A Distant Mirror

A Distant Mirror by historian Barbara W. Tuchman is one of the most captivating books I've ever read. The work encapsulates the history of the 14th century Europe in thrilling six-hundred pages. Have you ever wondered what life was like in the middle ages? This book is the perfect resource for that. This is the best nonfiction book I've ever read. It does have story elements within, however, they are rather limited. 

The book is loosely based around one man's life. Enguerrand De Coucy. He was a French noble that had a double allegiance, to England and his native France. He was the shining example of nobility, chivalry, and grace. He led war campaigns against England and led knights into battle in crusades as well. He helped unite England and France at key moments in the war. In the end, he got captured on a crusade and the Moslems imprisoned him. He died.

What was more fascinating than the life, goals, and happenings of Engerrand was the sheer alienness of this world, this so-called medieval Europe. What inspired me to read this book was the recommendation from my father. He said, "saying since you love science fiction so much, you should read this book. This world described therein is so foreign to you, that it will be like reading science fiction." He couldn't be any more correct. 

It's hard to believe that the middle ages even happened in some respects. Of course, it did, because we have literature, art, music [sheet music], and architecture to prove it. However, what I mean is that the world was so different back then, that it's hard to reconcile this universe in a modern perspective, which is what Tuchman does here. Spectacularly.  

The book covers the black plague [pestilence carried by rats, dung, and uncleanliness], the consanguinity of the papal order, the papal schism [which brought the Protestant Reformation some 100 years later-but it started here], knighthood, chivalry, philosophy of the time as well as art, literature, food, debauchery, flagellants, sexual deviancy, anti-semitism, as well as the gory bloody details that existed in the age; what life was like for the king, the noble, the knight, the squire, the peasant, the laborer, the noblewoman, the peasant woman, the priest, the pope, the aristocrat, the merchant, the sailor, the writer, the poet, the artiste, the architect. A Distant Mirror pretty much covers everything you would ever want to know about the middle ages. 

Some fun facts. The first sheet music was published in 1473. Contrary to popular belief the black plague did not only affect Europe, thus killing off 1/3 of the population. I learned from this book that the black plague affected India, Africa, and China. It was actually all over the world, not just in Europe. Chivalry was idealized in immortal knighthood but was hardly if ever utilized in practice. People lived long lives [living into their 70s sometimes], however, because of the brutal nature of the times [war, famine, pestilence], they often died at a younger age. People became senile faster too. Thus girls were married off at younger ages and bore children earlier, sometimes resulting in their deaths due to the nature of childbirth and the primitive methods of doing so. Kings and nobles were in a constant state of war, even with French on French assassinations, and likewise English on English murder. Kings and nobles kept power within families, making alliances with other countries by marrying off their daughters to royalty. 

The details of the war are remarkable. "To be a knight was to be a terrible worm in an iron cocoon." That's one of my favorite lines in the book. I had such a different view on knights in my mind. But the truth of the matter was that their iron armor was often so heavy that they could hardly move or attack very fast in it. They had to supported by archers wearing little armor for mobility and peasant foot soldier militia to win battles. They certainly couldn't swim in water if they had to. Terrible worm in an iron cocoon indeed. 

Overall, this is a remarkable work of history. In fact, I was so impressed with this book that I bought my own copy used from Amazon. Lucky for me, this book is very old so it was pretty cheap. In time I will look back to it. I read and finished the book in three weeks but during those three weeks, I didn't play any video games or waste my time in frivolous activity. Rather I went to the library and Starbucks and savored each and every word. This book is a masterpiece. You should definitely check it out. Reading the entire thing is a daunting task but once you finish you see the beauty in history. Bring on the Japanese feudal war era next.

Cole Porter tune

Here's our rendition of the Cole Porter standard entitled "Every Time We Say Goodbye." Definitely gonna add this one to the songlist. 
Enjoy!
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/every-time-we-say-goodbye-cole-porter 

Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell

“That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.” [The Doors of Perception]

I've picked up a lot of books over multiple library book sales. These are first-come, first-serve sales of mostly paperback but sometimes you can find handsome editions of hardcover novels. I picked up The Doors of Perception because I'm been inspired by the counterculture hippie movement since high school. The Doors was one of my favorite rock bands as a kid.

That's my paradigm. I'm mostly inspired through rock and roll rather than experimentation of drugs. But even as a youngster I was familiar with the Merry Pranksters, Timothy Leary, LSD, Sgt. Pepper, and "turn on, tune in, drop out." And of course, all my favorite American hippie rock bands supported all that stuff. The Doors named themselves after Huxley's Doors of Perception. This edition comes with a separate book entitled Heaven and Hell. Both of these short books explores the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. 

For starters, one of the main problems with these books is that its no longer apart of the zeitgeist or discourse. The idea of taking psychedelics in order to gain some insight into the spiritual self is no longer apart of the current paradigm. Native Americans were known to use peyote/mescaline for spiritual purposes. But do even they still do that today?  

The young people I know who have experimented with heavy drugs like LSD, mushrooms, cocaine, and heroine are using it in order to escape from their reality. Much like the quote above. They use drugs as a backlash against the real world because they feel they are suffering. Any release into paradise will suffice. Even if it only for but a moment. Drugs and alcohol relieve them from their suffering. Albeit only for a short while until they come down from the high. Knowing that, it's very difficult for millennials to truly understand anything that Huxley is talking about here. But I like a challenge. 

This isn't really a book. Rather its a dialogue of Huxley containing his trip on mescaline. Ironically the trip takes place in the world's largest pharmacy during the early stages of the trip. A bit of comedy for his mescaline trip.  What happens to someone under the influence of mescaline? 

a) Ability to think straight is little if at all reduced. You don't become stupid.
b) Visual impressions are greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of childhood when the sensum was not immediately and automatically subordinated to the concept. Interest in space is diminished and interest in time falls almost to zero. 
c) Though the intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is enormously improved, the will suffers a profound change for the worse. The mescaline taker sees no reason for doing anything in particular and finds most of the causes for which, at ordinary times, he was prepared to act and suffer, profoundly uninteresting. He can't be bothered with them, for the good reason that he has better things to think about. 
d) These better things may be experienced (as I experienced them) "out there," or "in here," or in both worlds, the inner and the outer, simultaneously or successively. That they are better seems to be self-evident to all mescaline takers who come to the drug with a sound liver and an untroubled mind. [Doors of Perception]

Time meant nothing. Huxley mentions there was plenty of time. Not a concern. He also wasn't concerned by spatial forms. This could mean the distance between me to my computer screen as well as the matter of me writing this review and then finishing it. Neither mattered anymore. 

What really is important to him is experiencing and observing.  Looking around the room takes on a new perception and/or concepts of the things we see. Mescaline strips down concepts but allows you to see them for the first time, the beauty of it. 

Man-made art had little effect on him. He was humored by the fact that humans tried too hard to symbolize things. "How dare they?" "The audacity?" This goes alongside paintings as well as classical music composers. He was more mesmerized by nature than by human-made things. 

Heaven and Hell go into religious aspects. Huxley notes that in the middle ages Christians would beat themselves until wounds would fester [flagellants] and starve themselves until they literally saw visions. They would literally see the devil. The festering wounds would cause hallucinations. How about that? 

My favorite concept that Huxley mentions in heaven and hell is a simple one. If you are a mystic/artist, you must learn from the scholar. If you are a scholar you must learn from the mystic/artist. It makes perfect sense. Why isn't the world like that? Why aren't more people across different discipline working together and learning from each other? It makes me wonder what could have been.

The truth is that I would never do any hallucinatory drugs and this book doesn't make a convincing argument for me to find a dude off the street and buy some mescaline off him. Rather, I'm impressed with Huxley's experience. I'll take his word for it and agree that the experience changed him for the better. Even if it only changed him for that day I can see from his writing that it had a profound spiritual effect on him. None of these drugs should be used for recreational purposes. Hell, at this point I don't even believe marijuana should be used recreationally. Maybe I'm getting too old. Maybe I'm a square. Maybe drugs are good for people sometimes.

In the end, we are all riders on the storm.  

Blue Monk

Here's our rendition of Thelonious Monk's Blue Monk. 

Orlando Figueroa Guitar
Jason Thomas Alto Saxophone

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/blue-monk-thelonious-monk

Impressions

Here's our rendition of John Coltrane's modal classic Impressions. 

Orlando Figueroa Guitar 
Jason Thomas Alto Saxophone 

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/impressions-trane 

Jazz Band Projekt Tracks

Here are some latest tracks from my jazz project, which consists of myself on guitar, Orlando Figueroa, and Jason Thomas on alto saxophone. We met back in January 2019 and we've played with seven different third members including bass players, a guitar player, and a trumpet player but we've always enjoyed just playing as a duo the best. 

Straight ahead!

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/the-gentlemen-minor-blues 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/mr-pc-paul-chambers 
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/bluesmen

The Silmarillon

The Silmarillion is JRR Tolkien's epic history of the elves of Middle Earth. It was published and edited posthumously by Christopher Tolkien [his son] and an editor in 1977. I somehow don't believe Tolkien would've published this book on his own accord. However, I'm grateful that his son published it because it is a fascinating work of fantasy fiction. 

Where do I start with this? In the beginning, the Illuvatar [the gods of Middle Earth] created the elves, men, and dwarves. The beginning of the story is what kept me reading all 365 pages. I started reading the book on Tuesday and I finished the book on Sunday.

The Ultimate Supreme Badass of Middle Earth is detailed in the first ten pages. His name is Melkor, later called Morgoth Bauglir, aka the Supreme Mother Fucker of Middle Earth. Why is he so angry? Why is he a monster? Well, you see it turns out that Morgoth was a musician, like all the other children of Illuvatar, he was apart of the Valar. Most of the children played the harmonious music of the Ainur, singing sweet songs. However, Morgoth played his own original music. Being a drama queen band leader, he created music of discord, aka death metal complete with blast beats and shrieking vocals. Basically, I see the arrogant evil side of Morgoth in musicians. Even myself but mostly in others. Musicians are real arrogant assholes sometimes. And I thought that was so interesting psychologically that I would say Morgoth is one of my favorite villains I've come across in fiction. He was a disturbance in the music before it is explained that he wised to be called Lord by others. Morgoth is really cool and the way that Tolkien starts his epic history of the elves is described thus: In the beginning there was music and eventually the music turned to discord, eventually leading to the battles that would go on for hundreds of years in Middle Earth. 

The truth about the Silmarillion is that its very thorny. I found it difficult to actually finish reading this book. In fact, I listened to all twelve hours of the audiobook version but it was so difficult to follow that I decided that I should go ahead and read the actual book if I wanted to truly understand the narrative, thus actually 'completing' the book. I had a biased attitude towards fantasy despite reading Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings in middle school. In recent years I've been such a science fiction afionado that I sort of look down upon fantasy as a children's genre. Although this is a heavy book that you could knock someone out with it is still a children's novel after all. Young adult if you will.

The book reads like a manuscript history of everything that could, would, and ever happen in Middle Earth. But mostly the Silmarillion is about the Silmarils, these jewels that the elves created that had infinite power. They're very similar to the Rings of Power that Sauron creates later but more beautiful and the elves will die for them. They proceed to fight over them for hundreds of years. This happened here, this happened there, and these are the people who did it, up to the 39th line [Aragon, called Strider later, Lord of men] of this family name and that family name. There is so much going on and it's so hard to follow that most people who attempt to read this book either stop reading it at some point and give up or take a very long time to finish it. Luckily I finished the book in a few days through some very intense reading sessions. Dedication I guess.

There are certain aspects of fantasy writing that I learned are very important to the genre. Here are a few. First, you have to create your own language for your original fantasy universe. If you have interesting names of characters, places, things, and events that in itself will keep people reading. Tolkien was a master philologist, a master of language and it really shows. Even the most boring parts of the Silmarillion contain a mastery of language. Not only did I learn a lot of new words but I was able to pronounce his own made-up words in my own mind in my own accent but because I listened to the audiobook I already knew how the words were supposed to sound, at least according to the British voice actor. However, I found that my own phonetics in my mind were even better and easier to prounouce. Remember that this book starts with a clash of sound and music. Language is apart of that. In addition, I would say that in a great fantasy novel the dialogue between characters shouldn't be overbearing, but rather that they only say what they need to say, the meat and potatoes of dialogue if you will. That is on display here as well. 

Next, if you want to write fantasy you have to have things happening all the time. And you have to explain it. Sometimes it could be simple things like explaining family lines and other times it will be epic battles taking place between dark lords, elves, and men. The fact that something is happening all the time in the Silmarillion makes it more enjoyable. Although as I said the prose is very dry I can't deny that there is always something happening even if it is just the explanations of this, that, and the other. It can get tedious but the creative imagination is powerful at work here.

Lastly, you need epic battles of struggle, strife, and discord. This book is 365 pages and the climax hits at the 180-page mark. It is a one-on-one duel to the death between an Elvish Lord and Morgoth, a melee duel. Morgoth ends up killing the Elf Lord but not without getting his ass kicked. He gets slashed in the face with a sword seven times. During the entirety of the fight, I imagined epic heavy metal music in the background. Sometimes I didn't imagine it because there were times when I would read the book with music in the background. Most of the time it was heavy rock and roll bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Now you see why these battles were so much fun. Sometimes the background music was Richard Wagner. Again this is a book about language, music, and sound despite the fact that most of the time reading is a quiet experience except for the turning of pages fast or slow. 

There's a lot of fun facts about Middle Earth here. My favorite is that the orcs are actually bred from elves. There's a love story between two elves who later find out they are brother and sister. You can guess how that ends up. Men were created way after the elves and are called the Followers. Dwarves were created second. The Dwarves played a great role in the battle against Morgoth. Men lived short lives in comparison to the elves and in the end, it was men who helped build Sauron's power through their evil lust for power. Sauron was Morgoth's protege who went on to become the second great dark lord after Morgoth was trapped in the sky [or something] after hundreds of years battling elves, dwarves, and men. Sauron is the main villain in the Lord of the Rings. Learning about his rise to power was fun but he's no Morgoth. He didn't destroy the music of the Ainur. 

Some of the things Sauron is into is very dark. Maybe a little satanic? He builds this temple to serve the dark lord Morgoth and men bring him, people, to burn alive as a tribute. That was quite morbid. He has an epic one-on-one hand-to-hand combat duel but in the end, he loses and flees his body, leaving nothing but a spirit. He is able to take the form of many things. He is able to take the guise of a beautiful person, charming and deceiving his foes. The Eye of Sauron watches over all of Middle Earth, haunting all living things, the Dark Tower presiding over all. Men quake in terror.

In the end, we have a conclusion to the entirety of Middle Earth that is somewhat more satisfying that the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy [at least from what I remember from middle school]. We find out how the three great wizards of men came to be and how they created the White Council [of elves and men] to counter and watch over all that Sauron does. We have Radagast who is pure of heart and loves animals, who controls and watches over nature. We have Gandalf who is a great leader and friend to men and the half-lings, aka the Hobbits. We have Sauraman who is evil but pretends to work with the good guys while he admires Sauron from afar, seeking all his power and destruction. Gandalf didn't trust Saruman for he already suspected that Sauraman sought the power of the One Ring. And silly Radagast was so sweet that he helped Sauraman find the One Ring by sending all the creatures of Middle Earth in search for it, thinking that it was just part of the plan to keep watch over Sauron. Lastly, we have the pen-ultimate conclusion that it wasn't actually the White Council, elves, men, nor dwarves that ended up saving Middle Earth from Sauron's evil. Rather it was a half-ling, a hobbit named Frodo who, with his friend ended up completing the task that no one else could achieve. Knowing that is very satisfying. But of course, it's written that way.

What a read. If you like fantasy you're going to love this book.