Hitler Youth who did not fully understand what they were being drawn to, Benedict has denounced anti-Semitism, and personally deals with Jews and members of other faiths with respect.

However, this is essentially useless because Benedict still divinely believes that his realm of thinking is the truth.  His personal respect for other people and opposition to intolerance is the only thing separating him from Nazism.  Benedict has yet to acknowledge pluralism, as opposed to relativism, where there can only be one truth, perceiving members of all other faiths as people who are in need to be saved or converted, whereas the Nazis would have them killed.   

Ironically, Benedict credits this belief, or perhaps mindset, toward Nazism's rejection towards Christianity as well as Christianity slowly diminishing grip on modernity.  This is to say that is Nazism is against Christianity than Christianity must stand for all things divine.  Of course, the Nazi's were against other religions, particularly Judaism, exponentially more than Christianity, yet Judaism cannot even get the same level of recognition from the Pope.

Goldhagen insists that the difference between the Pope and the Nazi's, while quite contrasting, was their actions, not so much their beliefs.  When someone with the mind of Pope Benedict remains an influential political and religious figure, the danger remains of relativism overcoming Benedict's external actions, causing them to return to the methods of the Nazis.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

It is a little late, but here are the lyrics to the song "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" written by Burt Bacharach and sung by Dionne Warwick.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

I've been away so long.  I may go wrong and lose my way.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

I'm going back to find some piece of mind in San Jose.

L.A. is a great big freeway.

Put a hundred down and buy a car.

In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star.

Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass,

And all the stars that never were

Are parking cars and pumping gas.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

They've got lots of space.  There'll be a place where I can stay.

I was born and raised in San Jose.

I'm going back to find some piece of mind in San Jose

Fame and fortune is a magnet.

It can bring you far away from home.

With a dream in your heart you're never alone.

Dreams turn into dust and blow away.

And there you are without a friend,

You pack your car and ride away.

I've got lots of friends in San Jose.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

Can't wait to get back to San Jose.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

For a long time I was very uninterested in this song, and possibly never even heard it before this morning.  As someone raised in Northern California, I have a hard time figuring out what the city of San Jose offers that even warrants the attention of Burt Bacharach, let alone a legendary song.  It turns out the song is not even about the world's largest suburb, but about the false allure of the California dream, particularly in Los Angeles.

San Jose is where one can go to escape being washed up, clinging with false hope that one is bound or Hollywood.  In Los Angeles, you can become a star within weeks.  However, the weeks turn into months, and then to years, "and all the stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas," sings Dionne Warwick.  While San Jose is not a very exciting city, the song reminds us that it provides us with what is really important: piece of mind.  It is a place with little distractions, which is what Hollywood is only for those whose dreams are not yet turned to dust.  

Dummy Post

What better way to celebrate the inaguration of Barack Obama by starting a blog?