:up:

implies¹ = suggests
implies² = entails (to use the terminology being used in the thread so far)

It is precisely because correlation implies¹ causation that it's important to keep in mind that correlation does not imply² causation. It's not banal, as Bartricks has claimed.

By the way, and roughly speaking, I think implication in logic is something that happens within statements (if then), whereas entailment happens within arguments, that is, between sets of statements and a conclusion.

Don't waste your time with Bartricks.

:up:

It's all beginning to make sense.

The first time I heard that, I didn't know the story behind it, but I found it fascinating and moving all the same, which is significant I think.

@Srap Tasmaner

I took some time to explore Cecil Taylor and, rather than the early stuff, I've settled on the solo live album Garden, recorded in 1981, as a way in, because I liked it from the start (it's the re-issue split over two discs, Garden Set 1 and Garden Set 2).

I read that Duke Ellington was one of his heroes, but I couldn't see how his playing related to him at all. However, despite initially thinking the music was totally abstract, and closer to non-idiomatic free improv than jazz, I began to hear the jazz in it pretty strongly, and not only in the occasional blues phrases and inflections. The track "Pemmican" on Set 2 is almost close to being a conventional jazz ballad, and this is where I can see how his playing is an extension of the tradition (jazz is not dead, it just smells funny).

In a nutshell, I don't really know what he's doing, and although I can discern the repeating motifs and chords, I find it difficult to hear the carefully worked out structure that people say is there. But I like it. It's exciting, technically stunning, and somehow very precise and organized. And in this performance (Garden) he leaves quite a lot of space, which I appreciate.

Before finding that, I watched a video of him playing, and that's maybe why I was more interested in his solo work, because I dug it. I wondered why it should help to see him play, thinking that I ought to focus on the purity of the music, but on the other hand he was a kind of performance artist who liked to emphasize the physicality.

I see what you mean. Sounds quite conventional to begin with and then goes a bit mad later on. I like it.

I'll give some earlier Cecil a spin.

Don Pullen — Srap Tasmaner

Now that's someone I know absolutely nothing about.

It didn't bother me so much — Noble Dust

It didn't really bother me either; it was just disorientating. To end the book "making you feel like the layers of reality can continue to be peeled back indefinitely" is far from being a bad thing.

But why charge a fiction author with uncritically assuming a philosophical position? Isn't that a given? It's a story, not a treatise. — Noble Dust

Well I agree with you, and that's one reason I'm going to read more of his work.

If you've listened to some other earlyish Ornette but not to Free Jazz, just spin it. There's just more players, but it's very listenable. I only finally got around to it in the past year, and it's nothing to be afraid of. — Srap Tasmaner

I've got it playing now. Thanks :up:

(It used to be said there were two routes into free jazz (my music theory is almost non-existent, so grain of salt here): Ornette just passes right by the theory of harmony and frees melody from it; Cecil layers in more, augmenting traditional harmony, broadening it. Free Jazz the record is definitely still on Ornette's end of the spectrum.) — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's how I see it.

Cecil Taylor is baffling. I guess I haven't given him enough of a chance.

Couple things about Elvin Jones: he told some interviewer that part of the secret of his style, the polyrhythmic thing, is that he always hits something on the beat, just not always the same thing. Also, when Mingus was forming a group in the late fifties, the only drummer he wanted was Elvin Jones, but Elvin was playing with someone else at the moment, so Mingus taught saxophonist Danny Richmond how to play drums, and Danny was his drummer for the rest of his life.

I think it might be the liner notes to the Coltrane I recommended where Trane says of Elvin, "Sometimes he's too much even for me." — Srap Tasmaner

:cool:

Coltrane's last couple years, I don't do — Srap Tasmaner

I don't much like Ascension or the later stuff like Interstellar Space, but I like a few things from around 1965 and 1966, like Kulu Se Mama and Transition (which have some tracks in common).

The track "Welcome" is calm and beautiful. As a jazzhead you may know it already, but I'll put it here anyway:


But it was the track "Transition" that first really got me into jazz. As a teenage fan of thrash metal, I was looking for something even more heavy, and that did the trick (along with Stravinsky). I still love to listen to it, even though my appetite for that kind of intensity has waned. It's intense and dark, but driving and controlled. His playing is clear and strong, although at first I didn't like the altissimo explorations, which I felt detracted from the strength of his normal registers. I changed my mind about that, mostly.

I love how it starts, right in it.

Understanding and loving the many varieties of free jazz (and fusion, for that matter) remains on my to-do list. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, I feel I ought to try getting into Albert Ayler, who might be more akin to Ornette than to Coltrane. Anthony Braxton is another sax player who seems fascinating but who I can't get to grips with. Otherwise, I'm tentatively exploring non-idiomatic free improvisers, among whom I like Fred Frith and the fairly obscure Lol Coxhill, who seems to have been an outsider even in that scene.

But with both free improvisation and free jazz, I can't often listen to the large groups, so I don't feel much desire to get into the large group improvisations of Coleman and Coltrane (the former, Free Jazz, sounds like more fun to me though).

It might be useful for those who are not so familiar with football if you summarize the problems and the criticism more clearly. What makes this one so much worse than others? How did it come about that it's happening in Qatar in the first place? How has it caused disruption to the football season?

I'm also bad at chess and the only time I felt drawn to play and improve my skills, I quickly became discouraged. Whether this was to do with the way I think, my abilities, social discomfort, or problems with interpersonal competition, it doesn't make a big difference: it's not chess that's deficient, it's us.

That said, I don't beat myself up about it.

Excellent. Curious to hear your thoughts. — Noble Dust

It's a wild ride, very enjoyable, original, and stimulating, and obviously hugely influential. He's full of ideas and has the ability to pile them up and repeatedly surprise while also maintaning a good story. He can make you feel you know a character with only a few words. He makes ideas as exciting as action. The corny, anachronistic, sixties-drenched stuff won't please people who look to science fiction for credible predictions (at least about technology), but it's humorously weird and also obviously satirical. The descriptions of clothing are ridiculous and seemingly pointless, but perhaps knowingly so. I liked that about it.

The ending threw me off. I can't tell if it was a mischievous afterthought or if it had been part of the design all along. It ends making you feel like the layers of reality can continue to be peeled back indefinitely.

So I like it a lot and I'm happy for people to class him as one of the literary greats of the twentieth century, and yet something about it rubs me the wrong way. Never mind the unreliable narrator: I feel with Dick we have an unreliable author. I don't quite trust him or feel an affinity with where he's coming from. I can get used to the occasionally clunky prose, even though I sometimes find it annoying, and I don't mind that characters are still using phone books in a world of commercialized precognition, flying cars and robot shop assistants, but there's something bordering on madness that's a bit alienating (could be I'm just saying that because I know he went mad in the end, in which case strike it from the record).

Also I think he uncritically assumes a philosophical position that I don't get along with, namely the soul or mind as in principle independent of the body and the physical world, as in fact tied down by the physical world to its detriment. This seems basic and unexamined for Dick, but to me it's a cliché.

I'll definitely read more though.

If you haven't heard it listen to Out of This World, the opening track of Coltrane's self-titled release on Impulse! — Srap Tasmaner

Thanks for the recommendation, I hadn't listened to that album before.

Cool to read your personal jazz story.

I have mixed feelings about Sanders. Some of it I love (or loved; it was in my twenties and I'm now trying to remember the bits I liked), and some of it sounds weak and rambling. It could be that my expectations are wrong, as they were when I first listened to Ornette Coleman after having listened to Coltrane for a while.

Mason & Dixon is wonderful — Manuel

I agree. I've found it fairly easy to get back into the language, although I've forgotten some of the characters. I reckon I'll re-read it in the near future.

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon.

I thought I ought to finish it before starting Against the Day. It's good to be back into it.

Ubik by Philip K. Dick. I think I'm finally beginning to appreciate his work.

Just got a copy of Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. That's 1232 pages that will keep me occupied for a while.

Listening now :cool:

May you be restored to full auricular health very soon.

Being, as I am, a tad peeved at always hearing the opinion that music isn't as good as it used to be, I've been listening to some new and newish music.

"Invest in Breakfast" by Bent Knee:


"I'll Wait For Your Visit" by Daniel Rossen:


"Eraser" by Katie Kim:


"The Softness of The Present" by The Comet is Coming:


"Transformer" by Owen Pallett:


"In These Times" by Makaya McCraven:


"U Don't Have to Rob Me" by Domi and JD Beck:


"Diminished Returns" by Android Trio:


"New Life" by Nick Prol & The Proletarians:


@Noble Dust Agree? :wink:

Good stuff. Very modern sounding. At times it reminded me of Riley and Reich.

I've been getting myself back into jazz. I've always liked Wayne Shorter, not only for his playing but also for his composition. No matter how primary the improvisation might be in jazz, everyone likes a good tune, and the harmonic simplicity of the compositions in modal jazz just sounds great to me; I never really got into the busier styles of bebop (or hard bop), aside from Charlie Parker (for me, Miles Davis and John Coltrane come alive around the Kind of Blue era, when they move away from those crazy bebop changes).

This is from Shorter's album Juju and features McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Reggie Workman, all from John Coltrane's group. But in contrast with sixties Coltrane, to whom he was often compared at the time this album was recorded, Shorter doesn't have the desperate searching quality that can get a bit much if you're not in the mood. And I do love Elvin Jones's drumming. I can't really get my head around it but the mercurial, impressionistic, responsive way he plays is amazing.



A couple of years later Shorter played in McCoy Tyner's band on one of my favourite albums, Expansions. Again, it has a similar modal approach, and again with good tunes. Shorter's playing is fantastic throughout.

This is "Peresina":



The album begins with a classic, "Vision". It's heavier and faster than, e.g., "Peresina", but still has the expansive, open and soaring sound that I like in this kind of jazz.



Those solos by Shorter and Gary Bartz, not least because of the help of Freddie Watts's drums, are really something.

@schopenhauer1

First, it's not just antinatalism: we do try to merge discussions on the same topics if they're happening simultaneously, or if they're asking the same questions or making the same points.

Second, the site guidelines specify that evangelists are not welcome on TPF. There is some leeway there, because some members of an evangelistic bent have been around a long time and are polite and thoughtful despite having only one interest.

Mikie had our full support.

Gong, "Wingful of Eyes", from the album Shamal.

I find the "Jazz and Classical" a bit restrictive, because a lot of the music I like doesn't quite fit in either. I'm going to assume that the other interesting kinds of music I like are welcome here--I'm coming round to the view that the other thread is too rock/pop-centric.

Fred Frith might be neither jazz nor classical, but his music has aspects of both. Today I've been listening to my favourite two of his albums. The first, the album Gravity, inspired by Eastern European folk music, has been called "avant-garde dance music", which gets the idea across; and the second, Traffic Continues, is a long multipart composition played primarily by the Ensemble Modern on oldy worldy orchestral instruments.





Also Pat Metheny's The Way Up

Don't worry: Agent Smith hasn't either.

There are a couple of sections in the book that I did find a bit tedious, but on the whole I thought it was intelligent, insightful, inventive, and, most importantly, playful and light, though not in a remotely stupid or trivial way.

:cool:

I know you have a cherished dislike of emojis, so I’ll translate: cool.

Yeh, I forgot you already responded to that post.

this sounds all post-modernist and self-referential and stuff — T Clark

Yep, I like that kind of thing.

It seems like it might be fun and funny, but I could also see it might be tedious and obvious. From your emojis it seems like it's not that. — T Clark

I loved it, but I gather that several other intelligent readers do indeed find it tedious and obvious.

EDIT: Incidentally, I posted something about it in the Shoutbox a few hours ago. It’s also relevant to your discussions of literary interpretation.

Current
Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions :up: :sparkle:

Recent
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller :up: :sparkle:
Christopher Priest, The Dream Archipelago :up: :sparkle:
Robert Silverberg, Downward to the Earth :up: / :meh:

Day in Autum

BY RAINER MARIA RILKE
TRANSLATED BY MARY KINZIE

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen. — Tom Storm

This hits hard for me. It encapsulates my own mixed feelings about autumn. The third stanza expresses the feeling that it's now too late for projects, for any positive change. The year's production is done and all you can do is fitfully wander as life is gradually drained away around you.

Talking of poems about poems--and apologies to Moliere if this is off-topic--I recently read the "The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes. It's a poem about writing poems, or about creativity, and foxes:

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Nevertheless, and knowing that a complete bias free reporting is not possible, what sites are you all using? — Manuel

Meduza, Al-Jazeera, Reuters, AP, Deutsche Welle, France 24, BBC world news, NPR.

No source is free of bias, but some are more reliable and professional than others.

The Grayzone is a far-left news website

known for misleading reporting and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes, in addition to its denial of the Uyghur genocide

Yes, they're tankies all right. But I'd like to address "far-left". While I'm not denying that it's a far left website in some sense, or even that tankies are far left, I'd like to point out that one can be far left but also against authoritarian regimes like China's or Russia's. It's sad that so many on the left fall for the pro-or-soft-on-Putin crap, but not all do.

Although it's true that people like Isaac do have a serious problem:

On the international left, almost nobody knows Russian, and even less Ukrainian; so when the left wants to know what is happening in Ukraine, it finds itself in a catastrophic situation. So as not to depend on the Western media, it is condemned to have recourse to the English-language propaganda of the Putin regime and to that of the so-called “anti-imperialist networks” which are pro-Russian (often “red-brown” or downright brown) — Zbigniew Kowalewski

This is quoted in an article on anti-Stalinist far left website libcom.org, which traces the history of red-brown alliances (alliances of the far left and far right). I'm not unreservedly endorsing the view that pro-or-soft-on-Putin leftists are necessarily in alliance with fascists, or that there's much of a link between, say, Aleksandr Dugin and Western Leftists, but the article is at least an example of a left-wing history and critique of the authoritarian tendencies on the left. (Though to be honest it's too boring and full of links to read in full)

This seems like a pretty good article on Grayzone and Blumenthal:

Grayzone, Grifters and the Cult of Tank

Jamal do you have any sense about sentiment in the Russian population? Some "resistance" seems quite well organised but no clue how big or small it is. — Benkei

My geographical location unfortunately gives me no special knowledge. I have a sense that people are increasingly scared (for example, many of my wife's colleagues originally came from distant parts of the country and have young male relatives there who now face the prospect of going to war), but I don't really know how people are thinking because those who openly express their opinions are usually either supporters of the war or critics of the government from an even more bellicose nationalist position. Opponents of the war and the depoliticized bulk of the population are mostly silent, or else they're in another country.

Having said that, there is a strong sense that debates are heating up. The mere fact that pro-Kremlin politicians are voicing their frustration and anger is probably a sign of a roiling mass of resentment and fear (there has been open criticism of the way the mobilization has happened).

But I don't know to what extent the mobilization is actually causing the hitherto indifferent majority to change their minds about the war. That may develop. So far the anger is about the fact that the government has messed up and might be losing control; they've always tolerated Putin because he's strong and stable.

The other thread has plenty of music that's not rock and pop. Maybe you've just been looking at the last few pages.

Be that as it may, I was just listening to "The Creator has a Master Plan" by Pharaoh Sanders.

Yes, the referendums will be used as propaganda. But that doesn't make them a real democratic referendum. And that's my point. — ssu

We know that's your point. It's such an obvious and uninteresting point that I question what you're in this discussion for.

Obviously the referendums are not legitimate.

I’m not a big fan of boethius’s view, but I have to say, your reaction to his statements of fact is just bizarre. Whether or not the referendum results are legitimate, they will be used by the Russian regime to justify further escalation of the conflict. This seems to be what boethius was saying, and I don’t know why you’d object to it.

A significant sentence in that article comes after it says that the authorities, according to law, cannot just round people up in airports, train stations, or on the streets, and send them to the front:

"Still, what’s unlawful is not always impossible"