THE BASKING PHILOSOPHER

THE BASKING PHILOSOPHER 071001 2006 The basking- shark with mouth open and ten meters long cruises the mind of ocean for intelligent life called Platon.

lørdag 27. oktober 2001 20:31 I set up the new little chess board on the low stool in the empty place left by moving the table leaving the corner empty and looked at the chess board with pieces and just looked at it admiring it. No one told me to move. No one told me to try to win. No one told me to try to defend myself. No one told me to DO something. I was alone. tirsdag 6. november 2001 20:40 My site is like a castle in dungeons and prehistoric monsters from outer space. and i am like the priest praised by Albert Schweitzer for expressing the thoughts he himself had as a youngster but better. I hope to help the early teen (bright) to become like me in some ways --- even more than I was helped. But in those days classical music radio (even in my Boston) was in its fumbling infancy. They kept playing over and over Ralph Vaughn Williams´ “Job, a Masque for Dancing” --- one soon got sick of it. I do not recall hearing it or hardly ever in the past many years. But of course, as you doubtless have gathered, I was EXTREMELY fortunate to be there in Boston when Charles Munch was conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra, discovering him a bit late tho, and going to his concerts from 1954 (about) to after 1961. Also hearing on radio which by that time had blossomed. In my junior year (third) at Brandeis University i had 18 pictures on my walls --- 17 by Hieronymous Bosch, and a photo of Charles Munch. We used to be able to go to the Friday afternoon concerts for two dollars and supposedly sit in what we called “monkey seats” (they folded down) along the back walls of the second balcony. But we could commonly find unused better seats to move into. Charles Munch pushed for increased opportunity for folks to see dress rehearsals, and then all seats were available, so there was a general stampede. Actually I forget whether the tickets cost 60 cents or two dollars, and the Friday tickets 60 cents --- one way or the other. We were beneficiaries of the wealthy who supported the orchestra. Anyway, I was able to get right up front many times. There is an expression: “O, to have been an Ancient Greek! O, to have been an Athenian! O, to have been an Athenian in the time of Pericles!!!!!” --- I was there when Charles Munch was conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was Olympus. And after the concerts on Friday afternoons (having in the intermission eaten fruit-cake in the lounge)(in the presence often of the wonderful radio presenter ) I went to Bailey´s ice cream parlor, right out of Henry James, with marshmallow and nuts and the best chocolate sauce sundae. You must undertand that I was in the presence of the most elegant ladies in the world, the upper class Bostonians, at concert and ice cream of a friday afternoon while the husbands tended to whatever such privileged who know they are privileged do on a friday afternoon while their females are at concert and Bailey´s ice cream with chocolate sauce. One time the orchestra made a bad job of a passage in some Mozart piece starting the concert. This sort of thing was as scarce as hen´s teeth, and Charles Munch was well and truly furious (I am quite sure this was the week Nadia Boulanger was also conducting part of the concert, so it would have been intensely galling to him) --- the next piece was Wagner´s "Die Meistersinger" Overture, and Charles Munch came tearing out onto the stage and to the podium like an enraged lion. You must understand that the Boston Symphony Orchestra was the greatest orchestra in the world (he said “They play like angels”). He showed them no mercy that time --- he tore into the piece like Zeus on a rampage. I was sitting down front about the tenth row, in Symphony Hall, which is almost flat and straight all the way back, seating well over a thousand people; that day mostly women. The piece over, they rose as one orgasm roaring from their deep throats and I turned to see them flushed and bacchanalian, every one of them a test to Botticelli.