Music is my great love, always has been. So I'm going to mention some of my favourites here from time to time.
Recently, Black Hockey Jesus played a best & worst game on his blog (which, sadly, doesn't exist anymore), asking for the best and worst song "in the history of civilisation". (Music lovers are like this - always excessive when it comes to the appreciation of music.)
Of course I was tempted to play and in that moment (because there are so many songs that might go for a "best" that this could only be a transient thing) I thought of Radiohead and Thom Yorke finally deciding for The Clock.
Radiohead has fascinated me since OK Computer came out in 1997. I like their music and the weltschmerz expressed by Thom Yorke's voice touches me very deeply. It must have some weird connection to that sea of sadness within me that I'm sometimes in touch with. When I am in a firm mental state (and I'm grateful to say that this happens a lot), I can even enjoy this connection. It is safe.
(If I'm not, I'd rather not listen to most of the music I like...)
"People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands—literally thousands—of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.”
Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
As I was looking for this citation in the internet (I was too lazy typing it from the book), I found it in an article about - Radiohead.
Thursday 25 September 2008
Sunday 21 September 2008
Elections
This is not supposed to be a blog about politics but politics is a part of life, right? At least it is when you care about who can influence your life as a citizen.
Just a few thoughts about a very small and a very large country.
Right now I am watching two national elections approaching and I am feeling a bit powerless as I'm not allowed to vote in either of them: Austria, where I live, and the U.S.
In both countries, the resulting consequences of these elections will be very noticeable. It does make a difference whether a far-right wing party gets about 20% of the votes even if it will not be part of the government, which remains to be seen. And it does make a difference whether the U.S. will continue an outrageously inhuman policy and, besides many other effects, continue to move further away from Europe, or whether the U.S. starts (and it would only be a start) to turn its policy into a different direction.
This is in response to the argument that nowadays it doesn't really matter which party is the recipient of your vote as governments don't have much scope in putting their ideologies into reality because they have to respond to global realities, mostly economic.
I used to think that, too. However, in Austria one could clearly observe a decay in political morality when the Conservatives (in a fit of power madness) finally managed to beat the Social Democrats, who had become much too complacent, with the help of the far-right wing party in 1999. This coalition crumbled to pieces a couple of years later but Austria still suffers from the consequences.
Need I give examples of the effect of the Bush government on the U.S. or on the world? It suffices to say that they added paranoia to the American Way of Life. In my view that is even worse than the bloodshed in Iraq, which was bad enough.
Fear is the number one nutrient for fascism. For a government to toy with that, to hazard with the consequences to push some petty (mostly economic) interests there is no excuse.
So it does make a difference.
Being forced to stay silent in a democratic sense, I can only hope that people in both countries wake up, listen and vote...
Just a few thoughts about a very small and a very large country.
Right now I am watching two national elections approaching and I am feeling a bit powerless as I'm not allowed to vote in either of them: Austria, where I live, and the U.S.
In both countries, the resulting consequences of these elections will be very noticeable. It does make a difference whether a far-right wing party gets about 20% of the votes even if it will not be part of the government, which remains to be seen. And it does make a difference whether the U.S. will continue an outrageously inhuman policy and, besides many other effects, continue to move further away from Europe, or whether the U.S. starts (and it would only be a start) to turn its policy into a different direction.
This is in response to the argument that nowadays it doesn't really matter which party is the recipient of your vote as governments don't have much scope in putting their ideologies into reality because they have to respond to global realities, mostly economic.
I used to think that, too. However, in Austria one could clearly observe a decay in political morality when the Conservatives (in a fit of power madness) finally managed to beat the Social Democrats, who had become much too complacent, with the help of the far-right wing party in 1999. This coalition crumbled to pieces a couple of years later but Austria still suffers from the consequences.
Need I give examples of the effect of the Bush government on the U.S. or on the world? It suffices to say that they added paranoia to the American Way of Life. In my view that is even worse than the bloodshed in Iraq, which was bad enough.
Fear is the number one nutrient for fascism. For a government to toy with that, to hazard with the consequences to push some petty (mostly economic) interests there is no excuse.
So it does make a difference.
Being forced to stay silent in a democratic sense, I can only hope that people in both countries wake up, listen and vote...
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