Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Posted on: July 29, 2008

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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…

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Posted on: July 28, 2008

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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…

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Posted on: July 25, 2008

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(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…

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Posted on: July 24, 2008

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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…

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Posted on: July 22, 2008

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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…

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Posted on: July 21, 2008

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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…

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