I have been thinking recently that perhaps the central lesson of life, if there is such, and I believe there is, has to do with loss, disappointment, and endings. It is certainly something everyone experiences in this world. Reports are that it is quite different in the hereafter! All the more reason to think that there is a lesson in finitude, and one that can’t be learned in any other way.

I read that Dennis Brain, England’s wonderful horn player in the 1950s, said somewhere that modern music making had to do with “faster, higher, louder.” To this, now seventy-five years later, I will add a perfect storm of additional traits: shorter, postured, branded, apex-ridden, and sexualized. This can certainly be seen in spades in the music reels on Youtube in music of all kinds, from Indian classical, to rock guitar, to Bach, and even to Francois Couperin, of the French baroque. It is technically adept, unmusical, and often tasteless. And I will add one more recent development, a particularly one: brutality. I confess that in my small way, I have been near to, and even a part of, these trends, in sitar, horn, and guitar. I want to say more about this in another place on my site, but haven’t gotten to it yet.