Daily Doug Reaction

Pass.....on a bell curve 

( a sort of "review" on this)

One slight point about this ... and specially TFTO ... 

One of the things that I learned about literature, the arts, the music ... and a lot of poetry ... is that we are not understanding our "position" in regards to the "story teller" and this is a serious issue ... 

Ex: Someone tells you a story ... and you understand it in a certain way, and it ends up meaning this and that for you ... and THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE STORY TELLER ... who may have invented the story to begin with!

But we took the ideas and the thoughts out of it, and "decided" that it means something ... so it is easy to see how the translations of major prophets (Jesus of Nazareth specially) are so misinterpreted, since the translations are not his words anymore ... they are idealistic thoughts related to the translator of the "original". And this is something that I saw clearly in some translations of my own dad's work into English, and how off base I felt they were ... possibly, the language was not a good venue for the translation, but in the end, my thoughts are that the translator was more attached to his own ideology of symbols and literature (very common in professors of all kinds!) ... and we have to be careful with that ... or we end up getting so confused and not getting any idea what the whole piece is about at all.

Hearing the Daily Doug talking about TFTO is nice and I will say that appreciate the effort of him doing the whole thing, and trying to make sense of it all ... although my opinion is the one thing that is most important ... it's not about the "end" ... it's about the experience that makes it valuable and important ... and it was so different that we could not figure out what is was all about ... guess what all the greats in the arts do and show us, time and time again? I appreciate Doug's effort, but I'm not sure that it really reaches the level of "attainment" that the whole of TFTO would like to suggest even if Jon these days, does not discuss it anymore ... specially having to deal with one player saying that it is nothing but just another bouillabaise ... a very sad comment, although it fits in a funny sort of way, though I think that his idea of "composition" is so structured as opposed to something that was more "modern" and created new structures, which he is not attuned to.

And we spend our time trying to figure it out ... and in the end, words are not good enough of a representation of what we felt ... remember that "language" developed from a form of expression for various items and moments and eventually developed into a "full language" complete with grammar, and we are MAKING AN ASSUMPTION that this language is capable of "defining" things in other realms and languages, and the fact is that it is NOT capable of doing this properly, since the specific moments are "experiential" and not exactly universal, although the academic world enjoys making it look like some sort of comparative this or that to show that all languages are similar ... and if we take Peter Brook's studies into language for theater in so many languages, this is not true, specially as each language has its own "heart" and "beat" ... which differs from everything else.

I love TFTO and have done so since the day I first got it ... I knew it was valuable and important to me! And to this day, trying to study it ... defeats the whole thing. It is about the "experience" and "living" it ... as the sun does ... day in and day out ... until one day it is over and all the fuel in the sun is gone! And this world will be over like so many others before us! At that point, I'm not sure that "meaning" is really important at all ... but at least the appreciation of the life of it is important and we (generally) give it some credence, even though we disrespect a lot of humanity, in so many ways, to the point that what we end up thinking is corrupted and wasted.

The saddest moment in my life was crying when leaving the Long Beach Arena where I saw the TFTO that night by this band ... in the end, the audience came to listen to "Close to the Edge" and "Roundabout" and the size of the applause was the difference. The folks were there for the hits they liked ... not the experience of the band known as "YES" ... at the time! They were obviously looking to get more adventurous than just a song band for the radio ... and the fans made their thoughts known ... that's not what we want!

I have never seen another concert that deserved the credit for "spiritual" at its best ... but on that magic night, many people had no idea what magic was ... except the melody they liked and had heard before!

And this is the main reason why I always comment on the side of the "experience" and not what it is all supposed to mean, because most of the times they do not match for me. And I hear it this way because of the knowledge of three different languages and how they come together and fall apart so fast when the communication and translation misses the "point" ... when it is best to appreciate that the point was the expression of that second in time, and not anything else.

::: (a bit more!) BTW ... listening to it today ... there are many things that I hear ... I hear Richard Pinhas here in his early days. I hear Robert Fripp here in his early experimental days ... and Steve Howe adapted very well to, since it helped extend and free form a lot of the stuff he liked to do! However, I think that many of us would consider them all parallel to each other and the feeling of doing things that were not conventional and learning from them. The main difference here, in YES, is that one person never falls flat of all these different things ... Chris Squire swims better than any duck you ever saw through it ... like he knew what it all meant and how to help make it better! Jon is fine, but if you separate Chris .. it a massive wow!

Doug will be Bach again later with his third and final Renaissance song, although he's Offenbach sooner.