Selections from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, author of Song of Myself http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/06/song-of-myself-by-walt-whitman-dazzling.html and other mesmerizing works - 10 out of 10

Selections from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, author of Song of Myself http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/06/song-of-myself-by-walt-whitman-dazzling.html and other mesmerizing works

10 out of 10

 

 

Walt Whitman has been a remarkable presence in the life of yours truly, for a few reasons, first of all the intrinsic value of the Poet of America – it would be interesting to find what he would have made of what is going on there now, would he reject in horror the Orange Jesus aka OJ that over seventy million cherish (and would put him in the White House again, if elections were held these days) or embrace him

 

After all, another luminary that I admire, David Mamet of Glengarry Glen Ross http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/05/glengarry-glen-ross-by-david-mamet.html fame, is a Trump fan, as hard to accept, or digest that can be; one could be a massive talent in one way, and a calamity in others

In our youth, alas, back in the eighties, we have had a show called Poezia Muzicii Tinere aka Poetry of Young Music, where the Creator, Host of the One-Man-Show was Florian Pittis, a fabulous actor (presumed to be gay, in the Ceausescu days, when that was anathema) would recite from Walt Whitman

 

The music was The Beatles – they are studied in Outliers http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/05/glengarry-glen-ross-by-david-mamet.html the classic of psychology by Malcolm Gladwell, as evidence for the ten thousand hours of exercise, practice over the years theory

The Beatles have been performing in Germany, in a nightclub, for night after night, starting early in the evening, and finishing late in the night, conforming to the notion that with plenty of exercise, taken daily, one could get to the top – in interviews with the public, they said that ‘yes, The Beatles were good’, but they would get spectacular, only after a lot of practicing the routine, which the secret of success

 

Indeed, another formidable work, this time a film about the first important female music conductor, called De Dirigent, what else http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-conductor-aka-de-dirigent-written.html has the protagonist say ‘if I do not exercise for one day, I will know, if this happens for two days, then the orchestra is aware, and if it goes on for three whole days, it will be the audience that finds it’

Returning to Walt Whitman for a second, he was so glorious that we had whole nights with him in the menu – I will return to this idea, but not before including a belated spoiler alert (yes, I will tell you what happens at the end, only I do not yet know for which poem) warning and disclaimer to prevent you from wasting any more time with the rest of this, futile as it must be now, given that if you read this, you are half way through, and there must be something wrong with you, so much so that any alert, sign will be ineffective

 

We had a good friend, called Mercus Norocel, who is in the meantime in heaven, if such a thing exists, and if some of his darker corners were not really much more hideous than we would never know – his sexual orientation was unclear to me, which is fine, except for a few fractions of a second when I was wondering if there is no horrendous secret there, in the jokes with kids – who was a fan of Pittis

How much was the actor and what was the awe for Walt Whitman is also impossible to separate, and what would be the point, but whatever the incentive, Norocel knew by heart the PMT, whole poems, passages from Song of Myself and Leaves of Grass http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/leaves-of-grass-by-walt-whitman.html which he would share with us

 

We would have parties, soirees when the highlight, main attraction would be Norocel reciting, and he could go on for hours – if the limited audience was erudite, culturally inclined enough to take more than a few verses – because he had a fabulous memory, alongside Leaves of Grass he would put more in

He was part of the group, but at the same time, friendly, malleable, he would say he comes to join us, but then on the way, he would meet with another team of colleagues, say at the Faculty of Architecture, who would shout to him ‘Norocel, come over here, to have a beer with us’ and too shy, polite and influenceable to refuse, he would please those beer drinkers, and upset us, for he would be absent…

 

Somehow, he got married to a woman from Moldova, perhaps it was Bacau, and he came with her to the house, then invited us to a flat on Titulescu, which was so close to my aunt that I had to sneak in to see him – the aunt had been married in the commie days to the head of the party cell at the Metro, and due to that privileged position, they had food, sometimes too much, it would spoil and then send it to us…

This is at least how mother saw it, albeit the opposite, perhaps the more truthful view was that they helped us survive, in the communist paradise, which was so well described by George Orwell http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/09/nineteen-eighty-four-by-george-orwell.html in one of his masterpieces, ‘animals were indeed equal, only some animals were more equal than others’…Norocel died

He would have a heart attack in the bathroom, his father, Mineralogy Professor Mercus, would tell me…the professor has been one of my examiners, and before his test, there had been a football match, which I was supposed to skip to prepare for Mineralogy, but he knew from Norocel how I broke my hand and joked about it…

 

Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world   – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

Some favorite quotes from To The Heritage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

‚parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”