New Currencies

My kid's music teacher was very impressed when I mouthed off a few things I knew about the main eras in musical composition. A few days after that she came up to me and asked if I could write something for her that she could use in her class.

Basically, I had mentioned simple stuff like that there was a time when the piano keyboard had fewer keys, and that the Romantic era followed from the end of the Wars with Napoleon and was about people becoming sick of the destruction and misery of war and turning to happier themes.

One interesting thing though is that a lot of musical styles followed particular economic migration: the Baroque proceeded from the economic power of navigation and the enhanced trading that occurred thereby. The Portuguese held navigation maps as secrets of state, and the word 'baroque' is a Portuguese word to do with their excessively lavish embellishments of pearls with gold ornamentation all of which was enabled by the wealth their map-making brought them.

A Portuguese Musician

A further detail is that composers possessed valuable things more than just their music alone – because the paper on which they wrote down the note scores was always very expensive bank ledger stock, and this was valuable in its own right, and could be sold whether it had notes on it or not!

When you look at what might constitute new forms of currency, you must consider that art and the quality of artefact, has almost as much to do with enshrining value in people's minds as anything else. A lot of people make the mistake of continually thinking during a major economic decline that absolutely nobody has money but that is completely incorrect. And then you have to realise that people who do have money in a general decline typically start to really prize preservation of all kinds. And that, for instance, is who buys tiny little, yet historically-important, and also very beautiful, things of extremely dense value such as the 1924 Australian sixpenny coin. Bankers, economic criminal masterminds, retired corrupt bureaucrats – all those kinds of people. The New Age movement often asks 'why do bad things happen to good people?' But I ask things like, 'can good money come from bad people?' Or, 'do bad people know what good and beautiful things are?'

Eighty thousand dollars

I say all of this just as things to think about, as we enter the time when new currencies are indeed developing in the wider marketplace. But they are most unlikely to be the ones which currently appear to have captivated the attention of the media...

Ornamentation

Ornamentation is a strange word. Originally, the word's roots implied something to do with 'equipment' – as in the equipment of an armed person.

Today, the word is used to describe something about the image of a thing, and even tends to imply a practically functionless aspect but one which nevertheless has aesthetic value.

If you look at some of the rarest of Stradivarius violins, they have ornamentation crafted into the beautiful wood – and at some level, the ornamentation is almost a vital symbol of the high quality of the instrument and its crafted structure.

An ornamented Stradivarius

This year, there may be a release of a current in post-production movie called 'Paganini – the Devil's Musician.'

No matter what real history says, this additional embellishment about the musician and composer regarding his having sold his soul to the devil to procure his skill and talent will no doubt persist on and on until everyone on the planet can't help but add this piece of folklore to the package each time they think about the composer in question.

It's a bit like the folkloric phrase 'and on the third day he rose...' These words are not in the Gospels at all. But that is not the common popular opinion of the matter.

All the same it's incredibly difficult to get someone to follow extremely 'complex arguments' and by this I mean not just expressions of words, but also expressions through art, and painting, film, and music, and even prose. I find it's quite difficult to get a modern person to listen with high consciousness to possibly the most ideologically complicated piece ever written of Russian music – Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. From about halfway through you will recognize the melody that begins there, from its having been used in a good half a dozen of the most dramatic romantic films. It takes a trained ear to really get the point of this piece, even though superficially almost anyone can pick up its apparent romantic aspect.

And technique is almost meaningless with these things – a lot of people play Paganini but few do it properly, and even those who achieve the acclaim of critics and classical music experts, in my estimation regularly fall wide of the mark as far as interpreting what Paganini was actually driving at. If you want to see what Paganini was really about then one of the best exponents of this particular music is the rock guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen. His playing of Paganini's 4^th Concerto for guitar – especially in some of his older recordings – will give you a good idea. But then too you also have to notice the important effect of the drums and rhythm section and what these two are doing in the piece to make the entire whole understandable to the listener. Most other interpretations at least in my view – and including those renditions by even the best trained classical musicians – completely miss the intended cadence and thus the underlying motion - and melody, such as it is. And this has the effect of an appearance of pyrotechnics and is otherwise, as far as the actual 'music' goes, completely incomprehensible and utterly confused.

Rachmaninoff 'got' Paganini because you can see how he lifts the musical punchline up and up through complicated spirals like a musical wrought iron gothic staircase.

Mostarda - Italian candied fruit, contain mustard essence!
But scientists think they know...
how Stradivarius violins were made.

In a day and age when the traditional symbols of power, wealth, and status are being constantly destroyed through the relentless triumph of economic vandalism and crass ignorance, it may not be such a bad thing to be merely 'ornamented.' Or that is to say, presenting oneself as though 'merely for ornamental effect.' ...Practically functionless, non-confrontational, non-threatening, unarmed, and a pacifist. You are thus, not a target. Stradivarii and Guarnerii have survived to this day without losing 40 or 60 per cent of themselves along the way because of the greed and lust and covetousness of the wicked and the evil.

The great question is, my friends, just what is it that today possesses a similar quality of manufacture and characteristics of subtle value?

Strawberries Romanoff!

The mainstream press is circulating a story about the Bolshoi Ballet in recent times throwing parties for Russian oligarchs at which leading danceurs have been told that it was expected that they were sexually accessible to the rich supporters of the ballet. Recent past identities from the ballet company itself are quoted as saying that mainly it was the corps that were told to have sex with the oligarch-type people, but also leading danceurs were sometimes 'on offer.'

Reading these reports I noticed the 'backgrounding' of the report sources, that they were dancers who were fighting a weight issue, or that they were not able to really stay at the demanding heights of dance.

Oligarch's personal transport - and inside having Strawberries Romanoff

I believe that once or twice I have posted on people like Nureyev, and the 'style' of the great dance companies and their people. The problem I have with the mainstream press nowadays is that they are culturally illiterate. When a great artiste carries off a performance, just the one time, and it is seen by a decent crowd of knowledgeable people, it really doesn't matter after that what happens with their weight or their attitude or even entire whole rest of their life. Just to have been able ever, to reach that special height, is testament to all the work and the skill and the talent, as well as the training and support given by other special people. Nothing else ever matters; just that one time counts.

If the press is referring to Anastasia Volochkova, and I understand they are, then what I can say from personal knowledge is that she certainly attained the truly great performance level.

There has always been an undercurrent of sexual moral hazard in the endeavour. And what is of greatest concern, frankly, is when the lesser performer is chosen above the better one for any unworthy reason. Very good danceurs have strong and important careers beyond injury or other barriers, as teachers and choreographers. You see, if Lance Armstrong had the problem of sexual misstep, it wouldn't prevent him necessarily from being able to impart sound knowledge of cycling; as it stands though he clearly knows nothing of advantage that he could impart about cycling. Volochkova is no second-rate loser like Armstrong is.

It is entirely possible that two things are true at the same time: someone, somewhere along the line, encouraged danceurs to sleep with rich patrons of the ballet, and the ballerina(s) who are now being quoted about this were dropped because they didn't go along with the proposition(ing). But it is entirely unnecessary to say these tell-all ballerinas are now being commercially-driven and that they were in fact not good enough dancers to make it at the highest level. The world of professional ballet is very large and very well-found (an English phrase meaning 'has lots of support') and being weightier is not any kind of real problem in fact. Volochkova is, and was, a very good dancer, and I don't think she ever was that overweight, personally. The fact is there are too many today who are unhealthily, and badly, underweight. Bolshoi in the past never had too many extraordinarily thin dancers – I think of Ulanova, for instance, the template of the Bolshoi lead female, really. There were many tall thin female dancers who were tall and thin by genetics – but today, it's all about some weirdo pop-magazine idiom of the stick-person.

The nature of high culture is this – if you are wrong, sooner or later you will fall into the dustbin of history. If any ballet company is picking dancers exclusively because of their willingness to put out, then they will rapidly advance into oblivion. Every impressario of any experience knows how to adjust his troupe for the ingenui, and the ice queen or the militant virgin, and the ultra carnal... Nureyev's problem, so we are often told, was that he willingly slept around too much. Much to producers' torments.

Actual Strawberries Romanoff

'Strawberries Romanoff' was hijacked by a Hollywood pretend-Russian aristocrat restauranteur. But he did it well and everybody loved the guy and the 'fake' name he pinned on an Escoffier recipe has stuck. Besides, anything Russian is white and red like ice-cream and cherries. There's nothing actually that fake about Strawberries Romanoff; it is something from Hollywood – a place where things are made up in precise ways to convey entertainments about people places and things.

There is nothing bad about sex mixed up in ballet society. It is morally wrong for the managers to imply to someone that they will not advance in the company without sleeping with certain of the patrons. Er, but it is morally wrong like Strawberries Romanoff are actually anything to do with Russian strawberries. And therefore my point is that it is unnecessary for the media to suggest that people like Volochkova had weight problems or weren't good enough. Not only is she telling the truth but she was an excellent dancer who did not have weight problems and very likely ran foul of some bad producer or manager. Any good manager would have merely offered up another more amenable lamb to the sacrifice. And any oligarch who demanded 'but I must have that one or the deal is off' is just being a child.

Also, actual Strawberries Romanoff

Egos are an issue, yes, of course. But then so what? Volochkova had/has an ego, the company manager has an ego, the oligarch has both an ego and dramatically-large amounts of money. You mix it all up: Strawberries Romanoff!

The standard recipe for Strawberries Romanoff is refrigerated Grand Marnier-soaked strawberries, a little orange juice, a fine dust of sugar, and vanilla ice-cream. But a better modern recipe that few know about is to have the strawberries soaked in botrytis-effected wine instead of the Grand Marnier. The result is a quantum leap advance in flavour on the original recipe.

Personally, the question I would hypothetically pose in an article to a hypothetical modern era Bolshoi producer or manager is 'if Lindsey Vonn were a dancer, could she make it in your ballet production?'

Calling Andy Garcia

Some of you here have read stuff that I have been posting from a long long ways back now – and you know, that long before anyone else said Osama bin Laden (or whatever the real name of this identity was...) was in Pakistan, you know that I said it.

You know it.

And sooner or later you knew that I would be pointing out something once again that more or less was er, ahead of the publicly-known information.

1.Andy Garcia - celebrity, good man, Ocean's Eleven actor. 2. Don't know...

Drifting in and out of some of my conversations here have been my occasional references to gambling, and to social clubs involving wealthy people inside of which data was being mined surreptitiously from members, and also certain networks of medical practitioners – in particular in the IVF field – that quite possibly contained scandalously criminal elements.

You may or may not recall that I have spoken of these things in the past.

Ah well, my friends in the Australian Federal Police and the various State Major Crime investigative bodies could do well to go back into their files concerning statements I had made to them not so very long ago.

Of course, in recent times the Australian Intelligence entities and the Australia Police have had fairly marginal success even with understanding simple things like Mossad stealing Australian ID's and passports and using them for launching assassinations here and there. Frankly, I'm not critiquing Mossad here – rather the spineless, gutless, under-funded and of course rather stupid Australians. They seem to have this unhappy knack of 'not knowing' anything.

James Packer

Like how it was possible for one of the world's richest men, James Packer, to be ripped off by a high roller cardplayer in one of his casinos to the tune of at least 32 million dollars. The local press is characterising it as a real life Ocean's Eleven incident.

But let me make it perfectly clear – Australia contains commercially-oriented private social clubs which are in fact organised and run by rogue elements of the British Foreign Service, in league with wealthy playboys and well-connected personages from Singapore and Indonesia, and these places are vipers' dens where conversations are bugged, brief cases are rifled through and documents copied, and covert financial scams are run against the unsuspecting.

Far be it from me to point to idiotic affairs like Rowan Gunaratne from Singapore giving advice on Tamil Terrorism to the fools in Canberra, or the fiasco about the stolen Aussie passports, or the HIH Insurance share float scam that was 'cleverly' blamed on Rodney Adler, or the crash float of now recently-bankrupted Nathan Tinkler that was run by other, more, 'clever' people in Noble Group from Hong Kong, or the stunning 'cleverness' of some young Parsee youth associated with Cisco Systems who took the ASX for a multi-million dollar ride with their simply amazing HFT programs...

No indeed.

Typical British private club items - not clues, really!

Apparently no one can see these things coming ahead, not even Alex Allen, the head of a UK Intelligence body who SOMEHOW MANAGED TO BE WORKING AS A PAID CONSULTANT TO THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN STATE GOVERNMENT, and living here while he was also the top Intelligence Officer in the United Kingdom. Apparently no one has told the Western Australian government that it is no longer part of the United Kingdom. Oh no, but these are of course all honourable men. The fact that six or seven people have dropped dead after being in this private club is apparently of little significance to the absolutely stunningly amazingly idiotic fools who run the Australian Security Intelligence agencies and the Federal Police. And these sudden deaths including, dare I say it, one particular Adam Rankin-Wilson, the relatively young and I do know, on the surface quite fit, personal lawyer of James Packer here in Western Australia.

But of course, these are all coincidences. Just like when I suggested bin Laden was almost certainly in Pakistan. Not to mention that he had also been in and out of England without anyone stopping him. Although admittedly, I use alien intelligence from UFO's and thus may have an advantage...

All the same, boys and girls of Caper Cops, let's face it, there is an old saying in Chicago – according to Ian Fleming – once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action.

I personally think the situation is already out of hand, but you know what, let's just keep waiting around until something REALLY BAD happens out of this private social club that Andy Garcia from the Ocean's series of casino scam movies has never been to as far as I know – but has his photograph displayed in.

Johnny Can't Dance



Tango dancers in a London show

“Every Saturday night when the sun goes down

Poor li'l Johnny goes down to the town

Well he can't dance, no he can't dance;

Poor Little Johnny he just can't dance.”

My mother was a professional dancer... But I don't dance at all. I may look like the great Pablo Veron if a stylist went to work, but hey, I definitely just can't dance!

A thing looks like something, but then, sometimes, it isn't what it kinda looks like it might be.

I'm the same age as Madonna. And I can fence.

Die Another Day

The song above is a New Orleans song about Jean Lafitte the pirate – the point is, he can dance; he's just not allowed to go into town as who he really is and dance in his identifiable way and get found out.

I'm doing – have been - doing my best to steer away from some of the depressing stories unfolding all around us. Shane Todd's death in Singapore is something that is very disappointing to me. But it is something about which I have decided to leave to the Financial Times and a small handful of decent reporters to cover and they have been doing a tremendous job. I mean, let's face it, if governments want to bury stuff and hide stuff, even Jean Lafitte would have a hard time dancing - that is to say, if he didn't feel he could dance to the miserable tune being forced upon him.

Myself, I am independent and I have gold hidden down in the bayou, but today, I'm not celebrating with any of it. I don't feel like dancing.

But then too, I remind myself of the film short called 'Milonga' in which a patient old man conspires with an Italian waiter to assist – I'm not too sure – either himself at a younger age, or his daughter, to get with the future love of their life in some apocryphal tango salon somewhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=P6JYeEcxnUU#t=53s

The reason there is a strong connection between wine and the gods is because good wine gets better over a long time – and some wine, over the longer the better.

Madge and Tony Ward and Debbie

Johnny (can't dance) Ward

But those of you who have been here watching for a long time now, will realise that if Johnny says get off the dance floor it's probably time to prepare to duck for the flying bullets as well.

The truly great Pablo Veron