RE: music theory and difficult transitions.

John Touzios (JTouzios@mwumail.midwestern.edu)
Thu, 08 Apr 1999 15:42:22 -0500 

Scottie,
  I believe you've unwittingly created just such a trail out "from our 
morass."  Is it not rather interesting that just today a young man felt 
comfortable enough to post his thoughts on how we might all be phonies over 
here waving around our high brow literature?  Salinger was not afraid of 
honesty.  Me, I've catapulted off of that and relate his work back to Tao.  
But in general, I sense a lack of fear for honesty on this list, and even 
where the word "Tao" makes you think about spending your life learning how to 
pour tea, there's no squeamishness about it.  Teddy went around the boat 
watching out for people being "kittenish" which is the same idea, I think.  To 
the college student who is looking for a bunch of phonies on a Salinger 
internet list I say, "Welcome, brother.  Stay on as long as the stink from the 
sarcasm doesn't bother you too much."
  I'm not going to argue against Salinger's work being meagre.  We all know he 
could have written more than Stephen King if he had had the notion.  But 
"hackneyed"...that just adds too much to the Salinger legend for my liking.  I 
prefer to see Salinger as a man who meditates a lot and prints some the 
allegories he comes across on his journey just because he loves me and you so 
much.  To him we're family.  I say that with as much bite as possible, so that 
it doesn't sound like Barney the Purple Dinosaur.  Nor like Artemesia the 
Mother Goddess Worshipper.  Honest to goodness respect.  And look.  Here, 
right here, is the fruit of that.
  John Touzios
>>===== Original Message From Scottie Bowman <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu> =====
>>    '... have i joined the wrong list?  this is the salinger
>>    discussion ring, correct?...'
>>
>>    No, cusackfilm, wrong.  This is Bananafish, a mailing
>>    list intended for the discussion of the works of
>>    J.D.Salinger.  Unfortunately, those works are so
>>    meagre & the thoughts contained in them so hackneyed
>>    that we'd all rather discuss anything BUT them.
>>    Lunacy, pop music, Nabakov, the impending third
>>    world war, my time in high school, God in his various
>>    manifestations, ANYTHNG....
>>
>>    But, as ever.  Why don't YOU (preferably observing
>>    the usual conventions regarding upper case & punctuation-
>>    perhaps even letting us know your name while you're
>>    about it)lead us out of our morass with some original
>>    thoughts of your own?
>>
>>    Scottie B.
>
>"The Tao does nothing."
>-Lao Tzu

"The Tao does nothing."
-Lao Tzu