So Christianity obviously fucked me up from the start. Now I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in the truths I learned. I can see that not many people do.

And somewhere along the line, I developed an intrinsic love of beauty.

So I am definitely a naive in the world of creating and owning beauty and things that are worthwhile. It does cross my mind that I’m not that good at beauty (music, poetry, writing), but nevertheless I enjoy and believe in what I do. In fact it’s more than that. My connections with music and poetry are essential to who I am. I think I have found the “niche of mediocrity” Somerset Maugham mentions. Here is a bleak little poem from my youth:

Niche of mediocrity

“Hundreds, thousands of youths…. enter upon the hard calling of the arts with extravagant hopes; but for the most part they come to terms with their mediocrity and find somewhere a niche where they can escape starvation.” Somerset Maugham

To F.X.E

Fire the last lean line
Farting from the mouth
Shelling quiet and obscene.

Were we the last ones
Or the first ones to
Taste the leaving leave the tasting
Leer? Hermaphrodites
Of love licking and
Leaping into charred charmed arms
Of the skeletal
Muse, the bony dame
Drooling and quiet as a
Curse. Shall we dance shall
We lean our coiled and
Tired bodies pinning flesh on
Fantasy? The death
Is broken. Tireless
Ginless loveless caress. O
Take me slowly. Gray
Is the animal.
Dead is the frail and spent day.

Okay so maybe it’s a dopey poem. The “F.X.E” is the fictional poet of Anthony Burgess: Francis Xavier Enderby. I was twenty-six when I wrote that poem. I am reading it out of an old journal.

So my life metaphors are definitely not the economic ones that dominate the underlying assumptions of our legal code and public discussions.

For example (and these articles are what brought it to my mind):

Brad Templeton seems to understand copyright law the way I do. I have understood for years that photocopying of copyrighted material is illegal. Technically it’s illegal to make photocopies for pages turns for musicians. I do this anyway. My teachers did it. But I know it’s illegal. Similarly, when I was running a big Roman Catholic church music program and using music in the bulletins, I knew that just  because it was in the hymnal that I had permission to use, I didn’t really have the permission of the copyright holders who  were often the makers of the words and/or the music. I followed the letter of the law for a while. I remember contacting the widow of the person who wrote a famous hymn that I had seen reproduced over and over. She told me I was the first one to call her and ask for permission. This made me understand that there was the law and then there was the practice.

Anyway, here’s links to three Templeton articles that explain why you are probably breaking the law with some frequency. By the way, though I have been known to act legally, I disagree totally with the law as it stands. But that’s just naive old me who thinks that “only God can make a tree…..”

10 Big Myths about copyright explained

Linking Rights

A brief intro to copyright

I put them in that order because that’s order I looked at them. I haven’t actually read much of the last one.

And then there’s health.

Peter Steinfels has a good article on the underlying assumptions of the health care debate, at least as seen from the point of view of philosopher, Daniel Callehan:

In Debate Over Health Policy, Some Words Are Seldom Spoken

I haven’t finished reading this next article but it has me thinking about how we have commodified quality of life:

How American Health Care Killed My Father