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Pearl Harbor Day

Dear Heart,

There is no way I could match your epistolary eloquence. My letters will just have to be what they are, from me as I am.

Your last letter expressed so much of what the sexual side of our love life means to you. All I can say is that there has been no one who does for me what you do, nobody who has made me feel better, nobody with whom the emotional and the physical has been so intertwined. And we may as well have been starting up for the first time, in a way (though now with 60 year old bodies, and attending psychic scars). It had been so long since I had sex that I thought I might have forgotten how it was done. Yes, I am supremely grateful that you are assertive in this area, and have such patience and stamina. Of course I want to do with you whatever you like and enjoy the best, and we'll do as much of that as is possible too.

Do you know that your breasts are formed along what might be called "Classical" lines? Looking at Renaissance paintings of what are most often semi-nudes (rarely are such works really detailed in the genital area) I note the rounded forms, the slightly wider placement than is true of the pin-up girls of the 20th Century, and the nice, compact nipples. So you see, you would have been the ideal for a Renaissance work of art, and that suits me just fine.

Maybe one day I will be able to turn off part of my brain altogether when you are ministering to me, and just give myself to that experience without any other kind of thinking about it. Are you able to do that? Right now, with you being three states away, all I can do is to sit here and think about it, while really needing that wonderful experience of your tongue, your mouth, your hands. When we were riding the bus back to South Station I could still feel you doing those things, feel it in the head of my penis, quite literally. I so wish you were here doing that right now, encouraging that electric flow, pulling years and years of sadnesses out of me….

Maybe we will have to destroy our letters one day. Will it be embarrassing to our heirs, our offspring, to maybe open up a few of our letters when we're gone and read about what one of their parents like to do with someone not their parent?…Sex between 60 year olds must seem disgusting at worse, off beat and slightly grotesque at best, to anyone more than twenty years younger, most especially if one of the participants is a parent! I just don't know…Well, my Pop is about twenty three years older than I, and I'm glad that he has enough ginger left in him that he still wants and enjoys sex. But I really don't wish to know any details. Might our kids feel the same way about us?…

*****************

Entirely different front. I accept that you have no interest in the Pacific Theatre in World War II. I was surprised that you have no interest in the Normandy area, though. - Post phone conversation now. As I was saying as we talked, all of these things have great emotional resonance. When I was at the Arizona Memorial I might as well have been trapped in that ship, beating on those walls, hoping someone would get me the Hell out in time. If and when I ever do get to Normandy, I know I'll be among those trying to carry nearly 100lbs. worth of equipment off those DUCKS, getting pulled under by the wet sand, while German machine gun bullets are mowing down those in front of me and around me, and I'm next. When I climbed aboard that B-24 at the Air Museum in Chino, I not only marveled at how small one had to be to fit at all reasonably inside - on screen the people and the inner space always feel/seem so much bigger - but I could also feel how vulnerable one was, having only a bit of metal aircraft skin between you and the automatic cannon shells of a Messerschmidt, or the shrapnel from anti-aircraft fire. I guess I feel more about those wars from the inside than you do, and not just from the more Apollonian view of the generalship. I couldn't help myself from weeping when I was watching that ceremony at Pearl Harbor today, and seeing those now old dudes who had managed to survive (there were about twenty from the U.S.S. Arizona). There were interviews with two of them. One described how it was to be inside a ship that was turning over, in the dark, grabbing hold of something as it flipped, feeling things falling around and on him, knowing the water was rising slowly around him, almost certain he would not be gotten out in time. They did get him out, in about a day and a half, and like the others who didn't get out, he DIDN'T KNOW WHAT HAD HAPPENED for that day and a half. Can you imagine that experience? Talk about claustrophobia and such. - anyway, the artifacts of war will be and are as interesting to me as anything else about Europe, maybe even more so than some other things, since I could never really identify with some member of a royal family, and could only imagine myself as one of their servant-musicians.

Of course I was sobbing, inside, when I came to my cousin Craig Brenno's name on The Moving Wall, the smaller version of the Wall that they can haul in semi-trucks around the country. In my mind's eye he's still that younger cousin that I used to play with.

I picture him in the V.A. Hospital in San Diego, filled with tubes and such, pumping his blood through him, and looking at, and realizing why the lump he made in the bedsheets covering him only went half way down the bed, though I wasn't there to see him (I think I was in Wisconsin at the time, or didn't know that he was at that transitional hospital). I KNOW why he no longer wanted to live, with no legs and no genitals. It makes me feel terrible right now.

***********************************

…..My God, this started out to be a love letter, and look at how it has drifted. Well, since it has strayed so far off course, I may as well tell you about the piece I'm revising-or actually rewriting, for the third time. If I could get at what I should be doing, I'd be working on my composition for Barry Brisk's orchestra.

This difficult-to-perform piece (I didn't or don't write things just to be difficult; sometimes the structuring of the thought just turns out that way), now entitled CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA, is in one long movement, with three major sections, after the initial making of three large bell sounds by the whole orchestra without the actual bells; those come later.

Section One: Sectional variations on four themes. After the initially separated presentation the themes begin to interpenetrate each other, so these variational periods tend to get progressively shorter. The end of this section is articulated by the waves-motive which should feel like giant breakers over which the horn peals out an Ur-motive, followed by the bells ringing in non-coincident patterns. (For the bells I've employed celesta, glockenspiel, vibraphone with metal sticks and rotors off, tubular bells, plate bells struck with metal hammers, and electronic bells for the lowest notes, since huge cast bells could not be sustained by any orchestra.)

Section Two: Developmental and mostly motorically oriented. The explicitly pulsed material continues as large, chugging chords, in their anti-pulse way, twice threaten to bring the proceedings to a halt, with their measured accelerando. (how one has to strategize to make a cycle like this fall outside the continuing pulse grid, but still be written in such a way as to coordinate the musicians.) this section is likewise concluded with the waves and horn, and then the bells.

Section three: A Passacaglia, the ever-repeating idea based on the first theme in the piece. It modulates with every cycle though, unlike most Passacaglias, so that we aren't chained to the same Tonic pitch all the time, something I consider to be the basic flaw in the form. Over that theme appear references to earlier parts of the piece. This time there are three great wave periods, only the last of which is followed by the bells, I think. I'm still working this out in my head.

Why waves and bells? I don't know if this is exactly it, but there is something in it for me in the way of contrasting the nature-spiritual with the human-spiritual, and I don't mean this in any formal religious sense. Only men cast bells, and except for machines for making artificial surf, only nature creates ocean waves. And these are not namby pamby waves, nothing pretty about them; these should flood any onlookers, and wash sea birds out of the sky. The bells are not offering comfort, or a quiet prelude to a church service either. If not exactly festive - strike that - they may make something of a festive effect, because that is the nature of tintinnabulation, but they should also flood the air with clappers, ringing, aggressive promoted high frequency content, maybe enough to hurt the ears a bit. If the piece is ever performed it will keep a few percussionists employed who might otherwise have to wait for something like Respighi's FESTE ROMANA. Why shouldn't I be a little optimistic in this wise? Think of Strauss's optimism when he called for 20 horns in his ALPINE SYMPHONIE. O.K., yes, he knew it would be performed even if he called for 150 musicians instead of a mere 130 (the standard orchestra employs closer to 70-80 for most 19th Century music). But what the Hell? I only called for one keyboardist to cover piano and celesta, and only one harp rather than Debussy's two, or the eight or so that Wagner wanted at the beginning of DAS RHEINGOLD. Can you imagine, in the JOSEFLEGENDE or JOSEPHLEGENDE R. Strauss calls for three sections of violins and two each of violas and 'cellos, four hammerglockenspiels (celestas), plus woodwinds in fours, oversize brass section organ,.. well, the list goes on and on. No wonder it's almost never performed. I'd love to hear it once live, and complete, not just the suite. (I have a recording of the whole thing, two if you count a badly recorded live performance on 'lp'.)

Enough. It's time for my first real meal of the day.

God, I am bored with cooking for one.

I love you more than I can tell you. I need you here to hold and hug, and even just to feel your presence.

My best love,

Dear Sweetheart,

Thanks so much for your being there for me, for your very sweet Valentine, and especially, for your love. How barren my life would seem now without you in it, and our phone conversations remain my lifeline, my prime connection with a world outside of myself that also includes me. I crave you, our physical and emotional companionship, and at night I am like the lonely Manticore, mentally doing battle with the forces that keep us apart.

And thanks, in advance, for emailing my letter to Bob Holson. I have deliberately avoided mentioning our plans, but he may draw any inferences he likes, of course. I genuinely look forward to the day when we are able to be exactly what and who we are to each other in the view of anyone who cares to be interested in such things, instead of having to skulk around as though we had something of which we ought to feel ashamed.

This is brief, of necessity. I keep neglecting so many of the things that I MUST do, thus offending both my sense of who I am and what any living environment ought to be. Without cabinets, niches and proper places to put things I feel like a pig living in a sty of papers, letters, envelopes, and sheer STUFF that I don't know what to do with. In order not to feel like the lady who worried that her underwear might not be clean if she had an auto accident, (I feel as though I'll be found out for living in a sprawl, a condition I actually detest), I simply have to begin doing something about it.

And so, my sweet, I'm going to attempt to make some inroads even now, while awaiting your late at night, tuck me in, call.

All my love,

Dear Jackie,

I seem to be out of typewriter ribbons, so if this letter cuts off abruptly you will know why. Will buy such supplies when I next do go out, which will be Thursday.

Will you not grant me that there is some valid trauma, separation anxiety, and yes, grief, that I necessarily have to go through with respect to my divorce? This doesn't mean that I don't love you, it doesn't mean that I'm trying to have a second wife on the side (so to speak, and I hope that construction is worth a small chuckle), and it doesn't mean that I'm not totally committed to our course of action. Even though, despite what you may think, I had determined for myself that C and I would never really have the kind of love life that I wanted with a partner, and the fact that years ago I began grieving for what I thought/think we had at one time, there is some residual grief having to do with a lot of things, and none of it related to having chosen to be with you. To be somewhat more fulsome about this, I feel something of the failure, or of being part of the reason for the failure of another relationship. It brings me a kind of grief to feel, "Well, despite your efforts, your good will, your doing the best you could, and your attempts to understand and right the wrongs, you blew another long term relationship." (Please don't allow my saying any of this to cause you anxiety; I was feeling this way before I even knew your address.)

There is no need to go further with this part of things because I know you will have already put together these pictures, given your very thorough approach when you are thinking about things - anything… The romance had definitely gone out of our lives, and if there was any hope of that being restored that hope was shattered by her being pursued by X, quite successfully I might add…

…for your sake I will try to distance myself more. Don't swear at me mentally, now, or feel all alone. Please. It's not that I'm trying to avoid being distressed by your distress, I'm just trying to address the things that make you uncomfortable, share my thinking about them, while not taking anything away from what you and I have together, and the nature of words can make it difficult to do those surface-seeming paradoxical things at once.

Things you should know.
On those occasions when C has visited me, and they have been few and brief, she has tried to make it clear, through body language and such, that she is getting past me.

When C and I speak by phone it has in the vast preponderance of times been what I would call business related…..

There's nothing …here, my dear girl/lady, nothing to say that you don't have my heart, nothing to say that I regret having found my real sweetheart again. All I'm really asking you to tolerate is the fact that there is pain of one sort of another in the death of any relationship, a kind of death necessary for a different relationship to flourish, for you and I to flourish, and that can't be helped. It's all got to be understood in a context of what was before I even knew that you still existed except in my memories and imagination…

Anyway, honey, this is meant as an explanatory letter, not sent to upset you. It might even be a source of some comfort. I don't know how you'll react to it, but then, I'm not sending or writing this to provoke a reaction, rather to let you know how things are/have been in specific area that are troubling to you.

Reassurance? You know that I love you. You know that I've never been happier in bed with anyone else. You know I'm still waiting for you….You know that you would be able to tell if I were thinking about having another relationship on the side, let alone were having one. You know that our loving each other will only gain in depth as we have more shared experiences, and as we discover our ways of being when we're not trying to cram in a month of missed experience into a couple of days, as we put together our own special shared physical and emotional spaces, as we come to rely on each other in the best ways on a day to day basis.

I'm hoping we will soon be in an optimistic, enthusiastic phase. I fear this long wait, while no doubt worth it, takes some of the edge off of the honeymoon because it encourages thoughts of perpetual loneliness, of feeling vulnerable to abandonment, betrayal, of being threatened from without and not being on site to do something about it. If you find you want to fantasize about what's going on here, imagine things as they most truly are, with me as a kind male Cassandra, working on stuff, or when needing to get away from that, watching the History Channel while playing solitaire. Right now what I'm doing is about as unglamorous as it gets, hardly what you'd call having any romance in my life.

The romance comes in when you call, or write me one of your stimulating (in more ways than one), sweet letters, and when I know there will be a reassuring message for me on my telephone. All those things means so much to me, as do you in pro per. I'm going through your divorce just as surely as you are, and saying that is not complaining about it. I'm with you there, you see. And I'm on the same committed path that you are. There is cause for enthusiasm, and celebration will be assured when we're through and past this transition.

I love you,

Dear Jackie, my love.

You asked what I thought of and/or felt when writing music. I have to say that many different things are commingled, felt and thought at the same time. These can range from the purely technical to the emotional, as that emotional side is related to sound shapes, textures and tones. A lot of what is felt more or less defies description because it relates to the sounds and their combinations as themselves, the "feel" of the music as a total formal structure and in its moment by moment events that reflect and create the overall sound design. I can isolate or separate out some of the thought and feeling elements and operations, but this will not be a complete list, and as I've said, these factors are not usually thought and felt in isolation from each other . It's mainly and almost only when there is some technical problem or challenge that has to be considered in a narrow way that other responses and expressive aspects of the piece might have to be temporarily put on some "side burner". Understand that my brief descriptions have to be understood as functioning within a resonant sound and compositions-already-written-and-known memory milieu. We cannot altogether escape our pasts, and that includes our knowledge of the historical past as well.

THE OVERALL DESIGN: THE PIECE AS A WHOLE ENTITY

For many composers, myself included, at least the broad outlines of the piece as a whole have to be predetermined, and in envisioning this some of the sound materials and shapes of the interior, the content you might say, will already have arisen by a process both miraculous and mundane. Why we can think in tones, sounds and their designs like this is no more or less mysterious and miraculous as being able to think in words or in other constructs (mathematics, physical actions, etc.). The mundane thing is that it feels not much different from thinking of what you are going to say, or write, before saying it or writing it. …Just as a verbal or conceptual construct might be vague and a bit nascent at first as one begins to write it (compose it on paper, in my musical case) the thought, musical or otherwise, becomes concretized and thus specific. {Frustration sets in when you know/sense that what you've more or less imagined in a general way is not at one with what you're actually writing. The law allows you to change your mind, and sometimes the changed concept will be better than your original one, but sometimes I can feel that I've cheated myself a bit, thus my always nearly full wastebasket, and worn out erasers.}

That overall shape merges the musical-technical with the "dramatic" in that, in the kind of music I compose, tension and release, low points and climaxes, variation and contrast, are all important, and all a part of the overall design;. That overall shape, what the piece is as a piece, (and what is music but designs in sound that seem to bear messages), is like the superego of the whole, the blueprints without which you have no building likely to stand and look elegant, and it is inseparable from the music as perceived, except as an abstraction. It can be mentally imaged as a kind of two dimensional graphic entity on paper chart, in other words as a kind of graphic analysis-design. It can be imaged in more three-dimensional terms, which I generally prefer, it can be imaged in a nearly tactile-kinetic way (which I suppose is why a lot of folks enjoy dancing but of course dancing rarely involves concentration on what is really happening or not happening in the music as itself, one reason popular trash music of whatever genre rarely engages the left brain much), as rhythm and accent elements, harmonic tension, and so forth elicit bodily-feeling responses in the sensitive, a kind of physical aspect of the design. Music has its own substance.

COLOR AND TONE

In this, harmonic color, melodic outline to a degree (the color of the melody as it leaves its trail in our memories), and timbre all play roles. (It's not by accident that we refer to "tone color" sometimes, when we mean timbre and combinations of timbre.) that wonderfully somber, dark tone, like some of the best music for 1940's black and white and grey movie-dramas, of Samuel Barber's First symphony, for example, owes its color-tone to the orchestration, the tragic-dark harmonic choices and interior textures as much as it does to the often heroic-tragic melodic-motivic content. This has to be determined in advance also, through a feeling thinking process, else there will be inconsistencies of the wrong kinds, a composition that doesn't seem to belong to itself, or which feels kind of "patched together", not all of a piece. Of course available forces play a large part in what can be achieved in this area, or areas, and determine, to a degree, the kind of music one will write. One writes a different kind of piece for a brass ensemble than one writes for a string quartet, for example, not only because of the differences in what can be done on a technical level (can't actually have pizzicato brass, only short notes, can't get the same kind incisive attack from strings, trumpet range is much smaller than that of the violin, etc.), but also because the character of the instrumental color is different

And just as in other respects, instrumental color can bring with it certain associations. Oboes are often associated with the pastorale side because of "ranz des vaches" (instrumental music played on double reed instruments while herding cattle or sheep, at one time, and especially in France and Italy), with belly dancing and harems (by extension, with Biblical orgies), and in various contexts in which bagpipes might be used because oboe and bagpipes come from the same family of double reeds. Horns can be associated with hunting, with heroic deeds, and with the great out-of doors - Mother Nature - because of hunting horns, natural horns used to signal at large distances, Alpine horns, and so on, to say nothing of the fact that we mostly hear the horn as reflected sound, thus large, spreading and somewhat enveloping. The same applies to most instruments, associations which may be exploited or more or less ignored, but which may be active to a degree even when unintended. {Sometimes you can get away with using an instrument rife with associations in a contrary context. The castagnets in Wagner's Venusberg Music, the orgy ballet in TANNHAUSER, do not remind us of Latin music. Nor does the tambourine in Strauss's "Golden Rain" music, surrounded as it is by harp, glockenspiel and other non-percussive instruments, suggest the music of Spain; it just becomes another quasi-metallic sound suggesting the gold, presumably coming down in the form of coins, rather than bars or ingots.}

THE MORE ABSTRACT EMOTIONAL SIDE

This can relate to flights or depressions of the spirit, to the internal emotional maps shorn of concrete representation or association with specific events. The opening of Vaughan-Williams' Fourth Symphony, for example might suggest upheavals in nature, a great war or a struggle of titans, depending on the propensities of the listener, but all of those are personal responses (which doesn't make them invalid) to a music of which we can only say with certainty that some great conflict is happening, a conflict which we may use for catharsis, identifying with and experiencing our internal desires for predatory aggression, rage, to kick the shit out of somebody. {I guess that those who only want feel-good experiences from music shy away from such repertoire, or don't identify positively with the kinds of emotions it tends to elicit. More's the pity.} Many people fantasize specific imagery to accompany such music, rather than just experiencing the naked emotional content as itself. That isn't wrong, but it does tend to limit the music, in a way, by not allowing it to be more universal, perhaps even philosophical, by encompassing all possible conflicted and tragic meanings.

That is a more general than a personal observation, though from its thrust you might correctly divine that my feelings as they relate to the music which I'm composing quite often do not have concrete imagery attached. That horn music in the "Air" in my Serenade, for example. I wanted to make a music right there which participated in the senses of the noble, the outdoors resonant, and that sense of longing for something indefinable, perhaps for something better than ourselves ( But this does not grow out of one specific incident in my life). The wind-organlike accompaniment participates in and supports the sense of being broad but restrained, not shouting but big.

I love that passage in the way that I might love some of the more mystical outdoors passages in Mahler's 7th Symphony, maybe in part because it does exactly what I wanted it to, while also bringing with it some flavor of an ethnic music (Scots and Hungarian) due to its rhythmic content and incipient hexatonic implications, the gapped -pitch scale with no leading tone in the melody, and no chromatic pitches until the very end of the main melodic climax, in the horn's melody itself. A contrast was needed , the galumphing music in the bassoons, which is not comical but might suggest something like Shakespeare's "mechanicals". In the end of that movement all is resolved, in the sense of being combined with, in a kind of multi-layered way, the elegant music with which the "Air" movement began.

Can I sort out what is feeling content here from what is formal, intellectual or technical? Not really, because all are experienced at once, in a sense as one-and-the-same, together. Perhaps some folks separate things out more than I do when they are composing; I really don't know, because you can hardly get a "legit" composer to talk about feeling-content these days, unless they are women, and to them the feeling content seems to be the most of what matters. Musgave, Oliveras, the other contemporaries, seem to have to have some stagey kind of drama to motivate their music, something visual or in some way concrete, even if only personal-concrete.

THE CONCRETE EMOTIONAL SIDE

With me this is mostly associated with vocal music, where words are controlling and delimiting what the music is all about. (I am excepting my music for theatre or that film). This is neither good nor bad, but just reflective of the difference it makes when the non-music element of the verbal is introduced. We generally try to wed the two together, and when done successfully one hardly thinks of the dichotomy (sp.?) between the abstract and the more concrete represented by the combination. At any rate, it takes me longer, always, to write vocal music, not only because of the technical considerations of the voice, how vowels work in some ranges, the rhythms and accents of the text as itself, and so on, but because now the music is pinned down by the text and now must reflect it in non-Mickey Moused ways. Oh, a good, settable poem, one that I like just as itself, might fire up my musical imagination a bit, but for me writing vocal music is as much a chore as it is a pleasure, a labor of trying to bend the music to an extra-musical end, and trying to make them both seem as one.

I just don't write real program-music, though that "Serenade' has something of an extra-musical framework. It's not like THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, or NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN, which attempt to suggest and to embody a story or a program of events. I've never written a descriptive piece of that sort. At present I'm not attracted to the idea of doing so.

Maybe I've answered your question, at least to a degrees

All my love,

Dear Sweetheart,

A brief exegesis on time.

Time is not a substance, not a thing, and it has no qualities in and of itself. It is simply a way of conceptualizing what is essentially a measure of change. Change is a feature of existence. Without existence there is no change, and without change there is no time. We approach the mental construct of time through metaphors, which are convenient and which may be necessary, given the predilections built into our brains' hardwiring. But we are easily trapped by our metaphors, trapped into thinking that the metaphor is the representation of something real. For instance, we give time a direction, "forward" (which then brings with it imaginary conceits like "moving backward in time"). But time is not anything but a measure. It doesn't move backward and forward. Only those things which do the existing have motion and change. A measure is an abstraction, with no concrete reality, and is only a kind of mental construct. Granted it is a construct with a high degree of utility. But it has no exterior existence as itself.

Because we have to have some "handles" to conceptualize such things as rate of change, rate of motion, cyclical phenomena, etc., for any number of obvious reasons, the idea of time is necessary to us. But that idea seems to act like a sort of drag net in terms of all of the muck it brings along with it, in large part because of the metaphors we use, and because we try to give time a description when there really is nothing to describe. Can we deal meaningfully with change without those misleading metaphors? I don't know. Not for sure. But a lot of what time isn't can be excluded from our thinking, and thus a lot of the garden paths down which our thoughts about time lead us can be eliminated, if we persistently remind ourselves that time is only a way of measuring change and motion, and that it has no existence as itself.

Even Einstein didn't escape the use of metaphors in his formulations. He chose to say that time "flows" more slowly in a body in motion relative to a body "at rest", which has been pragmatically proven to be the case, as you know. But it would have been more literally accurate to say that change happens more slowly in a moving body when compared with a body at rest, creating the illusions of a slowing down of "time". Time doesn't move. It doesn't slow up or speed up. It doesn't do anything. It is only a mental construct which we reinforce with duration measuring devices. It isn't even a "medium" through which we exist.

As you may know, but choose not to believe, the Universe is ageing. Yes, there is the illusion of contraindications in such matters as the "creation" of new stars through the accretion of loose matter, of which there is an abundance in some quarters, still left over from the "Big Bang". By our standards there is plenty of "time" left for new formations to appear, some of them formed of the leftovers of supernovas and the like. The Universe, and many things in it, age by very slow degrees. But we know that however huge the amount of matter and energy is in the whole universe, it is finite. And we can see that ageing process happening locally. Every so many years they have to add another second to the year at Greenwich, to compensate for the gradual slowing down of the Earth's rotation, a loss of kinetic energy. We know that the Sun, and every other star, is gradually consuming its own fuel. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, and that applies to the Universe at the macrocosmic level, and even more subtly (sp?) at the atomic and subatomic levels. In the conversion of matter to energy, or of energy to matter, some is dissipated, or neutralized. Despite new stars being formed, and the like, this ever so slow diluting, a loss in entropy, is happening at its own slow pace all the time, a dissipation of energy of a kind that cannot be recovered. This may or may not be hastened by the one-way expansion of our Universe, but I would venture to say that the expansion contributes by gradually depriving matter-energy of its ability to effect change. As you know, the force of gravity decreases with distance (I think it's something like twice the square of distance, but in truth I do not remember the exact formula). The rate of the expansion is just enough to gradually overcome the gravitational force, the bending of space which causes bodies to be attracted to each other, in the long run. All present observations and calculations suggest that there isn't enough "dark matter" and free matter of other kinds to cause a recoalescing.

There is that "wild card", the Black Hole. More about that in a bit.

So, the Universe keeps expanding, because of the continuing force of the energy from the "Big Bang" (though that is slowly being expended also). And the Universe continues slowly ageing. Even the electrons spinning around atomic nuclei rotate ever so slightly slower, at a presently unmeasureable rate, but remember that it's happening. There is no free lunch, no perpetual motion machine. In the end the gradual loss of entropy, and the evening out of whatever energy is left in what slowly becomes a kind of undifferentiated "soup", means that time ultimately ceases. Where there is no possibility of change or movement (two different ways of describing what are essentially the same things) then there is nothing to measure, and nothing to do the measuring.

Suppose that "wild card', Black Holes, actually gains the upper hand, by gobbling up matter and energy to the point that there is no free energy or matter around. They, themselves, may finally coalesce into one Black Hole, at which point even the concepts of size have no meaning, since there would be nothing else against which to measure such a super-entropic time-mass-energy trap. In that case time ceases also, but for different reasons. Gravity will have finally won the long endgame, to the point that there is no possibility of change. Nothing will exist but that one singularity comprised of super-compressed mass-energy, so tightly bound that nothing can happen.

There is nothing about which to be depressed, or to rejoice, for that matter, with respect to the long term fate of everything. The Universe is an indifferent place/thing in any case, and from one point of view without meaning, except as we choose to invest it with meaning. While we have it, and view that too-distant-to-really-conceptualize future with respect to what will then be the long distant past, as something like, "Once there was a Camelot."

On to other topics:

Precognition, the apprehending of events yet to happen, is not something which I "poo poo" altogether. Those who deny it entirely do so as a result of putting it, and related matters/subjects, to the wrong kind of test. It's a little like a Hole-in-one in golf. Statistically they happen rarely. If we were to say that a Hole-in-one has to happen on a regular basis in order to have a provable existence we would think that absurd. (Even a Tiger Woods, an Arnold Palmer, a Sam Snead could go through a whole season of hitting golf balls without placing the ball in a hole with one stroke.) But that is exactly like wanting a clairvoyant to predict future events accurately and reliably every time; if you want accurate and reliable holes-in-one to prove that they exist you're simply likely to be "out of luck". What is probably more accurate is to say, "Precognition is present too rarely to have a high degree of utility".

On those occasions in which it does happen, and there are instances in which it seems to have happened (precognition) with a reasonable certainty, it may be a function of something in the right side of the brain putting together probabilities until they suddenly boil up into a near certainty. We know that the death of the airship Hindenburg was an accident waiting to happen, whether sabotage, or St. Elmo's fire, an induction current, the different electrical potential between an airship and the Earth, or whatever sparked the explosion initially, the possibility for free hydrogen to be present in quantities sufficient to make an explosion possible was always there. It was just considered a minimal risk at the time, with every precaution the builders and operators could think of being taken to keep that risk to an acceptable minimum. What was that lady's name who foresaw that flaming wreck? (she) might have, in some way, received the energy of that event rushing backward against time's arrow. I think it more likely that in some active but subconscious part of her mind, and those of anyone else who might possibly have divined that this would happen, put things together and "saw" that possibility had become probability. But I put no particular stress on either interpretation, at least not to the point of saying "this is what it really is". - whatever the mechanism, we might find it personally profitable to take heed of some such "visions", much as did that person who did not take advantage of his/her booking on the Titanic. That we haven't isolated or accurately described some faculty or perceptual mechanism does not mean that it doesn't exist, and be functional in certain people at some times.

I feel similarly about such matters as telepathy. It is certainly possible that we send out wavelike forms of energy from our brains/being that we simply don't have the tools to measure, or even to prove or to disprove. Some may be able to tune in to the output of others, never mind the range of the "signals" and so on, (radio waves can be bounced off the ionosphere, after all), on occasion. My mother seemed able to do this sometimes. Perhaps it is a faculty that we might learn to develop, to train, but right now we seem unable to get a good enough handle on that function to do that. That telepathic communication seems too infrequent to be reliable doesn't disprove its potential existence. The scientist of a certain bent will simply assert that the evidence for the existence of telepathic powers is too anecdotal and inconsistent to constitute proof.

Well, these are subjects about which one may only have an attitude or a point of view. I would characterize mine as somewhat skeptical, in that there are too many people seeking to take advantage of credence for their personal financial ends - preying on those with sad love lives in "Psychic Networks", or desperately hoping to communicate with deceased loved ones in "Crossing Over"-type TV programs - who cloud the picture, but nevertheless open (my attitude) to the possibility that not everyone who has experienced telepathy is a scam artist, a sham, or just self-deluded. I don't demand extraordinary proof to believe such might exist, just credible evidence that it might be a faculty which can be or is activated in some people at some times, and I think that we do have enough evidence to suggest that this might be the case, but without reliability sufficient to have a high degree of utility, ordinarily.

(Note: this letter was the continuation of a long argument (with me) about time and the universe, to which-as will be seen-- he continues to return. After some hours of this argument, we went off to bed and he was still so agitated he got in on the wrong side of the bed, that is, away from his cigarettes, Kleenex, inhaler etc. This, plus his evident agitation caused me to say "What's wrong with you?" As will be seen, he misinterpreted this, in fact, after briefly acknowledging my explanation, he goes back into his argument. At the time, he became quite angry, the only time I ever saw him that way in our lives. He was never less than totally engaged in whatever he did. J)

About a first paragraph in my discography, after mulling it over I think that you're correct, and I will add one. I hate to think of all the retyping the addition of one paragraph will entail, but I'll do it in the interest of giving those who might not know why they are examining such a book reason to read further. I think that most who would even consider looking over such a book will have been led to do so because they already are interested in, or have some sense of the importance of this conductor. But there may be a few who need such a handle, and sometimes even the obvious needs to be stated, and I think you are right about this being the case here.

The part that most needs working over, aside from a few corrections that I see need to be made on a more microcosmic level in certain places, lies in the evaluations of the various releases/reprocessings of the 1939 Beethoven cycle. The way this is written could work very well for someone doing a comprehensive survey of available recordings at a very minute and closely scrutinized level. But from almost any publisher's point of view this part needs to be condensed, boiled down, because it is just too long and too redundantly self-referential written this way.

I miss you. I love you.

Now I have to return to the very mundane sphere of shopping, cleaning, etc., as well as preparing for tomorrow's teaching trials.

When you call again I'll get the address of your present P.O. box, which seems to be yet another casualty of this move, and put it into my "permanent" phone book. (that's got to be altogether re-written soon. It's just too depressing to read "deceased" again and again.)

A big kiss,

Though tangential to the main thrust of the discussion of time, I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we can never perceive an event while it is happening, only after some portion of it has happened. On the most immediate level that is because it takes time, very small, "units" of it to be sure but time nevertheless, for our nervous systems and brains to receive the information and process it. Ordinarily this doesn't matter much because the elapsed time between the onset of an event and our processing the information is very small. But think of the implications of this when dealing with subatomic particles, when a nanosecond can be the difference between a holocaustic nuclear explosion and a more benign use of nuclear energy, when trying to quantify the "bundles of light" using quantum mechanics, and so on. Our processing systems are far too slow for us even to experience such things directly; we can only deal with the after-results.

And the elapsed time between an event onset and our perceiving it is of course elongated as a function of distance. Though light and light-like transmissions travel pretty darned fast, they are slow enough that there was a lag in time between my hearing your voice at first hand and hearing your voice via the cell phone, when you called me up while in my apartment. The lag is even greater, obviously, when Houston Control Center communicates with a /the space station. If the sun should blow up we would not know it for some time, I forget exactly how many minutes, and life for us would go on as usual until that "past' event would finally have reached us. (Reminds me of that cartoon in which a dedicated golfer, seeing a nuclear mushroom cloud in the distance calculates that he can play two more holes before the shock wave hits.)

This part of the discussion doesn't really lead anywhere , not in the way that the definitional discussion does. But it does indicate the inherent difficulty, perhaps near impossibility, of proving precise simultaneity (sp?) of separate events. So much depends on the location of the observer.

Everything we see in the heavens is very long past. Theoretically, it could all have been blown apart or extinguished by now, and we wouldn't even know it.
To be sure some have postulated that destruction "out there" on a vast scale would build up a kind of shock wave that would hit us in advance of the event itself. Well, if that's the case, you have to throw out the idea of ca. 186,000 miles per second (the approximate speed of light) being the capper on velocity, throw special and general relativity out the window, which means a whole lot of proven principles (every prediction of Einstein's that would bear out the theories has been proven out), or we'll be hit with something having infinite mass along one axis. To be truthful, nothing can beat that visual information to the punch so far as signaling a major catastrophic event.

There are certain disadvantages in only being able to see different layers of the past, particularly as far as trying to understand the present on a galactic and larger level is concerned. We can NEVER perceive the "present"; we are imprisoned by the visual memories of what once was. From these we have to infer what is, in our now.

In any case, an abbreviated list of what have been proposed as possible states of the Universe in the 20th Century.

The Steady State Universe: This has been laid to rest by direct observation and measurements. Our Universe is not uniform in its distribution of matter, not in any direction. We have a lumpy Universe, which indicates that there was asymmetry in the original "Bang". It turns out that far from being steady state, our Universe is quite dynamic.

The Cyclical, or Pulsating Universe - I think most people share your preference for this being the state of things. It seems more cheery, somehow, to think that even if life goes on without "me", at least it will always go on in some form. Try as they might, our best observer/thinkers cannot come up with enough matter in the Universe to halt the mad rush away from the original center. Maybe something comes out of left field, to tilt the scales in the other direction, so that we have a big crunch followed by another Big Bang, and so on. If something does come out of left field to halt the expansion of our Universe I won't be offended. It really won't matter one way or the other, because it won't affect us in any way. By that time the memory of our memories will be gone, all traces of any of us will have disappeared. "Our names will disappear like a whisper in the wind" (adapted from John LaTouche).

The evidence at present points to a scattered, dead Universe being the ultimate big time fate. But that's not at all sad, if you think about it. It makes our time of existence that much more special. If the whole thing is a one time through proposition, we are that much more unique. We will have existed once, which in some sense distinguishes us from the nothing that has been before, and which we cannot imagine, and from the different kind of nothing that follows.

As to what caused the Big Bang, or what "was" prior to it, there is no system of thought, philosophy or science that can answer that question. If you think God existed before, then you have to ask what existed before God, or how did God come into being, so you might as well have just accepted that existence exists without having added one more unnecessary step backward. We want cause and effect, and we even seek to impose that want, that bent in our thinking, on a past when there was no cause and no effect. There evidently were no laws of physics, or they were suspended, or they operated quite differently, at the instant of that "Big Bang". You might say that all laws, of cause and effect, of probability, of physics, of chemistry, of anything, were born of that Big Bang. They all came into being the instant after. There just is no use looking for the cause of the Cause. There were no laws of cause and no overriding reason for existence to have happened at all. Like so many of the largest things - infinity, nothing at all - we simply cannot conceptualize, nor should be able to actually, a "time" before anything (that's actually a kind of contradiction in terms). The original cause might as well be described as a kind of accident, without purpose, reason or intent. The search for a "why" presupposes one or more of those, so it is a vain search. Like the Universe that resulted, the cause of existence, of anything having come into being, is indifferent, devoid of meaning except for that which we try to impose on it, or with which we vainly invest it. (It is a function of our natural vanity as a species, that we try to do that.)

You'll forgive me, I know, when I say that your fervent desire for the Universe to be a perpetual motion machine is a little like a kid's hope that there really is a Santa Claus, even when he/she begins to have doubts, or proof exists that it's really parents playing a game. Well, it's a somewhat happier thought than the one I subscribe to, I suppose, so maybe I should not be trying to disabuse you of it, whatever evidence suggests is really the case.

Dear Heart,

I would still maintain, in my Einsteinian way, that there are multiple realities, and that, like any of the others, any kind of overall "super reality" would be a matter of perspective as much as of the intrinsic "substance" of that reality. Perhaps a kind of synthetic "reality" which subsumes all the others exists, but to apprehend it we'd have to be to integrate all the possible platforms from which to view a/that "reality", something I don't believe our mental equipment would allow us to do.

Also, and we've already talked about this, the experimenter being a part of and influencing the result of the experiment applies no less in this area. We might be able to turn off the critical faculties, or some other aspects of brain function, but that doesn't mean that the view is erased or doesn't become a part of that which is apprehended.

Besides, and this is a very basic question, why is something more real without us? Whatever reality exists has to include us as well; we're a part of reality too.

Of course I don't deny anything that you may experience, or may have experienced. I don't believe the contemplative is just manufacturing all his/her experiences. I just think that the experiencer predetermines to a degree the nature of the experience. The only way to really erase the self is not to exist, and not to exist denies the possibility of the perception of anything.

But let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that we can have a perception without a perceiver, and put aside all questions of the hard wiring delimiting the nature of that which can be perceived, what would then follow from that perception? What would then follow from or be done with it? I'm not among those who poo poo knowledge without instant practical application, both because knowledge can have a value in and of itself, and because its applicability may not be immediately realized. We might find out late what its utility might be. But I do have to wonder what such a perception would result in at the concrete level. Oh, I see well enough that to monks of certain cultures, interest in this "plane" is of tertiary importance. They'd prefer to be sailing out there someplace in a kind of totally passive experience. (though the creation of the Tulpa among monks of certain Tibetan types has its own interest. But they do that only to satisfy whatever may remain of their human sexual need. It's to them a kind of inescapable human flaw, a kind of sop to the "imperfection" that remains.) The goal seems to be to escape human desires, as though to have desire is an intrinsic negative To me that's like wanting to die in advance of death, and to become nothing more than some kind of empty vessel. It's contrary to almost anything that I value, and I think, acting in a manner contrary to our natures as human beings. (Some might use it as an excuse for non-accomplishment, also. I'm suspicious of anyone who goes out with begging bowls because they're too holy to work.)

Anyway, much as I do value the interior self - I wouldn't be me without it - a part of our function is to exteriorize that self in worthwhile ways.

Besides, a good deal of the joy in living derives from the cycle of tensions and their satisfactions, including having painful experiences. The angers, sorrows, griefs and that interior restlessness, they're all necessary to the experience of the good parts. To have the experience of victory, you have to have the experience of the struggle, the "war" as it were. Otherwise it's like that old ad, "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" (this is not very apt, actually) Where would the fun of it be if there were no conflicts? I just categorically reject the idea that tranquility is the optimal state. To be totally tranquil is to be embalmed. Time enough for that when it becomes necessary because of our mortality. I believe, to the point of conviction, that the business of life should be/is the living, not trying to escape from it That condition of being apart from life, whether or not anything follows, is going to happen all too soon, like it or not. Better to enjoy the condition one is in, while we still have the opportunity to do that.

And that last idea, which took me a time to realize but finally hit me some time in my teen years, applies on the more "trivial" levels too. As a specific example, I would rather you were with me, and that we were embarking on our life together. But rather than spending my time fretting over what isn't at this moment, though that preference is real, I'm choosing to enjoy what there is to be enjoyed in my present solitude. It doesn't make me anti-social, but it does allow me to work, think, do what ever I wish to do, within the confines of responsibilities to the world (s) of employment, and all other matters having legitimate claims to my time and so forth. Why not take advantage of the way things are for me at this moment? That doesn't mean that I don't miss you like crazy (thank goodness for phone cards), but to dwell on that mainly would be just to keep myself in a state of perpetual unhappiness. I choose, instead, to enjoy looking at the snow on the golf course, to fret over a passage in a piece I'm working on, to write you this letter, and to take pleasure in my own company. Maybe what you see as my sunny disposition arises from this, at least in part. (I also think it derives, in part, from knowing my parents loved me.)

What you do I believe arises from your propensity for gathering information. You want to "see", understand and experience what is there in terms of an over arching "reality". And maybe following that to which your instincts and proclivities guide you, you will find some answers satisfactory to yourself. Nothing wrong with any of that. Remember that having someone around who meditates is part of my heritage too, and even though Mother and I both feared that we were somehow going to lose him to some form of radicalism - maybe he'd meet some very goofy people as a result of trips I took with him to "colonies" of those on the religious fringes) - we pretty much allowed him (Dad) do go his own way on his voyage of self-discovery {These days I just let him have his monologues about his own religious beliefs. On one point, at least one if not more, I do agree with him. The Christian God is an insane God.} It's possible for me to be tolerant of folks unlike myself, though I have to say that I'm intrinsically skeptical of anyone claiming to have the true clue on the huge issues, and I think that those with strong religious convictions are dangerous.. Those beliefs start to be treated as facts by the convinced, and tend to intrude themselves into political processes and in other areas in which reason and logic rather than mystical beliefs should prevail. You are free to believe whatever you find congenial to you, and I won't make fun of those beliefs, or poo poo whatever you might discover. If you want to discuss the validity of those beliefs and discoveries, that's O.K. too, but you know where "I'm coming from". If my Dad can go to church to accommodate a Lutheran, I can certainly get along with you in any views you might hold which are contrary to mine. Makes things more interesting, after all, not to have a "Yes lady" around. (By the way, I'm sure that Dad keeps his views about an "insane God" to himself when Lillian is around. - I can still see my mother, pursing her lips, being worried half to death about what could only appear to her as a perilous trip into the irrational, but still telling me that we should leave him alone to do what he needed to do for himself. As a brash youth I couldn't refrain from razzing him a little, and being worried about him myself.. Of course I see things in a little different light now, and though I could hardly join him in his kind of searching, I think it's kind of great that he jumped into Eastern-oriented religious perspectives far in advance of the trendy crowds. I don't think that Mom could ever really accept his points of view, and found them somewhat threatening, so for the last twenty five years or so of her life religion was a topic, or subject, that was just not going to be discussed any more. Without specifically saying so, I think she felt, as I do, that most of the time nobody really convinces anyone else in the religious realm, through argument about matters that are unproveable, and that it's best just to let people believe what they believe rather than get into all the unpleasantness so often attending such arguments. She was a Christian, no doubt of it, but without denominational or doctrinal attachment.) I don't think that you and I have any arguments about this, in any case. Being a skeptic doesn't mean that I'm dedicated in a "fight to the death" way to the proposition that there can't be a God. Maybe there is one. I just doubt it, that's all, at least in the way most people think of Him/Her. There may be a kind of will to exist, the kind of upthrusting force that causes chaotic systems to self-organize, and one may call that "God" if one likes. But a coherent being, with a personality, in whose image we are made, with eyes, nose, ears, etc.? I don't think so. And if by an afterlife one means that the self is swallowed up in some stream of cosmic consciousness without individual characteristics, then either let me be non-existent in all senses, or reincarnate me immediately, but this time with immediate access to memories of what will then be my past lives. - What's the good of a view without a point from which to look at it?

…..Anyway, honey, keep telling yourself…that this ridiculous state of affairs can't go on forever. Once everything is cleared up you won't have to look back. I 'ain't' perfect by a long shot, but I do promise that your life will be happier than it has been.

Time for me to do at least a part of what needs to be done. I do love you, greatly, with the resonance from the past and the immediacy of the present. And after today it will be only four more days…

Best love,

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