Anton's Ideas

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/strike-a-chord/”>Strike a Chord</a>

why I love the piano

PIANISSIMO

I have loved the piano all my life. I first tried to play it at three and half years of age and when no tune came out of it just by hitting the keys at random with my fingers I just got flaming mad with the thing and tried to imitate the tune I had just heard on the gramophone. It took six goes at listening to an arieta from Figaro, and some fifteen to twenty goes myself trying to pick out some similarity to the melody on the instrument before I finally played something which sounded vaguely like Mozart’s tune. I had lessons for 16 years after that and have played for enjoyment ever since. However, I have never described in prose how the music I play inspires my thoughts especially on topics that really matter.

I have to be completely alone, and also wear my voice activated recorder round my neck so that I can verbally jot down thoughts as they arise when I am playing. Proof that this works came only yesterday when I read a blog by sachemspeaks: in which a girl called Marwa defends her identity as an ordinary American born, peace loving, charity working Muslim.

Her main complaint is againt the lunacy of people like Donald Trump who believes all Muslims are potential terrorists and should wear some sort of identity badge and also be able to be tracked. She puts him in his place perfectly, so please click on the link above. I was playing a lovely piece of music, Granados’ Valses Poeticos, when her ideas made me think what on earth had made it possible for a man like Donald Trump to have any influence at all on Americans in general and the current terrorist situation in particular.

Imagine a very vain man, he colours his hair to look younger for heaven’s sake!, who has made two criminal speeches – one anti race and one anti religion – so far in his attempt to get the Republican nomination, either of which would normally have landed the speaker in jail. He insults people he doesn’t like because he’s so rich he can get away with it. Now there is nothing wrong with being rich, but if you don’t share your good fortune with others in need, or on causes that the world needs promoting, then you are not much of a human being. In fact you are rather despicable. But he’s worse than that, he’s actually mentally as thick as two short planks. I mean he actually thinks that being president would make him able to run the country as he wants. No president since Jefferson has ever done that.

Look at the present incumbent Mr.Obama. His three main aims when coming to the White house seven years ago were a) to provide more affordable health care for everyone. b) He wanted to stop ordinary people from carrying firearms because his country had the highest level of gun crime and socially related deaths of any country in the developed world, by a mile. And c) he also wanted to ensure that his country was at the forefront of restoring the world to economic stability. Well Mr.Trump should look at what his party ensured. That NONE of these ideals could be implemented as the president wanted because just 9% of the population were in a position to politically stop the head of state from doing what was best for his people. At least the republicans don’t pretend to be democratic, they just rig whatever elections they can – Bush Jnr was never legally president of the US, at least no non-Americans ever thought he was – his family merely had the right judicial support.

But what struck me most about my thoughts as I played was what I believed should be the attitude of all people in all countries towards people of so called different faiths. I am a Catholic but that doesn’t mean I think all Muslims are inhuman terorists or a threat to my own love of God. We love the same God, for heaven;s sake, and for the same reason. There is one thing that all religions have in common. They all believe there is only one God. Well that is the point, there is. We simply worship that deity in different ways. Fanatics have led factions into religious wars, and prelates of all faiths have tried to claim civil authoritarian priority over their flocks, but that is just a human fault. What matters is how we live our lives by being kind and considerate to others and helping those whom we love, and try to love and forgive those who we have problems with or have committed really awful acts. That is my creed, and certainly that of all the faiths I have studied in depth, which is most of them. You should never preach from a position of prejudice or ignorance.

I wonder how Mr.trump would feel if he were taken suddenly seriously ill and the only doctors available to save his life were Muslims who were only too willing to help him. I bet he would not stop them, though he might deny he knew their beliefs. Unless of course he’d tagged them. Think of the state we’d be in in Britain if we lost 30% of our health industry workers. That is the per centage who are Muslim.

And another thing that I find odd about such a man is that he is opposed to illegal immigrants in the US from Hispanics to Syrians. I wonder how he would feel if he had to deport 776 of his personal employees, who are on one third the average wage for their menial jobs, and pay the full rate to the type of Americans (if they exist) whom he wants to see in work in his country.

But the one thing I would never wish on Donald is somebody kidnapping him, blacking up his hands and face and setting him free near a police station in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t be around the next day and it would be his own fault. But I still could not do that to him. No, people like him are there to be shown the error of their ways and turned into decent human beings who might eventually get to Heaven. We have to do our best to make sure everyone has that opportunity however much we dislike what they purport to be.

And as the music and my musings come to their end I just want to add that I have more blood relations in the States than any other country, so I have no feelings of ill will towards the country at all. I just wish those with power would use it like good people and not self centred idiots, or worse in many cases.

AWE