I have already written about how my politics leaned to the left. In my junior year we had to read Marx and Engels, and spending most of my free time in the coffee houses of Bloomington brought me in contact with a number of their disciples from all over the world. At most college events, the Socialist Worker's Party set up a booth and distributed copies of their newspaper. I met a girl once who sat at one of these and took a fancy to her. I was quite happy when she invited me along to a meeting at the house of one of the local firebrands.

When I got there, a number of people sat around playing backgammon and listening to music. The firebrand showed up and talked about a rally he had attended and told us about the next one. The girl batted her long, dark eyebrows at him the whole time and almost had an orgasm when he suggested they put on an album by Jackson Brown. I picked up the lyrics. There was a touching song about one of his roadies who had died of a drug overdose. I left the meeting feeling something was not quite right with that picture, and ended up never joining any other alternative party. Oh I went to some protest marches, but they were one off affairs.

Call me sentimental. Call me nationalistic. Call me an ugly American. But first time I went into the voting machine and pulled the lever to close the curtains behind me, I felt like I was doing something almost sacred. Over the years, I have become somewhat cynical about politicians, but aside from 1980, when I was living in Italy, I have never missed voting in a presidential election. People talk about how similar the republicans and democrats have become-both doing the bidding of the special interests who give them the most money. For example, most Americans want gun control and universal health coverage, but almost every bill aimed at these fails to pass because of intense lobbying by the gun and health insurance lobbies and HMOs. Yet I still feel deep down that the democrats at least give lip service to the little person and the rights of workers. Forgive me if I am na�ve, but that is important to me. Perhaps it's too late. All indications are that big business has created a world where the focus in on consumerism and instant gratification. Reining in big business would be bad for the economy, we're told. Yet the percentage of poor people has not significantly declined. Why is that?

Sorry, I hadn't intended to get on my soapbox. Especially on the day I intended to write about one of my favorite composers-Bela Bartok. Over the years, several pieces of music have caught my attention on first hearing. It's almost as if they resonate with some pre-wired part of my being. Sarasate's Zigeunerwisen, for example, makes me go all weak-kneed and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodie Number 14, always seem to make my Hungarian blood boil.

Bartok has that effect on me. Today's piece, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta used to get a lot of air play on the phone-in request shows. It is considered by musicologists almost more important a work than his Concerto for Orchestra, which is his most popular piece.

The part that always sent chills down my spine, was the one in which Bartok tried to capture the feeling of night. He was fascinated by trying to capture the restless quiet of that time of day and in this piece he has the violinists slide their fingers up and down the string to give an eerie tone and which is now imitated all the time in horror movies. Another movement is a musical palindrome: at midpoint, Bartok reversed the notes and it this device gives the amazing sense of time going backwards or water receding. I can't think of a more atmospheric piece of music or a more fun one, to boot.

Bartok Page

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