currency tv

My brain stopped as the Louis Armstrong song played, and I felt forced to stop reading. I had to just listen.

I was reminded of a musician friend who listens to music (anything he can get his hands on, any genre from any time), with eyes closed, intently, unable to do anything else but listen. I can tell he is receiving a huge amount of information that I am not. He tilts his head and says "Hmmm" and "Ah" and "Ohh". I struggle to hear what he is hearing, but he is sensing the music more than just listening to it.

On a totally different topic, I think the most interesting thing about the movie The New World is the depiction of the moment of first contact between the peoples. I have thought about quite a bit, like a lot of people, what the exact moment may have been like when Native Americans and Europeans encountered each other for the first time. This film is gratifying in a way because it depicts the moment, whether historically accurate or not, I have no idea (I did poke around on the internet though, and the costumes do seem to be somewhat historically accurate - if you can trust the internet for that kind of thing). The period of colonization and plundering of the Americas, and the wealth that was shuttled back to Europe, is what made capitalism really possible. And those pustule-laden gross English kids in the movie is the new face of capitalism - ew!. The whole idea of currency is such a f-ing trip. Why did some people decide that gold and silver was so damn valuable? Why not something else?