To Read History

 

I’ve come up with a new epigram:

 

HISTORIAM LEGERE EST TRISTE ESSE

 

In my native tongue, that translates to: “To read history is to be sad.”

And that’s my conclusion.

 

In the second third of my life I focused the majority of my reading in the field of history. Whereas it used to be science and math and philosophy and entertainment, since 2012 I’ve spent most of my nonfiction perusal in the Dewey Decimal 900s. “History.”

 

It began with the Civil War, then sidestepped to World War II (with a brief foray to the “Great War”). The Space Race, ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, the Crusades, the Catholic Church, nations such as China and India, Napoleonic France and all the continental conflicts involving the little emperor, just to mention the more significant phases. Even the history of Baseball. I’m sure there were a couple other “History of …” books I’m forgetting.

 

I’m writing this not so much to brag as to lay a foundation for why I believe HISTORIAM LEGER EST TRISTE ESSE.

 

Consider:

 

We live in a fallen world. This is my view based on the teachings of Catholicism. Other religious beliefs offer comparable starting points.

 

Strife and striving are the constant companions of men in specific and Man in general. Depending on who you consult as an authority, out of 5,000 years of recorded human history, there have only been around 300 years entirely free from major warfare. Thus, the history of Man is the history of War.

 

War necessitates suffering, and the more “civilized” we become, the more “innocents” suffer in conflict.

 

Since the Endarkenment, we have seen a receding of the influence of the teachings of Christ, Who offers the only true solution to Man’s fallen state of being. And that recession arguably has increased more and more, almost exponentially so, as the Western world actively seeks detachment from Christ and a return to a greater state of fallenness. A progression toward regression.

 

Thus any serious volume of history will necessarily document suffering.

 

Hence, to an inquirer with a heart, even a heart of stone, “to read history is to be sad.”

 

Quod Erat Demonstrandum. (Q.E.D.)

 

Now, I’m not certain that biography falls into this category. Strictly speaking I assume it does, but since it addresses the struggles of a specific individual, there could be a few drops of wisdom one can squeeze out to lessen one’s own battles. Perhaps I’m looking for a loophole, but for now biography sits in acceptable position for me, i.e., “to read the personal history of an individual does not necessarily necessitate sadness, but can provide personal enlightenment.”

 

I recognize such a loophole can be applied to my main argument. Hey, I’m just an armchair philosopher who may have too big an opinion of himself. (May?)

 

Anyway, the bottom line is I think it is time to switch my interest out of the Dewey Decimal 900s. I have some ideas where to channel my downtime so that it’s not depressing me. Perhaps in the near future I will elaborate. Now I’m going to exercise that loophole and read about Sinatra, a conflicted and often troubled man who attained highs and lows the average person could only dream about. (Or nightmare about, I suppose). After that, the dissertation on Tolkien. And after that …

 

Book Haul

  

Well, its been nearly two months since Christmas, and I was looking for a reward for my accomplishments this year. I’ve been to five bible study meetings so far (we have eleven scheduled, set to end right before Easter) and have learned a lot. I’ve kept with the meditation, having done my 57th sitting this morning, for a total of 14 hours and 20 minutes. I am noticing a “smoothening out” of my personal shortfalls. And there’s a third personal goal that I’m also making progress on, a big, tough one, which falls outside the purview of this blog.

 

So when I want to reward myself, nine times out of ten it’s treating myself with new (used) books. In this case, I went to the local book shop and scored these two awesome finds:

 

 

I’ve been looking for a good biography on Frank for a couple of months now. This one, Frank: The Voice, starts at the very beginning and ends around the time of his Best Supporting Actor award in 1954 or soon thereafter. The follow-up, Frank: The Chairman, takes it from then to his death in 1998. If you google “best biography of Frank Sinatra” these books by Kaplan will come up, so I considered myself quite lucky to find it.

 

Over the past few years I’ve been reading more and more musician biographies. Geddy Lee and Led Zeppelin last year, Mozart in 2024, a book on various classical music composers in 2023, biographies of the bands Yes and The Rolling Stones the years before that. I do remember way, way back in those hazy days a quarter of a century ago living in Maryland of starting a Sinatra biography, but never finishing it. I’ve been listening to a lot of Frank these past few months, so I’m looking for a greater understanding of the man and his music.

 

The other, Mount Doom: The Prophecy of Tolkien Revealed, found me completely by accident. It looks self-published (or at least published by a minor house), but it’s a dense, 562-page dissertation on the Tolkien mythos with lots of mention of Thomistic philosophy and, I’m hoping, a challenge to post-modernism (yuck). There’s charts, diagrams, mentions of the neurology of the brain, the harmonic series in music (maybe also in math), and what they promise to be something like a revisionist explanation of The Lord of the Rings.

 

This has me almost, but not quite, frothing at the mouth.

 

I’ve made two abortive attempts to re-read Tolkien in the past two years, from the Silmarillion to the twelfth volume of Christopher Tolkien’s edited The History of Middle-earth. Perhaps, hopefully, this will jump start that desire and I can notch my sixth reading of Tolkien. Last time was in 2021, right before we moved down to Texas, so its kinda overdue.

 

The dilemma now is which one to start once I’m finished with the English Civil War book …

 

Anyway, happy reading all!

The Doors

 

On a whim last week I decided to listen to all the Doors releases with Jim Morrison singing, in chronological order, one album a day.

 

Why?

 

Well, way back in the day I was really into their music for about nine months, beginning in the winter of 1987. Back then, Morrison had only been dead for 17 years, so it would be like one of my daughters doing a deep dive into the music of Michael Jackson today. I had a couple of cassettes, some recordings off the local FM station, and No One Here Gets Out Alive, a biography of Morrison Santa brought me two years earlier.

 

In addition to the nostalgia factor, I wanted to see if the music still held up. Every now and then I hear “Light My Fire” or “Soul Kitchen” from the Alexa in the upstairs bathroom when occupied by my daughters, and I scratch my chin and say to myself, “I should listen to some Doors.” So I did.

 

Additionally, there was the possibility that I might uncover a hidden gem or two. Over their six studio albums they recorded 62 songs. I could probably name 20 off the top of my head, and probably 20 more I’d recall on re-hearing, but there still would be about a third of their total song count that could sound fresh to my ears.

 

So I listened to six albums over five days, some while working and some while walking, and enjoyed it immensely.

 

What did I learn?

 

In a little over four years, from January 1967 to April 1971, The Doors released six studio albums. Jim Morrison died on July 3, 1971, two and a half months after their final, L.A. Woman was released, and the remaining three members reworked semi-finished songs and released them as Other Voices in August of 1971, and followed that with the album Full Circle in August of 1972. I did not listen to these albums.

 

Of the six “canonical” Doors albums, I rank them in this personal preference:

 

   L.A. Woman (1971)

 

   The Doors (1967)

 

   Strange Days (1967)

 

   Morrison Hotel (1970)

 

   Waiting for the Sun (1968)

 

   The Soft Parade (1969)

 

 

 

But it’s only a ranking for the sake of making a ranking. Every album has great songs; every album has mediocre songs.

 

My favorite tunes have not changed. I think I’ve posted about them here at the Hopper, but for the record, my top tens would probably be something like

 

   “LA Woman”

 

   “Soul Kitchen”

 

   “Strange Days”

 

   “Moonlight Drive”

 

   “When the Music’s Over”

 

   “Waiting for the Sun”

 

   “Peace Frog”

 

   “Hello I Love You”

 

   “Five to One”

 

   “Wild Child”

 

 

 

I came away with three uncovered gems, “gems” in this case being songs I didn’t recall hearing before that stuck with me after the music was over. They are

 

   “Summer’s Almost Gone” off Waiting for the Sun

 

   “Wishful Sinful” off The Soft Parade

 

   “Hyacinth House” off L.A. Woman

 

 

 

Of the three, I find “Hyacinth House” unusually haunting. There’s that A-minor chord, there’s Morrison hitting some really low notes, there’s a neat little organ solo, and there’s kind of a plaintive cry for help as the chorus wraps up at the end of the song. I can’t shake it for some reason.

 

It was an enjoyable experience. If you like to do similar things I recommend it. The Doors were never my favorite band, but I did have a phase right after high school and I associate a lot of fun memories with their tunes. The more I grew musically the more I realized how Morrison totters along the fine edge of just staying in tune, and the older I get the more cringy I find his whole “lizard king” schtick to be. But it all worked. The faux poetry, the baritone tightrope, the carnivalesque keyboards, the jazzy drumming, and Robby Krieger’s superb and underappreciated guitar work (mostly done on a Gibson SG, my first true love in my life). It works.

 

I started doing a similar thing with Johnny Winter. I had his 1973 blues album just after this Doors phase, given to me by my lead guitarist way back then, that I listened to it a lot that summer. But I never really got into the man and his music. So I’ll do a walk through his catalogue and write down any songs I like and thoughts I come across, to be posted at a later date.

 

Happy listening!