Music and other Musings
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L.A. Ring, Road in the Village of Baldersbrønde (Winter Day), 1912
This is the first song that comes out of my experiments with Open Guitar Tunings.
I started composing it on the epiano but switched to the guitar for recording since this sounds a lot better IMO.
Painting by anonymous 17th century artist known as “Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds”
Recently I have discovered Joni Mitchell. I was blown away. It's so weird that I have never heard of her even though she seems to be really famous.
Do you like it when people are gossiping about you behind your back? Do you like to be left out, to be left behind or to be ignored? Do you like it when someone jumps the queue? Do you like people stealing or damaging your things? Do you like it when someone does not clean up the garbage where you will be staying or eating?
Mulahad, arabic for “atheist” (Image license: CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sometimes when people state their reasons for not believing in a personal God, it makes me wonder how arbitrary these can be.
A good example is this quote from Timothy Leary:
Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is ______ (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or Heresy. The word Islam means “submission”. The basic posture of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done.
from The Intelligence Agents (1996)
Yellow Mountain (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Edit: I have transferred my songs to another website. You can find this song and a more recent demo here now: https://reto.nom.za/music/songs.html#Indescribable
All powerful Loving and compassionate Long-suffering Indescribable Unapproachable light Hidden before me Unknowable but kind
Illustration of “The Trusting Child”, a poem by Lydia Sigourney
This is a new song I have started writing about two weeks ago. The inspiration came on the epiano with the first verse. It outlines our frail nature and the idea what will happen when we depart from this world. It's about faith and doubt, about fear and trust.
Edit: I have transferred my songs to a another website. You can find this song and a more recent demo here now: https://reto.nom.za/music/songs.html#I%20don't%20need%20to%20be%20afraid
“Worship” sculpture by Ralph Stackpole
I was a Christian in the evangelical sense for a long time and I was fooled a lot by what I call the religious spirit. The religious spirit is a sort of energy – or maybe it's really a spirit, I don't know.
What I know is that certain people harbor this “religious spirit”. When I come into contact with them or watch their sermons I get touched – and I often have to cry quickly. Before I always thought that this is the holy spirit's work and hence I believed it to be a sign for the truth.
An elderly Tibetan women holding a prayer wheel on Lhasa, Barkhor (photo by Luca Galuzzi CC BY-SA 2.5)
Do you believe in the theory of evolution? That is, more or less, that we have evolved through natural selection in billions of years from cells that randomly formed in the primordial soup?
Probably you do. You have been told in school it is so. You have been told science says so.
Haughtiness by Antoine Wiertz
The foundation of our society is crumbling. We see selfishness growing wild everywhere. The results are:
“Human love for dogs” by AnkitaD018 (CC BY)
This is my latest song. It was inspired by a dream. The first two lines and the verse melody are directly from the dream. I couldn't exactly remember the chorus (the part with “I'm gonna love you tomorrow”) but that's kind of what I remembered 8)
Edit: I have transferred my songs to a another website. You can find this song here now: https://reto.nom.za/music/songs.html#You%20Might%20Do%20Things
