Oh go on, say it.  :)

Ah well, it was a good run, nothing really to say today.

There's something peaceful about writing here knowing that whatever audience I had is long gone.  It feels like when I first started.  So in honour of that:

I'm 13 bars into a composition, and I do mean composition.  I've had three, maybe four, key changes already depending on how I harmonise that last bar of melody.  And none of them are your godawful "play the same thing in the dominant" sort of change.  Almost every motif or melody fragment is a variant of something that's come before.  I'm just now starting the section where everything moves as far away from the original theme as I can get while still being able to justify to myself that it comes from that theme.  (Yah, it's going to be a short thing, maybe 3 minutes max.) I predict key changes aplenty as I reach for notes that are not there in whatever key I happen to be in.  Ol' Bach did this all the time so why can't I? After all, I'm alive.  Him?  Not so much.

Is it any good?  Damned if I know and double damned if I care*.  Will you ever hear it?  Eh, not likely.  No one within any reasonable commute of here has ever heard of this blog.  The plan is that it'll get one public performance and that's it.  And the audience for that will be about equal to the number of people who'll read this.  :)

*Okay, that's a lie, sort of.  I'm not too worried at how well it turns out, but of course I do want it to be as good as possible.  It's just that I'm aware that there's nothing riding on it, if it fails, it fails. I'll just move on and write something else.  If it's turning out pretty good, then I'll re-write and revise until I can't improve it.  Getting older rocks, having more perspective on this sort of thing makes it so much easier.

Remember

Could they have known?  Those 19 crazed, homicidal humans, drunk on religion and righteousness, could they have know just how much they'd change the world?  I doubt it, though I suspect they hoped as much.

I'm not naive, nor am I unaware of the world outside North America.  People all over the world lived with fear and uncertainty long before that that one day in September where just how violent a world we live in was driven home .  Hell, there are even plenty of people, the destitute and desperate poor of North America, who knew this fact long before that day. The ability to turn groups of humans into the "other", into less than you are, is all that's needed to commit atrocities. Once you've done that, the rest is just planning and logistics.

I wish to live in a world where the only requirements to be ingroup is to have human DNA and act as if all people are of equal worth.  I don't even care that everyone actually believes that we're all equal, just that they act as if we are.  And isn't it a condemnation of the society in which I live that I feel the need to define what "all people" means?

To this end, I beg you, the next time you find yourself using the word "they", stop.  Stop and think about the group you're talking about.  Think about why you've grouped them together.  Take a moment to remember that no matter how different you think they are, they're all still human.  They had a mother and a father, they eat and sleep and desire.  They are most likely more similar to you than they are different.  And yes, I did this when I thought about the 911 hijackers.  Remembering that they are human too does not excuse what they did.  Remembering their humanity reminds me that I too can make people into the "other".  It reminds me that I have to better than that.

That's the lesson of 911 for me.  I will remember.

Craziness Update

I forgot to post this when it happened.  The crazy commenter who first showed up here, and again here, this time with a death threat, was arrested and is now in psych evaluation.  Despite being a little flippant about him initially, I sincerely hope he's now going to get the help he needs.  And I do think that though I was never worried about his death threats, those who lived nearer to him were right to be concerned.

No More Lies

I don't know.
No, really.
I don't know.

Three little words.
No. Contraction.
Four little words.

How much misery?
No, seriously.
How much pain?

Made up stories.
No truth.
Couldn't say them.

Those four little words:

I do not know.

Hooray!

Well, my mother's condition, while still serious, has now entered the realm of comedy.  When I called her this morning I didn't get an answer.  After a couple of tries I called the nurse's station.  A rather abashed nurse told me that the overhead lift device that's used to get her in and out of bed had jammed and they were in the process of extracting her.

My brother had also showed up just as they were preparing to get her out and then the phone began ringing over and over again.  Those poor nurses.  Anyway, all was sorted.  Mum's on her third type of antibiotic and it seems to be working.  The blood infection she had has been cured and slowly the extra fluid they made her retain to raise her blood pressure is draining.  Not a moment too soon because it was exacerbating the pneumonia.  Cautious optimism is the order of the day.

One serendipitous thing was that my niece was there too.  I haven't talked to her in a couple of years I think.  She's now in grade 11 and of course I had to ask what she was planning for after graduation.  I loved how ready she was for that question.  I remember how it was for me, it got so I could recite my plans without actually thinking about it.   Plus ca change..

But there's a big difference between my plan, such as it was, and hers.  She's planning on becoming a teacher and has figured out all she has to do to achieve that.  Fan-fucking-tastic!  I almost said that out loud to her and I'm afraid I did exclaim and babble a bit.  Ah well, I am the strange uncle with the ungodly ideas who lives overseas.  I do have a reputation to uphold after all.

I was honestly happy though.  You see, there is nothing more important than education to the future of humanity.  Nothing has ever been improved on this planet of ours by a lack of education. And Canada, and much of the western world come to that, needs all the teachers it can get.  And even better, in this case we're going to be getting someone who's not only focused, and I believe capable the kind of dedication that job requires, but we're getting one who's really, really smart.

My niece and nephew are a couple of the brightest kids I know.  Sure I'm biased, but I also value my honesty enough to not let that get in the way too much.  Besides, all the stuff I've learned about critical thinking over the last few years keeps me very aware of my cognitive biases.

I pay a lot of attention when I'm around my brother's kids because I see them so seldom.  The questions they ask, and don't ask, the way they ask them and how they understand the answers leads me to believe that those two are pretty bloody bright.

So, hooray for humanity.  If she goes through with it, it'll be one small but oh so important step forward in our progress as a species.  And hell, even if she doesn't I'm pretty sure no matter what path she choses it will be one that will benefit greatly from her being on it.