Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  On a social media site that shall be nameless, another participant asked me what are my three favorite Christmas songs. I answered quickly, without over-thinking it, but while trying to show some range among the many different kinds of song, and eras of song-writing, in the genre. I answered: Snoopy's Christmas (1967) Have yourself a merry little Christmas (1944) I heard the bells on Christmas Day (1863/1956). "I heard the bells..." has two dates on this modest list because it began life as a poem by Longfellow.  When Johnny Marks composed the tune most of us have heard, so that Bing Crosby could sing this poem to the world, Crosby cracked wise.  "I see you've finally gotten yourself a decent lyricist, Johnny." Anyway: I have since been thinking too much about my list of three.  In the lyrics of none of them does one find any reference either to Santa or to Jesus. My list avoid both commercialism and specifics of faith.  Two out of my three choices invo...

The preservation of the inherently evanescent. That is the old dream behind sound recording, photography, etc, and it's the dream that put the idea of carrying moonbeams home in a jar  on a level with swinging on a star in a 1944 Bing Crosby recording. But of course it must be the SAME MOONBEAM, or you're not really carrying "it" in a jar. You're using a jar to simulate a moonbeam, a different feat, right?  For decades after the invention of the phonograph, fidelity was the central goal of audio recording. The same moonbeam. Edison had sung “Mary had a little lamb,” and listen!   You could hear him doing so! The general attitude was that the more faithful the sound you heard was to the sound he had originally made, the more successful the recording.  But beginning at the time of the Second World War, and with increasing technical sophistication in the 1950s and 1960s, the goal was not merely fidelity, but something that may seem contrary -- successful...

The motion picture academy is givingout its big awards this weekend, but I've been thinking recently about the sappy old movie, Bells of St. Mary's. Bing Crosby, as Father O'Malley, is in charge of a parochial school. One of the students, Patsy, is failing (a course taught by Sister Mary Benedict, played by Ingrid Bergman, who here is simply the sexiest nun in Hollywood nun-portrayal history). O'Malley helps Patsy out, even ghost writing an essay Patsy has to submit, because Bergman's sticking to her high standards. The essay is supposed to be about "my favorite sense," and the Sister expects some students to write about why they love various sights, others about why they love various sounds, smells, etc. But under O'Malley's tutelage, Patsy comes to understand that the idea of "common sense" is our faculty of combining the reports of all those special senses into one rounded perception of the world about us. Its a very good ex...