An excerpt from 'Frasier'.

Daphne's trying to talk her family back home in england about a vacation they're all about to go on. They're giving her a hard time, and Marty's taking Frasier's case as well.

So Daphne asks him just as he's about to leave...

‎"Dr. Krane, Why is it so easy to love our families yet so hard to like them?"

I just loved it... Kinda sums a lot of things up!

Of crooked lines and anomalies...

By themselves, crooked lines dont make much sense... In fact they're probably totally useless in comparison to perfect straight ones...

But maybe, they could make perfect sense as the edges of the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. If you didnt have some protrusions and some cavities, u wudnt have anything to hold the bigger picture in its place!

Tanpura / Tambura / Tambora - Call it what u want, its an amazing acoustic filler!

Heres something to fiddle with. Its a little article on the use of electronic tanpuras vs. real live ones, and also why its absolutely essential for every classical musician / trainee to know it perfectly by ear...

To sum it up, the primary points dealt with, in support of real live ones and against the use of electronics substitutes which are gaining good popularity, are the science behind the construction, minor tweaks to achieve tonal quality and the effect with which a real live tanpura can make or break any classical performance.

Whoever thought there was so much acoustic engineering put into the age old tanpura!

www.medieval.org/music/world/martin_est.html

What is compassion?

A little thought that flashed last night before i went to sleep...

Q. What is compassion?
A. Feeling the pain for someone else's bruised knee, inspite of having a fractured shin bone yourself...

I gotta feelin...

I told 'R' on new years, I had a gud feelin abt this year... unlike last year...

I felt that mebbe things were still gonna be tuff, but the stagnation that had crept into everything, in the past few years, wud start moving again...

Kinda looks like I'm right... lets hope for the best...

You cant even thank people...

Its an emergency situation. You are alone and you call on some people you really trust for help.

They arrive... They help... The tough times have passed... You are relieved...

Then u turn around to all those who came and say "Thank You very much for coming and helping me in this tough situation"

Then some of them say, "Why are you saying THANKS... we feel like we're someone u dont trust... like we're some strangers to you..." and the works...

OK... I get the point that they're being aggressively and dramatically Nice / Polite / Friendly / Any Others, but cant they just say "YOU'RE WELCOME... You can count on us anytime!"

Is it too much to ask for, if I want to express my gratitude?

Man vs. Beast

Man is like all other living animals. He has the very same instincts for survival and sustenance. Whilst animals are bound by their instincts and cannot really act against them, man doesn't always have to do the same.

He's not a beast... he doesn't have to be one. Whilst he shudn't be ignoring his instincts, he does not have to bow down to them. He has the gift of intelligence and discretion at his disposal. To differentiate between right and wrong, gud and bad, is what separates him from the animals.

You may not be able to control what ur instincts tel u to do, but u can very well stop from retracing ur steps back into becoming beasts, by using ur power of discretion to act against them!