Lessons for life from Zander and Shostakovich

Speaking of how fake environmentalism will literally enslave the planet, this video showed up in my feed and was entitled lessons for life. It's a wise instructor of music from the Boston Philharmonic orchestra. I appreciate music. I can't read or play music but I can hear the feelings it portrays. Many years ago I listed Salt Lake and attended a choir practice in the Tabernacle. It wasn't the Mormon Tabernacle choir it was a smaller more intimate choir.

I sat down briefly and listened to them rehearse a section of a song. The conductor stopped them and said wait, that's not it. It sounded pretty good to me. At first I thought he was being a bit overly critical. Then he says to them, visualize the words you are singing in this section as a mist that gently rises and forms a cloud hovering in from it you.

They tried it again and the second time it sounded completely different. The words came out of their mouths like a mist and gently hoovered in front of them like a cloud. I could see exactly what he was telling them to try. I was like wow, that was impressive.

Likewise, Benjamin Zander appears to be that kind of an instructor. He's more like a Zen master that teaches musicians to feel and express the feelings the composer was feeling and intended to portray when they composed the piece. The musician he's advising in the video is a cellist playing Dmitri Shostakovich's sonota for the cello. It has fast and slow parts and when I first heard the full version it seems the slow parts were painfully slow.

Benjamin Zander explained it by saying it's as though Dmitri was tapping his hand on his knee fast and loud saying play it slow. Then Benjamin explained the history in context. Dmitri lived during Stalin's repression of his music. Russia at the time had a magnificent era of artistic expression like Vienna. For some reason Stalin came out with a declaration opposing music for the opera and Dimitri lived in fear every day of his life. He had a bag packed so he wouldn't wake his children in case the secret police came and hauled him off to the gulag. Once you understand the context of the feelings he felt and was trying to express, that piece makes sense.

I have two points to make. One is an appreciation of music and the other is an appreciation for the free expression of music and the arts. It reminds me of Mao's cultural revolution in Communist China. Several years ago I had lunch with two friends from the Falun Gong in Vancouver. One was a reporter from the Epoch Times. The other was an experienced leader in their community with a great deal of wisdom about the history of their struggle in Communist China.

She stated her relatives back then were academics. Mao's communism didn't just strive to eliminate religion, it also repressed the academics. University professors who didn't conform were imprisoned along with the religions leaders. Mao wanted to control what was being taught in the universities. She explained that the Communist revolution in China was not a cultural revolution. It was a cultural repression. Evidently just like Stalin in Russia.

She explained that the Confucius Institute in Canadian Universities sponsored by the Communist Party of China had nothing to do with supporting the teachings or virtues of Confucius. It simply hijacked his name as a cover for cultural repression. She said that the Confucius Institute was China's attempt to control what was being taught in our Universities.

Again I'm not going to hate on China and promote the WEF. China, like Russia had a long artistic history that predates Communism and right now the WEF are demonizing Russia and China in their attempt to hijack the movement and replace it with their twisted brand of Communism which we have seen happen all too often in the past. Just like what Lenin did to Alexander Shlyapnikov.

The Falun Gong are big supporters of the Shen Yun production which the Communist party opposes. When I first heard that I was somewhat confused. When I saw the Falun Gong supporting the Shen Yun production, I thought OK this is something the CCP will agree with. They want to promote Chinese culture. Then when I heard the CCP not only persecuted the Falun gong but they were also opposing the Shen Yun production I became confused.

That's because I believed the lie. I thought the cultural revolution in China was a cultural revolution. I thought they were trying to preserve and protect Chinese culture. In reality, they were doing the exact opposite. They were trying to repress, censor and erase Chinese culture just like Stalin did in Russia. The life lessons that we can take from this is the preservation of culture and art. Preventing the free expression of art and culture ultimately leads to slavery.