I found this the 2001 obituary from the Telegraph of the 20th century giant:
In his writings Gombrich persistently argued against "abstractions" and the collective niches of ages and periods. He believed in people, not periods; artists, not styles. "All collectivism has its dangerous side," he said. "It leads to talk of Our Nation, Our Age. I very much dislike this sense of isolation and superiority. We are not all that different from our past. It was governed, as our life is, by many accidents, tragedies and luck."
And I also like his description of what others call the historical Mannerist age, from The Story of Art:
...when artists became conscious and over-conscious of the great achievements of the past that weighed on them...
In that definition, our current is clearly a Mannerist time for many artists. Better put: Mannerist is a condition which might apply at any given time of history, including the present, given the collective tendancies of an artist culture to be by degrees more or less aware of the past.
And as to the value of ages and periods of art, these are useful for introductions to the history of art, but ought be taken lightly and never as rigid formal standards by which to value or devalue art past or present. Henry Geldzahler adopted Gombrich's view in that "the history of art is the history of individuals". I mean, look around and consider all of your friends who are working artists. Even presuming that a couple might become well-known or even famous, that we all make various choices in the paths of our lives, with regard to the art we produce, and that by and large we have an informed, at times reverent, but overall agnostic relationship with the art that came before us, and that pure survival comes into play so often, and even keeps us from finishing our art objects when we'd prefer, and that life, love, and obstacles inspire and interfere on a daily basis, and you start to see the merit of Gombrich's view, and perhaps of an overall narrative of the history of art based upon a reordering of this kind.
From her seminal essay "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders":
A feeling or respect for the past is the great gift we can bequeath to our students, trapped in the busy, bright, brazen present. Even leftist professors these days lack a sense of history. Arguments against the canon have come suspiciously often from banal, uncultivated careerists who, whatever their current prominence, lack scholarly distinction. Individual authors or works may go in and out of favor (both Shakespeare and Bach had to be revived by Romanticism), but the overall line of Western culture will never change. Every woman, black, or Oriental raised and writing in English is a product of that main line. The piddling ignoramuses who deny there is a distinct, discernible, objective Western tradition are just woozy literati. That is line absolutely, concretely manifest in the visual arts: at the temple complex of King Zoser at Saqqara are the papyrus-capped pillar forms invented by Imhotep which would be transmitted to us by Greece and Rome. Freshman from the poorest neighborhoods are amazed to discover that, cresting the columns of Philadelphia banks, churches, museums, libraries, and civic buildings, are the fronds and curls of Egyptian plant life, in 4,500 years of historical memory. The whole racial argument about the canon falls to nothing when it is seen that the origins of Greek Apollonianism were in Egypt, in Africa. Go down Moses: even Judeo-Christianity sojourned in Egypt.
At the end of a rather boilerplate critique by Roger Kimball of contemporary art as, by turns, too influenced by Warhol, too unbeautiful, too untechnical, too subjucated to theory, and too unethical—all of which may be by degrees true but since these are blanket condemnations ungrounded in particular works of art as well as burdened by onerous "artistic standard", they are thus boilerplate—comes the real insight, the actual kosmic kwote:
The serious art of today tends to be a quiet affair. It takes place not at Tate Modern or the Museum of Modern Art, not in the Chelsea or TriBeCa galleries, but off to one side, out of the limelight.... This is because real art tends to involve not the latest thing, but permanent things. Permanent things can be new; they can be old; but their relevance is measured less by the buzz they create than by the silences they inspire. In other words, the future of our artistic culture is not in the hands of today's taste makers, but those whose talent, patience, and perseverance will ultimately render them the taste makers of tomorrow.
There are few human endeavors that are more noble than the dedicated artist working in general isolation, simultaneously as if it is the most important thing in the world and yet still just a piece of stuff to be worked, and doing it as response to stubborn intuition, an inner call that must be echoed in form. Doing it all, impossibly, for the love.
It's about time we start to dismantle the whole "Che was a hero" cult. Don't know what I'm talking about? Here's a Jay Nordlinger column that details his absorption by American popular culture, and here's Slate's Paul Berman:
"Che was an enemy of freedom, and yet he has been erected into a symbol of freedom. He helped establish an unjust social system in Cuba and has been erected into a symbol of social justice. He stood for the ancient rigidities of Latin-American thought, in a Marxist-Leninist version, and he has been celebrated as a freethinker and a rebel."
Now, Andy Garcia has the courage to fly against popular opinion:
Garcia Film Banned for Anti-Guevara Sentiment
Movie star Andy Garcia's controversial new movie The Lost City has been banned in parts of South America because it depicts romantic revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in a terrible light. The Ocean's Twelve star spent years trying to get the project made, only for film festival bosses and cinema chains to shun the movie because it tells the truth about the Marxist guerilla leader and the Cubans slayed as he fought to revolutionize the country and hand Fidel Castro leadership. Garcia, who wrote, directed and stars in the film, says, "There have been festivals that wouldn't show it. That will continue to happen from people who don't want to see the image of Che be tarnished and from people who support the Castro regime. He still has a lot of supporters out there. Some people think Castro is a savior, that he looks out for the kids and the poor. It's a bunch of hogwash. In the 45 years since Castro came to power, Cuba has been in the top three countries for human rights abuses for 43 of those years. People turn a blind eye to his atrocities."
I have no idea whether the film is a good film or not. But the film could be excellently or poorly made and still set out to right the historical record about public perception about Che and Castro. I have a general aversion to biopics, as well as period pieces. Period piece biopics I never, ever see. But I'll check this out if I have a chance. Garcia deserves a lot of credit for taking an artistic risk such as this. Watch the trailer here.
We three merry Ds will be taking some of the world's best indie rock bands at this year's Pitchfork Music Festival we pre-ordered our 2-day passes last month. It'll be Twyla's first major indie rock festival. Her first concert was The Pixies, in utero. She's also seen Matisyahu, the Grant Park Orchestra, and several other bands. It'll hopefully be a weekend of fun in the not-too-crazy-hot sun, and an opportunity to hear up and coming music still in raw, non-homogenized form. Feelin it already.
I found this 2003 commentary on Camille Paglia from Thomas Hibbs, via NRO. In an article that generally praises her work and passion (rightly on both counts), he finds a problem with one of Paglia's admittedly more radical proposals—that of teaching sacred religious texts as culture rather than moral code; the latter she feels will be found by the student through a cross-cultural study in ways that make sense to contemporary life, and the former allows for a non-absolutist/literalist exposure from a global perspective. Here's Hibbs, with my own reaction to follow:
Paglia senses that liberal education is about inducing wonder, informing and disciplining the imagination and the intellect, and immersing students in grand visions of human life in stories, images, and texts. She sees that the arts here overlap with religion and that the "sacred" is not necessarily an enemy of the imagination or the intellect. Yet, at times, she sounds a bit like a New Ager herself; she commends the "cosmic expansiveness" of the world religions, which contain "vast symbol-systems more challenging and complex" than the works of post-structuralism—not much of a contest there, one must admit.
The problem is that the way she describes religious texts risks distorting them before inquiry even gets started. For example, she wants religious texts to be taught as culture rather than as morality, a bifurcation utterly foreign to religious texts. Paglia's dilemma here is instructive. She faces the obstacles of the modern, self-conscious pagan, someone who cannot believe in the pagan gods in the way an unreflective ancient Roman once did, but is nonetheless attracted to its mythic structure and its rich symbolism. Paglia finds herself in a position similar to that of Nietzsche (on the central tensions in Nietzsche's thought, see the fine work of Peter Berkowitz, Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist). In a model that Paglia follows throughout Sexual Personae, Nietzsche divides human culture into the Dionysian—the chaotic, orgiastic, violence at the heart of being—and the Apollinian—the human impulse to give order and structure to the chaos through art and reason. Like Nietzsche, Paglia attributes the great achievements of culture to a delicate balance between the two gods.
But if her Dionysian-Apollinian account is correct, then reason and civilization are revealed to be at best noble lies, inspiring illusions. But does it make sense to pursue the cultivation of that which one knowingly admits to be but a veil over the violent, irrational undercurrents of nature?
Short answer—of course! Longer answer—I've never liked the notion of "truth as noble lies" and I think the whole canard of it ought be retired.
It is simply a naive view. A study of the history of ideas shows clearly that, at any given point in time, truth and facts are always provisional; there is a continuity (from ancient to contemporary) in the striving to understand reality, and humans use postulates and the best-available information to put meat on the bare skeleton of truth and facts; and these are questioned, refined, tweaked, changed, and/or replaced as our understanding, collaboration, and insights deepen. We ought be neither absolutist nor nihilist, monist nor atomist about truth and fact; we use what is as solid and sturdy as possible, but never permanent and never without humility.
And to Hibbs' point that religious texts as culture is foreign to religious texts (and presumably a bad idea, though Hibbs isn't explicit about this). I think his view is too narrow. It amounts to concluding that the Bible or the Koran aren't based upon the discipline comparative study, and that is blatantly obvious. Each, taken literally/historically, posits the singular rightness of its own presentation. But going beyond the view of singular absolutism is exactly the point, and exactly what I believe contemporary conditions require. From a methodological point of view, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and others have more or less distinct rituals, and implicitly part of each's ritual is study of the sacred texts of that particular tradition to the exclusion of others.
Paglia advocates a new methodlogy, one more broad and inclusive, given that the contemporary climate of the world is far more interdependent and global than when the sacred texts, and the rituals contained within, were first enacted. Ritual, or more broadly "technique", is rightly subservient to intuitive experience. Just as genuine art is created first by intuition and then by whatever techinques are needed for the fullest expression of that intuition (which often requires entirely new techniques), the techniques for a genuine contemporary religious/spiritual/moral approach depend upon the requirements of our age, right here and right now.
I'm unconvinced that various religious traditions really need to be updated, or that it is pragmatically possible. The risk is dilution, and attempt at reconciliation of old and new that with a result that is deeply unsatisfying to the contemporary worshipper. Religious feeling suffers badly when rituals are diminished. But, since I follow Paglia's in the advocacy of a new ritual (global-based, cross-cultural comparative study of the world's religions as historical emergence), necessarily religions in their tradition form are installed in the museum. Mind you, one can still attend church, and do so humbly and soulfully, and hold this view. More than half of the need for churches, even today, is as a social mortar.
A radical renewal of all religion's invisible, timeless spirit and motivating operators (not religious artifacts or outmoded rituals) is a long process, decades if not centuries away. But we must continue turning the wheels towards that informed renewal today. Paglia's approach is fundamental to just that. This educational methology, if put into action, will of course lead to new and perhaps unforeseeable development of rituals that respond to the spiritual needs of the contemporary person. All that is good. Religion, and religious practice, are living entities. We ought call upon the traditions for their insights and guidance so as to not reinvent old wheels. But let's follow in the steps of Huston Smith and many others to become first informed cross-culturally about the best and worst of the history of religious ideas and practices, and then be flexible enough to allow new versions of both to emerge for our religions of today and tomorrow. It is not about integrating or reconciling the various traditional religions. This is not a call for ecumenical religious thought. I believe that is impossible. It is saying, essentially, every one of them is history, and let's learn from it in order to create something more functionally fitting with our current world and the future world.
Perhaps the most penetrating conservative insight about the human condition is that human nature has no history (i.e., every new baby starts at square one, developmentally, no matter the development of the parents and native culture). We strive for art, reason, and civilization to, yes, mitigate our indigenous chaos. One of the things learned through participation in a childbirth is that nature is wild, radically so. And because that is truth, humans use and develop traditions, institutions, truths, and facts as, ultimately, provisional entities so as to foster sustainability over the generations and in the impossibly delicate threads that holds societies together at this very moment. Through today's media, technology, and transportation, it is not unpragmatic to hold that, more than ever, the planet is one entity with innumerable variations. And may just that truth be the guide for the kinds of study, contemplation, and collaboration that continue to develop in response to our contemporary human condition. And may Paglia's radical approach to the world's historical religions lead to a renewed relationship with human spirit in its most boundless, resonant form.
The fam drove down on Saturday and returned Sunday night. I do love my alma mater's campus, and the surrounds of University City. We met 11 friends (including three of their kids). We supped at my all-time favorite bar (Blueberry Hill), cafed at my favorite java joint (Meshuggah Shack), and ambled round my favorite city greens (Missouri Botanical Garden).
But to boil it all down to one moment. Me. Two friends. The grassy green campus quad. 83 degrees. No clouds. Very barefoot. The frisbee. A long while. The 683rd such occasion in my life. Heaven.
The 50-year-old Franklin resident bowled his way into history Saturday night, rolling three consecutive 300 games at Classic Lanes in Greenfield to record just the ninth 900 series in the 111-year history of certified league play.
Considered the Holy Grail of individual feats in bowling, Wukoman's 900 series came in the Saturday Night Special Men's League, one he took part in as a part-time player for the season.
The drama unfolded in front of roughly 100 other bowlers, all of whom stopped in the midst of their games once news of the series spread, and ended with Wukoman collapsing in a heap on the floor, overcome by what he'd just accomplished.
"I've been bowling for 40 years now, and I know the lanes change and the chances of getting tapped or leaving a single pin, it just happens," he said. "There's no way you're ever going to strike 36 times in a row - supposedly - because it happens so infrequently. Something like that, you never think about."
I had completely forgotten that I had blogged a revised version of "When We Make Art" when I put together my Poetry collection. But here I am looking for something else I had written when I come upon it. I could even hear it cry, "don't you care about me?" My apologies to my poem! It is now rightly installed on my Poetry collection.
UPDATE: Also added a revision and name change to "Divine Tone" (nee "Divine Canto").
...start after consecutive start, Favre wowed his faithful fans with the kinds of plays and passes few other quarterbacks in NFL history dared even attempt.
When his No. 4 jersey is retired in Green Bay and his name is added to the ring of fame atop Lambeau Field and his bust is cast for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, there'll be little doubt in any football fan's mind that he was one of the greatest ever to play the game.
But that time will have to wait.
And so will the death of my interest in football. Let's hope this last go around in the upcoming season is, if not a championship, at least a good ride around the roller coaster. I came of age at this amusement park, but it has changed in that time from something of brutal elegance to something of bland attrition—the team that wins is the team that gets hurt the least. What an utterly boring kind of unpredictability. With Favre, you get the jaw-droppingly amazing at one turn, the idiotic blunder at the next. Tis how a gunslinger ought to be; it is how the game is played; faithful to its fundamental character as a metaphor for military combat. And that is far more preferable to the last, oh, five years of the NFL's regular, over-analyzed, homogenized pap.
I've been fortunate to attend many of Favre's games in person over the last 15 years. Trust me, the entire state of Wisconsin knows all too well that Favre does stupid things from time to time. But they also know that Favre gives it all, every play of every game to the limit of his physical ability. He simultaneously considers football the most important thing in the world, yet still a kid's game not to be taken too seriously. He's broken too many receivers' fingers with his rifle of a right arm. He's always been impossible to control, only barely able to be contained. He is as impossible to pin down as the weather. And at any point in time in any game, he is capable of wielding electricity like Zeus himself. Other players might perform technically better than him over a given stretch of games. But few if any players, perhaps since the dawning of the Super Bown era, have played the game with as much soul as he, and at such an awesomely torqued level for so long. Perhaps I have a certain appreciation for his position, given that I played quarterback into college. But I doubt that even casual observers don't see something special with Favre; some air or aura about him when he takes the snap and drops back to improvise. Plain and simple, Favre throws lightning. And you can't help but feel its charge.
A researcher from Darwin, Australia, says he believes that many works attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach were actually written by the composer's second wife.
His second wife was a copyist, but may also have composed many of his pieces.
Martin Jarvis, a professor at Charles Darwin University School of Music, has been studying Bach's work for more than 30 years.
Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach, is traditionally believed to have been a copyist for Bach and her handwriting is known from many of his original scores.
But Jarvis believes she may actually have written some of the best-loved pieces herself, including Six Cello Suites, some of the Goldberg Variations, and the first prelude of the Well-tempered Clavier Book I.
This is quite notable, if true in some way. I'm most surprised that the Cello Suites are here considered musically immature, from a formal perspective. Those pieces kill me everytime, no matter who the performer is (assuming a talented one).
But the thought of this whole thing startles, doesn't it? If some of Bach's works are by Anna; and if Shakespeare was actually Marlowe; if Homer was, well, who knows; if some of Ellington was Strayhorn; and so on...well, what does that say for our reverence of them? What, precisely, are we revering?
Frank, founder of IntegralWorld.net, published author, and early advocate for my own work, has started a blog. Here's my comment from a recent entry of his. Read his to get the full context:
Glad to see you blogging, Frank. I applaud your courage here as well as in your pioneering website.
To the last commenter, given my experience within I-I for 15 months, it is definitely "agree"; and for some (too many), "worship".
To Frank's point that "inviting specialists, critics and even sceptics to the table would be a good start." -- I don't hold this view, for I believe rather than encouraging free inquiry within an integral worldview, it encourages meglomania for all involved.
Integral, as a philosophy ever-developing, is rightly considered decentralized. The teat is now everywhere. The sober view holds that it always has been, much to the dismay of those who yearn for a Berlin Wall around "Capital I Integral". What folly.
Rather than feeding consolidation, I prefer the continued emergence of independent, even maverick, free-thinking, informed creativity in the blogosphere and elsewhere, that renews old truths, breaks through philosophic encampment, and is outwardly intuitive -- namely integrating the old and the new in the public sphere.
To this point: "More and more, celebrating one's own integral ideas in a safe environment has become the general practice in the integral scene."
I'm curious, Frank, what specifics you have in mind here? This seems like a very fruitful topic to explore. I'm sure there are many informed perspectives on this.
Well, here is something concrete the rich and famous can sacrifice for the little guy and for the environment: their views.
And, let's be honest, it's not a huge sacrifice. If Teddy [Kennedy] really thinks his fat—or, if you prefer, "phat"—crib on the beach will be ruined by the prospect of having to look at some windmills 5-13 miles offshore, he can swap pads with me.
The opponents of the project have made every ludicrous claim in the book, proving that environmentalists will even lie to other environmentalists. The windmills will kill whales, cause oil spills, ruin fishing, etc. None of these things are true, and the honest opponents know it. This is simply NIMBY politics pure and simple.
The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim - for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives - is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High.
SOLDIER FIELD LOSES STATUS AS NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK
And Blair Kamin, Chicago Tribune architecture critic, himself no fan of the new stadium, takes sweet solace:
Perhaps the best way to grasp the power and wisdom of the government's decision is to imagine the statement it would have made by keeping Soldier Field on the national historic landmark list: Open season on the nation's most venerated places. Now, at least, they're safer -- even if Chicago bears the cost of this victory at its officially disfigured Soldier Field.
Contra to several friends, I actually like the new-meets-old juxtaposition of the new field. I don't often when it comes to architecture, but here, it just works for me—one of the exceptions to my traditionalism, I suppose. I find it thrilling in its audacity. And it says to me that what happens inside these walls (which is usually American football) is both steeped in the dynamic of brutal, physical war (as historic as anything) as well as radically technological and inhumane, which is exactly what football is. I sympathize with Kamin's sentiment, of course, that of holding a conservative stance towards America's venerated buildings (I particularly love the new baseball stadium in St. Louis, for its bow to understatement). There are a million ways to design or redesign a sports stadium, so naturally it could have been done better (and worse). The columns-meet-curvy steel motif does connect with the overall timbre of extant Chicago architecture. Go to Michigan Ave and see how the contemporary Millenium Park also melds colonades with plump metal. There's a mystery to the mix if done with care. My guess is that the new Soldier Field will come to be loved by many, tolerated by more, militantly hated by a relative few.
Of course the stadium has already been struck by lightning once. Nathan Vasher's NFL-record 108-yd return of a missed field goal for a touchdown—the longest play in league history. Watch it here.
...Here's one of my opinions: when it comes to poetry, it's better to know one poem Truly than to have only a passing acqaintance with hundreds. If, like most people in this day and age, you're not inclined to sit down with a volume of poetry and really read it, but you still want to cultivate some appreciation for the art, then get intimate with just one poem. Make it yours for a year at least, if not a lifetime. Read this poem as often as you can. Read it out loud. A poem has not been genuinely kissed until you read it out loud. Whisper it, sing it, shout it, dance it, squeeze it, nuzzle it, eat and drink it....
I've made the red sidebar at left static. So as you scroll downwards, it stays put. I just want to look at you the whole time, my pretty pretty reader...
While visually this is a subtle change, under the hood I know this might potentially cause strange things, depending on your browser. With every improvement comes new kinds of badness. Please let me know if you are experiencing some sort visual snag that strikes you as weird.
In order to get the full red side bar, you may need to resize it slightly. Your browser window should be tall enough so that you can see the "About this Site" white link, under the "Support MatthewDallman.com" button and the Electric Flow sign up. Resize as necessary. I'm pretty sure that most monitor sizes should be tall enough to be able to show the whole dang thing.
Twyla Tour Spring 2006 continues this weekend. Her fifth city in six weeks. We are meeting friends in St. Louis for a fun little thang, a college reunion.
If I had graduated in four yrs, this would be my 10th yr reunion. Since it took me a super-senior year, alas the truth is that this is my 9th yr, but in the case of meeting friends who did it in four, who's counting.
I'll never turn down a chance to lollygag around my alma mater. The beauty of the campus was the main reason I went there.
Most of the group of eight have kids, and it's the first time meeting them for all of us. So I'll be in St. Louis as a father for the first time. Man, life is weird.
Enough about Bonds. Baseball is a great game, for reasons like this:
SAN DIEGO -- Julio Franco doesn't intend to slow down any time soon. Franco became the oldest player in major league history to hit a home run when he connected for a two-run, pinch-hit shot in the eighth inning Thursday night to help the New York Mets rally for a 7-2 win over the San Diego Padres.
Franco, 47, drove a 1-0 pitch from reliever Scott Linebrink (1-2) into the home-run porch down the right-field line at Petco Park. That gave the Mets a 3-2 lead and Franco the spot in the record book that had been belonged to Athletics pitcher Jack Quinn, who was 46 years, 357 days old when he homered on June 27, 1930.
Franco already was the oldest player to hit a grand slam, a pinch-hit homer and have a multihomer game.
"That won't be the last home run I hit, and I hope I hit one when I'm 50," said Franco, who has four career pinch-hit homers.
From the philosophic point of view, I see no way to resolve the continual strife in art theories and in criticism between the classic and the romantic save to see that they represent tendancies that mark every authentic work of art. What is called "classic" stands for objective order and relations embodied in a work; what is called "romantic" stands for the freshness and spontaneity that come from individuality. At different periods and by different artists, one or the other tendancy is carred to an extreme. If there is a definite overbalance on one side or the other the work fails; the class becomes dead, monotonous, and artificial; the romantic, fantastic and eccentric. But the genuinely romantic becomes in time established as a recognized constituent in experience, so that there is a force in the saying that after all the classic means nothing more than that a work of art has won an established recognition.
Historian James Elkins has written similarly about the dualistic poles that periods of art swing between over long periods of time. The broad terms—something like "classicism" and something like "baroque"—parallel conceptually the terms communal and agentic, where classicism/communal art is formed or shaped in ways common and shared among many artists, and baroque/agentic art is formed in ways irregular and particular to an artist. This duality can be seen when comparing impressionistic art (with its reserved sense) and expressionistic art (more showy).
Those dualities are commonly seen as periods of art, but Dewey wisely draws art more particularly and says that every artistic object has both aspects. It is a matter of emphasis as to whether an art object is more classical or more romantic (or more communal or more agentic). Fundamentally, it is impossible for an object of art to not be considered as its own entity as well as simultaneously considered part of a larger body, tradition, or kind of art. And again the working artist is reminded that this sort of perspective upon art is something considered retrospectively, after an object of art has been in the public sphere for some time and its work has been enacted upon and with the participation of audiences. An object or objects of art that have "won an established recognition" are thus considered a classic, but the working artist need be concerned with the production and distribution of their objects.
In other words, being regarded as classic is within one's reach, realistically. Just do the work, follow intuition (i.e., allow the new and old to make love), and courageously allow others to experience it, participatively. For part of art's "work" is the dynamic of people deciding amongst themselves the right time to recognize and salute the artist's creations. This is largely beyond the control of the working artist, and thus we concern ourselves only with that which we can control—our work's production.
I like the following idea by Jonah Goldberg. Quoted in full:
WHY NOT LET THEM VOTE?
Here's an old idea that I've been noodling again for a while: Why not let the Iraqis have a referendum on whether US forces should stay? Here are some reasons, off the top of my head, and in no particular order:
1. The formation of the government is the last major political benchmark for the Iraqis, and it's not going well. Sectarian feelings have hardened and there are few events left that can foster a sense of national unity. But a national referendum on whether Americans should stay would be exactly that.
2. If Iraqis vote yes on continuing America's presence -- which I think they would -- the Iraqi people will feel more "bought-in" to America's project.
3. It will once again signal that America is on the side of democracy while many of its opponents are not.
4. It will (further) pull anti-American elements into the electoral process.
5. It will take the burden off the new government of seeming like a lap dog to the gringos. The president and prime minister can say "I'm bowing to the will of the people" or "this issue has been settled by the people already" whenever presented with that charge.
6. It would deflate the impact of the "occupiers" epithet against Americans.
7. It would send an important signal to opponents of the war in Europe and America about the nature of the project. Could Ted Kennedy really say this is a war for Bush's ego or for oil with so much spittle if the Iraqi people poured into the polls to ask for America to stay?
8. It would help American troop morale.
9. It would take the heat off allies -- current or future -- when it comes to helping in the war effort.
10. It would marry Iraqi nationalism to democratic norms and force Iraqis to think very seriously about what their country would like if America left.
11. Even the American media would have to celebrate such an event.
12. It would further bind the next president -- Democratic or Republican -- to finishing the job in Iraq.
13. It would have Bush talking on issues where he's best.
Now, what if Iraqis voted no? Well, some of the above points would still hold true. Democracy will have been strengthened in Iraq. America's commitment to democracy will have been reaffirmed in a profoundly dramatic way. The long debate leading up to the vote will have changed the tone and served to teach not only Iraqis, but the region, about how democracy works. Etc.
And while I certainly think it would be bad if Iraqis voted America out of their country, I can think of no more honorable and face-saving way for U.S. forces to exit Iraq than after a vote of this sort. It certainly beats watching people hang from the bottom of helicopters.
I think the referendum would have to be worded carefully and cleverly, and I can think of other problems and benefits, but I think as thought experiment there's enough here to noodle.
Of every 100 freshmen entering a Chicago public high school, only about six will earn a bachelor's degree by the time they're in their mid-20s, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Thursday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.
The prospects are even worse for African-American and Latino male freshmen, who only have about a 3 percent chance of obtaining a bachelor's degree by the time they're 25.
The study, which tracked Chicago high school students who graduated in 1998 and 1999, also found that making it to college doesn't ensure success: Of the city public school students who went to a four-year college, only about 35 percent earned a bachelor's degree within six years, compared with 64 percent nationally.
For Twyla, it is looking more and more like either Waldorf and/or homeschooling. It's not that Hannah and I wouldn't encourage and support her to not only be part of the 6%. It is rather that to me this ghastly low figure is an indicator of systemic problems with the entirety of the Chicago public school system. I've written before that one can easily substitute "government" for "public", and doing so even sheds light on the issue. I mean, government really gets few things right on the individual level, and even on the macro level, outside of the military, you don't associate efficiency and flexibility with government federal or local for a city the size of Chicago. This is the limited but true libertarian insight—that government really does very little well, compared to an engaged, creative citizenry. And then you realize that the American public school model comes from the Prussian model, which came about to train children to be soldiers (and now to be able to sit still at a desk for hours on end) and you see that the public school system is no sacred cow.
Anyway, I'm confident that there are dedicated, creative people too numerous to mention that have taken it upon themselves to attempt to remedy the public education situation in this city. Mayor Daley, for his part, has made improvement of the public schools central to his administration. I sincerely hope that, at the very least for the sake of children and parents who do not have the choice of private schooling or homeschooling, the Chicago school system makes improvements. In the meantime, though, the chances of Twyla, or any of our children to come, attending a public school in Chicago seem very slim. In the case of Waldorf, the curriculum and flexibility seem to be far more effective (although Waldorf is pricey in this city). In the case of homeschooling, responsibility is more incumbent upon Hannah and me to step up as facilitators to Twyla's emerging curiousities to learn. I can say this: Hannah and I definitely have the courage to make it work for Twyla. We can say that much. I mean, taken broadly (which is usually how I roll) as engaged parents we have homeschooled Twyla, from day one.
For Bonds, there is a convergence of a federal prosecutor, baseball investigators, a power drought at the plate, a decaying body, a TV show for which he's being ridiculed and the persistent feeling that few people want him to pass Ruth and Aaron, which he relates to racism when he should look squarely in the mirror.
And I agree with Mariotti. For the sake of Aaron, for the sake of Ruth, for the sake of baseball, for the sake of the fans—please say your goodbyes.
In scrolling through The Corner (something I, as they say, am wont to do), I came across a link to this interview. It is of Travis Rowley—recent graduate of Brown University and author of Out of Ivy: How a Liberal Ivy Created a Committed Conservative. So I read the interview and had to chuckle a bit because, like me, he played football in college and seemed to be about as politically engaged as I was (which means not much, then) but then came upon a certain millitant sect of campus and was really put off. The similarity ends there, because I didn't write any commentary columns for my school newspaper (I did write four pieces, though, of the general interest variety), and of course I didn't go on to write a book about college turning me into a political conservative. I would only consider myself a conservative in the broadest, most inclusive sense of the term. I'm a voter dissatisfied by the offerings of both political parties, both in terms of their spokespersons (i.e., the candidates) as well as the underlying ideologies. And besides that, I'm a music guy, and the arts in general are rightly upstream from such stuff as politics.
But I have made it a point to search for, isolate, and then honor insights about politics and current events that come from any source. I read far more than I blog about. I used to give some kind of equal time to "left" and "right" commentary. That is a good practice, I think. Having done it "as a practice" for over four years now, I'm at the point where I'm pretty much just looking for rigorous thinking and reasoned arguments that use facts, again from whatever source. It's all about ideas, solidly presented. And I can say (this is just my opinion, but it is informed by several years of research into it), that on balance the best blog for useful insight into American current events, if you had to pick just one, would indeed be The Corner. This is not about agreeing or disagreeing; this is rather about substance. The blog is a mixed bag, of course, and that is the point. (Disagreement is healthy and fundamental to life.) There is no major current events site less diverse, intellectually, than Salon.com, and no major current events print magazine less diverse than The Nation. The Corner is a unique thing, and I don't think enough people realize this. Maybe because you have to get to know the personalities involved before stuff starts to really kick.
Of course, I don't go to The Corner for arts/aesthetic matters, and that is just fine. Plenty of other places for digging into the arts. In fact, part of my hesitance in calling myself a conservative is their utterly vacant regard for avant-garde art; that I love avant-garde art and am yet sympathetic with certain conservative thought is perhaps a paradox, but I don't worry too much about it. It's just how I roll.
There is more to say (isn't there always?) but I want to return to the interview I linked to. Check out this quote, again from the graduate-turned-conservative Rowley:
I didn't know it at the time, but I was arguing with Communists, Marxists, anti-Christians, and anti-Americans. Hatred for America was a very difficult scheme to decipher for a politically ignorant student, but I eventually found the campus left to be operating off of the intellectual premise that American liberty, Christianity, capitalism, and the United States were the root causes of all world tragedies.
To prove this, the campus left made a tireless and incessant effort to undermine America by constantly reminding everyone of certain people's claim to victim-hood, oppression caused by the American system. Homosexuals were victims. Minorities were victims. Women were victims. Muslims were victims. Indians were victims. Anyone who dared to question this premise-that certain people were injured by America's past and present-was doomed for what liberals saw as the appropriate social consequences. Their problem was, that once they marked particular people as victims, they were forced to point out the perpetrators who had inflicted such harm. If you listened closely, you would hear them saying that it was straight, white, and patriotic Christians who were to blame-the American mainstream. 9/11 couldn't have more perfectly demonstrated the reason why liberals fought so hard to maintain an image of victim-hood for certain types of people.
This reminds me of my own summary of the practical result of a conservative outlook, which is "you are not a victim!" There is perhaps no more poisoning a thought about yourself than that, in my view. No matter what happens to you, a conservative says, don't think yourself a victim, ever. Cue 'pick yourself by your bootstraps', 'tough love' and all that. Which, ultimately, is good counsel, even if it doesn't make you feel better in the moment.
Anyway, you've probably heard Rowley's sort of critique before, if you've been paying to current events. We are, I think, reaching a critical mass where the intellecual conservative movement founded by William F Buckley is entering the public sphere with more regularity. Non-Buckley conservatism, of course, is a catch-all term for views too numerous to count. I'm particularly talking about "think-tank conservatism" that for the last thirty years, has essentially been a response to the homogenation of American professorship into a general left-liberal lot of folks. There are exceptions (most universities have a couple old codger conservatives and everyone knows who they are), but in my experience, as well as those of my friends, one is more likely to come across a liberal-minded professor than a conservative-minded one.
Here's my question: If we take Rowley's point as essentially truthful (I think it generally is true), yet we don't put our head in the sand with regard to what America, as well as most countries of the world, has done through history that now we find repugnant, where does that leave us, ideologically?
I'm still trying to figure that out. There is a point in my question that ought not be glossed over. A main problem with "multiculturalism" is that in the advocacy of the merits of, in this case, non-American/non-Western cultural heritage, something gets left out: the warts. Every country has them. "Atrocities" have happened, throughout history, across the board. For example, finding fault with American treatment of its native tribes without also realizing that those tribes were likewise guilty of faults against Americans is exactly the problem. Let he who has not committed atrocity cast the first stone.
The reason I believe in America, and always will, no matter what it does (or pretty much no matter...) comes down to the hard reality that a country's ideals are always different than a country's behavior. Furthermore, criticism of a country's behavior can never be removed from its historical context, because no country operates in a political vacuum. And finally, I will always believe in America because its ideals are worth living up to, so as to improve upon whatever of its past that needs improvement.
I don't get caught up in "hypocrisy", one of Democratic Chairman Howard Dean's main motivations in public life, in terms of highlighting and calling it out, according to him. Saying something is hypocritical is a poor way of saying that life is not consistent. Or simply that truth is context-bound. What is right at one point in time might be wrong or inappropriate in another. Thus charges of "hypocrisy!" are empty gestures, best responded to by "life depends, dude!". It is a sign of a less-developed mind that cannot see the truth of the latter. If that is too blunt, then so be it, for it's true.
You know, when I was in my undergraduate program at Washington U in St. Louis, I heard whispers that many, many residents of St. Louis had little to no tolerance for WashU students. At the time, I had the usual feeling of indignation, "how could they not like us? They don't even know us!" Which is true, to a point, but misses a larger one. There is a general sense of self-importance that fills many college students of today, as well as university professors (and of course boomers, but that is a different blog entry altogether).
Self-importance increases as intellectual curiousity decreases. (How's that for a blanket statement, huh?) But as a general rule, I find that to be true. How could it not be? The very discipline of intellectual curiousity requires a deflation of one's opinion of oneself, as an "important being". When you learn, and I mean really learn, you find out, basically, that your horizons were too narrow, too unformed, too green. Recent studies have shown that the people who show the highest levels of "self-esteem" are convicted felons and criminals. In jail. Chew on that for a moment, if you didn't already know this.
There really shouldn't be any such thing as a "university left" or for that matter a "university right". It is not that the students ought not have their own political predilections. But the proliferation of "campus causes" and political action groups on campus should be removed, yesterday. University life ought be centered on the campus library, the classroom, and the professor's office. Secondary emphasis, still important, ought be intramural athletics, campus arts, charitable outreach, and student government (student/teacher relations). Campus administrations are bloated just as federal government is bloated. Tuition goes to pay university employees that the everyday student will never come in contact with. The tuition at my alma mater is over $30,000. This is robbery, and what, really, does it go towards?
The average early 20s man or woman, poltically speaking, has little to no first-hand experience with the connection between politics at the local and federal levels and real life. Of course people get more conservative as they get older, if they purchase a house or condo, if they become a father or mother, if they find that their income is too close to their expenses. I'm all for people of any age being political engaged and active, but I think far too much emphasis in this country is placed on the supposed importance of what collegiates think about the world. This goes for conservative and liberal college folks. They are not as important as they think they are. In outlets such as MTV's famous "Rock the Vote" and countless other contemporary media movements, college students are simply "given a mic" as if their perspective is really more experienced and mature as the average 40-something mother, someone who's raising a family, been negotiating mortgage payments, everyday hardships, and in general a post-coddled existence. I mean, really!
I have half a mind to apply to a PhD program (art history/philosophy/aesthetics), get the doctorate, and get a professor gig, just so I can fight the good fight for what universities ought be. My agenda would be clear—renewal and engaged contemplation, via the history of art and ideas! I mean, ideals aside, I myself want to learn myself firsthand what a real university experience is, at the ground, in the classroom with students whose intellectual curiousity runs deep. I mean, wouldn't that be something? And if centered on the arts and humanities from a global perspective, taboot? That's what real campus radicalism is about, by the way, not this pap that passes for "campus radical" today. No, to be a radical to have to plant yourself at the root of the university experience—learning, the alpha and omega of your daily bread. And do we study? Simple—those works that have clearly inspired the world's seminal figures, starting with the seminal artists. Period.
I'm not even sure that this has ever really been tried. So how's that for radical—the old meets the new as the electrical spark of learning makes everyone humble. I think homeschooling (of the non-fundamentalist variety) plays into this, somehow, but I've gone on long enough for now. Work calls. Gotta earn the ole paycheck.
YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO SCROLL LEFT NOR RIGHT TO READ THIS BLOG
A reader from the UK just informed me that on his machine/browser, this blog requires that he scroll right and left in order to read my extended entries.
This ought not be the case! You should only have to scroll vertically, up and down, and not horizontally.
It is a web designer's nightmare because I don't have this problem on either of my two computers, but you never know how things look on others' machines. Also, I imagine that things like this might happen from time to time because I hand-code everything on this site. Damn me and my maverick html tendencies.
Please please please let me know if there are strange things going on with anything on this website. I would much appreciate it!
I listened to some Hildegard von Bingen plainchant this morning as I did my pre-breakfast walk around the neighborhood. This has nothing whatsoever to do with an update on my work, but man, the music of hers performed by the group Sequentia is really something. I haven't bothered to try to understand the lyrics (delivered in Latin, with translations in the liner notes). That's an angle on perception perhaps I'll pursue something, but for the time being, the melodic motion and ornamentation through the exquiste sonorities of the Sequentia singers has my full participation. My usual choices for morning music are either von Bingen/Sequentia or folky acoustic guitar stuff (with or without a singer). It is a wonder, isn't it, how certain orchestrations are more and less appropriate for the waking hours. You understand why, for example, in India, there are morning ragas, as well as afternoon and evening ragas. This is a good cue to take, I think, given that it is quite clear that Indian traditions are the most pitch senstive ever produced. Authentic pitch sensitivity is a ear meets body acuity—trained, acquired, refined, and polished.
So to the update on my work. I figure I'll take this opportunity to do so because I've received so many kind letters of support from readers and listeners.
My activities have for the last five years been multi-pronged. The main prongs right now are my first book (A River Of One's Own), my fourth album (A Bird In The World), and my first magazine. Obviously this blog is an important part of what I do but since it rather speaks for itself as far as productivity, I'll just let it be that. So in no particular order:
A River Of One's Own is shaping up to be a readable, concise work of integral art philosophy geared for working artists of any and all disciplines. In this book, I will cover many topics, including artist practice and artwork production, with secondary emphasis on artwork interpretation and artist education. I have been using much of what I've written and posted to this site for raw material, outlines, and sketches towards what will be more fully developed and refined in the book. My main influences for this and all subsequent books are Camille Paglia, John Dewey, and Marshall McLuhan. I thus align my work with the North American philosophic tradition. Other influences are too numerous to list, but they include certain insights from Ken Wilber, Howard Gardner, Abigail Housen, and Ananda Coomaraswamy.
A Bird In The World I've already recently mentioned, so I'll just reiterate that this EP has firmly entered the final mastering stage. I'm mastering the tracks myself using Apple's Soundtrack Pro. It probably will be a couple more weeks of that (to tinker and tweak), and then several other mundane yet fundamental aspects to complete before I send it off to CDBaby for distribution, eventually to be available through iTunes and all the other digital outlets that my last album, I Am Sound, is. I hate the term 'concept album', but if you remove all the obnoxious connatations that resulted the British/American 70s music and simply take it to mean 'a collection of compositions with a common thematic thread', then as with I Am Sound, A Bird In The World is a concept album. It's not asking too much to hope that an album is taken aesthetically as a whole, is it? Once you see the album art, liner notes, and hear the tracks thus assembled, the essential theme ought be self-evident (I hope, anyway).
POLYSEMY Magazine is on schedule to ship its first issue in mid- to late-May (and thereafter also in October and January). I speak for the entire team—Paul Salamone, Hannah Dallman, Jean Dufresne, Dan Allison, Victoria Lansford, and Thom Morgan (aka Tuff Ghost)—when I say we are very proud of this entire effort, and of course our debut issue. It's been a process of figuring out things as we go. We invite you to subscribe, which you can do online by the end of this month at the magazine website: www.polysemy.org. Check it often, and you can sign up for the free e-newsletter right now so that you don't miss out on any information or special offers. The aim for the magazine is to provide a transdisciplinary perspective on the arts—its 'common substance'—for a worldwide audience of working artists. Stay tuned, because a lot is in store for the website, the issues, and beyond.
I'm working on a complete renovation of my Cellph Shots gallery. Check it out in this version before it all becomes a fancy presentation using Flash. Anyway, I'm trying to select from the literally hundreds of cellph shots I've taken over the last two years. Interesting to see how the imagery rather changes over time, as well as my own comfort with the camera. And then, looking at these shots, it's like, "I was there, the eye behind the lens." Which ultimately begs the contemplation, but really, who AM I?
...A work of art exploits its medium to the uttermost—bearing in mind that material is not medium save when used as an organ of expression. The materials of nature and human association are multifarious to the point of infinity. Whenever any material finds a medium that expresses its value in experience—that is, its imaginative and emotional value—it becomes the substance of a work of art. The abiding struggle of art is thus to convert materials that are stammering or dumb in ordinary experience into eloquent media. Remembering that art itself denotes a quality of action of things done, every authentic new work of art is in some degree itself the birth of a new art.
How do we expect our kids to stay close to us if the first thing we do is to push them away, whether that's in to their own bed, to a bottle in place of the breast, or left to lay in a crib all day instead of carried in a sling?
The humuhumunukunukuapuaa—it's a fish, silly—may just get its groove back:
HONOLULU (AP) -- The humuhumunukunukuapuaa officially lost its title as the state fish more than a decade ago but is set to reclaim the honor.
A bill reinstating the critter - known as humuhumu for short - passed the Legislature on Monday and heads next to the office of Gov. Linda Lingle for a signature.
The little fish with the long name was deposed in 1990 by a clause in the law that gave it its crown, which made the measure expire after five years.
But few in the state were aware of the change and the fish, also known as the rectangular triggerfish, and it has continued to be touted as Hawaii's state fish.
Via Yahoo News comes news today from the Pulitzer committee:
A posthumous Special Citation to American composer Thelonious Monk for a body of distinguished and innovative musical composition that has had a significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz.
That description is actually just about right. Other words might be: "for being the soul of jazz".
A federal jury convicted former Gov. George Ryan today on all charges that as secretary of state he steered state business to cronies in return for vacations, gifts and other benefits for himself and his family.
Lobbyist Lawrence Warner, a close Ryan friend, was also found guilty on all charges against him in the historic trial.
On their 11th day of deliberations, the six-woman, six-man jury found Ryan, 72, guilty on 18 counts of racketeering, mail fraud, false statements and tax violations.
Hannah, Twyla and me (what I call D3) are just getting back into the swing of things after a long weekend. On Saturday and Sunday we were in Milwaukee with family for Easter. I had Friday
Garcia Film Banned for Anti-Guevara Sentiment
We three merry Ds will be taking some of the world's best indie rock bands at this year's 
The 50-year-old Franklin resident bowled his way into history Saturday night, rolling three consecutive 300 games at Classic Lanes in Greenfield to record just the ninth 900 series in the 111-year history of certified league play.
...start after consecutive start, Favre wowed his faithful fans with the kinds of plays and passes few other quarterbacks in NFL history dared even attempt.
Twyla Tour Spring 2006 continues this weekend. Her fifth city in six weeks. We are meeting friends in St. Louis for a fun little thang, a college reunion. 
Of every 100 freshmen entering a Chicago public high school, only about six will earn a bachelor's degree by the time they're in their mid-20s, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Thursday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.
I learned today that my most recent album I Am Sound is now available the website Rhapsody.com.