Word: possession
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Pueblo's personnel problems over. Although the U.S. does not physically possess the vessel or have any hope of getting it back soon, regulations require that every ship in commission have a commanding officer of record. The Navy is now looking for someone on whom to bestow the responsibility. The change of command promises to be awkward and piping the new captain aboard will be a problem, but Navy regs will be served...
American and British composers have been misrepresented to some extent by the works which have proven digestible, but it still seems that they possess a weary delight in the mood of the rose-garden. The typical audience salivates for the caramel center of he symphonic repertoire. Its decayed sweet tooth cannot be extracted by more sugar, and its delight in gratuitous perfumes cannot be disciplined by more profferments of dusty oleander. This never-ending recovery of "adolescence" and "national roots" on the part of Anglo-Saxon composers, their incessant celebration of the precious and popular, reaches an apotheosis of sorts...
...thievery but that it is miscalculated. It resorts to idiomatic mimicry as an expressive inheritance rather than as the perfect means of musical expression which inner necessity dictates. Eclecticism is consequently faded and diffuse instead of directed towards precise statement. The work of an eclectic laborer cannot possess independent life, whereas the work of the derivative artist cannot possess anything else. This was what T.S. Eliot meant when he said that immature poets borrow while mature poets steal. Stravinsky's Pulcinella is derivative, Poulenc's Gloria eclectic...
...natural reaconteur or a mystic. Partly, this is because the role goes with the job, as the priest's garb goes with his--we want assurance that the author is inspired. Partly, it is because personality is something we can grasp and bring down to earth: if we can possess the personality, perhaps we can possess the inspiration. The poet-priest is sacred; no one (now) would dare be hostile to Borges...
...dead because I lack desire;/ I lack desire because I think I possess;/ I think I possess because I do not try to give./ In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;/ Seeing you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;/ Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing/ Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;/ In desiring to become, you begin to love...