augustmarsblog

  THE ART OF SEEING I once read that when Catherine the Great amassed an impressive art collection by buying up private collections of the Western European nobility, her primary motivation was personal, not national. She was driven by her desire to understand just what it was that made the art “great”. She would spend hour after hour roaming the art-filled hallways, stopping from time to time in front a painting and stare at it, oblivious to all else. She was not above looting the national treasury in order to satisfy her own curiosity, but all of Russia, and the entire world, has benefited from the acquisitiveness that was eventually to culminate in the magnificent Hermitage Museum. She was probably the most successful art collector in the world, because she had tremendous financial resources at her disposal; and she bought art collections at discount prices because the owners were desperate for funds to finance their military operations. Today,...

  The Arts: Music When I was telling about my learning to appreciate great music, I referred to that experience as an investment. Over the years (and there have been many) that investment has paid off, as my love for, and even dependence on, that music has grown steadily. There were times when I would be mentally exhausted after hours of study and focusing my mind on a mathematical problem, throw myself flat on my bed and listen to a Brahms symphony. It was the mental equivalent of getting a long, cool drink of spring water, sprawled in a shady, breezy grove after hours of work in the hot sun. It seemed that there was almost always a need to match or heal a specific mood, and there is considerable variety of moods. A Beethoven symphony expressed that pent up, repressed energy that often needed to be released; or I might sit at the piano and pound away at one of his sonatas. Somewhere among the movements of his sonatas, symphonies, or concertos I could experience profou...

  My Piano Throughout the years I have retained a close association with the piano. As I mentioned earlier, I realized early on that I would never be a performer, but I continued to play for the sheer fun of it. This fun gradually grew into a dependence, both psychologically and physically. After practicing the exercises faithfully several days in a row, if a day came when I couldn't spend some time at the keyboard, my fingers would (figuratively) itch to play. They would twitch or make little motions in the air as if trying to find some keys to press. An initial requirement for a pianist is to develop fingers that are both strong and extremely agile, and then learn to coordinate their motions with the complex notation of musical scores. So, in that sense, he could be accurately called an athlete. The psychological fulfillment that comes from playing also is almost beyond description. No matter what mood I found myself in, ther...

                                                                                                                     Welcome Welcome to my blog! I hope that you will find something of interest here. During a rather lengthy period of existence (that means I'm an old man), I have studied with enthusiasm several subjects, including depth psychology, the fine arts, philosophy and religion, as well as my career disciplines of applied math and physics. Here, I want to present a few of the insights that I gained from these interests, hopefully without replicating standard textbook material. I have also included some memories of some of the more interesting events and people that I have encountered...