There's a wonderful diary that was on the rec list today entitled, Komposers for Kossacks: Fryderyk Chopin http://www.dailykos.com/... It inspired me to say a bunch, so here goes...
I honestly believe that Chopin is the GREATEST ever. I'm not a musical historian, so I got some of my responses wrong in my comment to this diary, but what I know is that Debussey couldn't have existed without Chopin before him. Oh, man, the word beauty, beauty, beauty cannot be given ever without giving it to Chopin. He makes me melt. He makes me defiant. He makes me cry. He makes me happy in the way that Joseph Campbell makes me happy. That's why, without the words to say it, my on-line name is FollowYourBliss.
Chopin did (follow his bliss), and he's given me more than I could ever give him. That's my bottom line. That's why I believe in communalism. We all have something to give the other -- to be for them what they can't be for themselves, and to get from them what we can never do ourselves. Chopin enriches me. Chopin gives to me. Chopin is a god. A god to a person who is an atheist. I believe in humans. Our function is to find those who do that for us individually. And why I also give that place in my heart to Roger Federer.
Another who does this for me is Richard Feynman. Physics, music, and law (because I'm a lawyer). Beauty when done correctly for the right reasons, actually the only time art is beauty. All the arts give me humanity -- Picasso (even though he was an asshole), John Lennon because he was a genius (Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try). Van Gogh -- I literally have no words to describe my worship for this man. George Gershwin because I've never heard a single piece of music that is more important to me that Rhapsody in Blue. And, Samuel Barber for Adagio for Stings, the only thing he ever wrote that matters, but so striving, so excruciating, so trimuphant in the end over adversity, over despair. Amazing piece of music.
I don't even know how to end this, but Obama is my Chopin, my Barber, my Gershwin, my Federer, and even my Van Gogh of politics. I'm fifty and I've never seen a maestro in politics. He's the man to me. He's not perfect -- neither was Lennon, Chopin, Gershwin, or obviously Van Gogh. But I've waited all my life for a person in that office that inspires me, that makes me proud, that gives me hope that our democracy is what I've believed it to be since I was a little girl. We just have to keep claiming our democracy, keep screaming as loud as we can. That's what a true democracy is.
We're winning the health care debate. It's not done yet, but we're really gonna win this one guys.
My question to you, and I only hope to get some responses, is what makes you feel the way I feel about these people, who are the people that do this for you as well...It's amazing to be human. We should embrace it. We should love the people who make us feel human. Another for me is Nietzsche. Please contribute to my growth by responding, even more than you already have...