Effective Love and Recycling

Laughter cannot be recycled. If you tell the same joke twice, you have compelled your audience to use recycled laughter. They might try to hide their feelings, but their automatic reaction is embarassment.

Recycling jokes is questionable. Just remember how demanding it is to hear your husband - or any other member of your family - telling the same joke for the fiftieth time.

However, recycling may also indicate that you have some very special talent. Today´s paper tells about Harri Miettunen, Jean Sibelius and his music. Harri Miettunen plays tuba in the Tampere Filharmonic orchestra. If you have had anything at all to do with the brass instruments in the Tampere region, you know that Miettunen is a man of stories. The latest story is a story of him detecting majestic recycling.

Years ago when Miettunen was playing Finlandia, he was struck - or puzzled - by the perception that the music was, as if it were constructed around the same theme. Later on he realised that the same theme was repeated in Tapiola as well as in all symphonies by Jean Sibelius.

Every time when Sibelius has something important to tell us, he makes somehow use of four particular notes. He started his first symphony with them and with them he finished the seventh. No wonder he never wrote any more symphonies.

Sibelius being as important as he is to us Finns, there is a lot of research and writing around him and his music. What I find particularly interesting now is that Sibelius, having died fifty years ago, did not reveal his secret to any serious academic music researchers. Harri Miettunen is a tuba-player, in other words a blue-collar musician. Additionally he is known as a man with stories and practical jokes.

What do you think, did Sibelius do this on purpose? If so, why did he choose Harri Miettunen from the Tampere Filharmonic as his messenger. He could have chosen one of the serious academic researchers of his music anywhere around the world. While pondering that, it might be a good idea to open a bottle of Sibelius champagne.

When studying world literature at the university I became depressed. The reason was simple. The descriptions of the production of any author were summarized with he statement that, in fact, this or that individual book contained all that the particular author really had to say. Maybe, those poor authors with international fame and importance had written several books, and anyhow only one of them would have been enough to tell what they had to tell. So much work and so little wool!

Maybe those people should have chosen composing music instead of writing books. Anybody capable of reading and writing can say anything about your text, but the number of people capable of analysing your music is limited. You have better possibilities to hide your recycled ideas and be taken as a versatile genius - or a genius in recycling themes.

However, recycling your own ideas - which you anyway have somehow learned from others - is not bad if compared with copying other people´s ideas already published as texts. It is interesting to follow how important and influential people can become, just having copied something from one language to another. Here we could refer to the topic of my previous article (3.12.2007). We could start thinking, who have greater responsibility of informing the copy right holders of unauthorised copies - those who have done it or those who know it to have happened.

Now my choice of topics is leading towards a cul-de-sac. The only escape is to turn around.

Last week end we had snow and proper winter weather with some cold (-7 C). Now the snow has melt. It is warm and dark (+ 5 C). Days are getting shorter and shorter. Today we got the tulip bulbs planted. It certainly was the eleventh moment to plant some continuity among all randomness of the normal life.

I just started reading The Five Love Languages for Singles by Gary Chapman (ISBN: 1-881273-98-9). I have read his Five Love Languages which is dedicated to married couples. I know the basic message.

We all have our own special ways to interprete what love is, but if you want to show that you love someone, you need to know what he or she interpretes love to be .

You can test yoursel first: How do you know that someone loves you? Do you need to get presents to know that the other person loves you? Do you need to receive services and be taken care of? Do you need to be involved in discussions and reasoning? Do you want to have physical contact? Or is it important to you that the other person repeatedly says that he or she loves you?

I admire Gary Chapman´s practical reasoning. It is conscise and simple. You might think - knowingly or more or less unknowingly - that love is revealed by means of various services, making food, taking the rubbish out etc. The other person may just talk about love without doing any special services. Sooner or later you start feeling as if the other person did not really love you. He or she may really love you, but you are not able to understand his or her love language. It is nice to know that foreign languages are learned.

The same applies to yourself. If you think that real love is revealed by giving presents, the other person is just wasting time telling you again and again that he or she loves you. Just saying that he or she loves you does not prove anything to you. They are the presents that really show love to you. Recognizing your own love language can help you to understand what is going on in various relationships.

Five Love Languages makes a good and useful Christmas present. And because Chapman is good at recycling, you can find Five Love Languages for Children as well. The preface of Five Love Languages for Singles promises in a matter-of-fact way that "you will discover how to give and receive love effectively."

As we tend to load the Christmas time with so much expectancy of happiness and togetherness, it might be a good idea to get properly prepaired. It would be nice to avoid contradictions and disappointments and have the expecations fulfilled...

You will read one of those books very quickly, just in case.