TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Earthquakes and aftershocks rattled western Iran one after another, flattening villages and sending frightened homeowners into the streets. By Friday morning 70 people were dead, 1,200 wounded, and thousands homeless.
The death toll would have been much higher, residents said, but police used loudspeakers to tell townspeople to sleep outside after a 4.7-magnitude quake struck Thursday evening.
In the age of mass media, American culture has displayed an unequaled fascination with both celebrities and disasters. Andy Warhol was one of the first American artists to investigate this cultural obsession, in a body of silkscreen paintings created in the mid-1960s that drew their source materials from the magazines, films, and newspapers of American postwar consumer culture. Organized by the Walker Art Center and curated by Douglas Fogle, ANDY WARHOL/ SUPERNOVA will bring together more than 25 examples of the artist's early silkscreen paintings, juxtaposing his iconic serial images of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Elvis Presley with the artist's evocative and at times disturbing appropriations of newspaper images of car crashes, electric chairs, and other horrifying manifestations of disaster.
Pink will be the color of the new West Side elevated train line, the Chicago Transit Authority board said today.
The CTA board had asked schoolchildren from kindergarten through 8th grade to submit 200-word essays nominating a color for the new "L" line, which will begin operating in June.
Red, brown, blue, orange, green, purple and yellow were taken, but the rest of the spectrum was open – and pink today emerged as the winner. The new service henceforth will be known as the Pink Line.
The author of the winning essay will receive a $1,000 a savings bond, recognition in signs on buses and trains and an opportunity to be among the first to ride the new line.
At the core of the legacy of European classical music is the technique called polyphony. Here is my definition of polyphony: You sing a song, a good song that sounds fine all by itself. I sing a song that sounds just as fine all by itself. Yet when we sing together, something happens: the two songs while distinctly retaining their original characters, sound better together than separately. The union is more saisfying than the separation. The two songs might, incidently, be quite different from one another, or they might be similar. The could, in fact, be indentical but begin at different moments, as in a round. In any case, the contrapuntal tenet is that individual integrity find its transcendence in collective expression. This technique, perfected in the sixteenth century and practiced with increasing rarity today, is, in its simplest form, as accessible to each of us as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."
Imagine yourself and your most intimate friend in a deep conversation, feeling one another's feelings while talking soul talk. Effortlessly your speech turns into music: two braided instruments, a clarinet and a cello, or a French horn and a trombone, or two alto flutes, or a soprano saxophone and an electric bass. What would that sound be?
I'm playing with this flash controller. To listen to the music, you may have to additionally click on the bottom grey circle. Strange little controller, this thing is. Must futz with some more, but have at it.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Surgeons operated on a 2-month-old Pakistani girl Tuesday to remove two fetuses that had grown inside her while she was still in her mother's womb, a doctor said.
Robert Hughes (in The Guardian) captures the semantic mind-fuck:
Once, movements and works that no longer seem to match up with modernism as we understand it used to call themselves modernist. In Barcelona, the modernists were architects like Josep Puig I Cadafalch, Lluís Domènech I Montaner and even Antoni Gaudi, all of whose work fairly groaned beneath the weight of its historical references, exuberant natural detail and symbolic narratives - the very opposite of what people at the Bauhaus were thinking about.
Would you call a concert-house ceiling encrusted with giant polychrome pottery roses, each the size of a cabbage, "modernist"? But that was what Domenech, the star of Catalan modernism, did in his masterpiece, the Palace of Catalan Music, a building almost unimaginably remote from the products and ideas of northern modernist architects and theorists like Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, who wanted to strip all ornament from buildings and, like Euclid, "look on Beauty bare".
... In 1900 Paris, l'art moderne was not machine culture at all. It was organic, luscious and hysterically decorative - what we now call art nouveau, whose twining whiplash curves (or noodles) were the polar opposite of machine metaphors.
But gradually the meaning of "modernism" settled down to its present form, based on utopian fancies, standardisation, industrial materials like chrome and plate glass, abstraction and a vehement ambition to make a new world, not just a new art. Design - the rethinking from zero on up of everything from teapots to whole cities - was imagined as potentially all-powerful.
That last point about "design" raises an interesting question for artists. To what extent does every detail in one's work of art need be there for a reason?
Artwork is, in part, avant-garde to the degree its features large and small either bow to convention, are preconventional, or are beyond conventional (and thus post-conventional). Avant garde art will tend heavily towards the latter, which is a big reason such artwork is difficult to talk about at first for those audiences. It is not that such avant garde art is difficult, per se, to follow along or grok, because such art, being post-conventional, has been produced by definition from a sensibility that understands general conventions, including the normal manners of perception that general audiences have for their artwork, and then knowingly breaks those 'rules', which means redraws lines previously held dear.
This is a crucial point, and it is exactly what separates post-conventional from pre-conventional—in the former, the creator artists is versed in the semiotic dynamics of object and audience perception; whereas in the latter, the artist is essentially naive to how perception of their artwork operates in other people, and is driving the car without really knowing (or just barely knowing) proper driving technique, how a car functions, how others drive, or the rules of the road.
Thus in order to truly understand avant garde art, one must know the common conventions—which means rhythms (including formal gestures, patterns, structures, breaks, points of emphasis and de-emphasis, and more). These play with the expectations of audiences, who aren't thinking about any of this technical stuff but rather are looking for a feeling of narrative and emotional culmination. Both narrative and culmination are matters of rhythm, no matter the discipline of art. In art, surface appeal is first, then emotional appeal, and only later any rational or intellectual insight. That is the overall rhythm of perception, but within each is a rhythm as well. ("Spiritual" appeal is a more difficult topic that deserves far longer treatment than here. But certainly there is the 'quasi'-spiritual reaction to art that can happen at any time, basically if a person says so. Very troubling.)
Most people, when they turn to art to provide aesthetic experience, are looking to escape too much thinking. But it does not follow that the artist does not put a large degree of training, thinking, and purposefulness into the production of their work (as well as intuition). Or, at least, it wouldn't follow for the artist hoping for post-conventional art.
Thus to return to my initial question—To what extent does every detail in one's work of art need be there for a reason?—I believe that in the best art, of today as well as the past, the artist is extremely aware of every detail of their artwork. No nuance goes unexamined. To the beginner this may sound like a recipe for existential angst. But the experienced artist knows that certain features of their artwork are required else people simply won't relate with the art object. Thus certain particular features of the artwork, or even the overal ordering of it as a whole, might take on the character of convention in some way. But they are still examined, considered, and then kept in.
But the choice to do so always has deeper intent. Convention can be employed so that the deeper experience has a chance to be responded to. Convention might be partially or even completely cut away, not making the cutting room floor. Or it may stay because it helps to foster a fuller sense of the parts as well as the whole. The convention in this case (it may be, for example, the choice of backbeat by the drummer, or reverb put on the bass trick) carries semantic sway; it has currency, in the electrical sense. To the extent cutting happens, the artwork is by degrees more avant garde (but not necessarily 'better', of course.)
This is why so much of the best pop music is, structurally speaking, ordered in much the same way (verse, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, etc.) People who listen to pop music do so in a certain frame of mind that needs those common banks of the river to be there, sonically. And this is, simultaneously, why pop music is by definition only considered historically avant garde (i.e., avant garde only in the time of the Beatles and their contemporaries). No pop music today is avant garde if it adopts novelty only at its surface (lyrics, instrumentation, timbre) and not at its deeper structures (musical as well as lyrical).
What is left is music that may adopt the Warholian Pop strategy (namely, using recognizable icons in whatever artistic discipline) but that is structured post-conventionally; i.e., beyond but experienced in the traditional verse-chorus-bridge (or 'VCB') in the case of music. I do believe that pop/rock music can again be authentically avant garde, however; to do so requires heavy soul-lifting as well as deep education and experience in the history of music from around the world. It requires plenty of artistic experiments. Else it will continue to be plagued by stale, unexamined recycling of conventions 50 years old.
The way out of most any metaphysical knot when it comes to art object philosophy is the always-already assumption that the soul connection of art belongs to everyone, no matter from what culture or through what level of formal complexity of the object. I fully believe this, which is why pop music (conventional as ever, but still relatively innovative within those boundaries of VCB and its instrumentation, lyrics, and depth) can inspire. Same goes for any kind of Pop Art. The simplest can be the most soulful. But the converse is also true—sometimes, the most complex can be utterly profound.
All of which is more reinforcement for the general impulse to examine everything about your artwork. Make every little choice for a reason; it must serve not you, but the artwork's capacity to evoke experience for others. Let the work itself determine its own form, not the other way around. The artwork is like a well-stitched veil—ornate as well as transparent. It sounds like a paradox and it is. Art is funny like that.
After we got home last night, I opened a letter from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. It was very nice news. The 2006 CAAP Grant I applied for last November was approved. I applied specifically to pay for more lessons with W.A. Mathieu, my composition teacher (8 to be precise; I got funds for 6). I heard that several hundred artists applied; most get some kind of grant. Chicago is artist-friendly as well as forward-looking.
Here's the general info on the CAAP Grant:
The Community Arts Assistance Program (CAAP) provides support to new and emerging artists and arts organization projects that address needs in the area of professional, organizational, and artistic development.
Those who seek a grant must show specific purposes that the money will be used for something concrete and directly related to making art, completing art, or training for either/both. Living expenses do not qualify, which I think is in general the right way to go.
That this grant requires pragmatism (a discernible, if even quantifiable) end-result is what, for me, makes this program something that other cities, towns, and localities ought consider emulating. This isn't about giving artists a free ride. Nobody is quitting their day job from this grant. It is about realizing that artists have something unique to offer to culture, and a bit of financial help to do so encourages artists to get their ducks in a row so that something tangible can manifest sooner rather than later.
It was helpful to even fill out the grant applicaiton. I had to put into words a concise sense of who I am as an artist, what my goals and directions are, and how I can reasonably get their through up to a $1000 grant.
In ten days I'll attend the orientation meeting here in the Loop where funds are distributed. I'll blog about the evening. As some readers know, I'm a bit dubious about the whole "giving money to artists" enterprise. So my experimental research, almost a form of anthropology, continues into this whole world of artists seeking government money.
These are the three exhibits we saw yesterday at the Institute of Contemporary Art. All images and descriptions taken from their website.
The Holiday Home is an experiential installation exploring and quantifying areas in which the holiday home departs from modern design conventions. The orthogonal surfaces of the archetypal house are extruded and skewed creating the sculptural armature within which the dichotomies of home and holiday home are played out. The new architectural shape emulates escapism, the expectation of a holiday as removed from the everyday experiential routine. The interplay of what is real and what is virtual transpires on a number of levels touching on ideas of collective memory and phenomenological perceptions.
As part of Philadelphia's citywide celebration of Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania has commissioned artist Brian Tolle to create a new work.... After months of reading and visiting historic sites and archives throughout Philadelphia, Tolle arrived at three emblematic images. Signifying Franklin's genius for invention and politics, his enlightened philosophy of independence, tempered by humor and pragmatism, these images are: an electric snake (after Franklin's famous political cartoon "Join or Die" inciting the importance of unification); a brilliant sun burst (when the Constitution was finally signed, Franklin declared that the sun carved on the back of President Washington's chair was rising over a new nation); and Franklin's face engraved on the $100 dollar bill (Franklin's printing press minted the first American currency). As room-scale elements these images are realized with a graphic punch-which the populist Franklin would certainly appreciate -- in an installation composed of painting, printing, mural, and sculpture. Presented within the context of the Franklin tercentenary and today's heightened political climate, this installation celebrates Franklin as an iconic revolutionary.
Gone Formalism addresses new ideas about formalism as they relate to contemporary art by a small group of artists. This group exhibition asks, "What is formalism now?" Even as it continues to define art objects by properties of line, color, and space, contemporary formalism is variously described as intuitive, psychologically resonant, metaphysical, self-conscious, or neo-romantic. While socially relevant and even empathetic, the work does not overtly or visually reference popular culture.
I'm glad this is the case. That Wikipedia was equivalent to Encyclopedia Britanica with regard to errors always struck me as strange. Now it is clear why:
Nature magazine has some tough questions to answer after it let its Wikipedia fetish get the better of its responsibilities to reporting science. The Encyclopedia Britannica has published a devastating response to Nature's December comparison of Wikipedia and Britannica, and accuses the journal of misrepresenting its own evidence.
Where the evidence didn't fit, says Britannica, Nature's news team just made it up. Britannica has called on the journal to repudiate the report, which was put together by its news team.
Independent experts were sent 50 unattributed articles from both Wikipedia and Britannica, and the journal claimed that Britannica turned up 123 "errors" to Wikipedia's 162.
But Nature sent only misleading fragments of some Britannica articles to the reviewers, sent extracts of the children's version and Britannica's "book of the year" to others, and in one case, simply stitched together bits from different articles and inserted its own material, passing it off as a single Britannica entry.
We are going to Philadelphia, home to Twyla's Auntie Maggie, and one of our favorite cities. It will be Twyla's first aeroplane experience. Two art museums are on the docket—the Rodin Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art—plus some good walking around and thru history, and some Philly cheese steaks. So I'm Seacrest until then.
In the meantime, check the artist links to the left for fuel, go to the POLYSEMY site to sign up for the free e-newsletter, make some Cyber Art and send me a link, or just have a good time.
From Wayne Koestenbaum's brilliant biography, Andy Warhol:
It is false to say that Andy Warhol left nothing behind. He left behind his own example, the gestures and actions of a comic, heroic life; he'd rather have been called a heroine, but he was less Lois Lane and more Superman, tranforming his alien self into a costumed, metropolitan ubiquity. As well known for his odd verbal style as for his art, he stands before us as a formalist, an abstract thinker who reformed the way we see concepts, names, species, and categories. He was an organization man: interested in organisms, in originality, in organs, and in how the mind organizes cognition and memory. By collection and socializing, by making amused cameo appearances, by producing abundant sculptures, paintings, prints, drawings, films, photographs, videos, time capsules, and books, Andy organized and boxed the world into digestible units, modular perceptual containers that can be stacked, repeated, and counted, and that might last forever. Above all, he was a maker, in love with productivity: without apparent self-consciousness or inhibition, he produced, ceaselessly. The seed of great art is impulse, not restraint.
We at the magazine are counting the days until we both update the current website beyond its "coming soon" message and start taking payments for 1-yr subscriptions that are (I think) generously priced at $9.
In the meantime, be sure to pop over to POLYSEMY's site and take a moment to get signed up for the e-newsletter. That way, you'll know the moment subscriptions are offered, as well as be set up to receive all the new and updates about the goings-on with POLYSEMY Magazine as they happen.
A magazine "for artists, by artists" is about to get off the ground. Check the 1st Press Release to find out who's involved with this outfit. I hope y'all are as excited about this as we are. As publisher and editor-in-chief, I'm genuinely thrilled that we are as close to release of the magazine that we are.
Some of my most favorite music is from Giovanni De Chiaro, Americal classical guitarist extraordinaire. Hannah and I listen to his performances of Scott Joplin works all the time on roadtrips. He has transcribed and then recorded the entire Scott Joplin catalog for fingerstyle guitar. This is a monumental technical accomplishment that is topped by its peerless musicality. I can personally attest to the technical difficulty of performing Joplin's rags, cakewalks, and two-steps on guitar. You are required to change fret positions quickly without losing any momentum; which is the case for most difficult classical guitar music and these works are no different.
Joplin's music is, of course, seminal to the American music tradition. It is properly considered "popular" or "folk music" that was taken to new depths of formal sophistication (now its a classical form) without loss of popular appeal. I see the slowly unfolding ragtime tradition as like a sculpture that American composer return to again and again from which to steal ideas and inspiration. Its melodies are immediate and poignant, and its rhythms appealing and embodied. I believe, still, that this music remains both misunderstood as well as under-appreciated.
De Chiaro's work is a big step towards change that. In addition to his music (hard to find, but available through emusic.com), he penned four volumes of sheet music for all 52 of Joplin's compositions that are collectively published in a single volume by Mel Bay. With this song book, he opened doors for working classical guitarists who want to absorb and perform this material. This is an enormous step forward for the sustainability of American music; the music of course existed in its original piano form, through the hand of Joplin himself. De Chiaro offers another way for musicians to learn from a musical sensibility that pervaded the early 20th century.
I believe that love for Joplin's compositions will outlive many of those of other American composers, because of this music's stubborn listenability and still-resonant tonal substance. At the very least, he deserves an undisputed place on the pantheon of such American creators, next to the likes of Charles Ives, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and others. With De Chiaro's guitar transcriptions, the music is brought to a truly folk instrument, namely the guitar; where, because it sounds of the earth so plaintively and soulfully, it might actually truly best belong.
Jytte Klausen, in this month's Prospect, has an excellent article that retraces and contextualizes what transpired in Denmark as well as subsequently among Muslim ambassadors/Imams. Within the article is this very interesting revelation, unknown to me until now:
One of the 12 cartoons has been widely reprinted. It depicts a man who has been taken to be Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, but the image has not been understood outside Denmark. The Prophet's face is that of Sheikh Abu Laban, a notorious Danish radical cleric who achieved world fame for showing the 12 cartoons (plus a few more for extra effect) to various religious and political authorities in Egypt. The cartoon could be interpreted as suggesting that Abu Laban likes to portray himself as the Prophet, rather than as a simple besmirchment of the Prophet. But that is probably too sophisticated.
Maybe, maybe not. But this is exactly why I called for all analysis of the Cartoon Controversy to be anchored in what was actually depicted in the cartoons, iconographically with lines, colors, and words. Cultural, political, religious, psychological angles, and more, can and should be added to the analysis as evidence warrants.
But start first with the cartoons, the formal objects, and build analysis from there. Most analyses of the Cartoon Controversy have it exactly backwards. Cultural, historical, and religious factors are considered first, and actual formal cartoons last, if even at all. That is not how to properly conduct aesthetic interpretation, whether or not one considers the cartoons "art". You still are bound by what anchors this entire situation, namely the cartoons produced by 12 cartoonists and published in a Danish newspaper. Our obligation is to not superimpose upon the cartoons what isn't there, or what isn't implied by them.
I mean, how many people outside Denmark knew that THE INFAMOUS cartoon of the twelve protrayed Abu Laban? And doesn't that potenially change its meaning in a rather radical way?
Last week, Hannah took a picture of my childhood etch-a-sketch. She explains why here. This thing has become legendary in our family, because it has sat untouched for at least 20 years, after I did this, well, sketch of the house where I grew up, in Fox Point, Wisc. A kind of childhood realism produced when I was about 11.
This etch-a-sketch has moved from Milwaukee to Minneapolis/St. Paul to Boston to Brooklyn and now to Chicago, and it has kept its markings. Amazing, isn't it, how some things just stick around and some things don't last the time it takes to get home from the store.
After I mixed-down a composition of mine for marimba and violin this weekend, which I did for its own sake because it's been in the can for a year, I realized that not only does it belong as the first track of A Bird In The World, but that I have reached a place where I have all the tracks for this EP. Right on!
Albums seem to go like this for me; very intuitively, slowly, almost like an "it isn't happening" process. I go for months not sure where the album is heading, or if it is going at all, until—flash!—"fuck! that damn thing is an album!"
There is still work to do. I have to master all the tracks, do the liner notes, set up distribution and marketing. But it is nice to reach the "track lock" stage. I never know it is reached until I just feel it, in my gut.
I will release the album, at least, through CDBaby, iTunes, other digital distributors, as well as through this website as a Flash Album, where you can listen but not download. (Check out my other Flash Albums.)
The seven tracks of this Extended Play are comprised of, as I said above, a work for marimba and violin, a work on guitar using only harmonics, lots of piano works, and finally a piece for piano and drum machine (which I played through my guitar tube amplifer to remove all ickyness usually associated with drum machines).
A BIRD IN THE WORLD EP 01. TO GESTATE — for marimba & violin (1:31) 02. TO FLOAT — for guitar harmonics (1:29) 03. TO FLIP — for piano (0:53) 04. TO WAKE — for piano (7:06) 05. TO DREAM — for piano (3:36) 06. TO SLEEP — for piano (1:45) 07. TO FLY — for piano & drum machine (3:46)
Twyla and my father make appearances; the latter from doing dishes and the former through her cries. Both were picked up by the microphones when I was recording Suite For A Bird In The World, and I decided not the "found sound" actually worked aesthetically, or at least I think they do, and Hannah as well as several others agreed. Knowing when to say "THAT is the name" is, for me, the same as knowing when my album is done—it is like sex, because you just know when it is over. Don't you.
Our problem in understanding forced schooling stems from an inconvenient fact: that the wrong it does from a human perspective is right from a systems perspective.
You can read this entire book, chapter by chapter if you click here. Hannah and I have read an excellent essay by Gatto in the book Deschooling Our Lives that Hannah recently blogged about. Gatto, you ought know, was the 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year, after previously being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. He is definitely a real education pioneer.
Coolmel wrote that he considers blogging to be his spiritual practice. I posted a comment in support of him and of such path. While me, myself, and I tend to cringe a bit at the words "spiritual practice", mainly out of undesired semiotic associations with the parts of the New Age movement that I detest, all that aside, I dig the energy. I consider my entire website to be a big Cyber Art project. And thus being a potential form of art—if you like, Pop Art + multiperspective media + interior depth—blogging can offer a clearing for spirituality as much as many form of art. It all depends upon one's intention (and then one's technic). More on that below.
You know, I have meditated silently for over 8 years, performed music countless times, and have blogged for almost three years. The most resonant moments of those three are all the same general flavor, in terms of interior feeling and potency. It is about an expansion of one's perception, the consideration and inclusion of more perspectives, and the radical realization of transcendental, organic life-force. (And, for what its worth, these generally pale in comparison with the resonance of real love for another person as well as the birth of your child). But it is all good.
Anyway, here's what I wrote to Coolmel:
Right on, Rommel. I think blogging is a spiritual practice for you. I consider it one for myself, as well. It certainly isn't a spiritual practice in all cases, of course. It has entirely to do with one's intention—upstream from the links, images, words, pixels, and upstream from the clickety-clack of fingers on keyboard and mouse. If the source doesn't nurture discreet intuition, then it won't flow from the mouth either.
Upstream from all that, if, as like the practice of art, a person treats blogging as the downstream product of an open inquiry into the nature of self; of enmeshment vs attachment vs detachment; of pure play—then the practice of blogging can be as spiritually transformative as anything else.
And given that blogging, in the multimedia/multidisciplinary form that both you and I favor (i.e., words + sounds + images, both still and moving), is leading the ever-deepening edge of Communal Media Art, or Cyber Art, on a planet-wide stage, via the Myth of an Integral Worldview operator, then I have no doubt whatsoever that blogging represents a real contribution to the history of art.
So cheers to that. Never forget to keep it real. And keep on keepin' the faith.
City planners Thursday cleared for takeoff a new architectural landmark on the city's lakeshore, a 124-story, 2,000-foot-tall building described as a celebration of Chicago's history and spirit, especially its willingness to take a chance on a half-a-billion-dollar investment.
And it is two blocks away from where I work! A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to work across the street while the Frank Gehry bandshell was being built. Currently, I work a block away from the in-progress 92-story Trump International Tower. And perhaps in a year, I'll be a qwik jaunt away from this beauty as ground is broken.
Before cops threw the book at him, Jakub Fik threw something unusual at them -- his penis.
Fik, 33, cut off his own penis during a Northwest Side rampage Wednesday morning. When confronted by police, Fik hurled several knives and his severed organ at the officers, police said. Officers stunned him with a Taser and took him into custody.
"We took him out without any serious injury, with the exception of his own," said Chicago Police Sgt. Edward Dolan of the 16th District.
Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital reattached Fik's penis Wednesday, sources said. He was listed in good condition Thursday, according to hospital spokesman Andrew Buchanan, who declined to comment further.
She's been giving a lot of thought to the path we'll choose for Twyla's education. She wrote a great blog entry today that expressed her current thinking and research. It also involved some remembering of her own love of learning that was instilled in her as a child:
When I was little, Dad would take my sister and I to the big public library in downtown Milwaukee. I would go straight to the card catalogue, look for a subject I was interested in (Egypt, Russia, Horses, Farming, and Voodoo are some that I can remember now, off the top of my head). I'd write down all the numbers of the books I found, look for the section they were in, pull books off the shelf and sort through, eventually arriving at a respectable stack worthy of checking out. It was a big deal the first time I got my own library card, and didn't check out on Dad's.
Looking back on it, I wish that I could have done that all the time. Taken dance classes, done research on my own...Sought out teachers on subjects that peaked my interest. There was this one time, I think it was in the sixth grade, that we started a section on the USSR/Russia in our social studies book. I whipped through the reading while the teacher was going over the main points. When it was finished I thought, "That's it?! Well, this stinks!
So you should read that piece and then check out her overall blog for all the recent pictures of Twyla that she has taken. This includes a pic of yours truly in my bath robe. Oy.
Hannah and I watched a screener of this film last night. It is one-part biography of eccentric curator Henry Geldzahler and one-part documentary about the rise of Pop Art in New York City. We both liked this film quite a bit (though it is definitely uneven), and more importantly it stirred good conversation.
What is especially notable about Geldzahler is how he found it necessary to converse, party, and commune with working artists—Stella, Warhol, Poons, and more, in their creative workspaces. This is precisely how it should be. He travelled the country, as well as all of New York's burroughs, getting to know young working artists who were unknowingly tapped into something larger that they all shared. He was accepted into artists' circles because everyone considered him a true friend to art. A veteran of Yale and Harvard art history departments (before they were ruined by poststructuralism), I connect him with McLuhan in that both were well-versed in classical art and leveraged that exposure for an informed consciousness of which of the newest art and artists were offering something truly new to the vast pantheon of the world's art, and which weren't going anywhere. And as Lynne Munson details in her important book Exhibitionism: Art In An Era of Intolerance, the National Endowment of the Arts collapsed into political shambles after Geldzalher, its original Visual Arts Program director, left after getting the agency off to an excellent start as a real supporter of working artists.
It is impossible for me not to consider the current art world in light of this film, especially where the leading edge of it lies. I see Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Performance Art, Expressionist Art, Surrealist Art, and many other avant-garde sub-trends in contemporary art as being lights in the emerging chandelier of Integral Art. Integral Art is transdisciplinary and supports the view that all arts ought be knit together. Formally speaking, it is informed by the sensual immediacy of Pop Art, the intellectuality of Conceptual Art, the situationalism of Performance Art, the interiority of Expressionist Art, and the psychadelicism of Surrealist Art. It is further informed by whatever insights artists find in their own journeys through art past and present.
Integral Art absorbs the past as well as burns it. The biggest thing is to be tapped into the transcendental, organic now, else the art will simply die on the vine. And of course we cannot get caught up in detailed preconceptions about what Integral Art should be, because that kills intuition even before it takes root. These general characteristics are far from detailed, and rather broadly set the stage so that Integral Art does not unknowingly reinvent old wheels. That, along with demystifying the creative process, is basically the role of art philosophy as I see it, if it aims to be useful touchstone to working artists and not a needless obstacle that pretends to be something more than it really is. Such is my approach, anyway.
There has been a credible death threat placed upon the 12 signatories of the Manifesto (see here and here). The 12 have responded by asking all those who support their manifesto sign their own names to the manifesto. See this Andrew Sullivan post for more info. To sign it, simply email your name to prochoix@prochoix.org.
Normally new rivers, seas and mountains are born in slow motion. The Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is another story. A new ocean is forming there with staggering speed -- at least by geological standards. Africa will eventually lose its horn.
POLYSEMY Magazine colleague Tuff Ghost (wanna know his real name? poke around here) made a post about a "Vote for your favorite American poem" online thingy. He particularly said he was "looking" at yours truly, and so here's what I wrote:
And I'm looking at YOU, buddy.
I agree with William that Howl ought be on the list. I could go on and on in this manner, including that the poems from Hughes, Stevens, and Williams included here are not even the most popular (or for that matter, best) of theirs ... and in fact in that constructive light I will consider my own favorite poems and do a blog entry on those at some point soon. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I could not possibly choose my own favorite from this list when it includes these of Dickinson, Eliot, Poe, and Whitman unless there was a gun to my head. Even then, it would depend upon the particular day that the gun touched my temple, the make of the pistol, and what I ate for breakfast that morning.
Today (Walther P99 semiautomatic; with scrambled eggs, garlicky black beans, coffee), I'd say Song of Myself, because, like America itself, it is a vast scape of mystical, transcendentalist perception of divinity in all things
This + many other pictures of our 4 days in the City of Brotherly Love. 
He's looking for some perspective on this decision. 
Some of my most favorite music is from Giovanni De Chiaro, Americal classical guitarist extraordinaire. Hannah and I listen to his performances of Scott Joplin works all the time on roadtrips. He has transcribed and then recorded the entire Scott Joplin catalog for fingerstyle guitar. This is a monumental technical accomplishment that is topped by its peerless musicality. I can personally attest to the technical difficulty of performing Joplin's rags, cakewalks, and two-steps on guitar. You are required to change fret positions quickly without losing any momentum; which is the case for most difficult classical guitar music and these works are no different.
Joplin's music is, of course, seminal to the American music tradition. It is properly considered "popular" or "folk music" that was taken to new depths of formal sophistication (now its a classical form) without loss of popular appeal. I see the slowly unfolding ragtime tradition as like a sculpture that American composer return to again and again from which to steal ideas and inspiration. Its melodies are immediate and poignant, and its rhythms appealing and embodied. I believe, still, that this music remains both misunderstood as well as under-appreciated.
De Chiaro's work is a big step towards change that. In addition to his music (hard to find, but available through 
I believe that love for Joplin's compositions will outlive many of those of other American composers, because of this music's stubborn listenability and still-resonant tonal substance. At the very least, he deserves an undisputed place on the pantheon of such American creators, next to the likes of Charles Ives, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and others. With De Chiaro's guitar transcriptions, the music is brought to a truly folk instrument, namely the guitar; where, because it sounds of the earth so plaintively and soulfully, it might actually truly best belong.
Last week, Hannah took a picture of my childhood etch-a-sketch. She explains why 
After I mixed-down a composition of mine for marimba and violin this weekend, which I did for its own sake because it's been in the can for a year, I realized that not only does it belong as the first track of A Bird In The World, but that I have reached a place where I have all the tracks for this EP. Right on! 
INGREDIENTS
If you haven't already, check out the portfolio of artist 
Hannah and I watched a screener of this 