PalePower

Michael and Victor, Okay, first, AWESOME?!? It is such a lift and an inspiration simply to know that you people exist! I feel like a little window just snapped open, allowing me to catch a glimpse of how I always wanted my life to be. Michael, how difficult was it getting work in the music scene - both classical and otherwise? I'm incredibly interested in what you've done, since that's more or less what I'm aiming for myself. All the more coincidental with the two of you, I'm also in love with creative writing and aim to be a published author in the near future. Whenever people ask me what I want to do, I automatically respond, "be a composer" - I sort of forget to mention "be an author" as well because I've always taken that future of mine for granted. I can't imagine a time in my life when I didn't want to be and know I was going to be a writer. However, I'm so incredibly busy with school and piano and work and everything that I haven't had much of a chance to write more than a paragraph or two of description or jot down story ideas. I was working on a novella over the summer but that has been put on hold. . . it's all very depressing. =( But I'd love feedback - especially the kind you described, Victor - on the little I've written. Victor, my creative enterprises are at this time, unfortunately, rather inchoate. I sometimes wish I could drop out of school just to stay home to write fiction and music! However, I do manage to churn out a few pieces every several months or so, and have been getting my school orchestra to perform some of them. Some of my friends in college are going into film and so I've done some music for their class assignment shorts (very exciting since I mainly want to be a film composer). I've got samples of some of my music on my acid planet account: http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?songs=450345&T=9640 And, Michael, it's really not all that much to delve into, so I don't think it would too too distracting! However - how am I to know what may or may not distract you? *shrug* In any case, any and all feedback is MORE than welcome. ~Elizabeth

On a sort of different note, Michael - you're a conductor?!?! *glows* ~Elizabeth

Chris, that's AWESOME! Kudos to Disney or whoever was in charge of building that. Happy thoughts!! I'd have to say my favorite humorous Rand quote is as follows, from The Fountainhead, talking about the aunt that brought up Toohey: "Aunt Adeline was a tall, capable woman to whom the word 'horse' clung in conjunction with the words 'sense' and 'face.'" LAWL!!

It is a loooooooooooooooooooooooooong road to perfection, with lots of stops on the way. Every single stop is a victory - and second places are stops. Learn to celebrate yourself more. Plus, perfection in terms of skill . . . is almost undefinable. There is ALWAYS something you can do more, something you can do better. Make sure that if perfection is your goal, you specifically define it - like, how fast you should run to consider that perfect, how well you play...but then again, all that is STILL relative and can be improved upon. I would say the only real, objective perfection available to people is in the moral field, in the extent to which you adhere to your values - which in stuff like sports and music only deals with effort. Make sure you focus on that. ~Elizabeth

Wow, great job Jeff, we really appreciate your contribution - except for the fact, that..you didn't contribute anything. And, Kori, LAWL, YOU DONE DID DO THAT.

*Gasp* THANK YOU!

My computer crashed a while ago and I lost basically everything - including my massive quote file with all my favorite Rand passages. =( So, does anybody have/remember the word for word quote that goes something like "Your world is real, it exists, it can be won" and any relevant words/sentences that surround it? I miss it! Thankyouthankyouthankyou! ~Elizabeth

Jeff, Roark would be disappointed! What are you more concerned with: superiority in relation to OTHERS, or achievement in relation to your own personal potential? Judith has a point when she says that you're in a very competitive atmosphere, and so, obviously, measuring yourself up to other people is inevitable. But don't confuse it for your standards of measuring SELF-satisfaction. Awards, stretching down to second, third, and (God forbid!) honorable mentions are not meant to alienate comparatively "less" talented people, but to honor talent and hard work - PERIOD. People who come in second and third have OBVIOUSLY worked hard (especially in large competitions), and even if someone worked a little bit harder, their effort is STILL commendable. You also have to factor in unanticipated circumstances, like bad days, insufficient rest, an uncomfortable and throwing environment - and also, some people are just naturally more talented, gifted with a genetically stronger or faster type of muscle or what have you(which in no way gives one an excuse to slack as a result). Last year I participated in the Maryland State piano competitions, and came in third place. (Not like, out of the ENTIRE state - the competitions were divided into smaller groups, so there were technically lots of place-winners.) When I learned of my placing, I was more or less ecstatic - BECAUSE: I was completely new at that. I'd only started up piano around 13 years old, and had been under poor instruction for my first two years of playing. I had only actually started performing within the last couple of months, so the event of playing in front of people was additionally nerve-wracking and unfocusing. I guarantee you that pretty much every other person in that room had been playing at least four years longer than I had - and yet only two people could trump me, because I had worked my ASS off. You can't tell me that that's not something to be proud of! Obviously, as I enter the competitions again this year, I plan to land second or first place. But not to be better than other people - but to improve on my OWN standards. Competitions are only beneficial in the sense that they give you an idea of how much you have achieved and how much you can improve -- not to condemn you as a failure just because you haven't reached that yet. Never measure you own self-worth by taking into account the worth of others - it's totally irrelevant, and totally stupid.

But the dog will!!

Youth camps? The youth today are retarded. They don't READ, let alone even know what Ayn Rand's ideas are. ~Elizabeth

"Unseen" not in that it is eternally unknowable, but in that it is not immediately evident. (Just as a note, I'm sort of playing the devil's advocate to see what kind of responses might pop up.)

During a review in my Comparative Religions class today, I copied down a quote by one William James (I don't know who this is) that follows: Religion "consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." My best friend (a fellow atheist/Objectivist) and I remarked to each other that we both liked this quote quite a bit, since it did not imply the existence of a god, only an "unseen order." (It was also a nice definition, since many religions don't even acknowledge gods, like Confucianism or Buddhism.) Then our discussion traveled further - what does he mean by an "unseen order?" Does he imply the traditional interpretation - that the entire UNIVERSE is governed by some pre-determined method ("You, river, run that way; you, star, explode") or can it refer to a much more restricted, personal area? For example, can "unseen order" simply mean that there EXIST definite methods and philosophies which a single person can practice to bring themselves fulfillment? In this light, could Objectivism be qualified as a religion? ~Elizabeth

Does anyone else find that sort of hilarious? I mean, bad enough that you sacrifice animals, but even worse that you're . . . so. . . BAD at it. "Get his neck, get his neck!" "Damn I missed! I stabbed my leg instead!" "Sonuvabitch! Not again! Say another prayer!" Where are the professional Allah-inspired-slaughterers here? ~Elizabeth

Exactly. That's what I was trying to say, only you phrased it much better. I admire and love the clarification that Rand brings to much of artistic interpretation, but it's insulting (and potentially dead-boring) when she strives to bring it down to such a simplistic level. That sounds like an extremely creative idea!! Whenever you finish it (though it sounds like it'll take a while) I'd like to see it. Thank you so much! I think I'm really going to like being a part of this forum. Victor, I LOVE your caricatures. They honestly made me lawl. Especially Dali. And I'd like to hear the other stuff you have to say, which you alluded to. . . Michael, That sounds incredibly interesting. Is there an image of it online that you can link me to? ~Elizabeth

Elizabeth, No hugs, but hat posts comes to mind. :devil: -Victor HAHAHA. That's horrible(-ly hilarious)! *gets eHugged and eHugs everyone else in turn* ~Elizabeth P.S. Alright, fine, Kori, but what do TWO armless people do when they want to hug? I'd think. . . headbutt? Just sort of roll around?

Ayn Rand's view of art is probably the only part of her philosophy in which I seem to disagree just as much as I agree. My main problem is: to what extent can one actually, "objectively" objectify art? Isn't that one of the defining aspects of art in general - that a large part of it is subjective? It's been a little while since I've read The Romantic Manifesto (and I can't seem to find it), but I believe I remember the following excerpts correctly. For example, at one point Rand claims that, as "art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments," it is not only shameful, but immoral for an artist to paint a physically unattractive person - since doing so would obviously promote a life filled with ugliness and pain. This struck me as absolutely ridiculous. Visual art - to a great extent - CANNOT be objective. There are so many ways to interpret a painting, and to oversimplify it that much is an insult both to the painter and anyone who would hope to get anything out of art. A painting of an unattractive person can mean a number of things - for example, the overcoming the difficulty of life's unwanted hardships, the dignity and inner beauty a person can possess despite a less-than-appealing exterior, and, of course, extolling or just accepting a life full of pain. But the list never stops there. What about horror for the sake of horror - and KNOWING that it is horror (so that the picture's ugliness will intentionally repel and make one aware of what it is that is disgusting in life and why - an also praise-worthy purpose). What about humor? In this case, you could burrow deeply and say that painting ugly people would serve the exact same purpose as painting beautiful people: in laughing at the ugly people, you laugh at the ugliness of life, and so remain true and even more steadfast to life's beauty. But that doesn't always have to be the case - sometimes things are just . . . funny. For example, I remember one year when our family went to the beach, my sister (an absolutely amazing artist) made a collection of "Beach-Bum" sketches: she hunted down the absolute ugliest people on the beach she could find and memorialized them in her sketchbook. They were fantastic - we seriously could not stop cracking up when looking at them. They made us happy. But does that mean that we're immoral people - because she actively sought out ugliness, and that we actively took pleasure in looking at it? Try as I might, I can't sense the evil creeping through me. She (my sister) also told me that drawing fatter people was more challenging and fun than drawing thin, pretty people, because the latter all look the same and are insanely simple to slash out on paper. Does this also make her an immoral person - hunting down imperfection for the sake of improving her skill and providing herself with some challenging joy? Physically unattractive people are not immoral as a result of their appearance. Neither are their depictions. Rand makes the mistake of taking a symbol and casting it as a one-sided object, containing an indisputable identity. A is A - fat, ugly people are not evil. (Really?!) A is A - a subjective painting is not an objective statement. (Doubtless some paintings do have clear-cut messages, determined by their history and the artist's intention behind it. This doesn't mean, however, that a viewer isn't allowed to get something else out of the painting that the artist perhaps didn't even conceive.) To say otherwise is to strangle individual thought with end-all dogma. In another passage, Ayn Rand mentioned the morality that could lie behind still-lifes. The superior still-life artist, for example, would strive to paint the most beautiful, luscious, delicious-looking apple known to mankind, even if no such Perfect apple had ever really existed. The apple, of course, could only symbolize life in general, and that life is supposed to be beautiful, luscious, perfect, and ... delicious. The viewer would then look at this apple and think, "Wow! That's what I always thought an apple should look like!" and thus walk away filled with hope for the future as all his aspirations had been affirmed in that apple's beauty. The painting of a rotted, stinking, or even slightly dusty apple, could only be a denial of life's joy and a welcoming of impending death. It would depress its viewers and be the bane of mankind in general. My God, woman! It's a friggin APPLE. You could just as easily say that the picture of the perfect apple, as it was never seen in reality, is making a mockery of ideals and you should never strive for your hopes and dreams since they will only be as achievable as that painted apple is edible. There's no way to state the painting's purpose objectively - since there are no objective clues. It's highly likely that the artist did not have any conception of recreating his view of reality at all when painting the still life - perhaps it was simply a practice in technique. Perhaps he just liked the colors, or the interesting shapes (and the more rotted, the more interesting the shape). Rand's whole stance on art - and the fact that she is so unwavering in it - strikes me as a tendency of hers to inject philosophy into EVERYTHING - and the further tendency to inject her opinion and preference into an objective philosophy. If all artists wanted to be philosophers, they would've been too busy writing essays than to paint. If all artists wanted to depict reality's ideal based on strict physical first impressions, we'd be missing out on a lot of the variety that life has to offer us; more importantly, we'd be stomping on people's creativity and growth. So is art really "a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments?" Undoubtedly much of art is. But that is not the only purpose art can serve, nor can the first "Rand" purpose be achieved in just one, unwavering manner. I believe it is healthy, smart, and beneficial to the viewer to look at art objectively, but keep in mind that there are different objects that that piece of art can be focused on - a sort of subobjectivity. Art's meaning can be subjective to the viewer/listener, but that doesn't mean that each can't equally support their interpretation with objective aspects from that art work. The same holds true for music. I believe at one point in The Romantic Manifesto, Rand acknowledges that music can mean different things to different listeners. Later on in the book, however, she criticizes modern music as "taking the listeners back to the primitive lifestyle of the tribal Africans" (not an exact quote) and that the reason it takes "some getting used to" is because their music advocates a philosophy that weakens the mind. Absolutely ludicrous. You could just as easily say that to listen to classical music in this day and age is to live a life that denies mental progress - since you are, after all, still listening and - God forbid, enjoying! - music written hundreds of years ago when they did not have electricity or planes, listening to composers that - oh no! - might have even believed in God! (Get rid of all my Bach recordings - it'll corrupt my mind!) It's all too easy to see that Ayn Rand was NOT an artist and she was NOT a musician because she is so blatantly unaware of the many nuances of these professions that captivate their followers - that although painters do have a desire to express their vision of life, they also love the way that lines swoops upwards so smoothly, and the way those colors blend together so perfectly, or the way they clash against each other so daringly, and the thrill they experience simply from capturing a scene of reality so accurately on canvas by the sheer skill of their eye and their hand, even if the scene is a little garish, isn't it totally COOL that colors on paper can produce an emotional reaction?; that although musicians do have a desire to express their vision of life, they also love the way this instrument feels just like an extension of their body under a perfectly postured hand, and the absolute clarity of this note that they themselves are producing, and the way that note sounds when placed against another, and another, even if it is dissonant and makes you cringe a little bit, isn't it just totally COOL to think that vibrations in the air can SOUND that way and can even affect your emotions? Artists like to depict their ideal reality, yes, but they also enjoy reality as it is - because it is simply so FASCINATING. The same is true for architecture - yes, a building does have a specific purpose, and should, for practical reasons, be constructed to meet those requirements, but that doesn't mean that the building is in any way "immoral." IT'S A BUILDING. I like gothic architecture. I like old, Victorian houses, and Greek architecture on non-Greek buildings. They're interesting, and, yes, beautiful. Rand did an excellent job of clarifying what a big part of art DOES mean. However, there's more to a picture than meets the eye, and there's more to art than strict philosophy.

What about the people who don't have arms?!?!? ~Elizabeth

I got to see her in concert at the MCI center. It wasn't fantabulous, though, we were far away, and every song just sounded exactly like the album recording (the Harem tour). I prefer my power metal concerts for the full live music "these-awesome-musicians-are-straight-up-in-your-face-and-it-is-now-your-quest-of-honor-to-get-as-humanly-close-to-the-stage-as-possible-without-getting-squashed-in-the-mosh-pits" experience. It's like a concert and a battle against death combined. But we did get to hear her speak instead of sing. Her voice. . . really. . . sounds like that. It's bizarre. She's also extremely tall. And I'm so depressed that she and ALW ever divorced. They were like the couple from Utopia. (Upcoming music-nitpicking. Fun fun!) Well, true, but it's also a genre, based on using the "classical" instruments. Like, you don't hear the radio station announcing "Thank you for listening to WGUD, your one and only for Rennaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic, and 20th Century listening." It's classical! Short and sweet. ~Elizabeth

Goodbye and good riddance.

You actually ask me to name one!?! Anything by Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff. . . most of the piano pieces by Debussy. . . Khatchuturian's Masquerade Waltz, Shostakovich's Russian Waltz . . . Beethoven's Tempest Sonata. . . Sarah Brightman is absolutely gorgeous - I have pretty much every album, but she's not classical, except for the strict opera pieces. More like. . . neo-classical. . . *shrug* But, although I LOVE it to pieces, I only listen to classical like. . . 40% of the time. C'mon guys - there is GOOD, I mean AWESOME modern music out there. They just don't play it on the radio. You have to hunt for it. Skillfully. Like they were elusive, tasty little woodland creatures for the evening stew. Mmm. Music. And that's that. ~Elizabeth

That scenario was invented. I have not experienced that particular one, but I have had an intimate one-time encounter with a woman when I was going through a tough time and was extremely fragile. There was certainly more of a connection than a sex toy. We survived, we served each others needs, and it was good. I even found Kat later, so that part of me wasn't damaged at all. At another time in life, that would not have happened. Sex is not static, like buying merchandise off a shelf. There are many factors involved. btw - I also am not opposed to prostitution, although I think that this is playing with fire because of the volatile self-esteem issues. I didn't mean to suggest "you" you by my rhetorical questions; it was more along the lines of the impersonal "one" you. And I'm not coming from the oh-so-serious point of view that others may be coming from, that suggests that you (or "one") may be "damaging yourself". Not at all. And I'm not opposed to one-time encounters, as I've said before. I'm just looking at the whole thing from my own personal point of view in terms of what I'd WANT to do and what I wouldn't WANT to do, and how I'd feel if I found out that someone had slept with me without even liking me. Frankly, I can't even imagine being able to perform in a "casual sex" context. It would be along the lines of a mind-rape. Maybe even worse than an actual rape, because in this situation I would be forcing myself to do it. It's been said that there are real differences between men and women in terms of being able to separate love and sex, and maybe it's true. I'm not saying one needs to feel about someone as one would feel about the love of one's life to jump into bed, but if there isn't SOME level of emotional connection, where's the desire? Why would I WANT to sleep with someone with whom I have no emotional connection? I just don't get it. I don't care how physically beautiful a man is, or how rich he is, or how sexually experienced or talented he is said to be, if I don't have some emotional connection to him, I have no desire for him -- period. Similarly, if I DO have an emotional connection to a man, I don't care what he looks like, I don't care how much money he has, I don't care what other people say about him; I WANT him -- ferociously. I don't understand how other people feel otherwise. If I did go to bed with someone on short acquaintance, thinking we had that kind of connection, and found out later that it hadn't been reciprocated, I'd first feel used, and later feel disgust and contempt for the man for being capable of that kind of thing. In the long run, there would be no permanent damage to my psyche, of course. Judith Couldn't agree more. I don't think Michael was condoning sex without some attraction first - mental as well as physical - sort of like a Kira/Leo scenario. I could understand someone doing that. . . however, I don't think I, personally, could. It would just feel weird having sex with someone based on a first impression, when so many first impressions of people I've met have been wrong. ~Elizabeth

I got an email about that book from ARI and was considering buying it. Let me know how it is!

Thank you!! And try to find your sonnet - I'd like to read it if you do. Ellen, Aaaaah hooray! It's a very nice feeling to know that something you wrote "spoke" to someone else.

OH. Now I get what you're saying. The person that someone would choose as their sex partner at the age of, say, 18, isn't necessarily the kind of person they would want to choose at 45; that doesn't mean, however, that they didn't have standards at 18, or that the sex they had at 18 was "evil" or even something they should be ashamed of - just a part of their maturing process. I like that outlook much better. Plus it makes more sense, if rational happiness is our objective here. ~Elizabeth

Definitely - I'm aware of that. (Which is why the "rape" scene is one of my favorite parts of the book.) I was more commenting on the danger of taking the typically Randian pre-planned perfection of first-sight relationships literally. Ayn Rand is such a captivating and persuasive author, so in believing and taking as truth her essential philosophy, one can also tend to adopt an outlook on life that mirrors the novelesque perfection of her books - that every glance, word, and chance occurrence must have some deeper meaning and crucial significance, because that's the way it was in her books, and life SHOULD be the way it's presented in her books. (At least, that was my subconscious mental attitude immediately after reading her!) ~Elizabeth