My outlook consisted of a mixture of Marx and Christ. In the fall of 1976 (my junior year at Indiana University), I took a political science course which made us read Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, and, Marx and Engels. In French classes we read Pascal, Descartes, Voltaire, Camus and Sartre. My catholic background and the French philosophy I was studying lead me to a search for an altruistic and rational system of beliefs. Socialism appealed to me because it seemed say that everyone should have their basic needs taken care of. That way, their minds could be free to pursue more intellectual beliefs.

Oh, I never became a card-carrying member of any party. After Nixon, no one trusted the government any more and I didn�t want my name in any folder somewhere to be used against me later on. Besides, most of the people I met at the student union passing out copies of �The Socialist Worker,� or organizing protest rallies had the glassy-eyed stare of any cultist and that put me off.

Still I hung around leftists and artists and intellectuals. When you�re young, talk of revolution is exciting. You have no concept of death. No responsibility to family. No children to provide for. And if your material well-being is provided for, you have the luxury of thinking you�re a revolutionary.

Since then, I�ve come to see a certain paradox in political systems. Socialism for example is materialistic in origin but it�s goal seemed to be the betterment of human mind, which is a spiritual construct. Capitalism, however, flourishes in that most Christian of countries, the US, but it�s goal is to satisfy peoples materialistic needs. Why we had a forty-year Cold War over this remains a mystery to me. Now that the capitalism has �won�, I worry about the crass commercialism and soul-sucking materialism that seems part and parcel of it. Do we want all developing countries to become as rampantly consumeristic as we in the US are? If they became like us overnight, our planet�s natural resources would be depleted in before we knew what happened.

Marx was right about one thing, though. Economics is at the basis of all political decisions in the world. That there are still poor, starving, and illiterate people anywhere on the face of the earth is a result of economic and political decisions. Look, there has been a politically based famine in Sudan for nearly 20 years. Why does it get so little attention? Why does Kosovo get a war to stop ethnic cleansing? And why not just move the people in Sudan to somewhere a more fertile place? Or just do a Berlin Airlift-style intervention?

Today�s entry seems to be rambling out of control. I�m a bit unfocused since I have been on a short vacation for a few days. What I really wanted to say today is that my junior year exposed me to a lot of different philosophical ideas which formed the core of my beliefs for the next 20 years. Most of this was based on the works of European thinkers and artists. Since my primary goal back then was to turn myself into an �intellectual� I swallowed a number of these ideas without questioning them. (I hope I can be forgiven my youthful indiscretions. I don�t think I am alone: there were a number of American communists who took a long time to come to the realization that Joseph Stalin wasn�t the hero they thought he was.)

Anything that was European had for me a kind of seal of approval. That was especially true of music. Over the next few days I will write about a number of these pieces. I�ll start with Stravinsky, who remains one of my favorite composers. I�ve already written about his L�Histoire Du Soldat, which was a kind of �commedia dell�arte� play set to his music. After that he wrote two more pieces like this, Les Noces, and today�s piece, Le Renard.

Le Renard is what you might call a �challenging� work that requires a certain amount of concentration. For example, I wouldn�t recommend recording it and then using it as an accompaniment to roller-blading. The story is based on a mediaeval story about a rooster that outwits a fox. The role of the rooster is given to a tenor or counter tenor and his warning song is somewhat dissonant and shrill. I like the piece, however, because Stravinsky used a cymbalom, an instrument akin to a hammered dulcimer, which is used in Eastern European and Asian music. It figures prominently in Hungarian music and whenever I hear it, something stirs deep down in my bones.

Stravinsky Bio

Recording

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