Living With Plato

[poliphilo]

Ailz has introduced me to on-line jig-saw puzzles. They kill a lot of time. Plato goes, "Tut, tut."  And I feel bad about killing it.

I'm arguing with Plato in my head. He says poetry is frivolous and I'm trying to convince him it isn't. Plato is a puritan; he wants to simplify life. He thinks you can make people virtuous by denying them distractions. No, no, no, I say. How can it be virtue if it's never put to the test? Simplify your own life by all means; leave other other people to make their own arrangements.

Plato+guns= Al Shabbab.

My mother was watching a celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest last night. Plato said he wouldn't want one of those in his Republic. I didn't take him up on it.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

But then, simplification can itself be quite a luxury, as many a housewife will attest, with a thousand and one calls upon one's attentions during the day. That said, there's certainly plenty to be said for such, even to the modest extent of not accumulating unnecessary possessions. A lack of clutter in one's life can be quite heartening, even if I'm hardly speaking from much experience.

ESC, yay! Oh, it may come in for endless ribbing, but I'm there every year, watching from start to end. Well, at least the end of the songs - sometimes the winner becomes evident quite early on in the voting, which rather diminishes the fun, for me. (Perhaps needless to say, my choices aren't usually echoed by the voting =:)

I don't know if the UK's entry this year will fare well, but I'd like to think it'll be at least in the middle of the pack - nice to have a touch of electroswing in there, rather than Yet Another Gentle Ballad or Extruded Pop Product.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched The ESC for ages. I'm afraid I stopped taking an interest when we stopped winning.

I've never understood why- with such overwhelming musical fire power in the UK- we no longer bother to wheel out our big guns.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

That was actually what puzzled me about the ESC as a child; I couldn't understand why the big names in Danish pop music were completely absent and why there was this lot of completely unknown would-bes on stage.

Later I learned to scoff at the ESC with appropriate disdain, and then later again to love its 80's tunes with an ironic distance. These days, though, I fear I'm rather indifferent to any kind of modern music. I did, though, go to a wonderful performance of Bach's Matthäus-Passion last week.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

In the early days we Brits did field our big names- Cliff, for instance, and Lulu. Then- for whatever reason- we stopped taking it seriously.

I can't keep up with contemporary music. It's not written for me- most of it. I do try to keep up with new movies and new novels- and that's enough.