Maverick Philosopher

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Cats

Loving Spoonful, Nashville Cats, 1966. They's playin' since they's babies.

Harry Chapin, Cat's in the Cradle. For you fathers out there. Bond with your son when he's five. Wait till he's 50 and he won't give you the time of day.

Harry Chapin was a major talent who died young.  Here is his great Taxi. We Boomers are damned lucky to have the greatest popular music soundtrack of any American generation. 

What Happened to Harry Chapin?

Tokens, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, 1961 

Bent Fabric, Alley Cat, 1962. Bent fabric can be said to have a kink  in it. Therefore,

Kinks, Phenomenal Cat

Norma Tanega, Walkin' My Cat Named 'Dog.' The queen of the one-hit wonders?

Mongo Santamaria, El Pussycat. If you remember this one, I'll buy you a pussyhat and a watermelon. While we have Mongo Santamaria cued up, here is his rather better-known Watermelon Man.

To be precise, it is not his  inasmuch as it was written by Herbie Hancock.

More cat songs next week.

Vincit qui se vincit

"He conquers who conquers himself." Or as a cognate aphorism of mine has it:

Self-mastery is the highest mastery.

Self-mastery requires the mastery of both desire and aversion, not unto their extirpation as in Pali Buddhism, but sufficiently to render ordinate what is inordinate. The problem is not desire as such, but inordinate desire. Similarly for aversion.

Along the same line, and in paraphrase of Augustine,

The vicious man has as many masters as he has vices.

Or as I say, with maximal pith and precision:

Vices vitiate.