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Notes from Underground

  And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.  Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
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Hope

To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.-- Erich Fromm


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Telegraph Road

 



The Telegraph Road is a major north-south 70 mile thoroughfare in Michigan. Mark Knopfler was inspired to write this song while riding in the front of the tour bus, which made the journey down Telegraph Road. At the time, Knopfler was reading the novel The Growth Of the Soil by the Nobel Prize winning Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and he was inspired to put the 2 together and write a song about the beginning of the development along Telegraph Road and the changes over the ensuing decades






https://www.direstraits.com

TELEGRAPH ROAD


Well a long time ago, came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
He made a home in the wilderness
He built a cabin and a winter store
And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
And the other travellers came walking down the track
And they never went further, no they never went back
Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track was the Telegraph Road
Then came the mines, then came the ore,
Then there was the hard times, then there was a war
Telegraph sang a song about the world outside
Telegraph Road got so deep and so wide
Like a rolling river
And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze
People driving home from the factories
There's six lanes of traffic
Three lanes moving slow
I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I've got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
Yes, and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed
And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles
They can always fly away from this rain and this cold
You can hear them singing out their telegraph code
All the way down the Telegraph Road
Well I'd sooner forget, but I remember those nights
Yeah, life was just a bet on a race between the lights
You had your head on my shoulder, you had your hand in my hair
Now you act a little colder like you don't seem to care
But just believe in me, baby, and I'll take you away
From out of this darkness and into the day
From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain
From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
'Cause I've run every red light on memory lane
I've seen desperation explode into flames
And I don't want to see it again
From all of these signs saying "Sorry, but we're closed",
All the way down the Telegraph Road.













Love over Gold >>>

It takes love over gold
And mind over matter
To do what you do that you must
When the things that you hold
Can fall and be shattered
Or run through your fingers like dust










Dire Straits was a prominent British rock band, active from 1977 to 1988 and again from 1990 to 1995. They are widely recognized for their clean, sophisticated guitar-oriented sound and the songwriting of frontman Mark Knopfler.

Key Members

  • Mark Knopfler: Lead vocals and lead guitar (1977–1995) – A founding member and the band's primary songwriter.

  • John Illsley: Bass guitar and backing vocals (1977–1995) – A founding member who remained with the band throughout its entire history.

  • David Knopfler: Rhythm guitar and backing vocals (1977–1980) – A founding member and Mark's brother.

  • Pick Withers: Drums and percussion (1977–1982) – The band's original drummer.

  • Other notable members: Keyboards players Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher were long-term members who joined in the early 1980s.

Studio Albums

The band released six studio albums during their career:

  1. Dire Straits (1978) – Included their breakout hit "Sultans of Swing."

  2. Communiqué (1979)

  3. Making Movies (1980) – Featured "Romeo and Juliet" and "Tunnel of Love."

  4. Love over Gold (1982) – Included the hit "Private Investigations."

  5. Brothers in Arms (1985) – Their most commercially successful album, producing classics like "Money for Nothing," "Walk of Life," and the title track.

  6. On Every Street (1991) – The band's final studio album.


Band Legacy

Formed in London during the rise of the punk movement, Dire Straits emerged from the pub-rock scene. They reached global superstardom in the mid-1980s, particularly with Brothers in Arms, which was one of the first albums to be successfully marketed as a CD, helping to drive the format's early adoption. Mark Knopfler’s fingerstyle guitar technique and the band’s meticulous production remain highly influential





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