September 5 is St. Mother Teresa’s feast day.  I became interested in her story several years ago and when I read books and articles about her life, I decided to write a musical piece about her. She was a dedicated and powerful force in our world at that time.  She worked tirelessly for the poor and homeless and downtrodden.  And she organized her order of nuns and trained them in the same vocation that she was living.  The musical piece features a soloist and choir and instrumental accompaniment.  The choir serves to elicit the response of the soloist who is singing poignant words and phrases that she used during her life.  May her words have a ripple effect in your own life.

By Bill Svarda

REF:
I alone cannot change the world,
but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples,
to create many ripples,
to create many ripples.

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Some thoughts on the state of our arts:  When was the last time any of us used the terms awesome or beautiful or uplifting for contemporary works of art?  Music, painting, theater, sculpture, architecture, literature, etc.  When was the last time any of the above moved you in a spiritual manner?  Are we becoming immune to beauty?  Have we lost touch with our inner feelings?  Or has the art itself become trivialized or uncommunicative or irrelevant?  Are we losing our ability to feel deep-seated emotions?  It it the art? Or is it us?  Whatever the case, we are not connecting.

Have we reached a saturation point?  Is there so much music, visual arts, literature, etc, that we have become numb to anything specific in the arts or everything in general?  Is everything so accessible that it has lost its meaning?  Has everything become mediocre just by sheer quantity and weight?  Are we mass-producing art in every way that makes all of the above possible?  And what are the long-term effects of this?  Will our children and grandchildren forget how to appreciate something special because there is nothing special anymore?  And, how do we reverse this?

How do we take the numbers and the business commodity aspect out of our arts?  Any solution will take time to implement.  True art takes time.  The crafting of anything takes time, especially when it is one-of-a-kind.  One special painting rather than one thousand.  Something unique in any of the arts rather than everything in general.  But then, how does the artist of any kind exist?

Survival of the artist is paramount if there is to be art at all.  And survival means money and money means mass-producing, and then we have come full circle. Back to the present.  In the past there was a system of patronage.  The patron provided funding and the artist provided the art.  This seemed to work at times in the past.  Now, I’m not so sure.  Complacency can enter the scene:  just produce anything and get paid.  Not a good idea for the arts. Is the starving artist the solution?  Art of any kind does not exist in a vacuum.  It needs fresh air.  Does art reflect our times or does it cause trends?  Is it active or passive?

What will last indefinitely can’t be recognized in its own time.  Our own feelings are too adaptable and malleable.  Art is a hook, but we have trouble because of this when we try to make judgments or discriminate within a style. Ancient art is specific to its own times. It is special because of its craft and also its limited quantity.  It is special, unique and one-of-a-kind.  Some of today’s art will become special and unique and also limited.  Keep in mind that all artists have an expiration date.  Art does not.  The artist lives long enough to produce.  There are no parameters, only time.  Present likes and dislikes become irrelevant .  Future likes and dislikes will determine what is special and lasting.

For now we produce our art of whatever kind and hope for the best.  Truth and beauty will ultimately win over quantity and the expedient.  Auto-exoticism.  Only time will tell.  Time after time.

COMMON SENSE #2  (Boundaries)

Would anyone now leave their house unlocked when they leave, or even when they are at home? Does anyone leave their car unlocked? Their place of business?  Would anyone not try to prevent disease or virus or infection from entering their body?  Protection, security, safety, prevention:  we live with all of these daily.  Life is unthinkable without them.  Our cities, towns, organizations, societies and our country have laws for the above.  We live with them daily and abide by them and in all of them there are penalties for infractions.  This insures that all citizens may be safe and secure and live without constant daily fear.  Our military, our police, our doctors, lawyers and judges are all supposed to enforce and interpret the laws that our representatives have drawn up.  Our government itself with its executive, legislative and judicial branches as checks and balances is supposed to maintain our systems of safety and security so that we don’t live in fear from month to month and year to year.

When all of this is working properly, then all of the above is possible.  We trust in our system of government which is based on the very simple premises of common sense and logic.  Common sense should permeate our society.  It makes the normal interactions of normal people possible, actions such as driving a car, waiting in lines patiently, crossing a street, helping someone in need.  All of these mean that our existence is assured. Problems are caused when common sense is blurred or when there is a mental breakdown either individually or collectively.  If your plumbing or electricity breaks down you either fix it or have someone else fix it.  The same with your car, and any of your body parts or functions.  This thinking is logical and depends upon common sense.  But what happens when common sense gets blurred and our mental capacity gets impaired either individually or collectively?  When this happens we have breakdowns in our daily living, our bodies, our conveniences and our systems of government.  The question becomes “how do we fix it?”

It only takes one person with common sense and the will to use it to fix things.  Sometimes there is such a person and sometimes there is not.  When there is, the mentally impaired will not immediately recognize the need and value and the necessity of the “fixer.”  How do we distinguish between a true leader who is altruistic (and knowledgeable and competent), and an anarchist or fascist or socialist who wants only personal control and absolute power over everything and everyone?  There is only one way: the use of common sense, logic and dependable information gleaned by dependable education.

When all are blinded by the expedient, common sense needs to prevail.  It may begin with one person, but it needs to spread through the whole populace.  The value of common sense in our leaders and citizens and in ourselves must be recognized in order for us to live our lives without fear.  Common sense means: locking your house, your car and your business, supporting our military and our police, using our medical facilities and being financially responsible.  Our credit cards depend on this.  We are indentified by them and by our license to drive.  These guarantee that we are responsible.  When we write a check we are connected to a bank and we are indentified.  Our society is permeated with our connections and our identifications which validate us as being responsible.  When we vote for our leaders we are identified.  All of this is based on common sense, and common sense like freedom, takes work.  Our minds and our freedoms aren’t free. We must be constantly vigilant against those whose idea of common sense is mentally blurred and would little by little erode the structure of our society and its laws which give us freedom.

The structure of our music mirrors the structure of our society or the eroding of it.  The aimless lack of structure in our music is a warning to be vigilant and active.  Heed it!  Listen actively!  Be discriminating with your listening and viewing.  Think: “Common sense…!

I am beginning to wonder if anything is funny anymore. What used to be funny isn’t anymore, or it is just not allowed.  This is really a lousy time in our history to be a comedian.  Nothing is funny when everything is censored by PC codes which are put forth and monitored by…whom…?  Nothing is funny when everyone has a thin skin.  Nobody can take a joke anymore.  Not only is everything nauseatingly serious, but everything is also recorded and filmed. Why?  So the situation or material can be used in a lawsuit where the deck is stacked toward PC standards…formulated by whom…?  The slightest misstep is instantly available globally to an unforgiving media which is duplicitous at best and biased at the least.

This would all be funny, even hysterical if we were looking at it from afar in distance or in time.  But not when everything is deathly serious; when every word you use, every joke you tell, whether story or anecdote, demeaning or uplifting could have contained in it a time bomb or a flash bang. At this point it can be difficult to convey humorous content.  Could any of the older, great comedians work now under these conditions?  Benny, Burns, Berle, Barbutti; Caesar, Cosby, Corey, Carlin; Dangerfield, Diller, Foxx, Pryor, Rickles, etc…?  If they were tied up and artistically strangled as in our day, could they even perform, let alone figure out how to be funny, or even determine what exactly is funny. Can you really be “on” night after night when you feel as if you are walking through a minefield?  Thinking: Watch where you step!  Will this one blow up?  Is this the end of my career?

And think for a moment about satire.  Comedy used to be free to criticize, put down, draw similes to, make fun of, and point out the deficiencies and foibles of anyone famous or just anyone:  politicians, actors, musicians, everyday workers and the average and below average personality without fear of instant retribution.  This backlash is the reason books like “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Lord of the Flies,” etc., were written.  They wore a thin disguise to save face (or life and limb) to get their point across.  There was a time when nothing was so sacred that it couldn’t draw a laugh.  I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m sure that it happened.  More recently time wise we had “icebreakers” like Lenny Bruce, Eddie Murphy, and Richard Pryor that paved the way for “all out,” “no holds barred” comedy. The ice got broken, but it again froze over and the door slammed shut again.

Now we have new personalities like Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman and Roseanne Barr that again push the envelope.  They also are quickly shunned or dropped if they cross the line.  But…where is the line?  No one knows unless someone pushes the envelope again or breaks the ice again until PC’s unknown entity says through the complicit media that “you crossed the line.”  So besides getting shut down, the line comes closer and then its cohort, the net, gets even tighter so that the only thing that is left is…SAFE!  And now what is safe?  Mr. Rogers was safe.  Pinky Lee was safe.  Pee Wee Herman was safe (and then he wasn’t safe anymore).

So what are we left with?  Potty humor and toilet jokes, and all of the safe items in the PC agenda.  Is multiculturalism funny?  Is the transference of the sexes (either way) funny?  Is anything at all in the news funny?  Were you content with the Teletubbies or Barney?  Is the last action of satire and comedy “South Park?”  Is this show just hanging on until the hammer falls?  I’m waiting…waiting…!  We are in the midst of a battle for free speech and thought again.  In other words freedom from a life-sucking censorship.

And what is the answer?  Is there a solution?  Usually my answer has something to do with music.  This time I am not so sure.  The glut of music which we experience daily everywhere and in every conceivable style has been dumbed down to be used as wallpaper or background just to sell products that for the most part we don’t need.  But the music is supposed to put us in a malleable mood so that we might just consider the product.  Any product.  And this music has been sanitized to appeal to the absolute lowest mentality.  Thankfully in our daily lives there are a few exceptions.

A large percentage of film music is honest, because it is married to a story or a situation.  There are small pockets of music in almost every style that show craft and artistry in the composing and production.  They are not easy to find; you have to dig for them, but the effort is well worth it.  Even so, will this help the present situation?  In my opinion yes, because music can be a sort of “bellwether” or even a kind of thermometer or barometer held to our society to measure somewhat our truthfulness and our honesty.  And, if there is to be a solution, this could very well be it.  For if music is overcome by the same evil forces that plague comedy, then we are done as a free society.  But if it holds its stance, then comedy again will have a chance to be truthful and honest. And if that happens then all of our intellects will be able to survive the impending dark age.  We will again have something to genuinely laugh about.  Just remember again that freedom isn’t free.  We all have to constantly work for it.  While laughing and listening to music…!

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the present direction of our society.  Not just in this country but throughout our entire world.  Our priorities have changed drastically.  The ways in which we satisfy our needs and interact with others also have changed drastically.  Our day to day living is blurred.  Our balance is off.  Some examples:  right/wrong, mine/yours, old/young, rich/poor, light/dark, etc.  The way we now view these or choose to ignore them is significantly different from a decade or two ago.  The preceding examples used to be distinguishable, now they are blurred.  We have lost touch with our societal roots.  Our balance is teetering daily due to over communication and over-exposure to the news of the world which is spooned out to us by a self-censored media. All of this affects our balance, our mind-set and even our integrity.

With all of our voluminous daily flood of input from texting and social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we now have a loneliness epidemic.  A What!!?  A loneness epidemic.  Why?  We are bloated with information.  We are over-exposed to almost everything from our phones, TV, and the endless commercials that constantly break up our train of thought into small segments and make continuity a fading memory of the past.  So, not only are we lonely, but we are segmented.  There are so many distractions in our lives that we are forgetting how to interact with living humans.  There are those who talk to their pets more because they don’t talk back.  They just acknowledge your presence and moods without judgment.

What happened to free, unfettered thinking?  Is it possible or just blurred by our present culture?  Is innovative thinking becoming less frequent and discouraged by our present circumstances.  Are our cultural norms, habits, rules and guidelines now a help or a hindrance to our thought processes?  Maybe we can answer some of these questions and maybe not.  Maybe we are just too close to them, immersed in such a way that our lack of balance makes creative thought anywhere from just difficult to impossible.

Along with all of the above thoughts about balance and blurred thinking are the basic ideals we have so enjoyed in the past which have also faded.   We have either lost or are rapidly losing our respect, honor and civility to each other.  Is this due to the loneliness epidemic or just advances in technology in general?  We are not as nice as a society anymore.  Instead there is a spirit of meanness.  This is harmful and in some cases even shameful.  All too common are hurtful actions such as: men to women, women to men, insensitivity to authority which we as a nation have set up, and ignoring the aged and the downtrodden.  None of this is helping us to advance as a civilization.  We shout and pray for peace, but ignore it at every level of our society.  Our loneliness and removal from social interaction allows us to objectify which also allows us to be mean and hurtful with impunity.

How do we heal and repair our blurred outlook and our precarious lack of balance?  In a word – music.  Real music, not the mass of mediocrity dictated by a business that only cares about numbers and sales and image and merchandise.  This type of music can’t heal any of our ills.  It only exacerbates them.  It is intended to keep us off balance and blur our thinking and promote antagonism to authority.  It is a good part of the problems we are now facing.

Music that can heal and repair contains form and balance and continuity.  It makes possible coherent thought by its inherent creativity.  I wonder if this kind of valuable music ended in the early 20th century.  There has been very little innovation in music since then that stimulates thinking instead of trying to control your thinking.  And it is not style or acoustic or digital or vocal or instrumental that makes the difference.  It is substance.  So how do any of us recognize what is substance and what is not?  It takes education in music which is now missing from all levels of our school systems.  Exposure to music which is based on creativity and innovation is vital.  We need to find it and learn from it.  It is in concerts by symphonies and chamber orchestras and ensembles of all kinds that we can awaken to true art and innovation and creativity. And it is then available on iTunes or YouTube or Amazon, etc, to purchase or download or stream.  If enough people start this process then maybe, just maybe we can reboot and re-adjust our society and regain our balance and re-calibrate our moral compass as a society and a civilization.  Maybe…

All religions have teachings that say, in essence, “Love thy neighbor.” All of us have lived with this phrase practically from birth. It is part of our thinking, but usually buried quite deeply in our psyche.  We acknowledge its importance, but don’t necessarily follow its meaning.  Why is this so common? The answer is that it is so very difficult to abide consistently by such a simple idea as “Love thy neighbor.”

Sunday is fairly easy because of the worship services that we attend or at least realize that someone is attending somewhere.  And we at least make an attempt to be pleasant to anyone even in the parking lot, though this can be very difficult at times.  Patience seems to be directly proportional to “love” in a parking lot, i.e. as patience thins and wanes, so does our love of neighbor.  Even with this exception, Sunday is still a relatively happy day to get along with those that we meet. But what about the other six days of the week?

It is much more difficult to love your neighbor through the week with all of its stresses and variables when we come in contact with people in general, all of whom seem to be mentally disturbed and off balance. Driving a car on any street or freeway will bear this out.  Dealing with people on the phone or in stores or a workplace or an office, especially a government office will begin to try the patience of even the most sedate personality after only a few minutes.  Watching any news program on TV or listening to news on a radio can cause us to take sides on any issue immediately and develop animosity toward the opposite side.  Sometimes it is almost easier to switch sides and despise our own side just for some momentary relief.

So what can help us to reset our moral compass, reboot our minds and restore balance to our spiritual side so that it is possible to love our neighbor?  There are those that will try anything that they can smoke, drink, or swallow, but the relief is only temporary and sometimes the after effect is worse than the cure.  There are those who try Zen or Yoga or exercising to the extreme, but even with these the mind still returns to our original premise that people are the cause of any problem, so “why should I love them or even like them?”

There is only one solution that goes deep enough into our minds and has an effect that is lasting enough to provide relief, balance, and an outlook towards our neighbor that includes love… music!  We have music in our cars, music in our homes and workplaces and music in our headphones and earbuds when we walk or exercise.  We have music when we shop in stores or eat in restaurants or fast food marts and even “live” music in church.  This ubiquitous use of music tends to keep us sane.

Music gives us the impression that other people are also sane and not just annoying.  It makes it possible for us to truly “Love our neighbor.” So we need to regularly equalize our feelings and psyche by partaking of the soothing vibrations that can heal.  And be sure to make them good, good, good, “Good Vibrations.”