TRANSCRIPT

DENNIS SPEED:  My name is Dennis Speed, and on behalf of the LaRouche Political Action Committee, I want to welcome people here to our Saturday Dialogue with LaRouche for July 1, 2017.

There are many things that we'll be reviewing today, but I want to start with a warning and evaluation by Helga Zepp-LaRouche this morning concerning the upcoming G-20 meeting. What Helga emphasized is that we're looking at a situation in which there are various attempts to create conflict and disruption; and in addition to that, there are many disagreements among the persons and nations that will be meeting there.  There may be — hopefully — attempts to paper some of this over, but the crucial element is that a new policy configuration could come into being; because the President of the United States will meet with Vladimir Putin.  This is a much-anticipated meeting, and the Russians describe it that way and others are describing it that way.  This Monday, there will be a meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin; this is the third meeting that they will have had this year.  Certainly, in the course of their recent discussions, the topic of the President of the United States and meeting with him will have come up; because, of course, President Xi Jinping did meet with President Trump.  This means that this next weekend, that process will be unfolding in Europe.  Here in the Manhattan Project, we will be playing a role in trying to shape the environment that that meeting itself is shaped by.  But the way we're going to be doing that is no different than the way that Helga tried to do that in Beijing, and in the way in which Lyn has at least attempted to instruct us here concerning the issue of the Four Laws, and how those Four Laws become, in fact, American policy.

It's important to think about how we are approaching that. For example, there is a hopeful statement that was issued on June 30, in which the President of the United States recreated what is called the National Space Council.  This is an entity that had been first created during the 1960s — I think in '61; Vice President Johnson was the head of it at that point, and it was part of Kennedy's space effort.  It had pretty much gone into disuse, and then was stopped during the Bush administration.  In a release that was put out by Space News, they said "The Council will be responsible for reviewing space policy and providing recommendations to the President, as well as fostering close coordination, cooperation, and technology information and exchange among agencies and with the private sector."  If you go through and look at other reports, it's obvious that it's sort of hodge-podge and a kind of mess.  But in itself, I think that's not the point; I think the point is that there is again an intention to place the United States again in a certain preeminent position in space.  One of the things to observe, is that President Trump stated as an aside when he was in the process of signing this, he said, "I had thought that politics could be used to bring us all together, but I think now we are going to have to rely on space to do that."

As you all know, not only is Lyndon LaRouche well known — especially in Russia — for his role in the Strategic Defense Initiative and his negotiations with Russia as a back channel; but it's also the case that the concept of a Silk Road in space, a strategic defense of the Earth, these are concepts that have been at different times proffered by China and Russia in terms of potential collaborations with the United States.  Of course, we've made the point that the collaboration should begin by the United States imposing Glass-Steagall, creation of a new credit system, and an immediate crash commitment to advanced technologies including thermonuclear fusion with a particular emphasis on joint colonization of the Moon and mining of the Moon with China and with Russia.  And also, of course, Lyn has made another point, which is that there should be a four powers agreement; that India should also be brought into this.  I think people are aware that there's been kind of disorientation in India; we've seen it not playing the role it should play in the Silk Road.  Certainly Modi had been much more forthcoming a couple of years ago.  But if you consider also that this weekend, in fact today, we're seeing the celebration of the so-called 150th anniversary of the birth of Canada; itself largely a treasonous operation conducted against the United States.  And that Prince Charles is there today with Trudeau, there's where the crux of the problem really lies.  The independence of the United States has to be taken back from the British; and that's what we work on in the Manhattan Project.  The Hamiltonian Presidency is a way of retaking the United States from the impact of the British in the post-Roosevelt era.  That impact is greatest in the cultural area in particular; and at the same time, we've got to focus on what Lyn said about making the power of Hamilton's conception of the Presidency a reality in the United States.  So, we play a crucial role there; nobody else plays the role we play.

In terms of how we would therefore go about putting the combination of features that we've brought into play in Manhattan; the cultural feature, the idea of a new economic platform involving a joint Chinese and American collaboration to stop what's going on right now in New York City around the collapse of the transportation system.  And more broadly, how we play a crucial role in making this next week perhaps a pivotal point in world history, by assisting the process of bringing together China, Russia, and the United States.

I want to introduce Diane, who has a unique vantage point, particularly because of the work that we did in the last 72 hours in our choral and related work in the Manhattan Project.  So, Diane?

DIANE SARE:  How many people here were at the concert Thursday night?  OK, and how many people were at the symposium the next day?  It was really wonderful; it was really transformative.  I think it's very important.  I hope everyone is aware that this Tuesday is the Fourth of July; and the Fourth of July is the anniversary of our Declaration of Independence against the British Empire.  This is really a cause to which Lyndon LaRouche has dedicated most of his adult life; and I think we really have an opportunity to finish the job, so to speak.

I was reflecting on the deplorable state of the culture of the United States and the mindset of the typical American right now, where people are very confused, fearful, hysterical. They're broke, they're addicted to drugs; they have silenced their inner conscience, the kind of sense of right and wrong or true and untrue that really is innate in every human being, has been largely clouded over and distorted and crushed by 50-60 years of the Congress of Cultural Freedom and particularly the last 16 years of the Bush and Obama administrations.  I was thinking about why Schiller wrote the Aesthetical Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man, his great disappointment that after the American Revolution, the French Revolution would turn out to be such a dismal failure.  He placed the blame for this on the littleness, the smallness of the identity of the people at that time.  I think what Dennis has outlined is that we are in such a moment.  That is, there has been a transformation; the life work of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche has come into fruition with what China is leading with the Belt and Road; with the collaboration between China and Russia.  We had an election here where the American people overwhelmingly rejected the legacy of the British Empire; but the current President is under attack explicitly for the things that he's doing right.  That is what has partly has people very confused.  Then meanwhile, you have certain very pressing situations across the country in terms of what's happening with our infrastructure and physical economy; like here in Manhattan with the subway.

As people know, we had a rehearsal last Sunday where one woman came very late, and looked extremely freaked out by the time she got there.  She said the train that she was on had caught fire on the way to the rehearsal.  Then we had Tuesday another rehearsal, where the conductor Roland Carter arrived late, because earlier that morning there was a derailment at 125th Street station which caused a number of lines to be shut down.  They're saying that 200 feet of track was damaged, and when the brakes came on early, the train crashed into the wall; so there are piles of concrete.  It's a real mess!  And we haven't even gotten to July 10, which is the beginning of the "Summer of Hell" when they're going to be closing three rail lines at a time.  Three tracks at a time on a rotational basis over a number of weeks. I saw an article in Bloomberg which shows what they're repairing, and it frankly looks really silly; because it doesn't make any sense.  If the whole system is that old, why just repair these small sections?  They may be the most damaged, but shouldn't we actually think a few years into the future?  Maybe we need to redo the entire system; maybe we need to replace miles and miles of tracks, but people are not even thinking that way.

I think that's this question of the aesthetical education of man.  Schiller wrote other things, like on the question of measurement. What you see is that we are thinking, the thinking of this nation is just completely shaped by the dark age that we've been in.  I think part of the significance of this beautiful musical tribute to Sylvia Olden Lee, is that it gave people a point of thinking outside of themselves; and realizing that there is a potential for something much greater, much more profound and much more beautiful than what we are typically accustomed to.

I was just reading this morning a report that really jumped out at me.  There was apparently a conference in Europe called "The Future of the EU — A New Model of Cooperation Among European Sovereign Nations" at the European Parliament in Brussels.  So they had all these speakers, but the thing that really jumped out at me — just because of what I've been following on the transportation system — is that one of the speakers said that there was a severe earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, which caused 100,000 deaths.  This earthquake area was very far away, it was a four-hour drive, plus you had to travel by mule to get there.  So what they did was, they came up with a project to build two tunnels; and they built them in three months.  They were the total equivalent is 10 kilometers, so I don't know if each one was 5 kilometers or how it was designed; but imagine that.  Building 10 kilometers of tunnel in three months!  Then you think about what we're talking about with the Hudson River, the East River; we can't build, it will take us 20 years, it will take us 50 years, it will take us 100 years, we're not even planning it.  That's what I mean.  You think about President el-Sisi in Egypt building the parallel Suez Canal; and people said it was going to take five years.  Then they said if we really press, we can get it down to three years; and he said, no, we're going to get it done in one year.  These are the shackles from which we have to liberate ourselves.

The other thing that has come up, I've been thinking about what the world looks like and how it can be transformed.  I got in my email one of these petitions; if you ever sign a petition, you get all kinds of petitions on everything.  So, a petition came across about the situation in Burundi, which many of us LaRouche organizers — Dennis Speed, myself, others did a great deal of work on this area in Africa, the Great Lakes region in the '90s, where they had an absolutely hideous genocide, which one figure gave was about 3 million people, probably more than that, between Zaire (now D.R. Congo), Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, etc., very hideous.  And you have a situation now in Burundi where the current President [Pierre Nkurunziza], whose name I'm willfully blocking out is shooting everybody in the opposition at short range and burying them in mass graves.  It's a hideous genocide occurring again, and I sent an email to a good friend of ours to find out if this was the case, what the situation was, and he confirmed it.

But this is different from 1994, because now you have China because now you have China building railroads through Kenya; in other words you have a potential to actually address this.  And what our friend, who happens to be the former ambassador from Burundi to the United States said, is that this stems from the an agreement, from British companies to mine something or other there, exactly the old story that we know.  But that era is soon to be over!  That is, this will be defeated, this is being defeated by what China is doing with the Belt and Road, and therefore these things can become solved.

 As Dennis was saying, if you have at the G20 meeting and in spite of all efforts to sabotage it, there have also been powerful efforts — ours, the efforts of Seymour Hersh and others — to make sure this meeting stays on track, it looks like it's going to occur between Trump and Putin.  You've had the meetings between Trump and Xi Jinping; so, in an imperfect and not completely direct way, but nonetheless we are still on a trajectory to being able to consolidate what Helga has said, that if Trump were to join the Belt and Road, he will go down as one of the great leaders in all history, if the United States joins this process. Interestingly, that is on track.

So, with the Fourth of July upon us, it would be important for everybody here to commit ourselves to actually the intended identity of the United States of America as Alexander Hamilton saw it and as Lyndon LaRouche saw it.  And I think the last thing I want to do, is, this paper by Lyn in the latest EIR, which is short.  He says it's "An Autobiographical Memorandum: My Science and Our Society," and he talks about how he hated Euclid and he talks about the evils of sense perception and that people tend to be very infantile and not think straight if you value what you perceive with your senses over what you can imagine with your mind in terms of universal principles.  And he says:  "I avowed, that there exists only one foundation for the foundations of mankind's knowledge of science: the self-development of the human species itself: the meaning of the human mind itself, a meaning which is bounded by the progress of mankind's conquest of successively more and more of the unknowns of mankind's coming into evidence of the organization of what we know as our immediate universe. The rest were merely fictions rooted in silly fantasies."

I think we should take this fight, this week, as people know, there's an important Schiller Institute conference coming up at the end of this week that will further this, going right into the G20 meeting which July 7 and 8; but I think we should take this week and make it a turning point, and as both Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche said, it may be one of those great ironies in history that impending, total, chaotic breakdown of the infrastructure of Manhattan will be forcing medium by which we get this change made.

SPEED:  One of the things we want to make sure we do is supply the organization with a kind of evaluation from our people who were involved in the process of the last couple of days, not merely experiences, although that's important, and to get that, but also sort of an evaluation of what it means our capabilities are here.  So I'll just say that, and ask people to report; but I think there are two things I'd like to have.  First, I'd like to have John Sigerson, who was the other director of a choral process and who had also a certain vantage point from the symposium of yesterday, if you can say something about that here. The symposium of yesterday was a necessary follow-on to what happened on Thursday evening.  And both of these are at least thought about by some of us as necessary preconditions for what we're about to do.  Because in other words we have a three- or four-day period here before the Fourth of July, which is in one sense similar to the situation that Colonel John Buford found himself in, the morning of July 1st.

John Buford is the one that actually started the Battle of Gettysburg, as some of you know, because he was able, having accidentally encountered Confederate troops, and having recognized that this was not a usual situation, decided in his visualization of that possibility, to begin that battle there; it's important to recognize that Buford himself, was dead, about six month later — Dec. 16, 1863, he died.  So the role he played at Gettysburg, which was the high point if you will of his military career, was succeeded by his death through the war, six months later.  Had he not taken that action, he had not had that insight, had he not been available at that moment, all of history would have been different.

Now, we're in a similar circumstance in terms of how Lyn has deployed the Manhattan Project, in the issue of our people having vision or insight, emotional vision or insight, be able to play a certain role at a crucial moment, I think is at the core of what we're doing with the chorus; is at the very center of the idea of what we're trying to do with music.  It's not, I think, perhaps properly understood in that way, but I think from that standpoint, it would be best that John said some things here, so that people can kind of begin to get an access to what it is we're trying to do — it may be imperfect, it may be that there are other problems, but there's something that we're get at, in our work in this regard and I think it is best to try to start that evaluation first, and what he thinks about that, and go to all of you.

JOHN SIGERSON: Good afternoon. I want to concentrate on two themes that struck me over the last two days, in terms of what we have accomplished and what we need to accomplish.

The first thing that struck me is that, with everything about the Carnegie Hall concert that we did, was something that we were not supposed to do.  You're not supposed to do these kinds of things:  "It's not done, that way."  And this came up in so many ways — I just realized  — it came up in the large, but also in the small. I won't name any names, but I had a number of backstage discussions with some of the artists and others about some very, what you might consider very small details about the way that we performed with various of these pieces.  And they were surprised because the way I was doing them, and Diane was doing them is not "the way they are usually done."  "They're not done that way."

And the reason why, and I'll give you one example: Is that nowadays, as it turned out, if you're a musician and you want to go and perform a piece, what you do, almost by reflex action is you go to your computer, and you go to YouTube and you turn on five different performances of what was already done. And then on that basis you made a decision as to how you're going to do it; how you're going to do it with respect to all those other performers.  And then — maybe after that, you go to the musical score, and you try to apply what has already been done and the way "it should be done," because that's the way you're told to do it, and then you go to the score and you impose that opinion, that popular opinion, upon the musical score.  And rather than doing what Lyndon LaRouche emphasized to us, way back when we first worked on the first volume of the Manual on Registration and Tuning, back in the late 1980s, where he said, "Forget what people say about these pieces.  Forget all the musicology.  Go to the score, and also go to the lives of the great composers and their minds, and figure out what their ideas are.  Because that's the most important thing, is the musical idea."  And I think this is something that is only, even at the concert, we got it across in implication, but it's still a long way.

For instance, when Sylvia says, "Pay attention to the words," which she was constantly saying, yes, that is true.  But in my view, and I know in Lyndon LaRouche's view, the most important thing, is — and I think this is what Sylvia meant — is she said, "pay attention to the ideas."  Because a music idea, a poetic idea is something that you cannot even put a word on it. It is something much higher.  And this is what lifts people's souls, is that idea, to get at what a creative breakthrough is.

So I think that we shook up, in various ways, the artists and also hopefully the people in the audience, by implications, about doing things that we're "not supposed to be doing" and "it's not done that way."

And it's the same problem that we have with Glass-Steagall, in terms of the ability of people to grasp what we were talking about with Glass-Steagall and the credit systems, and LaRouche's Four Laws.  You're not supposed to do "so that that way!"

And of course, this is completely against everything that America was conceived of by Alexander Hamilton and the great founders our Republic.  Is that, no, no, you have to  — you've got to do something that's never been, or never been done that way, and forget what people are telling you.

So that's the first thing that I just wanted to point out. And the second thing, and this comes up with the symposium that was held yesterday, is, we had this panel of truly great musicians — but not just truly great musicians, but truly great souls, who were addressing us at that point, led by Mr. Estes. And what struck you, it certainly struck me, is that this is a grouping — what one of them described as an extended family  — this is a grouping that has completely gotten rid of rage, out of their souls; in spite of tremendous difficulties and tremendous discrimination, tremendous lack of opportunities. As Simon Estes says, he always quotes his mother, whenever he gets angry about something, and he remembers what his mother said, is: "Don't strike back.  Get on your knees and pray."  And they mean it. There's no anger in that, and you have to rid your soul of that kind of anger, and the feeling of being an underling.

And I think that the big problem we have in American culture today, is that everybody tends to act like underlings in the way that Shakespeare talks about in Julius Caesar.

So, I think that that sense, if you put that together with this idea, that I brought up before, of this idea of not doing things the way "they're done": Then you'll have a combination that will really defeat the British Empire, in everything that they are attempting and will attempt to throw at us.

So I'd like to leave it there, now and maybe we can open it up for more detailed discussions.

SARE:  I just want to say, also, a thing that is "not done" is to bring a community chorus onto the stage of Carnegie Hall. [laughter] Because, you know, and people who are highly trained and highly well-intended and supportive have said, "I wouldn't even do this unless you've worked with this group for a year, — and very intensely." And what one of the soloists said to me later, because I had had a discussion with him and told him about the chorus, so he came in and he saw the chorus.  And he said, "You know, I can see that a lot of your chorus members are not musicians; and they don't know how to read music, and they don't know exactly even know how to sing, all of them.  But, this is really a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."  And he said, "I was blown away by the way that chorus sounded.  It was incredible, it was of a quality far beyond what I was prepared for when I understood how it had been recruited."

Q: Hi, I'm Michelle Rasmussen with the Schiller Institute and LaRouche in Copenhagen, Denmark.  And I feel so privileged; I was in New York for family reasons, and to be able to go to this concert and this symposium, was really historic.  It was an historic event.  The beauty and the ability to move the audience through the chorus — the magnificent chorus — I was sitting way up in the peanut gallery, and when the chorus started singing I just got goosebumps all over.

And the one soloist after the other, after the other, a kind of — if you think about Motivführung we've spoken about, musical development within a piece, the whole concert was that, but starting with Elvira [green] who so dramatically came in from side, singing, and ending with this rousing Lift Every Voice and Sing, and with such moving elements in between which actually at one point brought me to tears; also when Frank [mathis] was singing.

But one thing was that, I was looking up some Simon Estes videos to hear how he had sung when he had his professional career, and how he had sung that aria by King Philip onstage was really something [from Don Carlo, "Ella giammai m'amo"].  But the other thing that came up, was the Simon Estes Choir in South Africa, and this choice, it was maybe 30 young people, all in African dress and the quality of their singing, they were all singing with bel canto opera voices.  It was tremendous.  And that this quality of song which he has inspired also in South Africa; you can look it up.

But I wanted to ask a question, because at the symposium, during the discussion of the five or six singers, it was mostly about their experience with Sylvia Olden Lee and how much they owe to her, but I don't think so much came out about what was on the title, which the idea of the National Conservatory Movement. Could you explain, what really is your idea of the National Conservatory and both its history and what you want to do with that, because I don't think it came out as much as it should; so you can elaborate now.

SPEED: Luckily we have a tape of the discussion, and hopefully, Lyn will be able to see this, and Helga will be able to see this, of course:  But the idea would be that they need to see it.  They weren't there, but one of the elements of discussing this idea, is that you can't actually discuss it competently unless  the two of them are involved.  That is, you can pose the idea, the idea had to be posed.  But you can't actually competently discuss it unless they're there.

So the first thing, therefore, what we were able to do is to present a portion of the ensemble of the resources that are now available.  And the idea was to have — the grouping you saw at the end was a distillation.  For example, Mr. [roland] Carter wasn't there; he had to leave and go back. Richard Alston obviously was not there on the stage, a main accompanist, a very interesting person.  Jeremy Jordan, who was the young man who played the Schubert [Impromptu], he wasn't there.  So there was other resources.

But the truth of the matter is, what should really be done is something that you have to have people who are capable of doing it, discuss it.  Now, don't feel bad; I'm just telling you the truth.  And therefore, that's the conception.

Now, the institution  is the people, but then, what's the state of mind of the people?  So that's the first thing. And that's the way, I think, to think about it.  Just so people are not confused, and I don't want to say more about these things, but that's just how I work.  I've known Lyn for a long time, he's known me for a long time. There are certain things that I know, when I'm in a certain situation, this I don't really understand.  That is, I understand what I think I mean, but I don't actually know what I mean; I know what I should mean, I think.  So what does he think about it?  What does Helga think about it?

There's nothing — it's sort of, how would you put this? Imagine, suppose you were part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s?  For some reason, you got drafted into it, and there are people like Einstein and others who were involved in this thing. Well, if you were in it, and you realize you had these other people, but you were coming across, or found, or discovered, or found yourself possessed of something really interesting, what you would want to do is consult with these people.  And that was the purpose of yesterday, in part.  To bring it together, and also, of course, to pose for the musicians this issue of voice placement.  Because one of the problems that I believe at least is the case — John can comment more on this — is that when you're looking at some of the singers, and the combination of their experiences, some of the limitations that they've overcome, there are others they didn't overcome.

There's a lot of things that happened:  For example, quickly, the second singer, Sheila [Harris Jackson] described to me her daily life, she described to me what she's trying to do in the Newark school system — she's just retired — and we had a conversation, she, I, and Elvira, two days before the concert, about this opening.  Because what we were trying to do, was to invoke Sylvia, and the arrangement of Lord, How Come Me Here? is Sylvia's arrangement.  And we wanted that, plus A City Called Heaven, which was an invocation, actually, of something that Warfield had done, but we weren't in a position to do the entirety.  Warfield had had a very specific idea about how to deliver that.  And when we were first discussing it, and when it was first performed in rehearsal,  — I don't think Sheila would mind me saying this — she said to us,  she didn't know us, she was trying to impress us with the quality of her voice and so on. And I and Elvira said, "no, we don't want that.  We want something completely different to come across. We're not really interested, we already know you can sing it, but the issue is what are we trying to say to people?  We want something which is a notion..." we were trying to see if we could invoke using the Spirituals, the spiritual content of the Florestan aria. That's what we were trying to get across, that was the notion. In the same way that Florestan aria begins the way it begins, this notion "Lord How Come Me Here?"  For people who know the aria, that's what we were trying to evoke.

We wanted this to be there as an internal statement; it doesn't come through the form of the Spiritual, it has to come from the inside of the artist. So we knew they could do it.

Now when we get to the symposium, this is Lyn's territory! This is not — I'll do what I can do; and John is sitting there smiling, because he knows what I'm saying.  But I know better than to act as if, I've got a true idea of where to take something like that.  I just know it has to be done.  So that's why we called it a "movement" because now it moves to Lyn's plate and Helga's plate!  Now, what? OK?  That's the idea.

You get yourself in a certain amount of problems — it's sort of like the idea, if you're trying to win a fight with a bully, and you're too small, you have to fight, but you got to run!  Now, when you run, you try to run back home and get your big brother or something, or somebody that's going to handle the problem.  And the key idea is, to always fight, but also know when to run to there you can actually get, not merely a reinforcement, but the solution to your problem.  Now, you can always jump in and get in a few licks in yourself; but you have to realize the difference.

So I hope that gives you an honest answer to the actual thing that we were doing, at least I was doing.

SARE:  On that, I was thinking about the panel, and I actually think the reason why they all started talking about Sylvia, was because that question was raised, which is — I forget how you posed it in the beginning, the horrible culture, how do we address this and transform people?  And so in the minds of everyone there, the touchstone is what Sylvia did, with them. But we're obviously talking about something much bigger.  And as I was sitting here thinking about how Sylvia, in a real sense, Sylvia was almost like a conductor on the Underground Railroad. I mean:  She was taking people who were not allowed to be Classical musicians, getting them over to Europe, getting their careers,  —  I mean she really did something very much like that.  So they think of how do you overcome this, and the image that they all have is what Sylvia Lee did with them.

Q: Hi, Alvin here.  I guess, as everyone has, there are a lot of things going through my mind since Thursday night.  One of the things was waking up Friday morning to the number of text messages from people I had invited who had attended the concert. And one man in particular, a friend and colleague, mid-40s, who's been invited to Schiller and Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture events for years, came to this one.  And his first message, on the text was — he brought his family, his wife, and two kids, 8 and 18 years old — "The event was amazing, everyone had a great time.  The Spirituals especially.  The opera though tough at times, was also moving in a way I can't quite explain, but very glad we attended."

I responded back, that since he had family there, I'd like for him to send me something that reflected the family, and he did in an email, and this is the most relevant part of it: "After being seated during one of the Negro Spirituals, my son (the 8 year old), experienced an anxiety attack that is uncommon. The vastness of the venue combined with the power of Spirituals scared him initially; but in 20 minutes he adjusted and everything improved from there.  My daughter (the 18 year old) who was constantly in a negative state, also took about 20 minutes, but afterwards her mood improved and she generally enjoyed it, a lot more than I expected. The opera portion which none of us could really relate to, started out a bit ambiguous, but as the performances moved along, some type of shift took place.  In hindsight, it appears that the first few pieces were survived, but as time passed, the remaining pieces were enjoyed.

"The remainder of our evening was great."  They left at 10.30 at night.  "We had dinner as a family unit; couldn't have had a better evening.  Everyone's mood was elevated and the effect is carrying over to today as I write this brief overview."

So this is a Black man.  I believe that the symposium aspect of this is something that is going to be crucial for him to watch as well, because for me, particularly from Mr. Hopkins, what I was getting was a historical responsibility that we have, and now, I believe we have a capability that we did not have, to truly enlarge the process. And I hope that the members of our chorus and of the Institute seize upon this moment to really make both the chorus and the support for it, grow, because I don't think we'll have another opportunity like this.

So, while my initial reaction, or after-effect of concerts is to say, "Ah! Take some time off!"  It's very good that we have the conference scheduled for next Friday with China coming in, because we have t keep the momentum rolling while we have it.

Those were my thoughts, those were my initial responses, that we have to move now.  People are ready, people are mobilized.  People have been moved, in ways, that he said, he can't quite explain, but something's there.  And I believe that him watching, and I have to share the symposium now for all those that came, because that's really kind of a finisher or a continuation for them to actually engage as citizens.  So that's what I had.

Q: I wanted to talk more about the esoterics of spirituality: Specifically, I'm a practitioner of Soto Zen, I've been a practitioner since 2004.  And a simple question that I can pose to everyone that can explain the feeling that you get as you're experiencing a Spiritual, or aria, or opera, that sense-perception that isn't part of your direct senses, a simple question.  Now this question would typically not be asked and it's a very generic one in the world of Zen that's been used plenty of times over and over.  The question is, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

Now, someone who doesn't perceive the true, the underlying message of that question, you know, like usually you get a laugh, or "I don't know," or "what's the point of this question?"  But those who have spent the time, the dedication in erasing what you directly see in front of you, and in realizing what's actually there, that there's two differences, I guess you could compare that to you get to a point, what you call "satori" where you are always aware of that moment, you're always feeling that sensation that you have when you listen to music or you read a philosopher, or something, and you have an epiphany; there comes a point where that doesn't go away.  And that's why I believe, that what we're trying to get at here, is that we're trying to raise everyone to a level to where they're beyond just their sense-perception and they're able to perceive the world in front of them.

SPEED:  I want to make one brief comment about that:  That was originally the reason that we did the solfège classes and the classes that John did, also Diane did, on Schubert and Furtwängler.  The issue is the Furtwängler method, motivic thorough-composition, and why we presented it, was that this is a scientific matter, it is a matter that can actually be grasped. And I will just say that much about it.

Maybe John will say more, or others who know more about it than I do.  But the important idea is, yes, that which you believe to be in front of you is not real.  The notes are not the reality of a musical piece.  And when we say this idea of "between the notes," we're talking about something which is a palpable, and apprehensible access to your own mind.  So I'll just say that much about it.

Q:  It was an interesting event for me in that I was sitting with two colleagues from my work office, one of them who is a director of a chorus, a rather small chorus but has public performances.  And I was little bit anxious in the beginning part, because it was sort of intriguing but I didn't really know where it was going, with the Spirituals coming in, with the talking, and I got a little nervous when that woman was talking who wrote the book, because she was having trouble being clear.

But what was very striking to me was the Don Carlo part with Simon Estes, that blew these people away, especially the woman who's a director. And she wasn't even that familiar with Don Carlo; and then, the thing that really clicked in my mind, was that Don Carlo of course is based on the play by Friedrich Schiller Institute.  And it was a real "Schiller Institute event." And also I saw that Rosa [d'Imperio] was sang [Elizabeth's aria from Don Carlos, "Toi qui sus le néant"], it was also a show-stopper aria that Maria Callas used to sing in her stand-up concerts, which I don't know if it was Maria Callas, but I thought it was suitable.

And what the woman told me is that what really struck her, was that she didn't think before about the connection between the Spirituals and the opera, and these people talking about God. And I was telling her how the Schiller Institute's interested in this because when the great political moment comes, otherwise the people just want to kill somebody.  That we have to uplift the population.  And if you talk about Democratic New Yorkers, you know exactly what that means.

And she was studying the brochure, and saying "Who's behind this?"  I just told her, those people out in the street, "LaRouche for President"?  And she goes, "Are they still out there?  Are they still campaigning for LaRouche for President?" I said, "well no, he's not running for President, but he's still conspiring and doing things."

And she also asked me about the Harlem Opera Theater, and I said, "Well, Gregory [hopkins], he's been behind this for a long time, and I knew these people in the '90s, Gregory, Sylvia, etc." And one of them asked me if I ever got a lesson from Sylvia, which unfortunately I never did.  I think that's about all I want to say.  I don't really have a definite comment, but that's what I thought about the performance.

SIGERSON:  Every spiritual experience, religious experience, I don't care whether it's Buddhist, whether it's Daoist,  — Confucian, which would be nice, too. But every profound, religious experience only has significance if it results in action.  And one of the greatest actions one can do right now, in terms of fulfilling that, is to join the chorus. Because it's through choral singing that that experience becomes something which is social, and has meaning in the real world.  If it becomes a purely personal experience, it never ends — it has certain private significance; but we as a movement are interested in action.

Tony Morss, for example, Maestro Tony Morss just commented to me in passing, how he feels so wonderful.  He says, "People in choruses are better than people in orchestras." [laughter]  And he ought to know, because he conducted for many, many, many years, in many, many orchestras.  And remember, Maestro Morss, before he retired, he said, "When I retire I want to join your chorus," and that's precisely what he did.  And so, I would say, if you yearn for spiritual fulfillment, join our chorus, and participate in what we are doing.

The other point I just want to make, on this question of where we go from here:  Again, think of Glass-Steagall.  We are creating a separation between degeneracy and ideas that actually move us forward for the next centuries.  And it's the same thing in our musical endeavors, and that's precisely what we have to work on.  OK, you can destroy your voice with singing shrieking gospel, if you want.  But here is a place, we are going to establish firmly, a place where the dignity of man and the creativity of man, and musical ideas and poetic ideas are primary.

And so you can take a choice, but this choice needs to be very clearly delineated.  And I think that's one thing that our choral movement has begun.  But in general, that's what we are doing:  We are giving humanity a way out, and a way to finally clear away the cobwebs of confusion, which afflict so many of our fellow citizens in the United States and abroad, about this question of "What is the Good?  Can you actually work to the Good, in a way that it's clear in your mind what is good and what is evil?" Thank you.

Q:  Good afternoon, this is Jessica from Brooklyn.  What Alvin and actually what John just said, is very relevant to what I'm going to say; I'm going to try to keep it short. I invited my best friend, colleague, my history teacher friend, and her daughter who is 7 years old, and her husband; and other people — but they were the ones that showed up.  And I had invited them to a lot of things that we have, but this is actually one of things that they showed up at.

My friend's husband was a sourpuss from the beginning.  "I don't like opera.  I don't want to be bothered, don't buy the ticket for me, because I'm not going to pay for it."  She had to drag him there, kicking and screaming.  He even tried to present his negativity to his little daughter, who was 7 years old, and she was sitting there kind of growling and scowling, too.  So, Kathy said, "Well, we're going to go support Jessica," but during the event, they sent me a picture of the husband scowling and looking really angry; and then, at the end, Gabby, the little girl, who is taking piano, her father actually said, after the piano solo performance, "You could be up there, one day." And she is quite good at piano, actually, even 7.

Her mom, my best friend has a beautiful voice, gospel, loves gospel.  The next day, as Alvin was saying, she texted me, all excited about how wonderful this was;  the Negro National Anthem, she didn't know what was going on, when everybody stood up, but that was wonderful, too.  And now, she's talking about ... "when is your chorus again? Wednesday night?  Oh, good!  I have prayer service on Tuesday, I actually might be able to make Wednesday night in Brooklyn."  So!

I'm really quite happy about this, because I'm an African American person, and there are challenges to talking to talking about what we're doing, many times, with Black people.  And the husband had said to me, "well, you know, you guys are supporting Trump?! What're you crazy?" that kind of thing.  So to see him actually transformed at that piano solo, and other things that he talked about, and actually stop being negative to his own child — that was really, really nice.  Thank you.

SPEED:  I'll just remark that according to my wife, that the performance of the Schubert Impromptu had a particular effect also on Minister Louis Farrakhan, that he was particularly concentrated at watching Jeremy Jordan's performance of that.  So it's interesting from that standpoint, also, in other words in musical content.

But I wanted to deal with a thing that you raised, which is the issue of the father, and what you report because of the nature of this; and an element of the Trump matter, which is related here, which we should discuss concerning Black Americans. In part this came up at the symposium yesterday.  It's veiled, it came up in particular way, as a result of an exchange which was not understood by the person who was making the exchange; didn't understand what was happening.  But it's relevant.

Why was he scowling.  Because his presumption is, "there's no way."  Just that phrase, "there's no way" — then you can fill in what "there's no way" to do, but the phrase is, "there's no way."  And just fill in, whether it's employment, whether it's advancing to become a pianist, whatever it is, "there's no way." And there's an assumption this is a racial problem.  José of course, who has been very active with the Foundation, had had a problem at his home, because for about a week, there'd been a problem of sewage seeping through the roof and he had to deal with this eventually, because his mother said, "that's just the way Brown people are treated."  José is from El Salvador, but that's just what her view is.  So José didn't think that was right, and so he managed to get the city to his house to fix the roof!  This does not strike me as being an explanation which is adequate to this situation!  And so what you have is this kind of purported circumstance.

Now the singers, are very important, because they can't afford and could not afford to believe that!  And what Sylvia did for them, as Diane talked about before, was sort of like Harriet Tubman:  She had a certain role for them, because they weren't really supposed to be performing this music; as Mr. Estes said, he didn't even know anything about it until he was 23 years old! And of course, Gregory Hopkins made that point in what he said: "How can you ever aspire to be involved in opera, if you've never heard one?"  So he was making this point about the failure of the school system and the failure of the church.

Now, Gregory is not a great fan of things like gospel, for example, but he's caught in this situation, with respect to the churches as a whole, in the city in particular, and the circumstance in which, if he attempts to advance what he's like to advance, he gets back simply blank stares.  But this is on the African American Spirituals as it is on opera! Or Lieder.

Now that's what you're dealing with, you're dealing with a dark age.  So our role is the one that Lyn has assigned around things like the Hamilton question:  It's identical.  That the notion of the American citizen, that Hamilton's and Washington's Presidency represented that's what's absent.  So that's what we have to place in this.

It's the same thing about Sylvia's relationship to Lyn:  The reason that she demanded to stay over and have breakfast with him, was because she wanted to really understand, and make sure she understood what she thought she saw.  Is what I'm seeing, real?  And she spoke about that a couple of times to me, because the idea of seeing Lyn in his pajamas, having this discussion with her, that — that's reality so to speak.  And that's the same thing about her relationship to Farrakhan; that's why he was there, and it's in his statement; just look at the statement he put out.  Because Farrakhan was trained to be a professional violinist and he was prevented from going to conservatory because of racism.

So there's a complexity here, and we're addressing something nobody else dares to address, not because that's our intent. We're addressing America, and a change in America.  We're making a change that Lyn designed this organization to make  — and which was rejected when he tried to make it, many years ago!  He ran for President, he did this several times.  People kept rejecting it.  He kept saying, "No!  I'm running again."  People kept rejecting it.  He says, "well, I'm still running, I just can't run, run.  So you go out and project this idea of the Presidency, and people will know that it's me." And that's what we're doing.

I think it's important for us to all realize, it is a real privilege what we're getting to do here.  And the reason we run into these people or these other things, is because, it's the natural result of just trying to do what he says.  That's why he always insists that we have to check with him on these things. We may think we're — maybe this was great, I don't know. He's got to evaluate it and tell us, as does Helga.  You know, is this it, is it something that we're missing here?  And what is it that we're missing?  He always comes up with that — I guarantee you, he's going to have something to say about this.  "OK, fine people, but this is now what you have qualified yourself to do, and this is what you're not qualified.  Now you have to get this, you've got to develop this capability."  That's the nature of the Manhattan Project.

Q:  [judy] I'm glad others are sharing the responses they're getting, because I hadn't thought of sharing this until the dialogue began here.  But we have many members of our chorus in Flushing, who are Chinese Americans.  They're Americans, they're citizens, they've been here some of them for many years; some of them are not yet fluent even in English, and they're now fluent in Carnegie Hall!  They've sung there, they've participated in this process of building our chorus, and one of the women texted me yesterday morning about 10.15.  She cleans hotel rooms for a living.  And she's not fluent in English, but she joined our chorus because someone that I'd met at a Trump rally, who voted for President Trump, and tried to bring all her friends to back Trump and they all said, "We're for Hillary!  We're not going for Trump!" and she was repudiated by her friends.

But then after the election she kept coming to the rallies where I met her;  and I invited her to the chorus, and she's recruited three other people to the Flushing chorus, and couldn't make it to the concert herself.  But this woman sent a text, saying, "Thank you for bringing me to this beautiful concert at Carnegie Hall.  I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity.  Thank you so much."  So she's so grateful that our movement has embraced them and dared to bring people  — they have never sung Western music before; they learned, as you said, why this other conductor was so shocked at what you were able to produce with such a diverse fabric in our chorus.  So we have nowhere to go but forward.

Q: Just in terms of the responses.  I was with my brother-in-law who is a former member, has been to numerous LaRouche events and chorus; he's taught music classes, and so on. And he composes, and tunes pianos for a living, and teaches guitar and piano.  But there were four nieces and nephews who drove up from West Virginia, while he was driving down from Canada, to be at the same event.  And their experience was quite different:  They had been home schooled, flying all over the world with their diplomat father, and the 20 year old said, "this is the first concert I've ever been to."  And the older brother said, "no, you were at a concert in our living room over in Azerbaijan."  And he said, "Yeah — but this is the first concert I've been to!"  And the other girl goes, "Yeah, well we were at that Christian rock concert." And he goes, "Yeah, but that was not a concert!"

And they were all equally blown away — people who had never experienced something like this, and the guy who taught classes on music; he was just, "yeah, this was thorough-composition, it was one piece, the whole concert."  And they were elevated as they were walking out, they were walking over the sidewalk about 7 feet up.

DIANE:  Just before this meeting and the closing of our discussion with Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche, she made the point that this has to be a very big week for our organizing, because this G20 meeting, as Dennis said in the beginning, is a very big moment, and she said, this is going to be much more contentious than the Beijing conference or these other conferences, because you have leftovers of the British Empire going in there trying to impose one agenda; but you have a completely new paradigm that has emerged.  So I think we should have in mind it's somewhat historically and poetically appropriate that it's the Fourth of July this week, and then we have that this weekend.  And we should take all of the nourishment that we gained from this Carnegie Hall event and the symposium and use it to fortify ourselves doing what we have to transform the United States.