Posted on: July 29, 2008
I watched Doctor Zhivago tonight. Keira Knightley as Lara. Hans Matheson as Yuri Zhivago. It’s a well done TV miniseries from 2002. Moving, especially at the end. It’s not David Lean. But it works in its own way. Expanded, because of the extra time. And updated to allow for more modern depictions of the love affair.
Many things jumped out at me. But especially this: brief, ecstatic joy in the middle of a sea of sorrow. The embrace of that joy. Being consumed by it, perhaps because it is so brief. As is life. Especially life in the middle of revolution and civil war.
Some might respond: all life is brief. Yes. True. But in relative terms, which is all we really know, it is shorter and has fewer moments of joy in the midst of violence–violence surrounding you, taking away your loved ones, your friends, your freedom. And those brief moments are all…
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Posted on: July 28, 2008
The Third of May, by Francisco de Goya. 1814
I had several eureka moments when I was a kid, regarding organized religion. These led to various breakaways and new directions, which I developed as I aged. No straight lines to some predetermined goal, to be sure. No easy paths to easy answers. There were always surprises and readjustments, new realizations of past errors, and new understandings of previous ignorance regarding this or that view held by others. And I tried to remain humble in the face of the mystery of why religions developed as they did and why they are so important to so many.
I was reminded of one of those moments recently when I heard a song about the helplessness of a child, his call for help, his plea. It made me think about how natural it is for humans to look outside themselves for answers, for protection, for sustenance,…
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Posted on: July 25, 2008
(For Roy)
I always find it interesting to discover mergings, connections, and cross-fertilization across the arts. Fusions, juxtaposition, new combinations. And one of the most interesting of these, for me, is when Rock stars are influenced heavily by great novelists, poets and philosophers. Especially if the range is wide, and influence is not just on the surface. One such case was Jim Morrison of The Doors.
Morrison lived the life of a nomad, growing up with a father in the military who eventually became an admiral. They moved frequently. Perhaps that nomadic existence pushed Morrison into the philosophy of Nietzsche, another wanderer, and into the poetry of Rimbaud, who may have set records along those lines.
Morrison was an alumnus of UCLA, completing his degree in Film. Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), the actor, poet and dramatist, was an early influence. Morrison and his bandmates (including Ray Manzarek, a fellow UCLA student) got the name for…
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Posted on: July 24, 2008
Tori Amos in Concert, July, 2007. Photo by Anrie
Tori Amos is one of my favorite Alt-rock divas. Of course, the word “diva” doesn’t really fit her. In our pop culture, it has too many negative overtones to apply to such a refreshingly eccentric woman. It has too many negative undertones to apply to a tremendously creative artist who constantly evolves, sheds old skin for new, and never seems afraid. Of anything.
I’ve been a big fan since 1992 when her second album came out. One listen to her Little Earthquakes and I could tell that she was “for real” and uniquely capable of merging classical piano, deeply emotional and personal songwriting, with ethereal harmonies and moving melodies. It also helped that she was a hometown girl in a sense. She spent much of her youth in Maryland, as did I.
Tori Amos was the youngest person ever admitted to the Peabody Conservatory of Music,…
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Posted on: July 22, 2008
The Shepherds of Arcadia, by Nicolas Poussin. 1630s.
When a society is wealthy, it takes on new responsibilities. New possibilities and opportunities open up for it. It has the potential to increase its own wealth and well-being many times over, if it just thinks ahead of itself and its own instant gratification. If it just thinks ahead of itself and its desire for personal gratification. If it just thinks ahead of now.
If the people of this wealthy society unite in common cause, they can do things that are impossible alone. They can do things that are impossible for individuals alone. They can even do things that are impossible for large institutions alone, or groups of those institutions. If the entire society gathers, unites, and agrees to work together, it can do things that have never been done.
At the same time, if a society chooses not to unite, it can fall back in…
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Posted on: July 21, 2008
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
It’s not often that a great writer’s life is more interesting in some ways than his books. But that’s the case with Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Born on the island of Java in 1925, Toer lived through several revolutions and national rebellions, participated in a few himself, and was imprisoned both by the Dutch colonial government and then later by the Suharto regime.
While in jail during his first imprisonment in 1947-49, he wrote his first novel, The Fugitive. During his second imprisonment, this time by the Suharto regime in 1965, he accomplished something even more amazing. Denied pen and paper, he managed to construct a tetralogy, recite it to his fellow prisoners, and eventually get it down on paper and published after his release in 1979.
Toer said in an interview:
“Before I got permission, I had to do it behind their backs. For a long time, I was not permitted…
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Posted on: July 19, 2008
Untitled, by Mark Rothko. 1952
All art is paradox. But Rothko, perhaps more than any other modern painter, embraced the paradox and threw it profoundly in our faces.
The canvas is flat. You can’t enter it. You can’t go through it, if it’s hanging on the wall. At least without injury and perhaps a heavy bill from the gallery. But Rothko continuously tells the audience to do just that. Embrace the painting, enter it, walk into it, let it engulf you and torture you and shake you. Shake the core of you. He wants the painting to be a plane and an entrance way in the same bright moment. Flat and omnipresent. Pressed against the wall as it surrounds you. And he wants you to accept the paradox and reject it long enough to succumb.
“We favor the simple expression of complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact…
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Posted on: July 18, 2008
Roberto Arlt
Roberto Arlt was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1900. His parents were German immigrants and German was the language spoken at home. They were poor. Long term formal education was pretty much out of the question, so Roberto took to the streets at an early age and learned there and in the library. He read a lot of Russian literature, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I can see Raskolnikov in his books, and Dostoevsky hovering over them, though Arlt puts less anger and despair on the page. Ezra Pound would have said of Arlt, if he had known him, that he modernized himself.
It was also the case that he made his own way in society with little help, working hard at an early age, writing for newspapers, later joining the military, and then taking odd jobs here and there until his career in journalism started paying some dividends. He…
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Posted on: July 16, 2008
We have a new essay below by our good friend David Haan, entitled Irony. Ironically, that’s not what it’s really about, except in a sort of indirect way. A very articulate bird told me that he got the idea for the piece from this review of Richard Sennett’s new book, The Craftsman.
Was the writer (Mr. Haan) pondering the art of being a bricoleur? Quite possibly. Was he thinking about improvising with and extending his bag of tricks, his toolbox of sorts? Probably. He may have zoomed in on this particular part of Scott McLemee’s interesting review:
“The notion of the bricoleur exerted a certain charm among the strenuously professionalizing, for it offered the gratifying prospect of imagining a tactile and worldly dimension to one’s intellectual activity. The bits and pieces of various theories or systems could be regarded as parts of a rough-and-ready “tool kit.” If they were incomplete or out-of-date—well, so much the…
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Posted on: July 16, 2008
Rumormongers have hypocritically insinuated that I make use of cheap irony. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I employ only the finest quality of irony, procured at great expense, its like not to be had discounted. In fact, I do not entrust supply to outside provisioners, but participate at every stage of manufacture, from the selection of raw material (unalloyed, never scrap) through its refinement—forged under sublime pressure, even tempered, under controlled heat, by a process of my own invention. Despite all due precaution, irony can become corrupted, so the results of all this effort may well never see the light of day. Only the most resilient irony, without discernable imperfection, is suitable to any proper craft.
Nor do I use it sparingly. To be effective, irony must be thickly applied, preferably in many layers, and meticulously worked in to its foundation so as to become integral to the final product.…
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Posted on: July 15, 2008
Barnegat Lighthouse, New Jersey. Photo by Thisisbossi
The Garden State. It’s like Rodney Dangerfield. It gets no respect. Which is one of the reasons why Bruce Springsteen’s rendition of “Jersey Girl” always gets to me. Because he takes all of that disrespect and throws it out the window of a fast moving car on the way to the shore. He sings that to his Jersey audience. He gives them pride of place and evokes memories his audience can easily relate to. He takes Tom Waits’ song and makes it his own and theirs. He makes it a Jersey song, which is something Waits could never do, as great a songwriter as he is. Waits was born and bred in California. Not his fault. He couldn’t possibly know what it’s like to grow up in Jersey, in the shadow of the Big Apple.
I love the song. I love to hear the people in the audience…
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Posted on: July 14, 2008
Battle of Quatre Bras, by James B. Wollen
My musings on dualisms come with many qualifications and the usual hemming and hawing. But, I’m going to skip past most of that and push on, despite the obvious flaws in any kind of capsulism.
Was thinking about the difference between layers in society and culture. That there has been, over time, a difference between the top and the bottom–and later the middle–across time, across cultures is too obvious to require elaboration at the moment. But there are differences as well between East and West, when it comes to those differences, which is far less obvious.
Conflict and Harmony. Of course, you had plenty of conflict in the East through the centuries. You had kingdoms, wars, empires, invasions, occupations, forced expulsions and so on, just as in the West. To form a kingdom or an empire means you had massive bloodshed along the way. No…
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