Excerpt from The Gay Science, Book One - my favorite Nietzsche of all his works that I’ve read.  This is the Walter Kaufmann translation.

Perhaps there is nothing that separates men or ages 
more profoundly than a difference in their knowledge
of misery: misery of the soul as well as the body. 
Regarding the latter we moderns may well be, all of us,
in spite of our frailties and infirmities, tyros who
rely on fantasies, for lack of any ample firsthand
experience—compared to the age of fear, the longest 
of all ages, in which individuals had to protect themselves.
In those days, one received ample training in bodily 
torments and deprivations and one understood even a 
certain cruelty against oneself and a voluntary habitation
to pain as a necessary means of self-preservation. 
In those days, one educated those close to one to endure 
pain; in those days, one enjoyed inflicting pain and 
saw the worst things of this kind happen to others without
feeling anything but—one’s own safety. But regarding
misery of the soul, I now look at every person to see 
whether he knows this from experience or only from 
descriptions; whether he still considers it necessary
to simulate this knowledge, say, as a sign of refinement,
or whether at the bottom of his soul he no longer believes 
in great pains of the soul and has much the same experience 
when they are mentioned that he has at the mention of 
great physical sufferings, which make him think of his 
own toothaches and stomach-aches. But that is how matters
seem to me to stand with most people today.

The general lack of experience of pain of both kinds and the 
relative rarity of the sight of anyone who is suffering have an important
consequence: pain 
is now hated much more than was the case formerly; one
speaks much worse of it; indeed, one considers the 
existence of the mere thought of pain scarcely endurable 
and turns it into a reproach against 
the whole of existence.

The emergence of pessimistic
philosophies is by no means a sign of great and terrible
misery. No, these question marks about the value of all 
life are put up in ages in which the refinement and 
alleviation of existence make even the inevitable mosquito 
bites of the soul and the body seem much too bloody and
malignant and one is so poor in real experiences of pain
that one would like to consider painful general ideas as
suffering of the first order.

There is a recipe
against pessimistic philosophers and the excessive sensitivity
that seems to me the real “misery of the present age”
——but this recipe may sound too cruel and might
itself be counted among the signs that lead people 
to judge that “existence is something evil.”
Well, the recipe against this “misery” is: misery.

Apologies for not posting recently. Personal drama…..ugh. Aaaaannnyyyhooozle, I was looking back over the past 11 pages of this blog and decided to create a joint page where I will publish only original stories/poems/ideas/pictures/etc.  I will keep updating this one and continue to post things I find that I like, but I think it will be easier and more organized if I keep original and non-original content each on their respective pages. That said, the url for the only original joint blog is as follows:

http://oliviasoriginals.tumblr.com/

By Daniel Kreps
Rolling Stone Magazine 

Forty years ago this weekend, the greatest band of all time gave the world their final album together: On May 8th, 1970, the Beatles released Let It Be, the Phil Spector-produced LP that featured hits like the title track, “The Long and Winding Road” and one of John Lennon’s most famous compositions, “Across the Universe.” While the album was recorded during the band’s caustic final days, Let It Be would go on to become one of their most celebrated records: it ranked Number 86 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

The story behind Let It Be is almost as mythic as the Beatles themselves. The band originally intended to record it as a live-in-the-studio album and movie in 1969. But the ambitious undertaking left the Beatles so weary, they abandoned the project to make Abbey Road instead. Later, Phil Spector added oversweetened orchestral overdubs to many of the album’s tracks — even though the record features some of the band’s strongest rock songs ever (including “Get Back”). In 1970, the Beatles released the documentary film of the same name, which captured the group’s iconic performance atop the Apple Studios building in January 1969. Perhaps due its controversial and detailed look at the Beatles’ interpersonal problems, the film itself remains unavailable on DVD.

Despite the album’s status in rock history, Paul McCartney was never a fan of Phil Spector’s production flourishes on Let It Be. In Rolling Stone’s original review of the album, writer John Mendelsohn also criticized Spector’s superfluous additions, saying the famed Wall of Sound producer rendered “The Long and Winding Road” “virtually unlistenable with hideously cloying strings and a ridiculous choir” when compared to the version that appeared on the Get Back bootlegs in May, 1969. After years of dissatisfaction with the released version, McCartney announced plans to put out Let It Be… Naked in November 2003, which stripped the Let It Besongs of Spector’s ornate production.