All Entertainment OK

Port of Poseidonia: The nor’easter
[And the Mountains of Hell]

Let us not all believe Atlantis did not have its secrets, and dark powers, for it surely did. And this sketch will bring forth, one of them. (Part V)

1
The Storm

A thousand years had passed and the late King of Atlantis, Phrygian, with his Queen Ais were neither a day older or younger since they had journeyed into the Great Gulf of Hell, with its turbulent waters at times, and its endless dim fog that covered their presence. They had drifted aimlessly like water-rats, ghosts of the abyss. It was around the year 9,600 BC, and there came a great hurricane, cyclone in the gulf; it looked as if the whole earth had collapsed, went upside down; a tempest that shook the foundations of Hell itself a nor’easter winds, vortex that twisted everything about. Ais hung on to Phrygian and Phrygian hung on to the vessel, lest they be caught in the water for a thousand years with bobbing heads up and down out of the water like drowning porpoises. When the storm had settled and the earth stopped shaking they found themselves still within the vessel, but on the side of a mountain top—a peak of sorts, it was about the size of the craft, sticking out of the water, not much more than a few feet, and the vessel was for the most part, destroyed as its side was struck, its thick wood crushed into the hard granite rock of the mountain peak.

And so the cracked vessel (along its shell ((side bottom)), cracked like an egg, gave the two inhabitants no choice but to leave its domain: for the insides of the craft were pushed and cracked to one side of the boat, and falling apart, unusable.

As they found themselves outside of the craft on the rock lingering about, thinking, the king knew there was no hope, once cast into Hell—I mean, to the landing docks of hell, and then inland where one sees the real Hell, as Hell. The Hell that resided at the pier was simply its transit station one might say, and the gulf, its water were the parade of ships that carried the doomed ones might add—to their fate; as the onlookers at the docks saw the parade of hundreds of ships, boats of all sizes rowing in, coming in, some sailing in on windy days, they smirked and laughed and gave a grave welcoming.

2
The Discovery

In this land of the dead, hours were days and days were months and months were years, and the seasons seldom changed. Abaddon and Zammrel, Lucifer’s lieges, were on the look out for the king and queen, but were blinded by the thick fog often, and as spellbinding and supernatural as they were, they were not omnipotent, or omnipresent: they could not be at two places at one time or command Hell’s foundations to not give refuge to seekers, the only problem is, for the seeker, for it was normally just a matter of time, for where could a runaway go? And their constant movements with the boat provided some escape, but now it would not be so hard to be found as it was before, it was just a matter of time as they had always know likely, the little hope they had was gone; was hope just a game saying: look how hard you tried, and see, you tried in vain. And as the days passed one by one as they hid along side the rocks, half under the water half hugging the tips of the rocks, which were really the mountain tops, being missed by a thread, but by a glance or two, had they looked longer, straighter, possibly the seekers would have, might have spotted them to capture. The king could see on the faces of Zammrel and Abaddon, lurid eyes of hate, wanting to be the heroes who brought him back to the Gates of Hell, to Hells domain, to hells’ everlasting torments.

The rock, the rock, that is all they had left to them, for them, with them; it was the mother of rocks to them, the womb that covered them, their salvation—for God was not watching, present in Hell, only the god of Hell was in Hell, Satan, someplace, and usually he didn’t’ like being there and was seldom there to be frank, it was His henchmen he ordered to do his dirty work, his kings and generals and henchmen. Yet Ais remained strong with her husband unselfishly strong, and so claimed each and every day to be his wife, she was a proud one thought the king, and a faithful one. They were about midway between the entrance of the gulf and the pier. Twenty miles each way perhaps, surely no wider in total length than forty-miles thought the king; but now it was deeper, much deeper, and as deep to hold a mountain below his feet—possibly five miles deep. All the mountains or hills before were on the other side of the gulf, where the pier was. On the opposite side of the gulf was what was known as Paradise, a place he was forbidden to touch, go to, nor could any one from Hell expect to be granted access to such a place if they could get close enough to smell the fresh breeze, cool fresh breeze that existed beyond this lifeless airless atmosphere. Oh it had its moments, but hot air on air was not a magical moment, and it is no wonder the Ten-Winged Serpent Satan Himself would not come down here often, it was a land of decay.

With many a hiss from the gulf stream, and the clutching of eyes that rowed the oars in the vessels that went by, he decided to venture deeper into the waters to look for a possible entrance into the mountain, a cave of sorts, anything to hide from this eternal domination that wanted to enslave him once captured. Yes, in spite of all, the king had some kind of hope, something that made him search and search, day after day, for an entrance. But he found only cliff after cliff, until the one-hundredth time, there he found an opening, small as it was, it was an opening nonetheless.

3
The Entrance

They were like two shadows chained together—both used to one another, it was a love no one would believe in books, it was hard to believe in reality, in desperation they loved even more than previous to their downfall.

—They had found a crevice, crack—a peak-hole you might say into an underwater mountain; this strange refuge gave them a rest as they pushed their slinky forms through it. It was fathoms bellow, and as they sank a graveyard of bones lay all about, an eldritch-dark, misty gloom, ivory-laced black moss circled about. It was the gloom of the earth, and the first night there was: phobic, neurotic mind bending occurrences for them; with its tight-macabre walls closing in on each side of them—ebbing. They didn’t think things could get worse, but just its lack of light was worse than the surface of the water with all its danger and fog included. Nonetheless they slept a night in peace, unguarded for once, so they acquired one gift, at a price of another, for sleeping in the Hell was impossible, and in the waters of the gulf, seldom could they both sleep at any one given time; yes, sleep was a privilege, a gift, and treasured by all, and all they needed to do was remember a thousand years of not sleeping; so this was their outlook on the matter, and gift in the raw.

They had woke up, or so it seem, days later, or possibly weeks or months later, time was not measured by distance or movements, it was measured by events more so. And waking up to know what was going on was time. If a boatman oared by you, and then another one shortly after, one might say it was five minutes or five hours between events. Then if there was more fog, and the spotting of these vessels were less seldom, then time was measured accordingly, one would have to allow more time for each event. It became simple after a while for the couple, after a hundred or so years that is, and then after a thousand years they didn’t even have to think on measuring time it was automatic. Their guess was that they’d been down there between eight hundred to 1500-years. But it was a thousand years they were there, take or give a few.

4
The Discovery

Now Phrygian and Ais saw a moved rock, a rock they had leaned against, oh yes, thick shadows have weight, believe it or not. And they quickly moved the surface of that area, and a larger hole opened—not too large just enough to seep through it like curled up worms digging their way to freedom, to the top of the surface of land. And when they came out on the other end, to their amazement they saw a city, a city deep within the core of the mountain, a necropolis, a resting place for a dead city of Atlantis; towers and temples all laying about as if a hurricane, or earthquake had caused some kind of earthly catastrophe, potentially an upheaval—volcanic activity, or asteroid or meteorite impacted the earth—something on that order

as they got closer within this mammoth core of the mountain—in the inner cave, pieces of oxide (iron) were all about and other minerals like globs of nickel lay here and there, that told the king it was highly, and most likely a meteor (s) that struck the earth, thus, elsewhere, if not everywhere there would be craters on earth, this was the upshot of the ocean floor. It had evidently sunk, and turned things a little upside down (what before was land, was mountains, some below the seas; probably even what were cities could now be on top of mountains that had never previously existed); furthermore, it was possible the earth itself became lopsided, and very promising unbalanced the earth’s axis; in addition, this upheaval of the oceans floors, was surely the cause of the earth being sprayed with large and small portions of a huge asteroid from an asteroid belt, or one, or a dozen, likely frozen rocks, flying by earth, and through the earths atmospheres.

But on the other brighter side, they had found—as they came closer to the towers, found the larger tower, and the acropolis, it was Atlantis’ graveyard. It was Atlantis itself, their previous home. Then by a standing upright temple, came Anases, in shadow form, like them—configurations of dark mass. On one hand it was a rude awakening for all, and on the other, a jubilee for all, for none had seen another being in a very long time.

“Phrygian,” he cried with a crack in his voice, “And Ais, I am so glad to see you.”

Asked Phrygian, in a lost commanding voice, a more human one than when he was Archeking of Atlantis, “My old friend, what are you doing here?”

“Oh yes,” he replied, looking about, “Yes, yes, I am looking for my scrolls, I had them in the tower as you must remember—I think, but I can’t find them, how will the world ever know of our existence?”

“They will make tales of us,” the old king now said with a nostalgic voice, “they will tell wild and long tales; yes, yes indeed that is exactly what they will do.” Then Anases left them as they stood, and started searching every rock, fissure he could find, the scrolls.

As they walked further into the debris, and looked about, a tour of sorts, looking at the few standing buildings; there within the tour, they turned to each other, Ais saying,

“At least we’re home.” But she was day-dreaming of the days of glory and beauty of Atlantis, which surely the old king was doing also and her words came out in poetry:

The Lost Archkingdom Atlantis

Her nine-sided ivory tower obelisks,
Atlantis’ throne to kings and gods:
Were topped with trident crowns—

Her towers, temples, and turrets:
Her tapestries and treasures of fur—
Fountains, pools and waterfalls,
Her gardens, lilies and poppies,
Her sculptures, palaces, observatories,
Her giant pearls of Yndessoss!
Coral reds and whites from Mu,
Lemuria’s vast urns and vases—
Give glory to you: Archkingdom, Atlantis

Lost forever in the deep fathoms of Hell….

See Dennis’ web site: dennissiluk.tripod.com dennissiluk.tripod.com

What scares you? Noises in the dark? Bats? Bees? Sharks? Are you scared of strangers or squirrels, or maybe even your own shadow?

So what scares you? I don’t know, but for those who like to be scared, here’s my countdown of the top ten best horror movies out there.

Coming in at Number 10…

The Exorcist

The Exorcist just narrowly makes it into my top 10 of horror, primarily because I don’t find it to be nearly as scary as it’s been billed to be. What makes The Exorcist a top 10 of horror is that it’s just plain fun. A child speaking in tongues, spinning her head around like a whirlygig, projectile vomiting pea soup. Who can resist such supernatural fun? The Exorcist reminds me that you can’t take horror too seriously all the time. Sure, I like to be scared, but horror is also about having fun, suspending your disbelief for a few hours. The movie also has a superbly spooky soundtrack — great for a few chills.

Number 9…

The Blob

“Which one?” you ask.

My answer: It doesn’t matter. The original and the remake are both great. The original black and white version could just as easily be listed as one of the top 10 campiest movies, but who can forget the old man with his arm encased in goo, being eaten alive. Hey — this was the fifties — classic, campy, terrifying fun, and what’s great about it is that if you don’t feel like screaming, you can go ahead and laugh your way through it. If, however, campy 50s sci-fi/horror isn’t your thing, then substitute the remake. Great special effects update a classic without ruining the campiness.

Number 8…

Audrey Rose

There aren’t any monsters in this one. No ghosts, no ghoulies, no creepy-crawlies. So why did I put Audrey Rose on my top 10 list? Because Audrey Rose is absolutely chilling in concept: if you die a tragic death, are you doomed to relive it again and again through nightmares in another life? If Audrey Rose doesn’t make you shiver, nothing will.

Tops in creepiness: Audrey Rose burns her hands on cool, wet glass.

Number 7…

The Thing (80s remake)

You’re isolated from the rest of the world; outside the complex, the wind screams. You won’t last long on your own, but inside the complex, the thing is loose, and someone in your small group is not who he or she appears to be. A wonderful remake, The Thing is the stuff of nightmares. Suspenseful and horrifying, this is not one to watch alone at night. The special effects are wonderful; watch as the husky transforms into the thing.

Number 6…

The Mummy

More funny than frightening, The Mummy works any way you look at it. Brendan Fraser is perfect as the swashbuckling, and sometimes bumbling hero. Fraser and his leading lady, Rachel Weisz have incredible chemistry and they kept me chuckling throughout. The special effects of The Mummy are top notch. I particularly liked the face-shaped sandstorm — very creative.

My single pet peeve: If cats keep the creature at bay, why not surround yourself with cats?

Answer: Because then there would be not movie.

Halfway there at Number 5…

Scanners

Before I say anything about the movie, I must say that you just have to love Michael Ironside as he plays yet another evil-doer. He always gets the job done, and he does it superbly in Scanners. Taking its inspiration from children of Thalidomide, children born deformed after mothers had taken Thalidomide during pregnancy. In Scanners, the children are born as scanners — telepathic, psychokinetic misfits. It was a side effect of drugs taken by their mothers during pregnancy — an inadvertent side-effect…or was it? Now they’re being studied, and exploited. Scanners plays on the not-so-paranoid fears of a generation. It’s an underappreciated movie that’s well worth a watch.

Number 4…

Night Breed

Darkly humorous and delightfully subversive, Night Breed definitely ranks among my favorite horror films. While on the quest for Midian, the place of his dreams, Boone, our protagonist, stumbles onto a mystical, mythical underworld. Both terrifying and fascinating, Boone is drawn into this self-contained society. Based on the novel, “Cabal,” by Clive Barker, Night Breed perfectly captures the surrealism that is Barker’s forte. Dizzying and disorienting, Midian is a place where reality and nightmares converge. This movie is, at heart, a study of the duality of human nature, light and dark, good and evil, civilized and wild.

Closing in with Number 3…

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

This is classic, Grade B horror all the way. The acting is bad, the effects are terrible, and yet it makes it into my top three. I think old horror movies tend to be the best since they don’t rely so heavily on special effects to score their scare. They have to earn their spookiness with lighting, plot (even a bad one), and sound. Don’t be Afraid… makes great use of sounds, particularly the sibilants as the demons call the name of the heroine “Sally” over and over again. What’s all the better is that nobody believes Sally until it’s much, much too late…

Number 2…

The Shining

Wow. There’s little more to say about The Shining. Okay, so there’s a lot to say about this movie. Jack Nicholson makes the movie work as well as it does. I couldn’t imagine another actor playing the role. For sheer terror, few horror movies pack as much punch. Moody and shivery, The Shining is one of the best adaptations of a Stephen King novel out there. The long, empty corridors of the Overlook Hotel lend the perfect atmosphere to the Shining. Expanses of empty hallway metamorphose until they are painfully claustrophobic. The backdrop of silence is somehow overwhelming. Even the sound of Big Wheel tires through the empty hallways is strangely ominous. There is no escape as a family descends into the horror of the Overlook, as a man descends into the supernatural grip of madness. REDRUM.

Tops in Creepiness: Those two little girls

And my favorite…Number 1

Poltergeist

Who didn’t get chills the first time the kitchen furniture was rearranged almost instantly by an unseen hand? Poltergeist is everything a great horror movie should be — creepy, startling, with just the right balance of awe and childlike wonder. I teetered between wild-eyed wonder and edge-of-my seat suspense during the entire two hours of Poltergeist. And what’s wonderful about Poltergeist is that it holds up after multiple viewing. You can watch this one time and time again and it loses nothing. From Carol Ann’s initial whispery conversation with the “TV” people, to the oft-quoted “They’re here,” Poltergeist is the best of the best in horror.

Music is also of great importance in horror films, and Poltergeist comes in ahead of most in this department as well. With an eerie, wordless tune sung in soprano, childlike voices, this one will chill even the most hardened horror fan.

So run, quick, to your local video store. It’s getting dark, and the witching hour is approaching. Come home, video tucked safely under your arm, and pop it into the VCR. Curl up on your sofa under a toasty blanket, and settle back for a night of thrills and chills.

And whatever you do, don’t forget to leave a light on…

Lisa is an author on Writing.Com/ Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writing.Com/ Writers.

Getting signed is the quest for most upcoming artists and bands, especially newcomers to the music industry. This shows that the Recording Industry, despite it’s many complaints to file-sharing, is still very powerful and an influential market . It’s important to note that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is still on its own quest to crack down on illegal file sharing and pirated music. It’s most notable legal cases are with Verizon, Aimster, Napster, MP3Board, MP3.com, and iMesh.

But what this means in relation to getting signed is that digital is the way to go when it comes to getting a foot in the door. The more the RIAA fights it, the more it will become popular. The good news for the RIAA is that they have slowly but surely began to embrace MP3 and file sharing technology. Artists interested in getting signed should keep up with the RIAA and it’s laws because it usually shows good signs of where to go to get music heard by large amounts of listeners.

While getting signed is a lot easier than it was four years ago, it’s lot harder to get signed and get an album out. The common misconception is that all matters are solved - once you get signed to a major label or record company. This is far from being true and is proven in so many recent cases.

The larger issue with the quest to get signed is still the fight to get an album out so artists can connect with fans, go on tour, and collect royalties from CD sales. When this purpose of getting signed is not fulfilled, artists are quickly headed back to square one. At least twice a year there’s a story about artists signed, but do not have money and have to wait three years to put out an album; at which point the release of the album is determined by other factors that may be more important to the company at such time.

Social Sites to Get Signed

The uprisings of Social Networking sites have made it a lot easier for artists to get their name out to more people, if they are willing to put in the time and develop a strategy for getting heard. One of the most important things an artist can do in the quest to get signed is network and build relationships with the right people. The right people are often the people easiest to get in touch with but usually neverminded : publicists, assistants, secretaries, etc. These individuals are important because they have to a lot more information that’s.needed but rarely asked for.

Having the knowledge of which projects are most important to a label in a given month can help ease a lot of un-necessary tension and questioning of why calls may not have been returned and why music may not have been listened to. But developing a relationship with these people gives the artist a different kind of leverage instead of it being unsolicited, it becomes solicited if the publicist, assistant, or secretary likes your spirit and likes your music enough to give the A&R (who you’re really after) a few nudges to listen to your music.

For a long time the emphasis on getting signed has been on the contacts, but not enough time has been spent on what to do with the contacts and what to make of them.

There are a few tips that I recommend for artists interested in making the most use of their contacts.

• Have a genuine personality – (make sure it shows)
• Eliminate fear and nervousness (as it only causes more problems for yourself)
• Know the details and the role of the person you speak to
• Keep up with the best communication gateway (use im, email,text – when necessary- it will vary from person to person)
• Try not to leave messages unless you’ve spoken to someone first
• Perfect your product while you wait
• Be willing to offer something for nothing

These are things to consider and help your journey to get signed.

Howard Britt is the owner of Music Oxygen, a music network that features quality music from musicoxygen.com unsigned artists. Give your ears a breath of fresh air and listen to free music now. Howard offers free music resources available on his musicoxygen.com music blog.

Developing an original sound is very important if you’ve ever dreamed about having a successful
music career. Today I often see young artists following a popular trend or trying to sound like someone famous. This may get them a gig, but it probably won’t get them a recording contract. If you want to stand out from the crowd and be noticed by the record industry, you’ll need to have your own unique style and voice. Not necessarily bizaare, just something that defines you.

As a songwriter and/or musician, you may have tried to mimic the style and sound of your favorite group or singer at one time or another. This is normal and can be beneficial in the early stages of your musical development. Much can be learned from observing and studying the legacy of rock n’ roll giants who have paved the way before us. But you are a unique individual and, as such, have something original to offer as well.

I have personally been a fan of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones throughout the past few decades.
These two super-groups rose to fame, almost side-by-side, during the early 1960s. Members of each group were friends and would sometimes hang-out together. But over the years a debate arose as to which is the greatest rock band in the world- The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. Well, if you’re still undecided, consider this. Back in 1963 when The Beatles were beginning to be recognized as the hottest new phenomenon on the music scene, The Stones were also charting on the radio with a
song called, “I Wanna Be Your Man.” Funny thing is, the song had been written by Lennon-McCartney and given to The Stones as a favor.

Although their music may have shared some similarities, the two groups were distinctly different and each had their own original sound. For instance, The Beatles presented a musical picture of fun, social consciousness, and extreme creative energy. Their producer, George Martin, once said: “The Beatles definitely had an eternal curiosity for doing something different.” The Stones on the other hand, have a more tough, raunchy and rebellious image. In fact, they used to be known as the “bad boys” of rock n’ roll. These differences are reflected in each group’s songs as well. The Beatles gave us “All You Need Is Love” whereas The Stones gave us “Street Fighting Man.”

I’ve never had the priviledge of seeing The Beatles (other than George Harrison, that is) in concert. But I did see The Rolling Stones three times and even got back stage once! So, you might say both groups have had quite an influence on me musically. I was also heavily influenced by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, among others.

Though my music has rock and folk overtones, I don’t try to sound like anyone else when I
write a song. However, I will sometimes get an idea from one of my “music mentors” and incorporate that into a song. For example, not too long ago my husband and I wrote and recorded an original song called “Hope.” I’ve always liked how the Indigo Girls use overlaping verses in some of their songs and wanted to try that idea in our song. So we created a bridge where my husband is singing a verse with a particular melody and then I come in singing something entirely different over the top. It’s pretty cool, and we don’t sound anything like the Indigo Girls!

You will begin to develop your own original sound when you start using your unique personality,
experiences, and perspective to express yourself musically. By combining these attributes and perfecting your musical skills, you will be moving along the road to success.

FREE Reprint Rights - You may publish this article in your e-zine or on your web site as long as you include the following information:

Kathy Unruh is a singer/songwriter and webmaster of ABC Learn Guitar. She has been writing songs and providing guitar lessons to students of all ages for over 20 years. To receive helpful guitar tips and creative ideas each month, be sure to sign up for the abclearnguitar.com/newsletter.html” target=”_New” ABC Learn Guitar Newsletter. It’s absolutely free!

There are various myths about “Kaal Sarp Yoga”. If Kaal Sarp yoga is in any person’s horoscope then it is said that whether planets are well positioned or settled in horoscope the person faces the immense hindrance on the motivation of works with zeal and patience or whether he/she has a very good luck, but the obstructions will arises frequently due to Kaalsarp Yoga. Whereas if the Kaalsarp Yoga is in full swing it is said that even person belongs to royal family, he/she will be obsessed with disappointment, which will make his life desperate and miserable. And due to factional Kaalsarp Yoga in person’s horoscope, the person has to effort a lot to finish any work.

What is KaalSarp Yoga? There is controversy about kaalsarp yoga.

1 – KaalSarp Yogas influence is from Rahu to Ketu or
2 – It’s influence from Ketu to Rahu?

It is well known that the Kundli of Independent India is made according to the date 15th Aug – 1947, midnight at 12:00 pm. It has the KaalSarp Yoga which moves from Rahu to Ketu, which considered Rahu(Head) and Ketu(tail). Rahu effects every planet. The Rahu Ketu movement is always zigzag and ultimately with its curvedly movement Rahu influences the planets coming on it’s path. This results in the formation of KaalSarp Yoga from Rahu to Ketu. If any one or two planets come out of path in Birth Horoscope, it creates the mean KaalSarp yoga.

Nowdays, there are various remedies for the KaalSarp Yoga viz –

1) To make and worship silver snake couple.

2) Mahamritunjay chant.
3) There are some temples which are consider to remove the ill-effects of the KaalSarp Yoga after performing the ritual pooja.

There is no logic to the worship of the silver snake couple. Because in the KaalSarp Yoga the Sarp(Snake) names indicate the movement of the Rahu Ketu in the zigzag modes like of a snake. Secondly the mahamritunjay chant is the Shiv Upasana the worship of lord shiva. Thirdly some temples rituals are considers to remove the ill-effects of KaalSarp Yoga but to whom to be worshiped, whereas head is consider Rahu and tail Ketu. If the tail(Ketu) is being cut and due to Ketu’s zigzag movement the remaining planets would remains outside the tail. But the basic solution is not consider in the KaalSarp yoga. This makes the person aghast after going through the three above noted therapies and makes him depressed.

Our Astrological Research Centre has deeply involved in the solution of KaalSarp Yoga by cutting the tail(Ketu).

Pt. Sunil Sharma

DIRECTOR, Astrological Research Centre

Pt. Sunil Sharma was serving as assistant director from 1990 till 2002 and as director of Astrological Research Centre since then which was established in 1952 by late Pt. Raja Ram Shastri. This organization has made outstanding contributions in the field of research and personal predictions. A postgraduate in Political Science and Sanskrit, he has been involved in original research work on astrology for past 15 years. He also launched the website ( astrocent.com astrocent.com) of this august institution on 24th December, 2004 which makes accessible to all original research work, criticism and a host of other concepts associated with astrology in the form of research and criticism articles which are nowhere else to be found on the world wide web. Another special feature of this website is manual horoscope which is a completely novel concept on the web. He does not believes in computerized astrological predictions as well as calculations and has also given the reasons in his research articles on the website.

Mozart’s operas were a cultural force at the beginning of the modern era. He began work on The Marriage of Figaro in 1785. The first performance was May 1, 1786 in Vienna. Between the American and French Revolutions, Beaumarchais’ comedy about servants outsmarting their aristocratic masters was already creating controversy in Paris. Mozart’s operatic setting premiered against elaborate intrigues. Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte had to remove much of the social satire of Beaumarchais’ play in order to get it past the Viennese censors.

The music begins as Figaro measures the bedroom he and Susanna will occupy after their forthcoming marriage. To Figaro’s dismay the chamber is within easy earshot of their master’s bell, which Figaro suspects will provide opportunities for the Count Almaviva to summon Susanna anytime of day or night, particularly while Figaro has been detained by some other obligation in his duties as the count’s valet. The feudal right of a lord to sleep with a servant girl on her wedding night, the notorious droit du seigneur, has been abolished by decree of the Count, but innuendo is strong that he will re-institute it in this case. Sexual conquest by aristocratic men of women beneath their cast is a theme that recurs in Mozart’s operas. Don Giovanni is, of course, a prototype of the philandering menace. Count Almaviva is well married, but projecting his own immoderate desire, he is jealous of the Countess in her relations with her page, Cherubino. The Countess is innocent, but the Count does have amorous intentions regarding Susanna. The story of this opera turns on what would today be grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit. It is some measure of progress that the kind of predatory attention that the Count pays Susanna is now illegal. In a time when servants were powerless against it, they resorted to wiles like those of Susanna.

As is evident, musical drama has, by this time, come a long way from liturgical metaphysics. Yet this comedy defies all attempts to turn it into a romp around the bedroom. Mozart’s most poignant music dramatizes the emotions of people contemplating the consequences of unfaithfulness. The aria Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro—Grant, love, some comfort—in which the Countess laments her husband’s infidelity is moving beyond words, even while Marcellina, Bartolo, and Basilio conspire in slapstick antics, attempting to marry Figaro to Marcellina, who is, in fact, his mother. Again in Act 3, the Countess ponders the loss of happiness in the aria Dove sono i bei momenti—Where are they, the beautiful moments? The lengths to which Susanna goes to maneuver the Count into a predicament in which he realizes his folly creates the appearance of complicity in the Count’s designs. Figaro feels this as betrayal for advantages supposedly to be gained by her place in the Count’s affections. The parallel emotions of the Countess and Figaro are provocative in their portrayal of humanity that transcends social status. That this comedy could succeed as entertainment among the aristocracy three years before the French Revolution is an indication of the optimism of an era. The implication is that many people understood that nobility is more a matter of character than the status lavished on one by birth or refinement, a lesson civilized people seem to have to relearn at intervals. Mozart’s sympathies with the liberals then contending for limits on the powers of governing classes may be a function of his own dependency on patronage, despite the fact that he was doing very well by it.

The layers of significance in this opera, which is only one of Mozart’s numerous compositions for the theater and the church, depend on musical craftsmanship in a tradition spanning many centuries. It may have been possible to artistically render social commentary on so many important issues in a play without Mozart’s music, but it is Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro that has survived, not Beaumarchais’. Is the meaning in the music or in the text? This is a question that never goes away in disputes about art. Those who have never heard the Countess’s arias sung by a soprano who has spent her life learning classical technique tend to reply that the same meaning can be conveyed without her thirty years’ study. A deeper question is whether there are sublime themes that cannot be contemplated in absence of music like this. The theology of the ancient Nicene Creed set to music by Mozart in the eighteenth century and sung by a choir in the twenty first compounds the impact of millennia of enculturation in the historic faith. Artistry and tradition, especially when used to illuminate virtue, or its absence, can be the impetus to sudden illumination, in some cases revelation of transcendent reality.

Mozart is full of overtones on universal moral themes, some of them in astonishing contexts, as when the Roman Emperor Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, turns up incongruously as the compassionate monarch in an opera titled La Clemenza di Tito—The Clemency of Titus. There are also interesting vestiges of Biblical lore. A tragedy from the French lyric theater provides the story for Mozart’s Idomeneo. Idomeneo, King of Crete, was among the most celebrated heroes in the Punic Wars. After dealing the death blow to Troy, he is returning to his own territory by sea. The opera finds him near the port city of Sidon as his ship is overtaken by a storm. In terror for his life he vows to the god Neptune that if he and the crew survive, he will sacrifice whomever he first meets on landing. Readers of the Biblical story of Jephtha quickly recognize the hazard in this vow. The sea god grants Idomeneo’s plea, but it is his son, Idamante, who comes to meet him at the port. The heir to Idomeneo’s throne and beloved of Trojan princess Ilia is now a potential sacrifice to Neptune. In bitter remorse Idomeneo laments the deity’s claim on his son. The aria Fuor del Mar—Fury of the sea, declares his misery in music that tests the limits of the tenor’s virtuosity: Stern God! Tell me, if my body was so close to shipwreck, for what cruel purpose was that wreck abated? Saved from the sea I have a raging sea more fearsome within.

On the recommendation of a confidant, the king decides to send Idamante to Argos rather than sacrificing him according to the vow, but soon after his departure a new storm arises. The ocean swells, and a monster emerges from the deep. This is but the beginning of suffering for people whose monarch has offended Neptune. The monster devours many inhabitants of Crete. The high priest of Neptune demands to see the king and tells him that he must render to Neptune that which is his. Idomeneo relents and concedes that his son will be surrendered. The priests and chorus make lamentation and plead for mercy. Finally, Idamante appears, willing to submit to his fate. Let the blow fall that will give relief in the present distress. I do not fear death, ye Gods, if your love bestows peace on my country and father. Ilia, Idamante’s betrothed, offers to take his place at the altar of sacrifice, but these displays of self abnegation move Neptune to compassion. His voice from the deep declares Idamante king and Ilia his queen. The sea god in this act seems more merciful than Jehovah in the similar plight of Jephtha.

This is a dramatic phrasing of a question those schooled in the Hebrew Bible still ponder. The God of the Bible commands holocausts against Canaanites and smites the children of Egyptians. These literary reflections of the ancient world seem alien to people heir to a civilization born of the amalgamation of Hebrew and Greek culture in Christianized Rome. Handel composed a setting of Jephtha’s story, and he couldn’t end it as the Bible does. In his improbable resolution, God intervenes using a deus ex machina, which isn’t convincing either. The conclusion of the matter in the book of Judges, after Jephtha’s daughter comes back from her lamentation in the mountains, is conveyed in the words: It came to pass at the end of two months that she returned unto her father who did with her according to his vow. This account is the kind of thing that makes people put the Bible back on the shelf, but the alternative, in Neptune’s irenic dismissal of the case against Idamante, is pagan. In the biblical metaphor of radical freedom God does not ask for Jephtha’s vow or compel him to keep it, but neither does God save him from a moral atrocity of his own making. Mozart’s affinity for an alternative ending alongside his opera of a completely fictional, compassionate Emperor Titus seems to confirm an image of Mozart as a prodigious youth evading the enormities of the real world.

The composer seems to have been a vulnerable soul. Peter Shaffer’s play, Amadeus, is as much a fiction as Mozart’s Emperor Titus, but it may have found some truth in its dramatization of Mozart’s psychological condition as that of a man plagued by guilt. The story attributes the hellish retribution on the philanderer Don Giovanni in the composer’s setting of the legend to Mozart’s feelings of terror about his own moral failings. It’s hard to imagine Mozart as, actually, depraved as the ravishing baritone who has no compunction about attempting to seduce a peasant girl on her wedding day. It’s not especially surprising to find in this opera that Don Giovanni, whose catalogue of conquests includes hundreds of women all over Europe—1003 in Spain, it is said—remains desirable to women in spite of his vices. Leporello’s Catalogue Aria is humorous, but this story, in its entirety, is not very funny. In the opening scene Giovanni kills Donna Anna’s father in a midnight confrontation. From this beginning, the motivations of the women in the opera are confusing or confused. Anna’s shrieking alerts the servants and her father that things are amiss, but before she calls for help, her first words are, in fact, You won’t escape; you will never get away from me. The ambiguity of these opening lines persists through the ensuing action. Anna makes Ottavio, her fiancé, swear vengeance on her father’s assassin, but, to the end, she is in thrall of Giovanni. After his demise, when the virtuous Ottavio wants her to follow through on their engagement, she puts him off for a year, saying she needs time to grieve her slain progenitor.

Another woman is also pursuing the unrepentant rogue. His next attempted seduction turns out to be Donna Elvira, an earlier conquest who is still on his trail. Giovanni escapes again, and Leporello tries to dissuade her from following him. This is the ostensible reason for the Catalogue Aria, a detail that tends to be overlooked in the interpretations rendered by most Leporellos. The valet’s dilemma is that of a man compelled to explain that his boss is an incorrigible cad. The fact that Don Giovanni is a nobleman is set in stark contrast by a scene in which he attempts to lead the peasant bride Zerlina astray. The groom is, of course, belligerent, and it is Leporello’s unsavory task to remove him. Giovanni in on the verge of success in the seduction, but Donna Elvira has not taken Leporello’s advice to go home. She snatches Zerlina from the clutches of the predatory “nobleman”. Donna Anna and Ottavio come in at this moment, and Elvira returns to expose and renounce Giovanni. He deflects Elvira’s rants by claiming she is deranged. Donna Anna recognizes him in this ruse, but the wedding feast continues. Apparently Giovanni is paying for the festivities. He sings his famous Champaign Aria still with an eye on Zerlina. Leporello distracts the groom while Giovanni draws Zerlina out of the room, onlythis time she screams for help. Ottavio and the women corner the Don and he narrowly escapes impalement on Ottavio’s sword.

Ruthless as he is ravishing, Giovanni changes clothes with Leporello. He is not ashamed to put his valet at risk for his life in order to deceive his pursuers, while he amuses himself serenading Elvira’s maid. The aggrieved groom, Masetto, who is not amused at nearly being cuckolded on his wedding day, is leading a band of armed peasants in the attempt to capture or kill Giovanni. When the posse discovers the rake disguised as Leporello, Giovanni sends in them general direction of Leporello and then beats up Masetto. Leporello has a near miss with Giovanni’s other pursuers, Ottavio, Donna Anna, and Donna Elvira, but he unmasks and escapes.

Having evaded all of his natural enemies, Giovanni’s defiance encounters a supernatural adversary in the cemetery to which he and Leporello have fled. A stone memorial statue of Anna’s father begins to speak. The Commendatore’s voice terrifies Leporello while it intones a challenge addressed to the unrepentant Giovanni. The rake tells Leporello to invite the Commendatore to dinner, and, trembling, Leporello conveys the invitation. In the mean time, Anna is delaying and dismissing Ottavio’s pleas that they be wed. Elvira finds Giovanni and interrupts him while Leporello is serving him dinner. She makes another appeal to Giovanni to reform. He contemptuously refuses and sends her away. On the way out she encounters the Commendatore on his way to accept Giovanni’s invitation to dinner. The stone guest enters. Trying to remain unperturbed, Giovanni orders Leporello to set another place at the table. The guest is not amused. He says, Those who take the everlasting bread need no temporal sustenance. Other matters bring me hence.

Giovanni says, speak your message. The Commendatore has come to confer in a reasonable fashion with the rank offender. He asks if Giovanni will sit at table and consider the terms of his surrender. Giovanni says he’s no coward; he will confer. The Commendatore asks for a handshake on the agreement. Once Giovanni’s hand is in the stone fist of the Commendatore, he begins to note a deathly chill. The guest commands him to repent. This is his last chance.

Pentiti, cangia vita, e l’ultimo momento
Pentiti, scelerato, pentiti, pentiti

Unrepentant and unrelenting, Giovanni rages even as he is dragged into the vortex. Voices torment him with threats of worse terrors waiting in the unending fire. Leporello is left to tell Giovanni’s pursuers that he is far away. There came a giant made of marble through the door and seized the master. Smoke and fire came from the ground and took him down.

Anna’s repeated delaying in her commitment marry Ottavio, even after the rogue’s demise confirms the ambiguity of the moral of this story. Anna says she will retreat to a convent to fast, pray, and ponder, and then, she promises, she will be Ottavio’s faithful wife. None of this inspires comedic release of the tension that has been building. Zerlina and Masetto are happily reunited. They join in the chorus warning that debauchery ends in destruction as has the inglorious Don Giovanni. Of course, directors in contemporary productions don’t know what to make of this morality play at the conclusion of the opera. Some years ago in Seattle the local company staged a production that parodied the ethos of a Catholic parochial school, complete with flashing neon cross, against the libertine’s revels. Some of this is arguably in the libretto; Don Giovanni’s music is robust in contrast to that of the virtuous Ottavio. Something is undeniably wrong with the world, and it is as evident in this opera as in the cinematic extravagances of the present era. Virtue is often not so interesting as vice.

Whether or not Shaffer’s guilt-ridden Amadeus is complete fiction, there is a morality play on another level than that apparent in this opera’s retribution on the seducer. It’s a question about whether virtue is life negating. The idea, that it is, has had many advocates, among them Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and currently, Darwinists holding forth variously as scientists or economists. This opera’s examination of the question is not as inspirational as that of Plato and Aristotle who conceived virtue as the noblest and most satisfying of human accomplishments and an end in itself. The Hebrew Bible puts virtue on a plane with wisdom and indicates on many occasions that God’s worldly blessing are on the righteous. Other Biblical narratives concerning Job, Jesus, and St. Paul require the concession that suffering often accompanies virtue and that crowd pleasers are frequently in the company of a multitude on their way to destruction.

There is some evidence in filth-obsessed letters of Mozart that he suffered from Tourette Syndrome. Shaffer’s play makes the composer’s scatological jests the object of Salieri’s disdain for him. Despite the evident mirth in his music, Mozart was on his death bed at age thirty six. He worked on sections of his Requiem in the final weeks of his life. The work was finished by his pupil Süssmayr with some more recent emendations. Mozart’s Requiem, as it is now sung, balances the fury of the Dies Irae and Confutatis with the lyrical Recordare. It has been a consolation to many generations. After the atrocities at the World Trade Center in 2001, fifty thousand people filled a sports arena in Seattle to hear it again as a classic inquiry into the enigma of the world.

Michael Dodaro is a musician and writer. He has sung leading roles in orchestra productions of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, Benjamin Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Bartered Bride by Smetana, Don Pasquale by Donizetti, and Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny. Currently, he serves as a cantor at St. Jude Catholic Church in Redmond, Washington, and a chorister at St. Monica Parish on Mercer Island. He is published in First Things, Journal of the Institute on Religion in Public Life, The New Oxford Review, and numerous online venues. His education includes a B.A. in English literature and philosophy from the University of Washington and M.A. from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is employed in the software industry as a programmer/writer.

You are awesome. You are the light of the world. And in this brief essay, I will prove it to you.

Your body is a superb machine whose functional details keep scientists in a state of awe and wonder. They estimate that your body has enough power to run a whole city for a week.

Your mind is a computer that has billions of interconnected neurons. You may have enough raw brain power to run a galaxy.

Yet there is something even more amazing about you. You are self-aware, the creator of yourself, and your own creation. You are more than a person, much more. You are a consciousness whose only limit is your own self-belief and imagination.

And, whether you admit it or not, you are here on this planet to do something great with all this raw power and potentiality. You are a creator and you are in a place where creation is necessary. In fact, your internal guidance system, your emotions, will tell you whether you are on track or off track. If you are happy, you are doing something creative and feel fulfilled. If you are unhappy, you are conforming to a reality that does not bring out the best in you.

On the surface of things, it may seem that you have little free-will and are limited in both creativity and imagination. It may also seem that you are pressed in and coerced to do things by stronger forces. And it may also seem that you are different from others, living in a separate objective world of your own.

Yet the study of quantum mechanics shows that at a fundamental level everything is only energy and that this idea of separation is really some kind of hallucination we all share in common because our senses are not subtle enough to observe the fluid interconnection between all things.

Furthermore, a radical subjectivity informs your entire experience of life. That is, you can never not be yourself, and even when you name something as objective, it is a statement that arises from your own subjectivity.

Finally, you are nothing but your own expression of choices, which you bring into existence through creativity and imagination.

This life that you live is the clay that you shape. You are the geometer, organizer, and designer of your life.

As Dr. Joe Vitale said in the movie, The Secret, “You are the Michelangelo of your own life. The David you are sculpting is YOU.”

What you think and feel on a moment by moment basis influences all of life because everything about you has some kind of influence.

This is a big concept.

Here is how to understand it.

Think of a row of dominoes leaning up against other dominoes, when there is a change in movement in one, it affects all the other dominoes.

Here is another way to understand it.

Scientists estimate that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly can affect the air currents in a way that gradually magnifies over a distance until it causes weather changes

Of course, all this is very, very subtle. You will never know whether your bad mood affects an international crisis in a war-prone area or whether your good mood creates an act of kindness in a city far away from you.

It has been said that the vibrations of someone with deep wisdom can affect all of humanity. This is easier to understand. After all the history of ideas shows that all that is necessary to influence billions of people throughout time is the ideas of a few people.

What all this means is that beneath the apparent separation between human beings, we are all one; and beneath the apparent lack of power we display, we hide a mighty power.

What you say, think, and do matters. Not only to you, but to everyone. Sometimes it is obvious how your influence spreads. But most often it is subtle, very subtle, hardly noticeable to you, like the flapping of the wings of a butterfly.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html
Copyright 2004 Saleem Rana. Please feel free to pass this
article on to your friends, or use it in your ezine or
newsletter. It’s a shareware article.

My eyes opened.
I am still alive;
Living on planet earth.
Though unconscious for many hours;
Unaware of existence,
Unknowing of life,
Incognizant of humanity
Living in a space of void,
Resident of nothingness,
Here, but not here.
There, but not there.

Now, awakened
I know I am here.
Thank you Lord! I guess;
I may prefer to be there.
Heard it is less troublesome,
Than here.

But, I accept here.
Though I am told there is better
And You know I want to be there
With You,
Yet,I thank you for here,
For now.

Here, I am able to hope for there.
Adds meaning to my life here.
You always visit me here
And we sometimes talk about there.

You review with me my assignment here
That must be completed
Before I can travel there.
And you remind me that
Even while I am here,
I get a little closer
To there every day.

I admit I do sometimes wonder about
What is going on there
And who is there
But no one who relocates there
Ever revisit here to tell me.

Well, I am awake and ready
To start my “here” business.
I cannot neglect it
Because what I do here
Determines what I do there

And ……

Which there I go to.

You placed me in time here,
Even though You went back to eternity there.
You did not abandon me here.

You speak with me daily
And do not withhold your loving-kindness
You cover me with the shield of wisdom
And do not forsake me in my struggles
Here.
Even as You prepare a place for me
There.

Thank you Lord
For being here and there.

Rev. Saundra L. Washington, D.D., is an ordained clergywoman, social worker, and Founder of AMEN Ministries. clergyservices4u.org clergyservices4u.org. She is also the author of two coffee table books: Room Beneath the Snow: Poems that Preach and Negative Disturbances: Homilies that Teach. Her new book, Out of Deep Waters: My Grief Management Workbook, will be available soon.

What Makes a Piece of Music a “Good Song”?
Most people say that a song is good if it has a good beat. Do you agree?
Why Do You Struggle with Rhythm?
Even if you think that the words, the melody or the harmony (chords) make a piece of music a good song, you probably agree at some level that the beat is often what draws you to a particular song.
So why do rhythm and counting feel like such a struggle?
If you are like most piano students, you simply want to play the tune, recognize the melody and feel the sense of accomplishment that comes from knowing that you played a song that you know.
When you sit at the piano you might think to yourself:
· Find those notes.
· What fingers should I use?
· How does that middle section go?
· Where do I go when it says ‘to CODA’?
You may get so confused that you forget why you liked that song in the first place.
But usually it was the beat of the song that grabbed your attention.
Yet, like most things in life, you end up giving all of your attention to your most pressing problems.
As the old adage says: “Art imitates life.” If you draw a parallel from your own life to your piano playing, you will quickly understand why the challenge of counting causes you to put keeping the beat on the back burner.
There are simply too many other musical issues vying for your attention!

You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
Are you one of those people who eats the cake first or do you prefer to start with the icing? Are you a person who can delay your musical gratification until after you establish the beat? Or do you have to listen to yourself play the melody right away?
You can have your cake and play the melody a few times with the right hand alone at first.
But if you want to eat it too, you will need to look at music differently.
Remember hearing one of your favorite songs sung by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett or Barbra Streisand?
What makes their renditions so special is that they (and other great artists) know how to interpret the melody in their own unique vocal styles.

Do you know how they do this?
Frank, Tony, Barbra and others sing so freely because their background ensembles provide them with a great foundation: a GOOD BEAT.
Your Left Hand Is Your “Count Basie Band”
Once you begin seeing your left hand as a solid accompanying ensemble like the Count Basie Band that so often accompanied Sinatra, your piano playing will quickly improve!
You’re probably wondering how you can expect 5 fingers of one hand to do the work of 17 professional performing musicians.
But when you look at what having a solid accompaniment does for the great song stylists, you can see how training your left hand to be the “band” can give your right hand the freedom to “sing”.
The Secret to Getting Unstuck

If you’re like most students, you find that keeping the beat is challenging. You may often feel like counting restricts rather than frees you as you play a song.
The reason for this is that you are trying to accompany the right hand melody. You probably often find it hard to fit a left hand umpah or 10th with the right hand melody, and so you get frustrated.
If you want to get unstuck, you will need to turn your thinking around.
Here’s the secret to getting unstuck: Start by giving your attention to learning the left hand accompaniment in strict tempo. Once you can do this, everything else will fall into place.

7 Ways to Transform Your 5 Fingers into the “Band”
1. Learn the notes to be played by the left hand. 2. Start counting slowly without playing anything 3. Practice the left hand part alone slowly and in strict rhythm (use a metronome if you feel ready) 4. Start playing the song with hands together at a slow tempo several times: focus mainly on one short (2 to 4 measures) section at a time. 5. Use your metronome to gradually increase the tempo 6. Get a sense of being the “band” by using a rhythm unit (drum machine: many of the inexpensive keyboards have wonderful drum sounds) 7. Listen for the right hand melody and make sure that you can always hear it when playing hands together

One Final Note
The next time you listen to one of your favorite artists singing a good song, pay attention to the background. Notice how the solid accompaniment keeps the beat steady, the music flowing and the performer free to express herself.
From now on, give your left hand the long overdue attention that it deserves. Recognize how valuable its role is in creating great music. Finally, remember that the key to success is in the counting. By starting with the left hand accompaniment and then developing a solid rhythm, you will be well on your way to playing many good songs.

Copyright © 2007 by Ed Mascari

1) The March of the Modern

Perhaps it was the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who first gave expression to the concept of an avant garde of artists on the cutting edge of innovation by asserting that “Poets are the unaknowledged legislators of the world”, although it is likely that the first use of the term in an artistic rather than military sense, was made by the French socialist philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon in 1825 in his “Opinions Litteraires, Philosophiques et Industrielles”.
Thence in the Paris of the early 1830s, in the wake of the July Revolution, there arose what could be termed a seminal artistic avant garde in the shape of the Jeunes-France, a band of turbulent young Romantic litterateurs (dubbed the Bousingos by the press, allegedly following a night of riotous boozing on the part of some of their number), whose leading figures included a fiery Theophile Gautier long before he became a bona fide classic of French literature, and who cultivated dandified and eccentric personas intended to shock the bourgeoisie, or conventional middle class, while inclining to radicalism, but that does not imply that avant gardism has to of necessity be politically radical, although it very often has been in the course of its history of defiance of what has been perceived as bourgeois tradition.

Needless to say perhaps, The prototypal avant gardists of 1830s Paris owed an incalculable debt to the earlier English and German Romantic movements, which did so much to promote the myth of the artist as tormented genius existent on the fringes of respectable society, if not as bohemian then as dandy, struggling to produce works of revolutionary genius often in the most dismal conditions, known as the vie de Boheme, the Bohemian lifestyle, and eternally pitted against bourgeois respectability.
The Bohemian was so named in consequence of being perceived as a gypsy, not a true Romany of course, but an artistic or spiritual gypsy existent in a state of picturesque poverty, Romanies having once been considered by the French to have originated from the former central European nation of Bohemia, while it is widely accepted today that the Romany people have their ancestral roots in India. The two great Parisian Bohemias of the 19th Century were the Left Bank of the Seine as a whole, including the Quartier Latin, and Montparnasse, and Montmartre, which exploded on an international scale towards the century’s end, while the first literary work to celebrate the Bohemian way of life was the celebrated “Scenes de la Vie de Boheme”, published in 1845 and which its author Henri Murger based on the Bohemia he experienced first hand in the Paris of his day. It went on to form the basis of Puccini’s opera “La Boheme”, and the contemporary musical comedy “Rent”. Later Bohemias included London’s Chelsea, and New York’s Greenwich Village.

The first wave of Bohemia ultimately produced the Decadents, and the great Symbolist movement in the arts, both of which came into being about 1880 although they had many predecessors, before the spirit of the avant garde could be said to have triumphed as never before in the shape of the massively influential and truly international artistic and cultural phenomenon known as Modernism, which existed at its point of maximum intensity from about 1890 to 1930, birthing such earth-shaking works as Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907), Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” (1913), T.S Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1922) and James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (1922), as well as movements as diverse as Expressionism, Cubism and Dada. Whenever Modernism is discussed, in addition to the arts, parallel iconoclastic developments in philosophy, psychology, science, and so on which fuelled the Modernist agenda must necessarily be taken into consideration, this agenda being significantly inimical to those Christian components of the fabric of Western civilisation according to certain authorities, and there is substance to their argument.
. Other critics have seen Modernism as actually predating the avant garde rather than arising out of it, that is as a spirit rather than a movement as such, possessing its roots in the so-called Enlightenment which initiated towards the end of the 17th Century and lasted until about 1789, the year of the French Revolution, producing great rebellion on behalf of lofty Reason against Christianity, others still go even further back into the depths of Western history, to the Renaissance and its revival of Classical Antiquity.

Modernism and the avant garde underwent a falling away in terms of intensity in the years leading up to the Second World War, while the immediate post-war age brought renewed activity on the part of such movements as the Beats of New York, San Francisco and elsewhere, and the Lettrists of Paris, Beat being the first avant garde movement to.

One of the keynotes of late Modernism as I see it (and I am not alone I doing so) has been the progressive mass acceptance of iconoclastic beliefs once seen as the preserve of the avant garde, especially with regard to traditional Christian morality, process which could be said to have accelerated around 1955-‘56, when both the Beat Movement and the new popular music of Rock ’n’ Roll, forged of Rythym and Blues, Rockabilly, and other simple folk genres, were starting to make strong inroads into the mainstream. Some ten years thereafter, this process could reasonably be said to have underwent a further quickening, with Pop starting to lose its initial sheen of innoxiousness, and so perhaps evolve into Rock, a more versatile music which went on to run the gamut from the most infantile hit parade ditties, to musically and lyrically complex compositions owing a considerable debt to Classical music, as well as Jazz and other non-popular music forms. It could plausibly be suggested that Rock became an international language in the mid sixties, and one that went on to disseminate values traditionally seen as morally unconventional as no other artistic movement before it, to spirit the message of the new permissive society around the world, and so contribute to the refashioning of Western society, with the most powerful Rock artists attaining through popular consumer culture a degree of influence that previous generations of innovative artists operating within high culture could only dream of. That said, Rock was just one of many elements of which the social revolution, the spirit of the sixties and beyond was constituted.

2) The Spirit of the Sixties Reborn

Had things not turned out the way they did in 1993, I might have wholly immersed myself in the Bohemian culture of the enthralling new decade, because I’d already become entranced by it a year or so earlier, Hippie Bohemianism being in the ascendant again in my suburban eyes, invigorated by the Rave/Dance youth movement, although in truth it had never gone away, merely kept a relatively low profile since the early ‘70s, going on to form subcultures which exist to this day.

The hip counterculture which had risen to prominence in the UK in the late 1960s had begun to lose momentum by about ‘73, to the degree that some three or four years later, “Hippie” had become a term of abuse among certain members of the Punk uprising. By the early 1990s, however, it appeared to me to be back with a vengeance, and around ’92, I’d fallen for it with it with all the passion of one who had had a surfeit of the eighties.
I was ready to take my attitude of extreme revolt to a further stage of development, and the climate of the times as the century’s end loomed seemed to me to be perfect for doing so, and yet had I succeeded, I may have lost not just my life but my eternal soul, leaving a trail of unholy mayhem behind me. Thankfully, God had other plans for me.

3) Last Flight from Bohemia

I became a born again Christian towards the end of January 1993, and immediately set about divesting myself of the elements of which my pre-Christian existence had been characterised. From the outset, I began dispensing of books I deemed to be of a negative spiritual influence, while others I salvaged, either to be jettisoned at a later date, or kept indefinitely. At times over the course of the years I took things too far, with the consequence that there were books, or music albums, presenting little if any spiritual threat to me as I see it today which I unceremoniously discarded nonetheless, even going so far as to subsequently repurchase some of these. It took me some years to get the balance right.

In addition to books and albums, I set about pruning the writings I’d collected, mainly short stories and projected novels. Again in this, I went too far at times, dumping irreplacable writings, when portions of them at least could have been preserved and recycled.

I continued writing after becoming a Christian, but from about the middle of the nineties, found it increasingly arduous to do so, and so started destroying most of what I wrote, believing at the time that through my writing I was glorifying the darkness of my pre-Christian past rather than God. By about 1998, I had almost altogether ceased writing, and didn’t seriously take up the pen again, give or take the odd literary scrap that survived my regular Savonarolan purges, until the winter of 2006 when I started contributing articles to the Blogster.com website.

I also destroyed hours and hours of diary-like recordings that I had committed to cassette tape since the early 1980s or earlier and which teemed with gross narcissism and decadent sensuality, as well as occasional bitter outbursts of a startling vehemence, so that I no longer recognised them as proceeding from the person of Carl Halling, as well as innumerous musings committed to paper which I deemed ungodly and more often than not with good reason. Were I to have died, I didn’t wish to leave anything behind that was of an overtly evil nature.

My efforts were not in vain. By the mid 1990s, Christians of my aquaintance could not have been blamed for being of the belief that what I seemed to be was what I had always been, especially given that what I appeared to be, namely a quiet individual erring a little too enthusiastically on the side of earnest self-denial, was not too far from what I was in actuality, my former gift for deception having largely failed me, not that I wanted to be deceptive, far from it, nor to do anything liable to wound the Saviour to whom I owed so much. Of course, I feared God, but I also honoured Him, and so wanted to do good things for Him.

4) Epilogue

If I have given the impression over the course of this piece that I no longer see myself as an artist, then I have done so purely by accident. What I resolutely don’t do however, is subscribe to the theory of the automatically tormented nature of the creative artist. Could God, the Creator of the universe, possibly condone such a role, which has legendarily entailed a variety of tragic conditions deemed to be characteristic of the “tortured artist” including addiction, depression, mental instability? Perish the thought. God wants artists to work for Him, the supreme Artist, to seek refuge in His love and care, where the sensitivity that is so often their undoing can be a blessing rather than a blight to them.

I cannot deny that I am still deeply drawn to the creative genius of artists, but not in the way I used to be, which is to say, from the position of one who worshipped them at their most turbulent and self-destructive, and thence sought passionately to emulate them, but from a distance, still appreciating them, but having a heart for them at the same time. I especially feel for those artists whose sufferings have resulted in their lives being wrecked by alcohol, my own one-time near-nemesis.

I’d like to think that there were those, whether artists or not, who in consequence of reading my writings, come to the realisation that escape from alcohol addiction is possible through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Notwithstanding the occasional brief relapse, I have been sober now for nearly fourteen years, and I am convinced of the miraculous nature of this, given that there is evidence that after even as little as four years most recovering alcoholics have resumed drinking, and that among those who haven’t, deep depression and other mental conditions are common, and understandably so perhaps, given the devastating effect long-term alcohol dependency has on the neurotransmitters.

I’m not saying that my walk with God has been free of suffering, nor that I haven’t paid for my past in a worldly sense, but I’m moving on with Him, as well as creating, writing, composing, singing, hopefully all according to His will, and have everything to remain on this earth for, and all because of Jesus.

Carl Halling. Born again Christian. Born London. Resides Suburbia. Actor, singer, songwriter.