I used to hate it ...

When I was a teenager in the 60s I loved Pop Music. When a new record was released by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones all the boys in the class would gather at the house of the only one who had access to a record player to listen to the new record over and over again.

 

And with a bit of luck we might hear it on the radio one day. I was living in Denmark, and Danish Radio was a state monopoly. You couldn't just let people listen to anything they liked. People had to be "educated" in good taste. And good music taste was defined by progressive social democrats, most of them fascinated with jazz music. And being employed by the state they would stay forever, and if someone new got in, it was most likely friends or someone who had been "politcally" approved. Jazz, jazz, jazz was what we got, Pop Music was what we wanted.

 

1 (one) hour every day the was pop music on the air. Not much for a starving ear. Nobody liked to be disturbed during that our.

 

We listened to the radio a lot anyway, because music is nice, even if it is just background music to do homework to. This way we had thousands of hours of jazz music going through our heads. In one ear and out the other. But some of it must have stayed. Sometimes I hear some jazz music now - not on the radio where they now play only Pop Music - and I recognise it. I don't know the titles, I don't know the singers or the musicians, but I recognise the music that have been through my head many times before.

 

I used to hate it, now I love it.

 

Here's an example:

That jazzy sound

F.Listz and M.Ozart

Is there anything like an evening out? Dressing up in formal attire. Going to a restaurant for a nice three-course meal and from there to a concert. Not a rock concert, of course, but a classical piano concert - a recital. The atmosphere, all the concert-goers with expectant smiles on their faces.

 

You go and find your seat. The hall fills up. The light is dimmed. The audience goes quiet. The pianist enters, wearing a tuxedo. We are about to hear the music that have survived for centuries and still speaks to our hearts and stirs our sentiments.

 

Well, if you have not had the opportunity to go lately, I include a link to a great piano concert here:

watch

Mao on the Wall

When I was young we often discussed events in The Second World War. The Holocaust in particular. How could people not know what was going on in the concentrations camps? How could millions of people be exterminated without the world knowing about it? We thought that many people knew, but just didn't have the guts to speak out against it. That they pretended not to know. That they were either ignorant fools or cowards.

 

We were not going to be like that. We were for a world of freedom and social justice. But not the hard line Soviet form of communism, of course. We had pictures of Mao on the walls of our students' rooms.

 

Our children now ask us how could we do it. Mao caused the death of millions of people. We answer that we saw China as the model for a new kind of "soft" communism, a better world for the poor and equality for everybody. They do not understand, how we could ignore the facts. They think that we were either ignorant fools or cowards.

 

One day they will have children themselves. Will they also blame their parents' generation for ignoring the cruel facts of the world and for upholding ideals that lead to the extermination of millions? They will have learned from us, I hope, and not repeat our errors. They will make their own errors, I fear.

 

Time will show.

(Conservatives repeat the errors of the preceding generations, liberals commit new errors).

Convergence

There is nothing like a winter break. To get away from under the grey sky and the icy wind and down south to top up on vitamin D from the sun. So when my wife suggested 5 days in Nice, I was all in.

 

Now we are back again. And we have guests staying with us for a couple of days. Old friends from when we were living in Germany. Of course we had to tell of our trip to Nice.

 

My wife was enthusiastic. There were so many amazing shops and department stores in Nice. They had all the brands you could think of, and the people attending to you were very nice and friendly. There were so many things on offer that we had to buy an extra suitcase to get all our new acquisitions home. And the hotel was nice and clean and the service good.

And good Italian restaurants. At least as good as in Copenhagen and Stockholm.  All in all a very successful trip.

 

I looked at Dieter. "Have you been away this winter?", I asked. "We have been to Helsinki for a weekend", he answered. "And?", I wanted to know. "It's exactly like Nice" he said, "just without the Mediterranean sea and the palm trees".