Here are two entirely unrelated things I want to say. First, readership of this blog continues to floor me. This site hit over 1600 unique visitors in the month of March - a new high. Thank you to every one of the sixteen hundred thirty of you from the entirety of my soul. Y'all are coming from 60 countries. Can you believe it? I don't think this site has had readers from as many as 60 countries in one month before. That, too, is a new mark.
I mean, as many times as I've been floored by the increased readership in the last 6 months, how much lower than the floor can I go? That's it, you'll have put me in the basement. I bow to you next to the water heater and utility sink. But seriously, THANK YOU. Daily content made of silly humor, the world in full-spectrum, cellph shots, and regularly offered music and philosophy will continue, such is my ongoing pledge. Without y'all, this site would be nothing, trust me. Thanks for your continued letters and insights. The plan is to ramp up the Readers Respond section, so look for that, amongst other continued changes and additions to the site. Did someone say, "Matthew's Kitchen"?
And secondly, here's my small pet peeve of the evening. I think people gotta stop the use of the word 'dogma' when what they really mean is 'doctrine'. Few people ever use the latter. And the former's meaning has been pummelled to smithereens - it used to simply mean 'seems good' (from the Greek Greek dokein: to seem, seem good), but now it has come to mean, essentially, everything that is wrong with the world, our elders, political systems, and myriad others hip haps, or something.
In truth, when people claim to be oppressed by dogma, or that they avoid situations where there is some person who speaks with too much dogma, or that they don't like religion because there is too much dogma, or that philosophical systems have too much dogma - for god's sake, pick your words a little better. If something is falsely reasoned, then call it false reasoning, specious, sophistry, or a whole host of more interesting words than the tired 'dogma'. Call folks santimonious, preachy, or close-minded. (You might also consider the plural form 'dogmata', which at least has flair to it.)
And for complains about institutions, try 'doctrine' next time you wanna complain of 'dogma'. Maybe you'll like the clarity, and you might just impress your friends. It can be a nice change, something that the whole family can play. Make it 'doctrine' in 2005.
Ok, rant over.
Thanks you all, from every part of the globe that has recently stopped by. All of my bows in harmonic expanse. May you relax just a little more into your fears, and step forward in loving engagement of the planet, courageously creative.
From a Chicago Sun-Timescolumn earlier in the week:
Maybe it was when I heard the song as the theme for a NASCAR video game.
Maybe it was when Hilary and Hailey Duff appeared at an event at the W Hotel City Center on Adams a couple of weeks ago, and the crowd went wild when DJ AM incorporated the song's famous opening riff into his mix.
Maybe it was when the song popped up during a screening of the upcoming Matthew McConaughey-Penelope Cruz movie "Sahara" -- just the latest of many, many, many films to use this tune on the soundtrack.
Maybe it was all those factors, building to a crescendo.
All I know is that somewhere along the way, it hit me.
"Sweet Home Alabama" is the greatest rock and roll song of all time.
Read the whole piece - his unadorned love for this song comes through, in rather comprehensive fashion (for a simple newspaper column). Roeper might be a bit dopey as a sidekick to Roger Ebert on the TV film review show, but as a columnist, he is a must-read.
As as far as his pick, I haven't given 'best rock song ever' much thought till now. I mean, there are so many awesome rock songs. So I'm not sure what my choice would be, but I have to say that Sweet Home Alabama definitely is a solid choice - the song kicks ass, and it still sounds fresh as ever. My first rock band, Union Jack, covered it at a high school gig. I even played a somewhat okay guitar solo that night. You know, somewhat okay.
I'M TIRED OF BOOMER/BUDDHIST/NEW AGE CRITIQUES OF THE WORD "ATTACHMENT":
It is a cop out, and the attacks on the idea of 'attachment' have, in my casual estimation, confused far more than it has clarified a healthy outlook on one's attitudes and beliefs, at least in for Western minds. Here is a passage from The Attachment Parenting Book (thanks again, Victoria) that addresses this issue head on, with regard to parenting and child-raisin'. (p. 109, paperback)
Attachment vs. Enmeshment
While attachment parenting is healthy parenting that supports and encourages the child toward timely and appropriate independence, enmeshment is a dysfunctional family dynamic in which a parent, usually the mother, smothers the child, keeping him from developing his individual personality because of her own needs. In this case the mother is still functioning at the level of a child in trying to get her needs met by the child - needs that were never met when she was a child. Healthy attachment changes at every stage, as baby becomes more and more mature, and the attachment adjusts itself to meet the needs of the baby, toddler, and preschooler as he grows. Enmeshment occurs when a mother is not able to 'let go' and graduallly adjust her attachment physically and emotionally. If you are becoming enmeshed rather than attached, seek counseling.
Now, doesn't 'non enmeshment' sound more like what the new agers mean when they cry the virtues of 'detachment'? In the West, it is too easy to interpret 'detachment' as 'disembodied vacancy' and 'lack of love and care'. For good reason, because I think in the West, that is exactly what 'detachment' means. Hooray for William and Martha Sears (authors of this and other parenting books) for this important distinction. "Enmeshment", as a kind of feeling of lost and entangled, is what we as parents, and as engaged people, ought to recognize and avoid. But never are we to avoid attachment. Attachment is the interface of love, nurturing, guidance, human to human resonance. Sometimes it seems that a whole generation of 25-40 year olds suffers the ramifications of either enmeshment or detachment on the part of the baby-boomer generation. Sometimes it seems just that - at least on our bad days. Well, we learn the flaws of our elders so we can avoid a programmatic rehash for our children.
A draft of the essay will be posted soon, over at Knowledge Library. Till then, here's a short excerpt:
The Isn’t of Wilber’s Integral Art
Wilber’s art interpretation essay (from The Eye of Spirit) is a valuable overview of the subject, and will undoubtedly stand the test of time, at least in general form. But I ask, what about creativity and artistry? What about technical artwork production in various mediums? What about the world of art business and distribution? What about artist fear, artist intuitions, or even mention of extant case studies that relate to art? These are different aspects of the art world and Wilber’s model for integral art offers truth of only a peripheral or sketchy variety on these counts.
There are other short writings on art by him. In these, Wilber gives brief mention to a theory of semiotics in an integral frame, yet little more than connect it to art in passing; of course his collected works devote large segments to discussions of general psychology, consciousness, and integral lifestyles, but rarely is a careful and reasoned connection made between his psychology philosophy and everyday artistry; other short pieces discuss worldviews, but he sloppily mishandles much of this material (from Gebser and others); he is yet another contemporary philosopher that does not include a general theory of music in his or her metaphysical model (Schopenhauer was the last of any merit, yet there were many before). And as far as art business, art education, art curatorship, and museology go, again there is very little if anything that is specific to the art world in the work of Ken Wilber. His popular cream-puff site contains short recorded dialogues that critique the contemporary music business, but one can hardly use these in scholarly purposes (as Wilber himself admits).
Of course, he is not required to write about these topics⎯he has written significant philosophy that will go down in history, and we are blessed by much of his work. But nor should he receive credit for an integral model of art when he has generated no such thing. There are more stories to tell than, and he has not told them.
The nature of my art philosophy is to tell these stories, and do so in an general model of integral art that treats integral not as a commodity, but as sketch of a worldview, the expanse and depth of which illuminates the art world in radically planet-centric and inclusive ways. We have a moment in history when knowledge from the entire world both empowers and imperils the health of the human history and contemporary life. Artists can take this opportunity and through intuitive display in artwork, offer energy that helps to stimulate the continued sustainability and evolution of human institutions, human compassion and love, and human relationships.
In my view it is selfish to not embrace this reality as a contemporary, mature artist in the world. In my own humble way as a composer and philosopher, if I can aid the world's artists in personal interior expansions along their particular edges of material expression, then I perform my soul's service. I feel that to do so publically, in an open-source manner, is the most egalitarian manner in which to perform my work. This isn't about the negotiation of market forces, or recognition as a hero or heroine who conquers the pluralist masses. This is about the expansion of human to human resonance through the intuitive exchange of art. Truth is what you find at the cusp of growth. Nothing more, nothing less. And thus the question: how full can your artwork be?
Great to read Dashh's post that gives a cadence point to several of his primary concerns about Wilber's integral model and the ii/iu dynamics. I consider his work, as well as that of Victoria, Human Bean Jean, (w)hole Dan, thrusting Paulie, Vince, Coolmel, and others to be very important. We all have lived with this thing called integral for several years, and have considered its practical relevance to our lives, relationships, and our work. These folks have the courage to question Wilber's integral model as well as the organizational dynamics around it, with the wisdom to see any sticky wickets within the particular contexts and not out of proportion. I'm thankful for their perspectives - to midwife a full-spectrum worldview takes patience, effort, honesty, and humility, present in all these cats through and through.
I think there is plenty more to support and critique when it comes to Wilber's model of integral, and the communal responses to it. As scholars, we ought to continue to verify sources, and validate, reframe, or even reject Wilber's conclusions. I think that Wilber's passion and vision were so immense that it made proofreading and editing of his philosophy a rather impossible task if his publishers were to release his books before the year 2100. The technology of the blog is perfect for this kind of point by point verfication and refutation, so by all means I suggest we continue to negate and preserve aspects of the model, the herds, and the institutions that require careful examination and a full-bourne hearing. I mean, there is really nothing to fear in this pursuit. If Wilber is any kind of honorable scholar, he would welcome continued public consideration of his work. That he is touchy when it comes to critique is his own problem, not ours. At least I know that in my case, I have nothing to lose from a full bashing of what deserves bashing. He has already insulted me, my wife, and removed any mention of me and my work from anything Wilber-sanctioned. So I might as well let 'er rip cause he ain't a vehicle for the distribution of my music or philosophy, and I'm better off for it.
And you know, let's remember that we are all going to emphasize and deemphasize what we will. I believe that Wilber's version of integral overemphasizes psychology and systems-theory, and deemphasizes object creation and communal response. I believe he overemphasizes Eastern compassion and underemphasizes Western love. I believe he overemphasizes the banks of the river, and deemphasizes the water of the river. He overemphasizes metaphysical theory and deemphasizes practical application. And I believe that his work on developmental worldviews has been patently off the mark, and all over the map. And these days as a public figure, I believe he overemphasizes his physique, and deemphasizes the fact that we don't care what his pecks'n'abs look like, or who his Hollywood friends are. All that allure blurs the ability to distinguish the man from the ideas, and to apply truths to practical use. Our lives are our responsibility, of course, not a philosopher's. But the gentlemanly thing to do, at the very least, is paraphrase Marvin Gaye's eternal maxim, and get your shiny the hell out of the way, my friend. Let the song sing. The music speaks just fine for itself.
The main reason Hannah and I went to Philly over this past weekend was to visit and hang with her sister, Maggie. Maggie is nearly a year out of school (Bryn Mawr) and since then has worked a good social work job in the city (she got it before she even graduated, which is somethin'). Her apartment is right in Center City, so she walks to work, along Philly's oft cobbled streets and sidepaths. Philly is alternatively charming and rugged. It was my third time in the city, and while I'll probably never live there, to visit it quite nice. And the 13 hr trip to and from Chicago is just short enough to justify a day's trip. Especially with the iPod a kicked.
We walked around Philly quite a bit; Maggie gave us a great tour. We held off on any explicitly historical stops, but with Philly the home of America and all, you can't escape the shadows of time. I particularly liked when we walked past city hall, a beautiful building rich in ornament, with a statue of Ben Franklin atop. Maggie told us that for a long time, city ordinances restricted the heights of all downtown buildings - none could be taller than city hall. It has since been repealed, but undoubtedly that ordinance made architects and city planners think creatively. Limits have that kind of effect.
On Sunday, which was Easter Sunday, we wanted to check our email and such. Maggie didn't have internet access at home, and the local cafes, which often offer wifi for free, were closed for the holiday. So Maggie suggested that we walked to a central park in the city, where the city offers free wifi access within the park. This was an opportunity to test out the buzz that Philly, as a city, was going to go wifi en masse. Well, it was a disappointment, and I hope the city uses the crappy wifi access in the park as an exercise in growth by negation. We spend 45 minutes in mere attempt to hook up; when we did, access was lost at the worst moments (such as when just about to hit 'send'). Alas, technology grounded our cyber leanings, for one day. The next day the cafes were open and there was much rejoicing.
Monday was also the day to go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is the home of Sly Stallone's famous run-up the steps as Rocky Balboa. For those that care, the statute of Rocky that used to commemorate this filmic moment has since been removed. Museum patrons apparently did not like the juxtaposition of high art and "ADRIAN!!!!". My sentimental side screams what the frock, let the statue stay. But in truth, I can see their point. I'm a bit of an old fashioned cat when it comes to museums. These are hallowed grounds, a santuary for contemplation of nakedly pure inspiration, through artwork that has stood the test of time. I wouldn't mind if there were a public outcry for replacement of the statue in front of the museum. If there is popular support for it, then I say consider it then. Museums are conservative, but populism is an ever-penetrative force. Maybe after Sly Stallone passes, the statue will come back. Kind of a macabre thought, I know, but such is the beauty of museology. To lean on the passive/receptive side is the proper temper for our musuems.
I've already started to showcase some of the pictures I took from the PhilMOA. Don't worry - their policy allowed photos as long as there was no flash. Perfect for the Cellph Shot, doncha think? Well, here's two more. From the inimitable Piet Mondrian. And as I prepared these cellph shots for this blog entry, I was reminded that the visual design of this blog, The Daily Goose, has a rather Mondrian-esque quality.
What do you think? Kind of similiar, no? Even the title of this piece works to describe the Goose's design. Anyway, this has been virtually unconscious on my part. I'm a fan of Mondrian's art manifestos and such, and a couple of his pieces inspire me, but I prefer Chagall, for example, much much more than Mondrian. But alas, creativity flows in its own river sometimes, or at least it seems to. Does this now mean that a complete redesign of the visual aesthetic of my blog is now in order? Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe, maybe not. Seems to work fine now. But the river. The river.
I actually have never read comics. But I read McLuhan and his seminal Understanding Media. For those that dig the graphic novella and such, check McLuhan out. In a critique of social rejection of the artform, he wrote:
The elders of the tribe, who had never noticed that the ordinary newspaper was as frantic as a surrealist art exhibition, could hardly be expected to notice that the comic books were as exotic as eighth-century illuminations. ... So, having noticed nothing about the form, they could discern nothing of the contents, either. The mayhem and violence were all they noted. Therefore, with naïve literary logic, they waited for violence to flood the world. Or, alternatively, they attributed existing violence to the comics.
'Pop', 'soda', or the generic 'coke'? Give that a thought while you look at this map that shows how your neighbors like to describe the bubbly brown sugary goodness-in-a-can.
Me, I grew up a soda man, like a good southeastern Wisconsinite. But having lived in 6 cities in the last 7 years in the northeast quadrant of the United States, I've heard it all. I have to say, I kinda like 'pop' more than I ever have. It is a little more, well, fun to say, don't you think?
These three hotspots constitute three of the four contexts of integral art (or 'art examined through an integral worldview'). For those acquainted with the philosophy of Ken Wilber, this diagram will look both familiar and unknown. Wilber's integral model is akin to the pre-broadband internet, with slow, inconsistent dail-up connectivity. It is rather a monolith - effective for its time, primarily the 1970s and 1980s (though he still refines his model today, to polish thought for the 70s and 80s new age human potential movement crowd).
My model for integral art (also applicable to other domains) is BroadBand Integral. It is based on a multiplicity of perspectives, and a holism which anchors perspectives into contexts. Above is a diagram of three of the four primary contexts of art in the world. That undiagrammed fourth context is that of art institutions (such as schools, performance venues, curated exhibits, and museums). Instead of the tight-fit approach, which sticks everything into a single four quadrant diagram, my approach uses the concept of the four quadrants as a lens. Integral is a camera with a wicked zoon lens, so to speak. And it is experimental - to institutionalize something such as integral puts wagon before the mule. And I pride myself that my model of integral art is experimental. Art is experimental. The point is for artists to feel inspired to ask questions and live into intuitive answers. Art is open-ended - with my model, I simple aim to juice the breath-force of artists.
While there is lots to examine in the art world, I cite four primary areas to demonstrate my model of integral art. Because every sentient being possesses four quadrants (a point on which I agree with Wilber) then it logically follows that anyone can view the world through the lens of integral. And in the art world, what you tend to see are versions of the above. To examine artist consciousness, the four quadrants will illumine that story. To examine artwork production, the four quadrants will illumine that story. And so on and so forth. The four quadrants illumine each aspect of the art world in different ways. Thus, a multiplicity anchored by holism - or in any other words, BroadBand Integral.
The paper entitled Art in Integral Broadband will soon be posted. It compliments my paper Integral Stories of Art (already available in my Knowledge Library and particularly engages Wilber's main writing on integral art, from his book Eye of Spirit. The argument situates Wilber's true but partial account of his version of integral art into the larger perspective that takes more of the art world into account. It is a revision of an older paper called "The Big Three of Integral Art", which I circulated around the tight-knit community of artist-scholars that volunteered time, love, and energy to the development of the Integral Art Center/Domain of Integral University.
Its founders, by the way, were myself and Matt Rentschler - as a loose team, we alone did the hard ideation, scholarship creation, and personnel coordination that brought an integral art domain from nothing into something. For 16 month until my resignation, it was me and Wrench and that's it (besides awesome volunteers such as Victoria, Jeff Lohrius, and Dashh). As the main writer, I generated over 250 pages of material that honored Wilber's 'aqal' model (a techno-speak jigsaw puzzle of rather dizzy sort), did not get caught by its sticky wickets, and I was pretty much alone on that artist-scholar-writer journey. Wrench provides the occasional (and useful) soundboard for some of my ideas, and he has some of his own. We were partners of a kind, and talked several times a week for over 6 months (which ended over a year ago).
Don't believe the hype if someone tells you different -- Anything integral art in the context of Wilber's integral university was founded by me and Wrench. Of course there were plenty of folks before us, not in the context of IU but in the more general I-I, and there were folks who took the reigns after I resigned - I was replaced by three people, including Stuart Davis. Integralnaked recently wrote that he, Stuart, was a founder of integral art domain of IU. That is the sort of perfect little lie that the cyber-based distance of integral institute can fully leverage. It would be easily corrected given my own bio posted at integralnaked, on the occasion where my composition A Whirling Tango was showcased by the site. The bio described my involvement as director/host of iu-art. Conveniently, everything about me and that piece has been removed from the site.
At first I was pissed, though it wasn't unexpected given that I resigned from iu-art. But I'm glad it is no longer there. (And I'm very glad for Victoria and Jean's support on this matter.) That website has turned self-congratulatory to Wilber, kidmystic, and anyone whom shiny can leverage for more prestige in the world. They can continue as they like - some conversations had moments of interest (many seemed like rather unambitious and redundant), though I have cancelled my subscription from lack of use.
But I am glad to no longer be part of that herd of adulation. My work on integral art theory and practice continues, stronger than ever (as I hope my website demonstrates, though much is not online yet, and books are on the way). While Wilber the writer is often deeply admirable and provocative (I have called his work brilliant many times on this site), Wilber the organizer and Wilber the man are not and that really wore on me, especially after direct and undirect insults from him to me and Hannah (by that I mean, to our face and behind our backs). Jean has suggest that the recent rise of critical analysis of ii, Wilber, and the integral model is a matter of the backside of growth. I would agree. Another name for this is 'kill mommy'. Whether I myself am amidst this dynamic, I don't know (maybe others do). I've definitely tried to purge myself of needless Wilberarity.
But I will say that my time with IU/II was another example in my life (I've had many) that works in the negative - how not to treat others, how not to write scholarship, how not to organize and plan projects, and even how not to think. And the diagram above is a product of an effort to improve upon the last one, how not to think. I believe that as far as a theoretical model goes, the above diagram is a better way to think and conceive of the artworld, and to examine it thoroughly. If it is too much of a sketch, do not worry. More is on the way to give flesh to this simple diagram.
Just got back from Philly after a 13 hour drive all day today. More on that later, tomorrow, or something. But in a quick scan of my favorite blogs and such, I found Jean's Tuesday post, which burns the light even brighter. Her kosmic kwote:
I think to the extent that I've mastered integral as it exists as a worldview, a value meme, and as an operational system, as well as the shakeups going on in my psyche over the course of this winter, I just want to let it go, and live in the world with it as part of my overall existence.
A theory of integral = a touchstone of a worldview. Done & done. And not to be touched all the time. Shit gets sticky.
"Dai Yueqin shows her 4.2-meter-long hair in Tongxiang, east China's Zhejiang Province March 24, 2005. Dai has kept her hair uncut for 26 years since she was 14 years old." (hat tip, People's Daily Online)
I have revised my poem Grok Integral over the last 36 hours. Like Michelangelo said about the process of sculpture, for me, to write poetry is to incubate, improvise electric, then spent hours to cut away the fat. So let me know if you feel bone when you have a chance to read the poem. On all things integral and such, I believe it speaks for itself. I did sculpt the arrangement of the words, so see if you catch something on that level. But enough of my prescription!
And to the other thing. Here's an unexamined assumption within integral institute, in case you are curious. It is the one that says it is wise to build a university -- the integral university -- primarily around the thought of one man. I mean, is it a solid assumption?
(Because I was the host/director of the integral university art center for 16 months, and resigned in November, I believe I am qualified to ask this question. And that I have written about integral art to the extent I have, of which my Knowledge Library is an example, is another ticket into this arena.)
Is it wise to institutionalize what often amounts to theoretical speculation? Is it wise to make museum out of what hasn't in any large way yet left the laboratory? Is it wise to build a university with such an explicit agenda weaved into its very fabric - namely, to increase exposure for Ken Wilber's integral theories? Isn't the big drag of university and professor 'agendaism' one of the loud complaints of boom boom Wilberitis?
I haven't seen ANYONE besides myself ask these questions, either inside the cyber halls of integral institute's back rooms or in the public sphere. Is it group-think to never ask these questions, never pick at the assumption that a Wilber university (a more proper name, at least at the time of my resignation) is actually a good thing? That institutional speculation in the "berlin wall of integral institute" (one of Wilber's own sayings, btw) is a proper construct for integral philosophy?
You tell me. It is one of those things that might make you go...
The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson wants to know. A kosmic kwote:
Recalcitrant, unbending, immobile, a throw-back to a better, more idealistic age — this is the rock-cut image that the perpetual ‘60s professor taps into. And Churchill, with his photo-studio manufactured profile, pageboy locks, occasional fake Indian name, hip street lingo, and sassy banter did it better than any we’ve seen in quite a while — or at least well enough to wow the flabby university committees that allowed him to cash in.
Hanson, fwiw, is another one of those writer's whose essays are so well-crafted that the form alone offers truth, even if I disagree with his conclusions. Clearly expressed thought it is own reward, and on that count, Hanson is among the best.
After work today, Hannah and I are off for a drive to Philly. We are gonna hang with her sister Maggie and bum around town until Tuesday. Whether I can touch base much with The Daily Goose remains to be seen. I hear rumors that Philly has some urban hotspots. If so, the city joins the growin' chorus of towns that add web connectivity to the masses. Milwaukee, for one, has been wi-fi for several years in many public places. Not too many people know that. But anyway, we are excited to go to the home of the first American government. I'm a vegetarian, so no cheese steaks for me. Hannah (also a veggie, longer than me) talks more and more of hot ham & cheese sandwiches. We'll see if she follows thru. For all of this, I blame Ben, who constantly waves meat in her face. Yeah, you, Ben. Go hold a kite in a thunder storm, will ya?
Look, here's the deal. It is kind of a matter of 'come on, u gonna go all-in or not...' sort of thing. I've also heard this about old jazzers - when you speak, you penetrate to the truth as best your intuition deals. Whether you actually have the cards or not (usually you have at least a little pair or somethin'), the point is not in what you got but you you can make other people think you got. The game is in the management of impression, on the field of your reputation. You leverage what you can make people buy. What you grok is something altogether different. You don't actually hide or directly contradict this truth when asked. You just don't lead with it. Just like you runnin' for office, you just kinda get to know the moments when people give up their spears and just wanna sway all night long. Cuz it is easier, ya know? Easier than to pretend to others that ya really are all that. Simply put, it is some kind of journey, my destiny really. Don't believe me? Well, it is a story, but at least that drives the semiotic. Or at least - ha hA HA! - give dame evidence a flower.
To add to the torch, today's blog entry by Victoria (3.23.05) has wicked fuel. She lets it rip. Her kosmic kwote:
But enough with the starry eyed star gazing at Hollywood. Those of us who live integral lifestyles that would make most peoples' head spin don't need Eddie K or, (dear goddess) Sharon Stone to make us excited to work that integral practice and plop our asses harder onto cushions, and like children, who are influenced by their parents' actions not their words and promises, it is those who embody and embrace being integrally informed that hold the hope for implementation and change, not mere marketing hype.... We DO get it, and we are always already here in our myriad forms of energy, not waiting to be noticed, not in the room off to the side, not waiting to be linked or uploaded. Always already here.
Rock on, V. Tell it like it is! (And thanks, too, for the mention of my marimba piece.) Today there is a world out there, new & ancient. Are we ready to sing illuminated? Are we ready for post-shiny?
More commentary on all things integral (tm) has sprung forth. At a day in the integral life, Dashh offers a series of potent Integral Concerns. Mystic trainer Vince Horn offers a thoughtful response. So dig those out for sure.
[My brief rejoinder to one of Vince's points is that to the extent I have an axe, if anything it fuels my desire to speak out, scrupulously but fearlessly. I sincerely don't want the dynamic of integral to spiral to a premature demise, but nor do I want to prop it up through unexamined assumptions or uncalled-out Hollywood egoics. I passionately want integral (the heuristic model) to sustain and evolve, and not burn crisp in a skin-deep fry pan. And by 'sustain and evolve', I mean continue to be a lively touchstone for the collaborative realization of a worldview, only scribble-sketched by the model, and way bigger than any one person, but behind the breath of all of us.]
And then there's Jean Dufreznee, at her incomparable blog The Human Bean (like that name!). In today's entry, she calls the multi-blogged discussion as so much bitch slapping and loves it through and through. She has plenty to say, and I thank her for mention of my marimba composition. Hers is another must-read blog, whenever her inner just because boils to outward (and hilarious) expression.
The allure of its shiny progenitor blurs worldly use in common beats. I mean if you work a full job, meet ends with humble means, hold a family house, engage the unsurreal life, kneed a sadhana, read skin-deep magazines, get jiggy, roll away from pretense, breath the state of yo & various & sundry hip hap. You mist the authentic when a provocative bag of ideation contours a fiction of your most human potential & damns the folklore that dams your salvation.
So begins the newest addition to the Knowledge Library. It is a prose-poem called Grok Integral that you can download as a PDF. Enjoy.
[And thanks to Paul Salamone & all the cats over at GenerationSit.org for the simple space to riff an early draft.]
Scholar Christina Hoff Summers wants to know. This is in regard to the controvery that surrounds the comments by Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, where he suggested that genetic differences might explain, in part, the overwhelming difference in enrollment between the sexes in mathematics and the hard sciences. From her article in National Review comes this kosmic kwote:
To an outsider, the controversy must look very strange. Nothing Summers said was a threat to the advancement of a single competent woman in any of the sciences. The statistical fact that more men tend to score in the top-five percent of math-aptitude tests makes no predictions whatsoever about the abilities of any particular man or woman. Far from being outrageous or sexist, Summers's comments were completely respectable and altogether mainstream. But not in the academy.
Emphasis, by the way, is hers. She has a coherant point of view and opinion, and I believe her work is academically rigorous, even if one disagrees with her conclusions. I happen to essentially agree with Summers - this is a rather ridiculous controversy and bespeaks sound-byte scholarship that infiltrates the relationship between universities and the media. Universities are exactly the places where debate about just this sort of issue ought to take place. That is does ought never be a reason for the dismissal of any qualified and decorated faculty member, nor administration officials, nor any college presidents. If you disagree with President Summer's points, then by all means do whatever you see fit to disprove them. But ad hominem attacks on his qualification for his job are simply inappropriate. The mainstream media, with its narrow windows of large-scale cultural broadcast, are the perfect vehicle for sloppy intellectual discourse.
So definitely read Summer's piece (the writer). She is great with language and persuasion. A larger point is I find that coherant writing, more than the particular opinion expressed, helps to form my own opinions, even if those conflict with the writer's view. From conflict springs truths. The hum of tight prose jogs the mind forth. The work of Camile Paglia has the same effect for me (though I happen to agree with her view much more often than not). I believe that too many people close their mind to opinions different than their own, and thus don't read (if liberally-minded) conservative media, and vice versa.
Opinions change over time. Solid writing doesn't. I'd rather read a tightly composed article that I 99% disagree with, than a poorly written piece that totally jives with my view. The latter is a rhetorical strike out; the former is a single, double, or triple, it depends. And what is a home run? You might think it is a piece coherantly expressed AND in simultaniety with my own view. But you would be wrong. A home run is any piece of prose that drops my jaw at its brilliance, and beckons return visits. (A grand slam makes me want to write a whole book, right quick.)
But to return: I might add that Summers (the writer) is an outspoken critic of what she calls postmodernism's effect on academia and on the way we raise our children. She is also a noted critic of the work of Carol Gilligan, which Summers believes is not academically sound and absent peer review of the documentation Gilligan uses to form her conclusions on, for example, developmental differences between boys and girls. Ken Wilber, as many know, uses Gilligan's research to support his core claims of his philosophical model. No big point here. Just that academia is a small world.
I'm back on the every-other-week lesson schedule with Allaudin. From December of last year until the beginning of March, we only had two lessons. This was my choice because I needed some space to recalibrate to a world of The Bean. That is a process that continues. But I decided that I ought to take advantage of Allaudin's wisdom, challenge, and support while I have this chance. Especially since I finished the tracks for I Am Sound, I am in a mode that I describe as 'shuttin' down the factory, openin' up the sales counter'. Or something. Basically I'm not going to think about an album for a while, and instead work to increase the visibility for my three records, with initial emphasis on I Am Sound.
Of course, my creative alchemy continues. I've been in a composition mode where I have started to fashion several short pieces, which I call miniatures. Whether those will end up on one or more album remains to be seen. Each are under 2 minutes, and some are under 1 minute. Like filmmakers create shorts, I currently create miniatures. So far they have been in the general form of a prelude. In the broadest sense, a prelude is simple a short piece for an instrument in a free style. Emotionally, a prelude serves to evoke a sense of introduction, that something of interest will happen next. Whether that something happens or not is irrelevant - you are made to feel as though it were.
So these miniatures, or preludes, are in part from composition assignments that Allaudin gives me. He wants to compose pieces that traverse through keys. He asks me to first experience these journeys through piano improvisation, then to compose what moves me. His term for these kind of assignments is 'magic mode modulation'. Modulation is a common term: it means to proceed from one key center to another within a piece. The more tricky term is 'magic mode'. The magic mode is the panoply of pitches contained in a single key. The term is related to 'chromaticism', but I believe an improvement on that concept. With chromaticism, there is not a sense of background and reason for each of the pitches in a chromatic scale. The term implies that the 12 pitches (in the Western tempered scale) are mere givens. To think 'chromatically' is to not dig into the 'why' of things. On the other hand, Allaudin's 'magic mode' pitches indeed have a background. In Harmonic Experience, he devotes several chapters to the investigation of every pitch within the octave, and each's relevance to the larger functional system of harmony.
So you can think of 'magic mode modulation' as similar to 'chromatic modulation', if you like. But 'chromatic' is simple too willy-nilly for me, too arbitrary. It doesn't question assumptions, or suggest that there is a harmonic order than undergrids our musical expression and composition (which there is). 'Chromatic' is basically a lazy term, and the conceptual slide from that to the noxious '12-tone' or 'serialism' is short. Basically, to use Wilberian terminology, 'chromaticism' and for that matter 'serialism' are forms of musical flatland. Tones, as complicated states of resonance, are reduced to mere frequency, or scaler relationship. The latter (again in Wilberian jargon) is 'subtle reductionism' - tones are merely part of a system of scales. The former is 'gross reductionism' - tones are merely physical vibrations, measured in Hz and the like. Each of those perspectives are important, but woefully partial if taken as the whole story.
When we hear a tone, or hear music, we usually don't process these as scaler operations, or as a maze of frequencies. A few people hear music this way, but that group is an overwhelming minority. That is to say that tones have subjective perspectives that are at least as important as the aforementioned objective perspectives (and nearly everyone would probably say that the subjective perspectives are several times more important). Two kinds of such subjective perspectives are those of the composer's interior, and the audience members' interiors. Music jogs these realms, and animates interior points of reference (or 'referents'). Our attachment to music is intuitive and semi-conscious. We love it deeply, and we often can't express why (or don't see a reason to - 'if you have to ask, then you'll never know' and such). But inside our selves, we know why we like music. There is a connection - perhaps it makes us dance, makes us think, makes us dream, makes us make love, makes us act, makes us witness - all that and more, perhaps. In the music we love, we feel in unison. With what is the subject of philosophy and mysticism, but our common sense feels the slippery contours of the wet kiss.
But alas, I'm far adrift from my start point, dear reader, so here I'll pause. In the spirit of the prelude, I will say that there is more to come (always and ever more with The Daily Goose). Tis enough abstract riffs on music for this moment. Are you full as I am? Shall we sing?
From today's "The Chicago Way" column by Tom McNamee of the Chicago Sun-Times:
I went looking for a carnival and found a church. I walked among dead people posed like sculptures and looked for children recoiling in fear. For adults shaking with disgust....What I did find was an air of reverence, a powerful introspection I'd never noticed before in a boring old museum.
...It's called Body Worlds, and it consists of 25 formerly alive human beings whose entire bodies have been preserved and hardened like plastic -- skin, organs, nerves, blood vessels and all. Gawking at these "plastinated" corpses, we finally see exactly what we are made of, every bone, intestine, tendon and muscle.
Here is the museum's website. In Chicago, there is a buzz about this exhibit like none I've seen. Hannah, Ben, and I plan to see it in the next couple weeks, so I'll have a report. It might be tough for me to absorb the exhibit without thought of Alex Grey's anatomical artwork. But I'll say this: if Body Worlds doesn't make me forget about Grey's stuff, then that says something, perhaps, about the deep quality of the exhibit (or lack thereof). My hope is that it takes my breath away. My guess is that it will. I've seen pictures. It seems pretty hot. BTW, here's the general website for Body Worlds, as well.
Over the weekend, Hannah and I drove three hours to stay with my Ma and her fiance Rick at their house in Grand Rapids, Mich. That we live in Chicago makes it easier to see them and our other family, which is in the Chicago/Milwaukee nexus. (Milwaukee is just an outer-ring suburb of Chicago, anyway. I can say that because I grew up in Milwaukee.)
Ma is excited to be a GRANDma. She's been great and supportive. Early on, she sent along several books on pregnancy. She has started to plan a shower for Hannah that will bring together her family on the south side of the Chicagoland area. And she has been talking (yeah, she loves to talk) about her experiences when she was pregnant with me and my brother, Christopher.
This weekend, we planned to do just one thing. Because GRapids is so mellow, we like to keep things on the chill side. So after the requisite tour through GRapids, orchestrated by Rick (who is very good at being a tour guide), we did our one planned thing. For the first time in my life, and in Hannah's life, we went to Babies 'R' Us.
You know, I expected the worst side of the baby-thing industry. I expected the equivalent to Best Buy - a mateial-sensory overload of crib bumpers, musical mobiles, strollers, and diapers. I expected a head ache and an internal scream. But it wasn't too bad, for a big ole store. Actually, it wasn't bad at all. We had a very nice time, kind of a hoot, even. Ma & Rick bought us a crib-set (farm animal theme), a walkie-talkie baby monitor, some crib sheets, The Bean's first blankie, all of which are needed and cute. Plus, we peeped a couple items we'd only seen online or in ads: the baby-bjorn and the mini-co-sleeper, both of which are on our baby registry. Most of all, it was nice to feel Ma and Rick's energy and love for The Bean. At the last moment, Rick tossed a little ducky finger puppet into the cart, right before check-out. Baby's first finger puppet. Aww, Rick! Aww, Ma!
The rest of the weekend was mellow. After the baby store was a late lunch at a GRapids eat-spot favorite called "Ruby's". My god, we had so much bread. Our experience was like a tapas restaurant without the Spanish. American tapas, if you will. The five appetizers we shared all had bread, plus there was bread pudding for dessert. Is that much bread in one meal even legal? Call the carb polizei!
Anyway, after a slow drive home, we hung and watched the early Hugh Grant flick Impromptu - a period piece about the composer Chopin and his band of artist friends, and one of my all-time faves - and we watched the Hanks/Zeta-Jones/Spielberg vehicle The Terminal, which I thought was quite subtle, and I liked quite a bit. All that with lots of great food cooked up by Ma and Rick - and who can complain? To max and relax with couches, cable, and catamounts (as in the Vermont basketball team in the NCAA tourney, on the tube), I can say this. The Rapids, yesssirreee, were grand.
Our "blogger who but moonlights as a human", aka Coolmel, offers thoughts that sketch a middle ground between 'group think is good / group think is bad'. Elsewhere, a discussion thread on g.t. has popped on the World of Ken Wilber online board. On a different and more personal sense, Paul Salamone examines the value of integral theory in light of spiritual practice, in an entry at GenerationSit.org. On a related line, Dan Allison looks at a core premise of integral theory. Also check out a May 2004 essay by David Jon Peckinpaugh, called Shut-Ins. And the light gets juicy.
In better news, Skyler is still doing amazingly with the "magic ear." The other day when we were in the car, out of nowhere he said, "Mom, I'm glad I have my magic ear. I was really frustrated and really angry that I couldn't hear all the time!" For every second of heartbreak at what my baby must have endured for who knows how long, there is an overflowing sense of joy in how much difference this little piece of technology has made in his life in only 2 weeks.
What good news! And by good news, I mean the full-grin, heart warmed kind. Little big man Skyler has a new lease on sound. That is really exciting.
That is the name of an article by the incomparable and essential Camile Paglia, published in Telegraph. I read every thing she writes, and do so many times. There is always more to grok in a Paglia essay or book. She is probably one of the two or three writers on art most influential of my own work and scholarship (and, in truth, I of course have a long way to go to even consider my work in the same sentence as hers).
The newest essay is actually an excerpt of her new book, Break, Blow, Burn. In her critique of contemporary poetry as 'weak', she offers her own view of the power of poetry, and its ability to ward off schools such as descontructionism and poststructuralism, and maintain its magic:
Animated by the breath force (the original meaning of "spirit" and "inspiration"), poetry brings exhilarating spiritual renewal. A good poem is iridescent and incandescent, catching the light at unexpected angles and illuminating human universals - whose very existence is denied by today's parochial theorists. Among those looming universals are time and mortality, to which we all are subject. Like philosophy, poetry is a contemplative form, but unlike philosophy, poetry subliminally manipulates the body and triggers its nerve impulses, the muscle tremors of sensation and speech.
The sacred remains latent in poetry, which was born in ancient ritual and cult. Poetry's persistent theme of the sublime - the awesome vastness of the universe - is a religious perspective, even in atheists like Shelley. Despite the cosmic vision of the radical, psychedelic 1960s, the sublime is precisely what poststructuralism, with its blindness to nature, cannot see. Metaphor is based on analogy: art is a revelation of the interconnectedness of the universe. The concentrated attention demanded by poetry is close to meditation.
Or as I would say, art amplifies humanity. Its metaphors, apprehended in the times and moments of our lives, fling us naked into timelessness. Our lives are endure yet change in the micro-moments of pure absorption in art. We find the cusp of the depth of the expressed subject, and make love in that mystery. The courage and love of the artist becomes our courage and love. Our souls commune in a boundaryless womb.
In any words you like, Camile Paglia is a champion of authentic artistic spirit. She stokes the fires of creative blood. She is, I believe, a true ally of all artists who aim in their artwork to offer their emotional soul, in passionate and unconditional surrender to the life, death, and celebration of our human lives.
Here's the kosmic kwote from Wired magazine's take on the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia (one of my favorite sources for general reference, as Goose readers know):
The One for All model has delivered solid results in a remarkably short time. Look up any topic you know something about - from the Battle of Fredericksburg to Madame Bovary to Planck's law of black body radiation - and you'll probably find that the Wikipedia entry is, if not perfect, not bad. Sure, the Leonard Nimoy entry is longer than the one on Toni Morrison. But the Morrison article covers the basics of her life and literary works about as well as the World Book entry. And among the nearly half-million articles are tens of thousands whose quality easily rivals that of Britannica or Encarta.
What makes the model work is not only the collective knowledge and effort of a far-flung labor force, but also the willingness to abide by two core principles. The first: neutrality. All articles should be written without bias. Wikipedians are directed not to take a stand on controversial subjects like abortion or global warming but to fairly represent all sides. The second principle is good faith. All work should be approached with the assumption that the author is trying to help the project, not harm it.
That is a lot to expect from the free-wheel nature of the web, and its users. But somehow it works. The site is a testament to the fact that intelligent and moral humanity is alive and well in the 21st century.
Want a brief sketch of how to operate fully in today's art world? Then you ought to absorb my essay, What is Integral Art?, posted here. Write me with questions or thoughts if you got 'em. Otherwise, do enjoy.
In light of the recent brew-haha over at Harvard about its president's comments on sexual differences, The Guardian's Helena Cronin offers a most cogent elucidation of evolutionary differences between males and females (broadly seen at the phylogenetic, or 'species' level).
Her kosmic kwote (one of many possible):
These differences are not recent or artificial or arbitrary. They have deep evolutionary reasons, which are well understood. Sexual reproduction as we know it began with one sex specialising slightly more in competing for mates and the other slightly more in caring for offspring. This divergence became self-reinforcing, widening over evolutionary time, with natural selection proliferating and amplifying variations on the differences, down the generations, in every sexually reproducing species that has ever existed. Thus, from this slight but fundamental initial asymmetry, flow all the characteristic differences between males and females throughout the living world. Now, 800 million years later, in our species as in all others, these differences pervade what constitutes being male or female, from brains to bodies to behaviour.
Closer to the ground, at the personal (or ontogenetic) level, we see that every person has access to 'masculine' and 'feminine' dispositions. (I outline the supportive research here, part of a longer essay on how to apply this knowledge to artistry.) Thus men have masculine and feminine sides, and women have masculine and feminine sides. We are humans, not robots, and we have in our native capacity a great many attitudes, behaviors, perspectives, and of course fears. Sometimes we are simply scared of what the other disposition might feel like, or how it might be perceived by others. Thus, logically, you might fear fullness.
Are you a decisive decision-maker, or do you like to go with the flo
