notes / comments

[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

Although I'm not an avid listener of Classical music, I like what I've heard and played from Bach and Chopin very much... yourself?

[tunot]

Re: notes / comments

#
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
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Once more I stand accused of plotting the ruin of the nation by promoting miscegenation – a word I have never used if only because it is a favorite by the likes of Nazis, members of the KKK, and racist bigots in general.

You took the words right out of my mouth..

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Although I'm not an avid listener of Classical music, I like what I've heard and played from Bach and Chopin very much... yourself?

on organ, i love Bach.
on the piano, Chopin! /ara

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Sunday, June 18, 2006
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It’s not easy writing for an audience of laymen who think they are wiser than writers if only because, unlike writers, they deal with reality every day.
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Since we can never be sure to be right, let us at least make an effort not to be catastrophically wrong, as we have been in the past.
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Sometimes to be understood can be much more painful than to be misunderstood.
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Dissidents have been victimized not because they were wrong but because they were right.
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As things stand, I suspect we are a nation whose writers and poets outnumber their readers.
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Whenever I write “nation” I think “collection of tribes.”
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We have a rich literature but a destitute readership.
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Under Talaat and Stalin, our writers risked their lives. Today our academics are afraid to risk their income brackets. Result, an abundance of books on massacres and Turks.
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Monday, June 19, 2006
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Where everyone believes he is among the chosen, being unchosen becomes a privileged condition.
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Why should I be on the side of little men if their sole ambition in life is to be big men in order to oppress little men?
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Unlike some of my fellow Armenians, I will not pretend to know everything there is to know about xxxs, but I can make the following assertion with some degree of certainty: even at their worst, they are not as bad as those who hate them.
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The more accurately I describe our tribal ways, the greater the number of readers who would like to cannibalize me in order to prove they are better Armenians.
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“If you gaze long into the abyss,” Nietzsche warns us, “the abyss will gaze back into you.” Elsewhere: “Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.” And: “No one is such a liar as the indignant man.”
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There is a price to be paid for writing too much about Turks and massacres. Or, writing about Turks is not the best way of de-Ottomanizing ourselves.
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More quotations from Nietzsche:
On benefactors: “This is the hardest of all: to be modest as a giver.”
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On bishops: “After coming in contact with a religious man, I feel the need to wash my hands.”
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Wednesday, June 21, 2006
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TALAAT AND I
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When told not all Armenians were guilty, Talaat is said to have replied: “After what we have done to them, if they are not guilty today, they will be guilty tomorrow,” or words to that effect.
For many years, whenever I was told not all Turks were guilty, I would think, “After what they have done to us, they are all guilty!”
Readers who insult me today may plead not guilty on grounds of ignorance, but the same cannot be said of those who were better at programming us to hate the Turks but not to love our fellow Armenians.
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THEN AND NOW
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When I was young I tried to change the world; in my old age I try to share my understanding and so far I have been as successful in the second enterprise as in the first.
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BENEFACTORS AND WRITERS
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Benefactors are more popular than writers because they share their money, and everyone is convinced he has more than his share of understanding but never enough of the green stuff. Between thirst for knowledge and greed for money, who among us will choose knowledge?
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KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE
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What you think of yourself is only half the story. What others think of you is the other half. Knowledge based on only one half of the story is closer to ignorance.
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[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

“Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.”

When I look at mankind through the scope of nihilism, I see it at the same level I see bacteria... Mindless and only interested in growth, survival... Yet when it becomes to successful, it quickly dies out.

This passion for resentment is the driving force behind mankind, that helps it in the shortrun. Yet if we were all someday cured of the tendancy to fall under its spell, we'd give up on life anyway... Chaotic isn't it, which is why society doesn't favour your messages Ara... It wants to keep on living with its chaotic order, so that it can die mindlessly in future generations.

So now I stop looking through the scope of nihilism, it doesn't help me in the longrun either.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, June 22, 2006
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Once in a while I am compared to such famous writers as Camus, Mencken, and Vidal only to be told that I am a total mediocrity and a miserable failure.
I don’t mind admitting that no matter how hard I try I will never be as good a writer as Camus and Vidal, or Arlen and Saroyan. But I hope my detractors will agree with me when I say, if I were as good a writer as they are, I would be treated with such respect by my fellow Armenians that no one would dare to say anything remotely critical about me; and if anyone did, my fans would tear the poor bastard to shreds.
As a better writer, moreover, I would have been exposed to an entirely different set of experiences and thus would have acquired an entirely different perspective on my fellow Armenians. I might even have been misled into thinking that Armenians are indeed among the Chosen. That’s because, even the greatest of writers have an ego that is not immune to flattery.
If I write as I do it may be because I write not as a first-class giant in world literature but as a second-rate scribbler; and if God in His infinite wisdom made me who I am, namely a mediocrity and a failure, He must have done so for a purpose, and who am I to question His judgment?
Do I really believe I am a mediocrity? That is not a question that I would even consider replying because experience has taught me to assess oneself is to make an ass of oneself. Besides, trying to be honest in a dishonest world keeps me so busy that I consider it a waste of time to engage in endless speculations and controversies about intangibles with men who seem to be more interested in who I am and less in what I say, more on my status and less on the reality we confront.
However, I will say this in my favor: if readers who have read Camus, Vidal, Saroyan, Mencken, Arlen, and many other great writers take the trouble to read and assess me, then I must be going places.
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[tunot]

Re: notes / comments

But I hope my detractors will agree with me when I say, if I were as good a writer as they are, I would be treated with such respect by my fellow Armenians that no one would dare to say anything remotely critical about me; #

You shouldn't put Arlen in the list, since he was not only ignored and thrashed by his fellow Armenians when he was writing; he is ignored and thrashed to this day by Armenians. And all because they didn't understand him and didn't care to, instead taking everything he said about Armenians completely out of context, including his own son.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Friday, June 23, 2006
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FROM HOMER TO HITLER
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The Greeks had a word for everything, but I doubt if they had one for miscegenation, perhaps because even their gods fornicated with mortals. (How low can you get?)
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By inventing fornicating gods, the Greeks may have understood that if fornication with mortals was uppermost in their gods’ minds, why should we pretend to be any better?
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By proscribing fornication, Christianity invented a literary genre (fiction) whose central concern is fornication. But the Greeks were ahead of the rest of us there too – after all, is not adultery what propels the action in the ILIAD?
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To how many of our racists I could say, “Please, don’t waste your breath on me. I too have read MEIN KAMPF.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, June 24, 2006
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In the following definition from THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY, Ambrose Bierce was not thinking of Armenians but he might as well have been: “RESPONSIBILITY: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.”
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When asked what he knows now that he did not know on the first day of his presidency, Bush is said to have said something to the effect that he had learned to be more careful in his choice of words. It is to be noted that he did not say he learned to be more careful in his thinking or more objective in his judgment or more tolerant of opposing views and arguments, only more carefully with his vocabulary.
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Don’t tell me what you should think; tell me what you think. On second thought, don’t tell me what you think because when an Armenian says what he thinks, out pops an insult.
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By insulting another we also insult ourselves by exposing the absence of reason in our thinking, lack of manners in our conduct; and if we speak in the name of God and Country we also run the risk of exposing the moral bankruptcy of both.
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[jgk3]

Re: notes / comments

Don’t tell me what you should think; tell me what you think. On second thought, don’t tell me what you think because when an Armenian says what he thinks, out pops an insult.
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By insulting another we also insult ourselves by exposing the absence of reason in our thinking, lack of manners in our conduct; and if we speak in the name of God and Country we also run the risk of exposing the moral bankruptcy of both.
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I don't think I'll ever tire of these short and eloquent notes... Anyone can understand them so long as they look inside of themselves and not at banners.

I cannot comprehend the level of your perceptiveness and your ability to put it into such simple phrases.