The Immortal Irishman

Perhaps the most demoralizing passage I have read in many years. I was born a Farley.  My father was a Farley and his Irish heritage burned deep in his soul. We traveled there once together, the only visit for each of us, and it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.  So the history of oppression of the Irish people feels a little personal to me.

This from one of my favorite authors, Tim Egan: The opening paragraphs of his fascinating biography of Thomas F. Meagher, The Immortal Irishman.

"For the better part of seven centuries, to be Irish in Ireland was to live in a land not your own.  You called a lake next to your family home by one name, and the occupiers gave it another.  You knew a town had been built by the hands of your ancestors, the quarry of origin for the stones pressed into those streets, and you were forbidden from inhabiting it.  You could not enter a court of law as anything but a criminal or a snitch.  You could not worship your God, in a church open to the public, without risking prison or public flogging. You could not attend school, at any level, even at home. And if your parents sent you out of the country to be educated, you could not return. You could not marry, conduct trade or go into business with a Christian Protestant. You could not have a foster child. If orphaned, you were forced into a home full of people who rejected your faith. You could not play your favorite sports--hurling was specifically prohibited. You could not own land in more than 80 percent of your country; the bogs, barrens and highlands were your haunts. You could not own a horse worth more than 5 sterling. If you married an Englishman, you would lose everything upon his death. You could not speak your language outside your home. You would not think in Irish, so the logic went, if you were not allowed to speak in Irish.

"Your ancient verses were forbidden from being uttered in select company. Your songs could not be sung, your music not played, your Celtic crosses not displayed. You could be thrown in prison for expressions of your folklore or native art. One law made it a felony for "a piper, story-teller, babler or rimer" to be in the company of an Englishman. Another six statutes banished bards and minstrels. You could not vote. You could not hold office.  You were nothing. "The law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic," said John Bowes, an eighteenth-century lord chancellor of the island. Nor could any such person draw a breath without the Crown's permission.

"The melodies of this nation and its favorite instrument were a particular target of English hatred. At one point, your fingernails could be removed if you were caught playing the harp. The Irish married to the sounds that came from that instrument, and they grieved in some of those same keys. But the indigenous music came to be seen as subversive--too nationalistic, too connected to the old stories. In 1603 it was proclaimed that "all manner of bards and harpers" were to be "exterminated by martial law." That same year, a few months before her death, it was said in Ireland that Queen Elizabeth had ordered her troops to "hang the harpers, wherever found, and destroy their instruments." The Virgin Queen allowed Shakespeare and Marlowe to reach great heights during her long reign, but Elizabeth had not a thimble of tolerance for a people she considered primitive. To encourage the elimination of one musical aspect of that culture, the government paid a bounty to anyone who turned in outlaws of the harp. The musicians were easy to round up; many of them were blind, music their only refuge and source of income.

"What had the Irish done to deserve these cruelties? They had refused to become English."

Leon Russell

Sittin' on a highway in a broken van
Thinkin' of you again.
Guess I have to hitchhike to the station;
With every step I see your face
Like a mirror looking back at me
Sayin' you're the only one.
Making me feel I could survive.
I'm so glad to be alive.
Nowhere to run and no guitar to play.
Mixed up inside and it's been raining all day
Since you want away.
Manhattan Island Serenade.

Leon Russell has always been one of my favorite performers.  As a teenager, my friend Randy and I would buy his albums as they came out, and I remember us listening repeatedly to the eponymous Leon Russell, Leon Russell and The Shelter People, Leon Live, Hank Wilson's Back and--still one of my favorite albums for late-night solo road trips--Carney.

He was a gifted songwriter, and many of his songs became hits for other leading musicians. like This Masquerade (George Benson), Superstar (The Carpenters) and A Song for You (Danny Hathaway and many others).  He was highly respected throughout the music industry, producing for many of the top stars (Stones, Dylan, Sinatra) and often performing as well (keyboards, guitar). Elton John says Russell was his biggest influence as a pianist and songwriter.

I saw him in concert in Florida in the 90's. He was already prematurely hobbled then, walking with a cane and sitting at the keyboards throughout his performance. But his voice was still distinctive and captivating and the concert featured both his mournful love songs and the high-energy rockers that always made him fun.

R.I.P. Leon Russell.  Today I'm singing a song for you.

What Goes Around ...

I had the good fortune of taking a car full of teens to a mentor picnic.  One of them, a 14-year-old Hispanic boy named Walter (the only Latino I have ever met with that name!),  said he liked music. So we took turns sharing some of our favorite songs.

He started with the powerfully emotive Disturbed cover of Sounds of Silence. (I felt very with-it, having already heard it.)  Of course, I had to expose him to the exquisite harmonies of  Simon & Garfunkel in the original version, which was new to him.

After sharing a few more songs, including turning him on to Odetta's Midnight Special, Walter shocked me with this pick from his personal library, "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire," by the Ink Spots, which was a big hit in 1942!  My faith in the next generation has been restored.

How to Create a Mind: Ray Kurzweil

Another favorite book from my library--notes from rereading it today:

• The story of human intelligence begins with a universe that is capable of encoding information. The odds of this happening are astronomically small.
• Only homo sapiens have a knowledge base that evolves, grows exponentially, and is passed down from one generation to another.
• Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns (LOAR) states that an evolutionary process inherently accelerates and its products grow exponentially in complexity and capability.  An example of this would be the human genome project: The amount of genetic data the world has sequenced has doubled every year for the past 20 years (book was published in 2012).
• The world is inherently hierarchical.  Trees have limbs, limbs have branches, branches have leaves.  The brain stores and reassembles memories in a similar hierarchical structure.  Paragraphs are composed of sentences, then of words, then letters, and most fundamentally, strokes.  Our brain stores each of these strokes in separate locations. restoring them as patterns as needed.
• Our memories are listed in forward order, and we can only remember them as such.  (Try reciting the alphabet backwards.)
• The neocortex is the part of the brain responsible for memory, perception and critical thinking. The basic algorithm of the neocortex is pattern recognition. The basic unit of the neocortex, according to Kurzweil, is a collection of neurons which is a pattern recognizer.
• Images are stored as lists of features which are elements of patterns.  Hence there is much overlap and redundancy with similar images.
• "Identity lies not in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells."  MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung.
• Our memories are sequential and in order.  They can be accessed in the order they are remembered.  We are unable to directly reverse the sequence of a memory.  (Try reciting the alphabet backwards.)
• Our memories are stored as sequences of patterns.  There are no videos, images or sound recordings stored in the brain.  Memories that are not accessed dim over time.
• Our conscious experience of our perceptions is actually changed by our experience. We are constantly predicting the future and hypothesizing what we will experience.  This expectation influences what we will actually perceive.
• A human master in a particular field has mastered about 100,000 chunks of knowledge.
• The neocortex is "plastic," i.e. can change.  For instance, if one portion is damaged or injured, another portion of the neocortex can take over those responsibilities.  In an extreme example, there is evidence that the visual cortex in blind people can be used for language processing. This is possible because all sections of the neocortex use the same basic pattern-recognition and prediction algorithm.  It's what the brain does.
• Only mammals have neocortexes.  the human neocortex is much bigger than other mammals. Those folds in the brain allow broader surface area of the neocortex to fit into our skulls.