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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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."
> 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.
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.
There are words derived from Greek that end with "-is" in the singular and "-es" in the plural. Thus
This thesis is . . .
These theses are . . .
This basis is . . .
These bases are . . .
This axis is . . .
These axes are . . .
In these words, the final "-es" is pronounced "...
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?