Fixing chasm with education

What is music? As told by Omar ‘What is music’? This is a question that sneaks up around almost every music class I’ve been in. Why, music is truly a tasty concoction of mind and sound. The mind is actually the main ingredient to music, and when used in the correct method, it will yield small, timid, yet complex symbols that are known today to modern humans as “notes”. Ever the ‘language of music’, these “notes” come in different structures: strong, weak, friendly, mean, happy, depressed, silent, and loud. Each, however, talks in a voice of expression and colour.

I know it sounds quite odd, but the only way notes may flourish is to go through a process called “composing”. Now, “composing” is to exploit the voice of notes, or, as I mentioned before, the ‘sounds’. The way to learn and talk the voice of notes is to play “instruments”. Instruments are the way to speak “music” and, if spoken right, music is created. Like I said, music is a concoction of mind and sound. It is also an art, using harmonious combinations of the notes. It is an art, in which, allows the person to become less stressed and absorbed into the beauty of the music. It allows people to become more understanding, more moral and truthful. It relaxes the listener.

There are many different types of music: classical, jazz, reggae, rap, rock, country, techno, r & b, etc. Types of music use different moods of notes and junction and compound them into the music. For example, classical music is in high mood. The language of music is spoken in good taste. Many spry personalities are melded into this genre’s concoction of music. Philosophers like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and others, used reggae as digging tool to bend social and political rivers flowing only through green hills and meadows, to economically parched ghettos yielding a chance for everyone to swim across to their rights.

But take another mood of music, like, say, rock. Rock sounds as if notes have been taken to a slaughterhouse and beaten senseless. Lots of different moods and attitudes are into this sort of music. To wrap this up, music is an art. A different kind of art. It’s an art in which is not drawn or painted onto paper. It’s the art of the sound that is of the essence. It is art around us. Think, art that can be heard and not seen. Created by mind, sound, note, composing, instruments, and of course, feelings and thoughts. Music itself is a creation. At least, that’s what I think.

Omar Wright

“His way paved, boots too smooth, no friction in his steps; he slipped, stumbled, fell – did not get there” - The Jogging Pen

Chasm: That gaping hole and gulf between, and reason to strive; that great motivator to close up divisions, and erase fault lines between where we are, and wants to be; between real and dream. Without chasm; friction to agitate and energize our inside battery – energy force that lights up solution to right and wrong, left and right, good and evil, you and me, his and hers, wives and husbands…naming only a few, our worth would fade away.  

But chasm is elastic; stretching from narrow to wide, up and down – everywhere. Narrow chasm yields quicker solution than wide ones – like using a boat to cross a river. Having to without a boat, and cannot swim is a wide chasm; so you learn, then swim to the other side and celebrate – a chasm trampled. Same as going back to school and sail through those final credits – build a graduation bridge to your future. Am I correct; Steve, John, Omar, Peter, Mike, and Tim…?

Chasm is shapeless, undefined and each unique, with no standard solution. Invisible chasm is dangerous; unseen force – wall of fear many uses religion to dissolve.  But religion creates deadly chasm of disunity in which many perish. Lawyers – a unique bunch, trained to dig chasm – same as religion, which flourishes inside divisions and riffs.

 But without chasm we are weak; solving personal and communal chasm builds muscle – strengthens. Fixing and adjusting defines intellectual and social development; the mind expands one defeated chasm at a time, and once stretched never returns to its original size. The riches of our intellectual reservoirs are as the difficulty of chasm solved.   

Ship conquered the sea’s chasm, allowing travel between continents within days. But continuing fight against chasm, using airplane, reduced the same journey to hours. When a plane crashes, new chasm is created; defeating chasm never ceases. 

Chasm should be fixed peacefully, but some solutions are responsible for many good people’s deaths: Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, for example; lives erased because they laid planks over chasm – bridging gaps between really confused people. Using war to bridge chasm is wholesale destruction. 

The Panama Canal, squeezing the Pacific and Atlantic oceans together is a giant leap. Closing the gap between moon and earth is another. But Von Braun’s early Rocketeering at the RaketenFlugplatz (Port of Rocket)  (1931), and later his Peenemunde project – raining down (V1 and V2) guided-bombs; The Third Reich’s secret weapon to shock-win World War II, was the first big step off planet earth towards outer-space. And Sputnik’s circling and beeping the globe (1957), was the political muscle, scientific and engineering hustle that landed Apollo 11 on the moon (1969). Either way, Mount Everest size chasm was beaten flat.  Many lives have been lost defeating chasm, but knowledge increases just the same.

In some community, chasm is a burden; long mountain range of grim skyline of despair – visible everywhere under dark cloud of famine, diseases and ethnic cleansing…naming only few. You hear it on the radio, see it on television; chasm left alone, festers and grow into malignant champion – fists raised in the air; delivering blows – suffering, sickness and death.

The surest way to defeat chasm – individually and community is  education; that basic right and tool, not to passed exams, but air -puffs of energy to pull stubborn people and ideas together; prying guns from boys in the streets, leaving books instead. But getting a good education for the right reason is also a chasm. Here is one reason still true in this digital-graphical age: 

 EDUCATION:“To afford all members of the human race the means of providing for their needs, of securing their welfare, of recognizing and fulfilling their duties; to assure for everyone opportunities of perfecting their skills and rendering themselves capable of the social duties to which they have a right to be called; to develop to the utmost the talents with which nature has endowed them and, in so doing, to establish among all citizens a true equality and thus make real the political equality realized by law – this should be the primary aim of a national system of education, and from this point of view its establishment is for the public authority an obligation of justice”

Marie – Jean Antoine Nicholas (1791)

 Solving chasm is great reason for getting an education. Those relaxing under trees, hats covering  their faces, listening to singing birds – playing video games, ignoring all; will not hear nature’s educated creatures scurrying to safety from oncoming hurricane – will be left without shelter in life’s storm. Embrace chasm to transform into your greater self. 

 From our dialogue in Cuba: Calculus has real life use; in your case, a sharpening tool for your ideas. Philosophers need mathematics (logic) to induced/deduced arguments. Go sharpen up yourself!

 Peace! And back to school…September, 2010

 Wright © Copyright Teaching Aid.

Written By: jeffery.wright@live.ca

                      Written By: Jeffery.wright@live.ca

Wake me when cloud cease their invites;

To mothers over princes; tearing them from spring’s eternal  sleep

Dreams, stubborn; cannot wake up

Young minds in chains; no wings to fly

Wake me when cloud no longer drifts;

To youths walking out of their bodies, to seek evening’s twilight;

morning’s heat too hot

Strong arms pumping fuel into veins; blood’s too weak

Youths in their slumber; not walking on cloud

Wake me when cloud’s gone; sky’s blue – comes the sun

Wright © Copyright Teaching Aid