@Robusto I've had an earworm stuck in my head all day. Few are left who will remember this one, but I know you will.

Now add 45 years, and nothing has changed:

The lyrics are just as haunting now as they were then.

And still just as meaningful, connecting.

I don't know the answer, and this time, I know I cannot.

Back then I thought I might someday get to see, and I guess I have. From then to now. But that's where the clock got stuck.

And of course, the antidote comes from the same place. When your Weltschmerz has sunken into Lebensmüde and your saudade metastasized into morriña, get a hold of the real piano transcription of Rick Wakeman's accompaniment to Cat Stevens’ “Morning Has Broken”, and play it yourself on your own keyboard, again and again, until its rising joy wipes away the tears of years. For yet a little while.

@Robusto Can you tell whether Wakeman's playing that on a piano tuned using equal temperament or just intonation? I ask because he modulates from C to D (and back). I can well imagine it being more ... uplifting? .... in just intonation given the nature of those two keys tuned that way.

@tchrist Oh, Indeed I do.

@tchrist I'm almost certain it is tuned in equal temperament.

I would imagine so. I can't tell though.

I'm sure he'd keep his piano in equal temperament, as studios do, except for special occasions.

Something very haunting about both songs.

Isn't there, though?

Remember, when your mood descends into the shadows, that music is always there for you. If you just give it a chance, it always comes back like the one true friend who never leaves.

Yes.

I have to go back to playing. Too deep in the shadow now. I heard your ping and switched keyboards, but only that one holds any promise of things getting better.

Yes. Sometimes I turn off the lights and just play in the dark, and it's an entirely different world.

So do I.

It opens up this other dimension.

Do you recall the ending to American Beauty?

> It's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.

That's kind of the place it puts me in, to play in the dark like that.

@Robusto How could I not?

>          When old age shall this generation waste,
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Enlightenment of some sort. Transcendence of something.

> Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

O Ozymandias, I hardly knew thee.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Here’s an accent you never hear any longer, reciting an Ubi Sunt? poem of a slightly different sort, but it still goes from young and green to old and grey, yet hoping the cycle will turn again.

Really, it's all you can do, in response to what Santayana called "the crushing irrationality of existence," to sing, and partake of the communion of music.

And with that, I'm going back to playing right now. I have to. Too dark. Thanks for stopping by.

Enjoy.

Isn't there anything on the main site about the pronunciation of processes?

Strange.

There is one. And my fave answer:

But if you truly wanted to fashion it after those Greek plurals, it would become proces or something, which would maim the word. Processēs, too, sounds strikingly off-base, but it's common enough to be accepted as a valid pronunciation, perhaps.

If anything, I hear it more frequently than processəs.

@Færd It's the best 'explanation by example'. But it should have given a fuller answer by also listing the similar series for the 'etymological-based' pronunciation.

I think I only hear 'processEEEZ', and since the late 80's. But then it always stands out strangely to me, so maybe I just don't notice when it's pronounced 'PROcessiz'.

I've picked up the violin a couple of times over the years and I'm fairly sure I'd never even get to Level One. I mean, it's supposed to be in tune, right?

@Robusto They need to start around -3 or -4

@Færd I know what you mean.

@Mitch And maybe also a list of other -ess words that are pluralized regularly – that is, with es.

@Mitch Interesting.

Here's a list: onelook.com/?w=*ess&ssbp=1

Does any other noun from the list share this anomalous pluralization with process?

It would never have occurred to me to pronounce it in such a weird fashion.

It sounds...pretentious but illitterate.

There is also processus (singular with short u, plural with long u).

But I think that's rare in English.

@Færd Hippopotamuseseez

@MetaEd Darth Teresting

@Mitch Darth Deed.

@Cerberus That it did to me at first, but I realize it's so ubiquitous I can't make that judgment anymore.

@Mitch Gesundheit. (to play your own trick on you)

.

Boy what dinner I made tonight.

@Færd That's unfair. You can't tease us like that and not say what you made.

@Mitch You oughta taste it for yourself.

Beet, turnip, lentils, salt, turmeric, and an herb we call golpar. Left cooking for a couple hours and it smells and tastes like health itself.

That is, if you feel coming down with a nasty cold.

And I have nobody to share my improvisation with tonight. sigh

Oh, and the filling ingredient: potatoes.

Oh, and onions.

It sounds like the ingredients aren't gonna stop

I think I only missed water.

@Færd As in you didn't add it while preparing or you didn't write it? One has consequences that the other doesn't