To get to a basic meaning of good using music, plenty of choices were available beyond the “folk,” “ska” and “world” categories. Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven among many other classical composers had more than enough to say musically that helps us get a grip on good.  The point was more about Pete Seeger’s character, and his choice to not back down and his ability to not become embittered by the injustice; the choice The Specials made to sing to protest a hero’s unjust imprisonment, or Raghu Dixit’s choice to celebrate virtue through a young girl.

For a cinematic rendering of good, Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World comes to mind, which brings the topic back to good music.  Lou Reed does not normally evoke good the way Pete Seeger does, but his contribution to the soundtrack of this film, What’s Good, is worth a listen.  It approaches the subject by pondering inexplicable loss.  Another contributor to that soundtrack is even harder to associate with the word good, but if you listen to him in conversation, he sure sounds like he knows something about good.

Are there equations predicting good behavior other than George Price’s?  If so, please share.  Meanwhile, you might find Laurie Anderson’s Let X = X, a fine diversion.

I experienced monstrous difficulty getting this piece written. The difficulty was that of synthesis, which eludes one all the more deftly when one searches for it too seriously. Almost desperately, I wanted, both for my own sake and for the sake of this, our burgeoning compendium of tidbits and travel tales, to provide a perfectly comprehensive explication of my two months in Kumily. But I have to give up the ghost, and I always have to think more humbly about writing.

So after several drafts, I submit an account more prosaic than I’d hoped for, which is the price of my liberation from this imprecise living–both here and there and in neither hemisphere entirely. I have had reason and time to think about travel, specifically about travel and writing, the collection and formation of disparate experiences for the creation of something meaningful. Growing up, I tended to believe that writing just happened–that a writer, when faced with a given circumstance, simply reported what was before him, and that his metaphors and imagery arose spontaneously from the content of his impressions. I don’t believe that any longer. Writing is hard, and writing honestly is harder.  Continue reading →