Weekly Recap #9

Live Album I’ve had on Repeat – Jimi Hendrix, Live at N.Y. Cafe au Go GO. There’s a lot of music that’s gone by the wayside. Too slow, too simple, too weird, too old. Better musical ideas have come since. We’ve grown out of that. But I think some musicians and their music will be with us forever. More people alive today have listened to Mozart’s music than did in his own lifetime. He is more famous than ever, nearly 230 years after his death, and I bet the true potential of his renown has yet to be achieved.  Ever since we learned to record music for posterity, the vast majority of humanity’s musical creation has been lost and forgotten, but we are unlikely to ever lose or forget Mozart, unless the unthinkable happens to our entire species. 

Why Mozart, and not another? For the same reason we know the name Napoleon, and not that of some farmer that was his contemporary: one was closer to the centre of their world than the other, and then they changed its direction. If you listen to Mozart, you will hear some of the best ideas that existed in music when he was alive, but what’s more, you’ll hear ideas that did not yet exist until he invented them. Mozart was a bridge between the past and the future, as are all famous names. One day, the world will move far away from the present moment. Centuries will pass, and we will all be dead (maybe). But I’ll bet that Mozart will still be famous. And so will Jimi Hendrix.

Read the rest of this story, and get a link to the album here.

Documentary that Surprised Me – How Star Wars Saved In the Edit. This short, eighteen-minute documentary really puts on display the magic of cinema. When the original Star Wars released in 1977, it captured the imagination of all the world. Within weeks, the movie was everywhere, and being talked about by everyone. It was dazzling cinema for the time. The special effects were convincing, and the sound design was inspired. The story was simple but spoke to many people in a big way. The Star Wars universe came into existence that year, and it has ever since resided parallel to our own. I challenge you to name a fictional universe more fleshed out and known by more people than the Star Wars universe. Trekkies are often made fun of for their obsession, but who among us doesn’t know Darth Vader. Even those who haven’t seen the movies can picture him in their minds. But Star Wars was very nearly a great and amazing failure.

Read the rest of this story, and get a link to the video here.

Event I Payed Attention To – SpaceX’s Second Astronaut to ISS Launch. On Sunday, November 15th, SpaceX took astronauts up into space. While paying attention to this, I discovered some interesting facts about the company.

I remember a time before rockets could land. Musk would talk about the goal but no one really paid much attention, until he made it happen! SpaceX is the first company ever to recover a rocket booster through a vertical landing. The first-time humans ever sent a rocket to space and had it land gracefully on earth was on December 22, 2015, with Falcon 9 flight 20. Since then, sixty-four rocket boosters that launched have been recovered, and forty-five have been reused. I didn’t know this, but of these, a few have been reused up three and four times by now, (see Falcon 9 B1046, the first to be used four times). 

Read the rest of this story here.

Quote That Struck me – Epicurus. ”Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not. Remember that what you have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

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