1. Having spent a couple or three days listening to Luna and other Lofi DreamPop bands and then spending hours listening to Moby while reading and putting him on overnight, I suddenly realized that over the last, wow!, nearly forty years, I've paid very little attention to Radiohead.
So I did a Radiohead search on Spotify and requested a playlist called Radiohead Radio.
I don't have intelligent words to describe the music that came on for the next couple of hours while I continued to read Underground. I do know the playlist included bands like The Smiths whom I've heard mention of over the years, but haven't tried out. It also included a couple of Pink Floyd songs -- and while I can't really explain it, I heard these familiar Pink Floyd songs in a different way when they popped up in the company of Radiohead and The Smiths and others.
I'll continue this exploration of music I missed all those years ago -- it was during a time when my attention was on Richard Thompson, a wide array of acoustic folk and singer/songwriter music, Celtic bands, the Fairport Convention family tree of musicians, the Grateful Dead, and other similar music -- but not Radiohead, not Luna, not a wide array of bands and musicians I'd never hear of until this week, not the music I'm enjoying going back to and, I guess you'd say, catching up with now.
It's fun.
2. Haruki Murakami's book, Underground, took quite a turn when he added interviews with members of the religious cult Aum to his oral history of the March 20, 1995 Tokyo subway system sarin gas attack.
The individuals, so far, who agreed to talk with Murakami are mostly now only loosely affiliated with Aum, but continue to have high regard for the spiritual teachings and guidance of the cult.
The interviews I've read so far feature individuals who were (are?) seekers, searchers, introspective, philosophical, hungry for spiritual meaning. They found in the teachings of Aum's leader, Shoko Asahara,
inspiration, stimulation, intrigue, and deeper meaning and became, at different levels, involved in the cult.
Not one of those individuals Murakami interviewed was involved in the sarin gas attack in Tokyo, nor did they know it was going to happen. Each of them condemned the attack. Each was bewildered by it. It affected their future involvement with Aum.
Over the last year and a half or so, I've been reading books and listening to podcasts dealing with extremism, trying to understand what moves people to commit themselves to ways of seeing the world that are often dark, often involve violence, are deeply distrusting, and often put them under the sway of a mesmerizing leader.
This blog includes a written record of the reading and listening I've been doing.
Underground is another book chronicling extremism.
I have been hoping all this reading would help me understand more fully why people turn to extremism and why they follow extremist leaders, join extremist groups, and embrace extremist ideologies.
So far, I haven't succeeded.
In fact, I'd say the more I read, the more I'm bewildered.
But, I'll keep chugging along.
3. Debbie found a recipe for a ground beef and sauerkraut casserole and she fixed it for dinner tonight. It's a simple casserole consisting of ground beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, sour cream, and seasonings. She also boiled some delicious noodles to go along with this dish.
Awesome. This dinner was awesome. Debbie made two pans of this recipe. She'll freeze the second and some day, on down the road, we'll pull it out of the freezer and enjoy its awesomeness again!
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