Jack Nicholson gave me the creeps from the first moment I saw him in Easy Rider. I still remember the review in the Wash Post at the time it was released extolling his performance and though liked the reviewer utterly disagreed. I did like Peter Fonda.
Zappa gave me the creeps also and would have to turn him off when he was on talk shows. I was very taken with Jim Morrison though, from the first moment I saw the posters with one-half of his face in shadow and with the Alexander the Great hairstyle.
Bios of Morrison mentioned his father was an Admiral but if it is true that Morrison's father was in charge during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, it greatly adds to McGowen's theories.
Thank you Sweejak for telling us about this. I like Hermes site but this info is something to think about:
A few years ago I checked in to Dr. Norman Livergood's site (I understand he is a former dept. head of the War College) and he was postulating that this was a recurring cycle. I can't find the essay anymore but here is his site.
http://www.hermes-press.com/index.htmlDoes any one have a take on Livergood?
http://www.hermes-press.com/music_portal.htm
Plato's Understanding of Music
This is one of many areas of human life in which our failure to study and practice Plato's philosophy has resulted in cultural degeneration. Plato was so aware of the positive and negative effects of music on the human psyche that he stated:
"Let me make the songs of a nation and I care not who makes the laws."
Plato understood that the degeneration of Athens had been caused in part by citizens losing awareness of the effects of music. It was, he claimed, through ignorance that Athenians affirmed that music has no truth, that it is neutral and, whether good or bad, can only be judged by the pleasure of the hearer. Plato outlined the contribution music made to the moral decline of Athens and denounced the ignorance of "men of genius."
"They were supposed men of genius, but they had no perception of what was just and lawful in music . . . And by composing licentious works, and adding to them lewd words, they have aroused the multitude to lawlessness and impudence, and made them fancy that they could judge for themselves about melody and song . . . In music there first arose the universal conceit of omniscience and general lawlessness. Dissoluteness followed these pretences and men, fancying that they knew what they did not know, no longer felt awe, and the absence of awe begets shamelessness. For what is this shamelessness, which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of the better person by reason of an over-daring sort of license?"
Plato, Laws III
"At MTV, we don't shoot for the 14 year olds, we own them. The strongest appeal you can make is emotionally. If you can get their emotions going, make them forget their logic, you've got them."
Bob Pitman, founder and one-time president of MTV
"Atmospheres are going to come through music . . . You can hypnotize people with the music and when you get them at their weakest point, you can preach into the subconscious what you want to say."
Jimi Hendrix
[ich our civilization must get to grips with in some geni]
"I adamantly believe that rock in all of its forms is a critical problem whuinely effective way, and without delay, if it wishes long to survive."[/i]
David Tame, The Secret Power of Music "Music can be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America."
Henry David ThoreauA Renewed Understanding of Music
Through rediscovery of the Perennial Tradition's teachings about music, we can regain our understanding of how music affects individuals as well as the whole of society--and how High Music can induce Heightened Awareness.
Plato saw music as a means of developing the human soul:
"Instruction in music is a more potent operation than many others, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inner regions of the soul, with which they forcefully interconnect, imparting refinement. The soul of one appropriately educated becomes graceful."
Plato, The Commonwealth, III, 401.d "Music can only suggest, encourage with its delights, not force anyone to act contrary to their best convictions, yet, many suggestions can undermine felt and reasoned convictions over a prolonged period of time."
Basil Cole, Music and Spirituality Hildegard of Bingen's (1098-1179) statement, "Music is the echo of the glory and beauty of heaven. And in echoing that glory and beauty, it carries human praise back to heaven," resounds in the contemporary world through Julius Portnoy's 1963 Music in the Life of Man: "Music is the releaser into the material world of a fundamental, super-physical energy from beyond the world of everyday experience."
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Loving Spirit, Dwell Within My Heart
Lord, how deep, how wonderful
this mystery of love for me.
It begins as a string of love
Deep within your heart,
This movement of your Spirit
Thanksgiving after Communion
O Jesus, I believe that in this holy sacrament of the Eucharist you have really and truly come into my inmost soul to share your divine life with me. I believe because you have said it and your word is true.
May your sacred body that I have received so transform me that no stain of sin may remain in me.
May what I have received in my mouth, O Lord, dwell ever in my heart and from a passing benefit become an eternal reward. Amen.
Preparation for Communion
O Lord, prepare my soul to receive you. You have said, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him: as I myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me."
I come to You now that I may draw life from You. Let me join You in this Mass in adoring and thanking our Heavenly Father, in making reparation for sin and begging for the graces I need to serve Him worthily and glorify Him daily more and more.
May Your kingdom come in my heart and all the world. Amen.
Going forth everywhere
To fill the whole of your creation.
Your love is the greatest grace
Beyond all that you have made,
So how is it that of any space
Where your love seeks to rest,
A love that nothing can confine,
It seeks to find a place
Deep within a heart like mine?
How terrible to be caught up, then,
In the routine of everyday things when
I don't have time to savor your love,
Or worse ignore it, or worse still reject it.
Loving Spirit, dwell within my heart.
So that I may reflect your peace and light. Amen.
-By Columban Father Patrick Sayles
To request the prayer book
"Prayer From Around The World" that includes these poems, please write to:
The Columban Fathers
PO Box 10
St. Columbans, NE 68056
http://www.columban.org/content/view/44/49/
Prayer for Missionaries
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, Your missionaries have cheerfully left home and all dear to them for love of You and to bring Your love to Your poor. We beg You to strengthen that spirit of love in their hearts. Let it never be weakened by failure, frustration, difficulty or trial. Be with them in loneliness, hardship and danger. Send them the help they need to carry on their work for You and make it fruitful.
Amen
-From the booklet The Body and Blood of Christ. For copies of this booklet please write to: The Columban Fathers, PO Box 10, Saint Columbans, NE 68056.
acts of reparation
In another letter the pious Bishop Theophan wrote again about prayer to Father Agapit: "In prayer everything must be absorbed in a feeling towards God - either contrition, or thanksgiving, or glorification, or in asking for something needful for the soul or of the body, with faith and hope".
Finally prayer was essential teaching of Father Agapit who would say: "Take care for the salvation of your souls; for God's sake, do not lose heart, but fortify yourselves with prayer, with living faith in the fact that the Lord is concerned for your salvation, and that at your every humble appeal, in His love for mankind He is always read to help you."
Like all the early writers and ascetics of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Father Agapit himself prayed and instructed others to pray the Jesus Prayer:
O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
This prayer to Father Agapit was the most essential prayer for him, and for others would say: "The inward activity of the heart," (concerning the Jesus Prayer)
"is the science of sciences and art of arts, and those experience in this activity always abide in fear and trembling by reason of that narrow and exceedingly obscure pate, which is found only with the help of experienced instructors..."
The Jesus Prayer must be done with free will of the individual, and done with the need to spiritually have constant prayer with our Lord God, and that is to say to have unceasing prayer, which in itself has benefit for the soul, and brings it inner peace.
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http://www.catholicexpert.com/lent_prayers
Later came
the Maurin Peter Farm on Staten Island, which later moved to Tivoli and then to Marlborough, both in the Hudson Valley. Day came to see the vocation of the Catholic Worker was not so much to found model agricultural communities as rural houses of hospitality.