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George Steiner, at once provocative and truthful

The number of human beings who, at any given moment and in any defined society, care deeply about literature, music and the arts, for whom such caring comports a truly personal investment and opening of being, is small. Or to put it more accurately, where accuracy is of the essence: the ordinary museum visitor, the fitful reader of poetry, of exigent prose, the audience for classical and modernist music as these are performed, broadcast or recorded, participates in a rite of encounter and response which, after the period of secondary and, possibly, of tertiary education in which such encounter may have been assigned its cultural and social functions, belongs less to the sphere of commitment than it does to that of decorum. In numerous societies, moreover, even this participation enlists only the privileged. Given a free vote, the bulk of humankind will choose football, the soap opera or bingo over Aeschylus. To pretend otherwise, to edify programmes of high humane civilization as arising from improvements in mass education – such didactic projections are active in Jeffersonian or Arnoldian liberalism no less than in Marxism–Leninism – is cant. Those who, in actual fact, generate the syllabus, who recognize, elucidate and transmit the legacy of literacy in regard to textual, artistic and musical creation, have always been, are a handful.

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From George Steiner’s “Real Presences”

A fascinating insight:

“Two principal impulses energize the American spirit: immanence and egalitarianism. The crux of American time is now. The past matters in direct reference to its usability in and by the present. American sensibility tends to invest remembrance not in historicity but in Utopia. Transcendence itself is made pragmatic; the definition of tomorrow is that of the empirical realization of substantive dreams. No other culture has so dignified the immanent. Concomitantly, the egalitarian ideal seeks to domesticate excellence. The European canon orders vertically, gives differing ranks to the products of intellect and of feeling. Its strategies are those of exclusion. The Parnassus, the Pantheon of official glory, integral to European humanities, are suspect to American sentiment. The American genius would democratize eternity. “

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Corey Wayne

Good women who want to be good teammates to their men should be loyal, trustworthy, dependable, responsible, easygoing and easy to get along with. They should communicate in a mature, adult and calm, loving manner, taking the time to understand their men and the differences in how men and women communicate. They should understand that men think logically and want to make them happy, and they should, therefore, strive to speak in logical terms and give specific instructions on what they need to feel loved, supported, nurtured, safe and comfortable, instead of expecting men to understand without explanation or for them to draw the correct conclusions from examples and stories. Women should also understand that men are visual creatures and also like to be enchanted and seduced by their women who love themselves enough to eat healthy, exercise properly and look feminine, attractive and desirable. It takes two to make a relationship work. Men are not psychic. Women should bring joy, ease and delight into their men’s life without creating unnecessary drama.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne

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