Monthly Archives: May 2007

On Saturday evening in Paris, I was walking towards the St. Paul metro station on Rue de Rivoli and came across a church (whose name I do not know). Along the church’s façade hung a big white banner proclaiming that “L’amour a vaincu la mort“. My limited French tells me that “love has conquered death”. But, I couldn’t quite figure out the logic.

I recognize the precept that through the love of God and the sacfrice of His Son, believers can achieve eternal life. What has me confused is my understanding that believers must first die in order to have eternal life. It reminds me of my favorite line from Peter Tosh’s “Equal Rights“, “everybody wants to go up to heaven, but none of them want to die.” So if death is a prerequisite for ascension, then why would we want love to be so cruel as to impede eternal life? And am I the only one who noticed that the Christian wedding vows are only binding “until death do us part”? Someone needs to get their story straight. Otherwise with love conquering death, we are in for a very long marriage and no retirement.

Maybe it was the Bee Gees who said it best, “Nobody gets too much heaven no more . . . nobody gets too much love anymore, it’s as high as a mountain and harder to climb.”

Here goes my second test at combining music with images. The song is “Saturday Sun” by Nick Drake, one of my bro’s favorites. The photos come from trips I made a few years back to Formentera, Fuerteventura, Paris, and also includes ones from home (Bethany Beach, Georgetown, and Potomac). I know, I should stick to writing.

Note: Based on James’ feedback, I made some alterations to the video and even added in photos from Marrakech and Asturias. Sorry, but I didn’t have time to work on the fading.

This morning (it is a holiday in Madrid) I have been playing around with images and sound and made this test video. It includes some of my favorite paintings by Egon Schiele, John Singer Sargent and others (many of which you will recognize from this Grave Error). For the background music I put one of my favorite songs, “Enta Habibi” by the Yuri Honing Trio from their album Orient Express. Because of the song’s obvious Arabic flavor (I am not sure if it is Fairuz singing), of course, there are more repetitions of Sargent’s paintings than of the others.

I know I should probably be thinking more about WiFi everywhere, but sometimes I just can’t resist getting involved in apparently irrelevant philosophical discussions. And this occurred while reading Martin’s blog this morning about what makes us like music. According to Waya, we are attracted to music based on its association to something from our past. A different opinion was given by a 13 year old as being the reaction to certain hormonal stimuli. Although this is essentially a psychological versus physiological debate (or even nature vs. nurture), both are good answers and actually quite compatible. Believe it or not, the reasons why we are attracted to any given art form (and the variations thereof) and simply being attracted to anything in general is something that I often think about. Here are my impressions: Continue reading →