Merry Christmas! [Eve]

Greetings everyone, 

It's the holiday season. Christmas is here in eight hours. I've already an enjoyable day. I woke up early around 10 am and went for a walk. I proceeded to come home and play the acoustic guitar on my balcony. Then I played some overwatch and started reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a very good book! I've decided to take some time to write another work/life update regarding the holiday season and covid. 

The market has been tough this holiday season. The morale of the workers' is the lowest it's ever been in my eight year career. Employees are getting fed up and some of them have quit and/or gotten fired. There's been another one or two isolated incidents of covid but it hasn't spread, or at least, we haven't been told that it's spread. Disconcerting to say the least. 

As regard to my health, I get my temperature checked daily by my father [although the managers at the store should be checking employee temperatures as well but they aren't doing it] and I've never had too high a temperature nor developed any covid symptoms. I guess I should count my blessings. Some of my friends weren't so lucky. Especially the ones that work in retail and/or warehouse work and management. 

My whole goal when going into work now is too completely relax and not overreact to anything or anyone. It's sort of like a Zen mediation attitude to working retail. Every bad interaction can be cancelled out by realizing that there is neither praise nor blame attached. The things the Buddha taught.  

The customers at my store this year have been very tough on the workers. I've had a lot of complaints from customers simply because I'm an employee standing near them. They want to complain to the store director or supervisor but they're also content to let out their anger on just any old employee, that may or may not help them as a response. To be alive in the bitter sea. 

In terms of my music and keyboard playing I'm still at it very often. I've also been reading a lot too. In a short period I've read Plato's Republic, Writings by Aristotle, Ovid's Metamorphosis, War and Peace, and this book about Johannes Kepler called Kepler by John Banville, the best living writer from Ireland. In addition, I have a couple heroes of the storm pc game teams that I play with, and I still play overwatch and team fortress 2. I've even been studying Spanish for a month now. All in a day's work! 

I've been working so much yet somehow I'm still getting a lot done in all my free time. My favorite new activity has been going out on long morning walks and even night walks. During the day, I like to go to the park and read a book sitting on the bench in front of the duck pond. Sometimes I get up and stare at the shimmer of the water's reflection, the shimmer staring back at me. 

Merry Christmas 

On the 17th day of Christmas

It's the 17th day of Christmas! Here's a general update. 

The grocery store gig has been good. I'm getting somewhat consistent hours, but could use more. Hours are still mostly cut across the board, so most of my co-workers aren't doing so great financially. One little hiccup from the company, they started sending out checks via mail rather than having the employees [that pick up their checks at the store] pick them up at the store. Naturally, this has sowed discord amongst the employees and a sore blow to their morale, as they aren't getting their checks on time when they want and need them. Companies need to better by their employees. This is such a small change but it's done a lot of damage to the employees.  

In terms of covid, there has been none or not very many cases at the job. In terms of covid safety, surprisingly, we have been very safe. I can't quite explain it other than the fact that the store is so empty when I work [late shifts] that there's hardly any people coming in, making my chances of catching covid from a customer very low. Eso es muy bien! 

This is a super harsh winter in California this year. Surprisingly, flu and influenza is very low this time of year [due to mask wearing, and not breathing in as much cold air, and because people aren't going out as much], but you never know when you can catch a cold or worse, the corona virus. The weather is amazing during the day, about 60 degrees, but at night it goes to about 50. Desert weather.

In terms of gifts, I've already finished all my shopping. This year, because I knew that work hours were low, I made sure to do all my shopping in the first week of December. Cool things I look forward to getting for Christmas: A Japanese dictionary from my friend, a German dictionary from my brother, a steampunk novel from my father, and candy, oh! How I love candy! Ich liebe Süßigkeiten! I am so looking forward to eating candy on Christmas! 

I've been playing a lot of computer games online: Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, and Team Fortress 2. Mi dia fue maravilosa porque jugue los video juegos en la computadora con mis amigos todos los dias. 

I've become a much better player at all the games. I have three different Heroes of the Storm teams that I play with at different times and on different days depending on who's available at any given time. The main thing I've learned from all this online gaming with voice and headsets is that its not always about winning or playing well, you have to learn how to speak well with your team, and how to boost their morale when their morale is very low, you have to learn how to speak as a leader, and then they will follow your lead. Naturally as the medic in every game, I'm the playmaker. Ich bin der Doktor, Art und Fürsorge.

Lastly, I've been learning languages on the Google Translate app and YouTube, Sugoi kūru! [to learn the accents better through voice actors], going out on long walks, reading lots of books [I just finished Ovid's Metamorphosis, and a book on Buddhism, called The Things Buddha taught], and playing acoustic guitar and electronic keyboard, el teclado y la guitarra, me encanta. 

This Christmas is a real blow to the morale of the American people. Just be happy for what you have, but more importantly than being happy about what you have, make sure that you have deep in your heart, the capacity for happiness. Many a time has gone by when a friend, family member, or casual acquaintance is very upset about whatever is going on in their life, only for me to realize that even if things were going good for this said person, they still would have negative things to say. You must learn to not say negative things around the people you care about. It's not always about being happy, rather, sometimes its the capacity for happiness that must be restored. 

Felicem natalem Christi

On the 9th day of Christmas

The holidays are here. And the time is right to start shopping for Christmas gifts for your friends, family, loved ones, and acquaintances. It goes without saying that this Christmas is going to be a lot different. Hell, even Thanksgiving this year seemed to lose some of its intrinsic holiday value. However, I am firm believer in Christmas and the holidays. It's a happy time, so be happy! Some people have it rough this time of year so remember to be extra kind to everybody you come across. You must never underestimate the power you have in your word with others.  

Work has been slow. Hours have been cut across the board but my hours have been consistent. It's like a ghost town over there at night now. Nights used to be as busy at the day time shifts but now that quarantine and curfew is in effect, there's hardly anybody that comes by at night now. The work has become a lot easier simply because there's nothing to do, because there's no customers to help. This is why management cut hours.

I've been in deep quarantine mode. I play guitar, I play piano, I practice languages, I work, I play pc games, I write, and I read books. It's almost like [gasp!] being an artist/content creator is a full time vocation! [It really is.]  

I've been listening to a lot of the Italian Mozart operas; Cosi Fan Tutte, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro. I was inspired by this book called Music in the Classical Period, of which I wrote a blog about, which you can read here.

I've been livestreaming my jazz jam sessions with my friend Jason Tomas, a terrific alto saxophone player. Check out our last performance here.

Although it's super difficult to meet new people during covid I've been talking to a lot of new people online, and I've met a very nice girl that I play Heroes of the Storm with. She's a web developer Cali girl, and she also knows Spanish and German. 

I've been teaching myself Spanish and bits of Italian, French, and German through the Google Translate app [to learn the spellings of the words] and YouTube [for the pronunciations and accents]. So far I've been learning for a month and it's unbelievable how much I've learned in such a short amount of time. It's almost like I've become a mini-polyglot already, but of course, to go from beginner to intermediate in Spanish is a lot harder than it seems so I'll stay humble and respect all cultures across the globe. 

Lastly, there's an overreliance on technology especially now in quarantine. I wrote my ideas on the subject. Check out this post entitled Luddites and Technocrats here.

The quarantine makes life simplistic because there's not much to do. Well, that doesn't mean you should sit down and watch Netflix/Hulu all night, or play video games every day of your life, or watch the news 24/7, or watch YouTube all day long, or movies all the time. Too much reliance of these things is bad, and the virtuous man/woman is a moderate man/woman. Remember to rely on the beauty of nature at least a little bit everyday. My closing statement is something similar, realize that the beauty of women is infinite. 

La vie est belle. Pace e benedizioni. Schöne Ferien. Feliz Navidad.  

Balcony Concert #1

Guten tag, 

Here's a livestream from two days ago that I finally uploaded from Facebook to YouTube, where it will hopefully get more views. We performed some standards and improvisation. We did the standards Freddie Freeloader, Blue Monk, Footprints, and Body and Soul, as well as a minor blues improv and improv based on a diminished chord. Orlando Miguel Figueroa on guitar and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. 

Thanks for listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe to my YouTube channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifzXJhZ-55w

Luditas y Tecnócratas

The world today is a machine of chaos. The virus is running rampant, killing 2700 in one day. Social media sows discord and division in our populace and politics. Things aren't the way they were before, you'd hardly even recognize it anymore. We, as an organism are so attached to our technology that most of us couldn't live without it, or even imagine a world without it. Would it be like the Utopia or New Atlantis or Sir Tomas More and Francis Bacon? Maybe. Maybe not. Would I even be writing this if I knew that nobody would read it? Without the support of the internet to share my ideas, would they still be worth writing about only for myself, or just family and friends?  

Everyday is a new construct in which technology is used to maximum effect. We leave our smartphones in our pocket all day long at work and even go on them when at home at night. Our computers, televisions, and video game consoles are bastions of the shiftless biomass, the state of nature in America right now, especially under quarantine. Social media is used to no end and will probably continue to be ad infinitum. 

But not all of it is bad. Tech can be used for the good of society but more often than not, when tech is left unregulated, it becomes a tool of the super rich, powerful, technocrats. They use their mathematical scientific abilities to create apps, or websites, or algorithms that potentially can last forever until eventually replaced by another one. 

You are not a gadget. It isn't normal for a human being or animal [for man is but an animal with sense of virtue of what is good] to walk around with a computer in their pocket, forever connected to a fantasy mini universe [the internet] at all times of morning, day, or night. But we let these things happen because we're moving with the spirit of the times. If everyone has the new iPhone, then it means it's time to upgrade my old iPhone and get the newer one. Is that what you should do?

The luddites that exist in society today are borderline living on the fringe types. They might live in the woods, on a farm, or Wisconsin, or Alaska, or a wood elf type of forest area with big houses enshrouded in darkness. Isolation and loneliness isn't as much of a problem for the luddites, for they always have the natural world, the natural order of things that makes them happy. On the other side of the equation, in comparison, the technocrats have their money, power, and grand influence over the emerging world to make them happy. Who am I to deny any of them happiness? 

The way of the old world is dying and/or already dead. Language learning isn't a focus in America. Music learning isn't a focus. We no longer read books or get our kids to be interested in them. Math test scores are very low. Science scores are very low. Kids from other countries come here to learn and learn more than our kids do, taking their knowledge back to their own countries and doing good things in their worlds. We focus on getting our kids through college and getting them to work, a very fine venture but if they don't actually learn anything, are we really doing a good job?

The old world is nature, animals, music, books, art. The new world is television, video games, movies, social media, and constant overuse of technology. There are good and bad variables regarding the characteristics of the old world versus the new world, but it can't be denied that the way of the world is shifting into a deified technological statehood, being and time of the digital age. 

The cyberpunk aesthetic of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling is already here. Fundamentally, most Americans [most humans with smartphones and computers] are cyborgs. We're attached to our phones, computers, and tv's like they're an extension of our body, an extension of ourselves. Who needs to play Cyberpunk 2077 when we're living through it everyday of our lives. This is why it is important to always take time to reject technology, set it down for a set period, and come back to it at a later period. If you're interested in what a true gritty cyberpunk world looks like, read William Gibson's Neuromancer. In the Trump era, it goes without saying that we are living in the realm of science fiction and far right political ideology that is so fringe that it reminds us of Nazi Germany. The past is reminiscent of the future. When we stare into the abyss, it looks back at us. 

Will the future remember things like Plutarch, Homer, Mozart, and Charlie Bird Parker? Or will they focus more on what happened during the 2016 to 2020 elections? The world lives another day but tomorrow never knows.    

Thoughts on Language Learning

-These are my thoughts on language learning after learning Spanish for three weeks, he estado aprendiendo español por solo tres semanas pero planeo aprender de por vida.

-You're brain is actually learning something so new, so different, that it's teaching you to think differently, think differently in another language.

-It's like that science fiction movie from 2016, starring Amy Adams, Arrival, in which she learns how to communicate with aliens. 

-Her brain gets rewired, she learns to think so differently, that she learns to think like the aliens and communicate with them.

-The revolutionary philosopher Wittgenstein says, "life is language games," well the more different words in different language that you know, the more you see that this is the case.

-Sometimes when sleeping and upon wakeup, you're thinking about all the new words, phrases, and accents that you've learned. At first this freaked me out because I wasn't used to a cacophony of words of different languages in my head, however, you soon realize that you'll become used to it, and that you've begun to learn to think in those other words/languages.

-It's a fun activity for me, I learn on the google translate app or google translate on my computer, sometimes I learn for 5 minutes a day, sometimes for over an hour, and sometimes 20-30 minutes. Because I'm not being forced to learn against my will, my mind is open and I've even begun to become something of a miniature polyglot. 

-The vast wealth of beauty that exists in language appear to me in the form of Spanish, Italian, and French. However, I do find a different kind of beauty in the languages from the Far East like Chinese and Japanese.

-Upon reaching my fourth week of Spanish language studies, and learning bits and pieces from other languages, you soon realize that all of the information will be forgotten unless the material is consistently repeated and reworked over and spoken aloud with others, speaking the words aloud is the most consistent way to reinforce your memory. 

-Once you learn more words in other languages, the sound of the languages, the sound of the culture becomes a part of you, thus you are able to articulate and understand English much better as a result.  

-Spanish is the best language for me because it is the first language I wanted to learn, then next in line is Italian because it sounds muy bonita, then French because its very useful and also sounds great.

-There is somewhat of a correlation between the thick European languages like German, Russian, Swedish, and say Chinese [Mandarin, Cantonese] and Japanese, although it is very small.

-The root of all my language learning, as what Wittgenstein would call language games is all based on Latin, the godfather of Romance Languages; Learn Latin, and I can finally read Ovid's Metamorphosis in its original format, a true worthy goal of artistic expression and understanding. [Very difficult and would take years]

-The case is that once you start learning you can't stop otherwise your vocabulary of phrases, words, grammar, visual memory of the words, and accents will slowly fade away, so don't give up. 

-An end goal would be to travel across the world and speak whatever languages I need with ease. 

-A much more difficult goal could be to learn Spanish, Italian, and French, and become a translator and do that as a career.

-An easier goal, move to another country that speaks Spanish, Italian, or French [or even China to speak Mandarin], and get a job teaching English, and learning their language from the locals. 

-You're brain is rewired and overloaded with so much new information every time you learn, you must remember to always get plenty of rest. Day naps and night naps are both needed!

-Sometimes upon wakeup you'll think thoughts in Spanish as you get out of bed, at first it's a bit scary and unusual, but you soon get used to it, and recognize the fact that you're thinking in another language but that you're fundamentally the same animal. 

-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote is one of my primary inspirations for my Spanish learning, as Cervantes' has been called the godfather of the Spanish language, for good reason, his Spanish language style is unmatched. 

-After quarantine is over, I want to visit Mexico, and have a blast with Spanish.

-What better way to spend your time in quarantine than learning other languages and appreciating other cultures? The world doesn't revolve around just America or just English. In the brand new emerging world, the times they are changing. 

Live Performance 12/2/2020

This is a live performance from today, 12/2/2020, that took place from 430pm-530pm. Featuring myself, Orlando Miguel Figueroa on guitar and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. We perform [in order], an untitled composition, Footprints, Freddie Freeloader, Blue Monk, a jam based on a diminished chord, and ending the set with Body and Soul. 

Watch the performance here, https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/1730748607096466

Thanks for listening and supporting our music. 

The modern improviser refuses to die! 

Music in the Classic Period

Very clear and concise. The book focuses on Haydn y Mozart. Recommended to all classical music fans, and those interested in the historical aspects of Europe's arts, culture, history, and music in the 18th century.

One of the most important things that I almost overlooked was the cultural differences between the classical styles, most notably opera. Operas were best heard and most liked in Italian, but eventually, the Germans started to form their own operatic styles based on folk music and legends. Mozart tried to write French operas but they just didn't ring as well from the established grand operas in Italian. It appears that Italian was the best language for opera.

Also noteworthy was the fact that many of the composers' notes during this time period for their music were written in Italian. So even if you were an amateur musician playing from scores, you would've known a little Italian to play your parts. 

Lastly, it should also be noted that composers, travelers, and merchants were expected to speak multiple languages like French, Italian, and German, it was the norm for composers like Mozart. 

The development from this 'classic period,' from the baroque to sonata form-rondo, to concertos, to symphonies, to chamber music and string quartets, to opera, to sacred music, and finally into the Romantic era of Beethoven is an amazing development in the history of music, culture, and art. The past has greatly influenced the moderns in terms of classical music and beyond, ad infinitum.