I wanted to give some kind of justification for the guilty pleasure of watching WWE (almost "wee"), or at least for watching the film “The Wrestler,” but it seems that Roland Barthes already did so, even though he was writing way back in 1957. Barthes’s 13 pages (condensed quite a bit) follow. I must apologize in advance for atrocious grammar. I guess one instance of it could be blamed on my slicing and dicing, but most of it is due either to poor writing from Barthes, which would be kind of inconsistent, or to poor translating, which is more likely (sorry, Miss Lavers).
“The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess. Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle. Of course, there exists a false wrestling, in which the participants make a show of fair fight; this is of no interest. True wrestling, wrongly called amateur wrestling, is performed in second-rate halls, where the public spontaneously attunes itself to the spectacular nature of the contest, like the audience at a suburban cinema.
“The function of the wrestler is not to win; it is to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him. The gesture of the vanquished wrestler signifying to the world a defeat corresponds to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic mode of the spectacle. As in the theatre, each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant. In the body of the wrestler we find the first key to the contest.
“The physique of the wrestlers constitutes a basic sign, which like a seed contains the whole fight. Wrestling is like a diacritic writing above the fundamental meaning of his body, the wrestler arranges comments which are episodic, but always opportune. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theatre. In both, what is expected is the intelligible representation of moral situations which are usually private.
“Each moment in wrestling is like an algebra which instantaneously unveils the relationship between a cause and its represented effect. What is displayed for the public is the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice.
“Everyone must not only see that the man suffers, but also and above all understand why he suffers. What the wrestlers call a hold has precisely the function of preparing in a conventional, therefore intelligible, fashion the spectacle of suffering, of methodically establishing the conditions of suffering. Wrestling is the only sport which gives such an externalized image of torture. But here again, only the image is involved in the game. It is not true that wrestling is a sadistic spectacle: it is only an intelligible spectacle. There is another figure, more spectacular still than a hold: in the forearm smash, catastrophe is brought to the point of maximum obviousness, so much so that ultimately the gesture appears as no more than a symbol.
“We have already seen to what extent wrestlers exploit the resources of a given physical style to unfold before the eyes of the public a total image of Defeat. In wrestling, Defeat is not a conventional sign; it is not an outcome, but quite the contrary, it is a duration, a display, it takes up the ancient myths of public Suffering and Humiliation: the cross and the pillory. It is as if the wrestler is crucified in broad daylight and in the sight of all.
“But what wrestling is above all meant to portray is a purely moral concept: the very limit of the concept of Justice, this outermost zone of confrontation where it is enough to infringe the rules a little more to open the gates of a world without restraints. One must realize that ‘fairness’ here is a role or a genre, as in the theatre: the rules do not at all constitute a real restraint. In actual fact a fair fight is nothing but an exaggeratedly polite one; conversely, foul play exists only in its excessive signs. A fair fight surprises the aficionado; he feels suddenly moved at the sight of the general kindness of the world, but would probably die of boredom and indifference if wrestlers did not return to the orgy of evil which alone makes good wrestling.
“Extrapolated, fair wrestling could lead only to boxing or judo, whereas true wrestling derives its originality from all the excesses which make it a spectacle and not a sport. The ending of a boxing-match or a judo-contest is abrupt; the rhythm of wrestling is quite different, for its natural meaning is that of rhetorical amplification. Some fights are crowned by a final charivari, a sort of unrestrained fantasia where the rules are swept away by a triumphant disorder which overflows into the hall and carries off pell-mell wrestlers, seconds, referee and spectators.
“Such a finality demands that wrestling should be exactly what the public expects of it. In wrestling, nothing exists except in the absolute, there is no symbol, no allusion, everything is presented exhaustively. Leaving nothing in the shade, each action discards all parasitic meanings and ceremonially offers to the public a pure and full signification, rounded like Nature. This grandiloquence is nothing but the popular and age-old image of the perfect intelligibility of reality.
“No one can doubt that wrestling holds that power of transmutation which is common to the Spectacle and to Religious Worship. In the ring, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few short moments, the Key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils a form of Justice which is at last intelligible.”
Sercer, John, Editor. Excerpts from “The World of Wrestling.” In Mythologies, by Roland Barthes. Translated by Annette Lavers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, 1995): 13-25.
This book has a double theoretical framework: on the one hand, an ideological critique bearing on the language of so-called mass-culture; on the other, a first attempt to analyze semiologically the mechanics of this language. I had just read Saussure and as a result acquired the conviction that by treating ‘collective representations’ as sign-systems, one might hope to go further by unmasking them and account in detail for the mystification which transforms petit-bourgeois culture into universal culture. --Roland Barthes, 1970 Preface to Mythologies.
I cannot countenance the traditional belief which postulates a natural dichotomy between the objectivity of the scientist and the subjectivity of the writer, as if the former were endowed with a ‘freedom’ and the latter with a ‘vocation’ equally suitable for spiriting away or sublimating the actual limitations of their situation. What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.” --Roland Barthes, 1957 Preface to Mythologies.
'The contradiction of our time might make sarcasm the condition of truth'?! Pedants, rejoice!
June 30, 2010
June 29, 2010
A Scene
"It's been a frightful day, and I haven't had anything to eat. Dear Martha, would you make me a plain omelet?"
"Jimmy, do you mean to say I'm plain?"
"Nonsense, it's called a plain omelet."
"But you never call it that. I've heard 'omelet' and 'cheese omelet' from you. So I'll repeat myself, do you mean to say I'm plain?"
"If I meant to imply that, I would have done it more obviously."
"Well that's not how you imply, is it, Jim? It snuck up on you, didn't it, Jim? Jimmy, would you make me a greasy hamburger?"
"Now now, I've been working in the heat all day. Don't go jibing me."
"I'll jibe you all I want as long as you're jibing me."
"But I'm not. I was at a diner today and my buddy ordered a 'plain omelet.' That's how he said it, and it was just how you make them. So I thought I'd call it by its proper name for once."
"Who was this buddy? What was this diner?"
"It was Bill. And Ranieri's."
"Why on Earth, Jim, would they have a French omelet at Ranieri's? Jim, I've caught you in a lie."
"Martha, this is America--the melting pot."
"Well I'll melt you, Jimmy, along with your damn omelet for calling me plain."
"Well you are. What's a man to do with the truth?"
I'm a hopeless English major from UD
This is “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke, and it’s my favorite poem.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree, but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up the winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady, I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Toni Morrison says in Beloved of eating sweet corn, “There is no accounting for the way that simple joy can shake you.” Well, the same is true of experiencing a great poem. But, I’ll account anyway. G. K. Chesterton, in a lovely phrase, says, of a characters’ wife: she is “one of the five good faces of the earth.” I think that that line is justification enough for having five favorite lines in a poem.
“I learn by going where I have to go.” Either ‘I learn where I have to go (by going),’ or ‘By going where I have to go, I learn.’ Beautiful ambiguity of grammar. Does the verb ‘learn’ have an object? This line is enough to justify my spirit that traveling can be a wandering or gerrymeandering, not necessarily including a direct object. Too often, travelers are just sightseers, who go from place to place, with their schedule marked out for them and every hour of their trip planned out for them. From Tate: “The Bridge attempts to cover all American life, but it covers the ground with seven-league boots and, like a sightseer, sees nothing.” From Kundera, a question: “Where have they gone, the idlers of yesteryear?” His answer, from a Czech proverb: “They are gazing at God’s windows.” There is a slowness in this line that relates to the central question of this poem, which could be, ‘how do we reconcile ourselves to our inevitable death?’ By lingering, meandering, wandering, learning our fate by the process of learning itself. From Eudora Welty’s short story, “The Worn Path:” the object of that old lady’s journey is irrelevant; the journey itself is the point.
“I hear my being dance from ear to ear.” There is something real, being, that the poet feels between the ears, in the head, in the intellect. This suggests that there is something intelligible, thinkable, that can be grasped by feeling. Roethke has so many beautiful moments of dance in his poetry. I hear echoes of Milton’s profoundly sad and itself echoing line in Paradise Lost; “Senses return, but not to me return.” The echoing within Milton’s and Roethke’s lines reflects meaning, something that is intelligible, through the senses, and not just knowable: also enjoyable, in Roethke’s line: there is dancing in his head. Dancing kind of like that passage about shucking and eating sweet corn: “How loose the silk. How jailed down the juice…. How loose the silk. How quick the jailed-up flavor ran free…. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free.”
“Light takes the Tree, but who can tell us how?” There is a receptiveness necessary to life; in order to learn, he must be taken by his senses, must allow unconsciousness to take him as the light takes the tree. A beautiful memory: abandoning Peter Bloch and Joe Amorella (not that that’s necessarily the beautiful part) sleeping under the walls of Saint Peter’s to go wandering at dawn, standing near the Tibur River opposite the Aventine Hill in Rome, the morning after staying up all White Night, actually seeing the light take the trees at the top and the tops of the many churches before it came down and took me, too.
“The lowly worm climbs up the winding stair.” This seems to be an odd line, but the poetic logic for it is already given: the image of light taking a tree thus imbuing it with meaning; the search for a grave. “I’m a worm, and not a man.” The knights of faith, as opposed to the knights of infinite resignation, are simple people, Kierkegaard says, who can “forget themselves and become something new.” They are like the butterfly, who “completely forgets that it was a caterpillar, and may in turn so completely forget that it was a butterfly that it may become a fish.” Faulkner: “My mother is a fish.” How does the light of thanatopsis take us? It takes us as like a worm climbs out of a mausoleum. Only by dying do we gain some kind of rebirth and resurrection to a new life; “life is but a dream, and that dream is bounded by a great sleep,” or words to that effect. But there is no immediate jump to the resurrection, no idea that life is something to be passed over as quickly as possible: “Great nature has another thing to do / To you and me, so take the lively air, and, lovely, learn by going where to go.” Words to that effect: “Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone, / and the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating / of dark habits, keeping their difficult balance.”
“This shaking keeps me steady, I should know.” This, too, is one of the five good faces on the earth. Downing a couple pots of coffee, along with many iced mochas, my third sleepless night in a row. Desperately trying to finish my Senior Novel paper and my Faulkner paper and my History and Theory of the Novel paper. Desperately trying to keep a difficult balance, knowing that my very shaking due to the amount of caffeine and nicotine I was absorbing was keeping me awake and able to finish three papers in a night. Again, that ambiguity of the line when considered not as two phrases, but as one. Does “know” have an object? This shaking, this quivering, this quickening, this life, keeps us steady. We cannot think without feeling. We cannot die without living. We can’t be steady without shaking. This poem doesn’t nail down some question and answer, isn’t dogmatic. There is the melos that doesn’t emphasize the helping “should,” what “ought” or “needs” or “has” to be done (ah, that beautifully subjective subjunctive), but rather the acting verb: “I should know.” Know what? The poem doesn’t force its thanatopsis, its knowledge of death and the revelation of the resurrection that death brings upon us. It just presentifies, to steal a term from Borella, and asks to stand by itself. The poem doesn’t need a dogma directing it in order for us to learn from it. “I should know.”
From my favorite Psalm: “The dead don’t praise thee, O Lord, nor do they who go down into the inferno; / But we who live, bless the Lord, from this time now, and unto ages to come.”
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree, but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up the winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady, I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Toni Morrison says in Beloved of eating sweet corn, “There is no accounting for the way that simple joy can shake you.” Well, the same is true of experiencing a great poem. But, I’ll account anyway. G. K. Chesterton, in a lovely phrase, says, of a characters’ wife: she is “one of the five good faces of the earth.” I think that that line is justification enough for having five favorite lines in a poem.
“I learn by going where I have to go.” Either ‘I learn where I have to go (by going),’ or ‘By going where I have to go, I learn.’ Beautiful ambiguity of grammar. Does the verb ‘learn’ have an object? This line is enough to justify my spirit that traveling can be a wandering or gerrymeandering, not necessarily including a direct object. Too often, travelers are just sightseers, who go from place to place, with their schedule marked out for them and every hour of their trip planned out for them. From Tate: “The Bridge attempts to cover all American life, but it covers the ground with seven-league boots and, like a sightseer, sees nothing.” From Kundera, a question: “Where have they gone, the idlers of yesteryear?” His answer, from a Czech proverb: “They are gazing at God’s windows.” There is a slowness in this line that relates to the central question of this poem, which could be, ‘how do we reconcile ourselves to our inevitable death?’ By lingering, meandering, wandering, learning our fate by the process of learning itself. From Eudora Welty’s short story, “The Worn Path:” the object of that old lady’s journey is irrelevant; the journey itself is the point.
“I hear my being dance from ear to ear.” There is something real, being, that the poet feels between the ears, in the head, in the intellect. This suggests that there is something intelligible, thinkable, that can be grasped by feeling. Roethke has so many beautiful moments of dance in his poetry. I hear echoes of Milton’s profoundly sad and itself echoing line in Paradise Lost; “Senses return, but not to me return.” The echoing within Milton’s and Roethke’s lines reflects meaning, something that is intelligible, through the senses, and not just knowable: also enjoyable, in Roethke’s line: there is dancing in his head. Dancing kind of like that passage about shucking and eating sweet corn: “How loose the silk. How jailed down the juice…. How loose the silk. How quick the jailed-up flavor ran free…. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free.”
“Light takes the Tree, but who can tell us how?” There is a receptiveness necessary to life; in order to learn, he must be taken by his senses, must allow unconsciousness to take him as the light takes the tree. A beautiful memory: abandoning Peter Bloch and Joe Amorella (not that that’s necessarily the beautiful part) sleeping under the walls of Saint Peter’s to go wandering at dawn, standing near the Tibur River opposite the Aventine Hill in Rome, the morning after staying up all White Night, actually seeing the light take the trees at the top and the tops of the many churches before it came down and took me, too.
“The lowly worm climbs up the winding stair.” This seems to be an odd line, but the poetic logic for it is already given: the image of light taking a tree thus imbuing it with meaning; the search for a grave. “I’m a worm, and not a man.” The knights of faith, as opposed to the knights of infinite resignation, are simple people, Kierkegaard says, who can “forget themselves and become something new.” They are like the butterfly, who “completely forgets that it was a caterpillar, and may in turn so completely forget that it was a butterfly that it may become a fish.” Faulkner: “My mother is a fish.” How does the light of thanatopsis take us? It takes us as like a worm climbs out of a mausoleum. Only by dying do we gain some kind of rebirth and resurrection to a new life; “life is but a dream, and that dream is bounded by a great sleep,” or words to that effect. But there is no immediate jump to the resurrection, no idea that life is something to be passed over as quickly as possible: “Great nature has another thing to do / To you and me, so take the lively air, and, lovely, learn by going where to go.” Words to that effect: “Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone, / and the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating / of dark habits, keeping their difficult balance.”
“This shaking keeps me steady, I should know.” This, too, is one of the five good faces on the earth. Downing a couple pots of coffee, along with many iced mochas, my third sleepless night in a row. Desperately trying to finish my Senior Novel paper and my Faulkner paper and my History and Theory of the Novel paper. Desperately trying to keep a difficult balance, knowing that my very shaking due to the amount of caffeine and nicotine I was absorbing was keeping me awake and able to finish three papers in a night. Again, that ambiguity of the line when considered not as two phrases, but as one. Does “know” have an object? This shaking, this quivering, this quickening, this life, keeps us steady. We cannot think without feeling. We cannot die without living. We can’t be steady without shaking. This poem doesn’t nail down some question and answer, isn’t dogmatic. There is the melos that doesn’t emphasize the helping “should,” what “ought” or “needs” or “has” to be done (ah, that beautifully subjective subjunctive), but rather the acting verb: “I should know.” Know what? The poem doesn’t force its thanatopsis, its knowledge of death and the revelation of the resurrection that death brings upon us. It just presentifies, to steal a term from Borella, and asks to stand by itself. The poem doesn’t need a dogma directing it in order for us to learn from it. “I should know.”
From my favorite Psalm: “The dead don’t praise thee, O Lord, nor do they who go down into the inferno; / But we who live, bless the Lord, from this time now, and unto ages to come.”
D. H. Lawrence, Jean Borella
Recently I read with great relish Lawrence’s Studies In Classic American Literature. Here is another critic who, along with Henry James, and Milan Kundera, writes criticism as an exploration or digression that illuminates their own as well as other’s art. Unlike those who took (the tragically still Miss) Sue’s American Civilization classes, I had never realized just how good (by which I mean pedantic) Lawrence is, having only read a few novels and failed to be impressed.
One of the many attractive things about Lawrence the critic is his explorative style of writing. There is something about the repetitiveness in his writing that calls to mind one of the five good faces of the earth, Charles Peguy. Both repeats a few epigrammatic lines, over an over, with slight variations. Lawrence is expressly not dogmatic; he lives by that most undogmatic of Gods, the Holy Ghost.
Some thoughts on Benjamin Franklin:
“The wholeness of a man is his soul. Not merely that nice little comfortable bit which Benjamin marks out. Why, the soul of man is a vast forest, and all Benjamin intended was a neat back garden. The soul of man is a dark forest. The Hercynian Wood that scared the Romans so, and out of which came the white-skinned hordes if the next civilization. Who knows what will come out of the soul of man? The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it. Think of Benjamin fencing it off! This is Benjamin’s barbed wire fence. He made himself a list of virtues, which he trotted inside like a grey nag in a paddock.”
“Here’s my creed, against Benjamin’s. This is what I believe: ‘That I am I.’ ‘That my soul is a dark forest.’ ‘That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.’ ‘That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.’ ‘That I must have the courage to let them come and go.’ ‘That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.’”
“1. Temperance: Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods. 3. Order: Know that you are responsible to the gods inside you and to the men in whom the gods are manifest. 9. Moderation: Beware of absolutes. There are many gods. 13. Humility: See all men and women according to the Holy Ghost that is within them.”
“He tries to take away my wholeness and my dark forest, my freedom. For how can any man be free, without an illimitable background? And Benjamin tries to shove me into a barbed wire paddock and make me grow potatoes or Chicagoes. And how can I be free, without gods that come and go?”
On Nathaniel Hawthorne:
“Man ate of the tree of knowledge, and became ashamed of himself. [Sex] didn’t become a “sin” till the knowledge-poison entered.”
“The sin was the self-watching, self-consciousness.”
“Nowadays, men do hate the idea of dualism. It’s no good, dual we are.* The cross.** If we accept the symbol, then, virtually, we accept the fact. We are divided against ourselves.”
“For instance, the blood hates being KNOWN by the mind. It feels itself destroyed when it is KNOWN. Hence the profound instinct of privacy.”
“Blood-consciousness overwhelms, obliterates, and annuls mind-consciousness.”
“Mind-consciousness extinguishes blood-consciousness, and consumes the blood.”
“We are all of us conscious in both ways. And the two ways are antagonistic in us.”
“They will always remain so. That is our cross.”
“There is a basic hostility in all of us between the physical and the mental, the blood and the spirit. "The mind is “ashamed” of the blood. And the blood is destroyed by the mind, actually. Hence pale-faces."
"Every time you “conquer” the body with the mind (you can say “heal” it if you like) you cause a deeper, more dangerous complex or tension somewhere else.”
“For a long time men believed that they could be perfected through the mind, through the spirit. They believed, passionately. They had their ecstasy in pure consciousness.”
“America soon plucked the bird of the spirit.”
“The Scarlet Letter gives the show away.”
I’ve been reading Lawrence and Jean Borella at the same time, and, a bit surprisingly, they have something to say to each other.
*Lawrence: the mind-body or soul-body distinction destroys something in man.
Borella: “When Scripture calls upon man to gather together all elements of his being in order to venture toward God, it generally articulates a tripartition of elements [Borella refers to the Old and New testament “law” of love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart (“blood-consciousness,” Lawrence would call it), with all your soul (“mind-consciousness”), and with all your strength (“body”)”]. Conversely, when it calls upon man to divide himself, to renounce what--within himself--is not truly himself, it generally articulates a bipartition, and simply opposes the soul to the body. The first point of view has a more doctrinal value, while the second has, rather, a methodical or ascetic value. Man is, in fact, more truly himself when standing lovingly recollected before God, in the perfection of his nature, than when struggling sorrowfully in the world to conquer the imperfections of his sinful condition.”
**Lawrence: The Cross is the ultimate symbol of the destructive conflict between the soul (vertical plane) and body (horizontal plane).
Borella: The “Cross-Circle” is the ultimate symbol of the unity and restoration of Divine Nature in man. [Here’s where I get in over my head, but I’ll try anyway.] The broken circle is kind of like the Cross: it is the “symbolon” or the “vestigial,” concrete form of the pact of unity between God and man. The symbolon, however, is only completed and made to live through the “traditional significance” given to the symbol (through the authority of the Church, the body of Christ) and the “ritual activity” involving the symbol (the daily life of the members of the Church; that is, members of Christ’s body).
Perhaps, D. H. Lawrence is justified in seeing the Cross (if it is considered just as a symbolon) as the symbol of an incomplete relationship between God and man. Lawrence sees that there is something greater than that: his allegiance to the Holy Ghost (which Christ sent to look after his Church and its activities on earth). I think Borella’s consideration of the “tripartition of man” and its symbol of the “Cross-Circle” lends Lawrence’s precedence of “blood-knowledge” over Franklin moral “mind-knowledge” its true significance.
One of the many attractive things about Lawrence the critic is his explorative style of writing. There is something about the repetitiveness in his writing that calls to mind one of the five good faces of the earth, Charles Peguy. Both repeats a few epigrammatic lines, over an over, with slight variations. Lawrence is expressly not dogmatic; he lives by that most undogmatic of Gods, the Holy Ghost.
Some thoughts on Benjamin Franklin:
“The wholeness of a man is his soul. Not merely that nice little comfortable bit which Benjamin marks out. Why, the soul of man is a vast forest, and all Benjamin intended was a neat back garden. The soul of man is a dark forest. The Hercynian Wood that scared the Romans so, and out of which came the white-skinned hordes if the next civilization. Who knows what will come out of the soul of man? The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it. Think of Benjamin fencing it off! This is Benjamin’s barbed wire fence. He made himself a list of virtues, which he trotted inside like a grey nag in a paddock.”
“Here’s my creed, against Benjamin’s. This is what I believe: ‘That I am I.’ ‘That my soul is a dark forest.’ ‘That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.’ ‘That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.’ ‘That I must have the courage to let them come and go.’ ‘That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.’”
“1. Temperance: Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the gods. 3. Order: Know that you are responsible to the gods inside you and to the men in whom the gods are manifest. 9. Moderation: Beware of absolutes. There are many gods. 13. Humility: See all men and women according to the Holy Ghost that is within them.”
“He tries to take away my wholeness and my dark forest, my freedom. For how can any man be free, without an illimitable background? And Benjamin tries to shove me into a barbed wire paddock and make me grow potatoes or Chicagoes. And how can I be free, without gods that come and go?”
On Nathaniel Hawthorne:
“Man ate of the tree of knowledge, and became ashamed of himself. [Sex] didn’t become a “sin” till the knowledge-poison entered.”
“The sin was the self-watching, self-consciousness.”
“Nowadays, men do hate the idea of dualism. It’s no good, dual we are.* The cross.** If we accept the symbol, then, virtually, we accept the fact. We are divided against ourselves.”
“For instance, the blood hates being KNOWN by the mind. It feels itself destroyed when it is KNOWN. Hence the profound instinct of privacy.”
“Blood-consciousness overwhelms, obliterates, and annuls mind-consciousness.”
“Mind-consciousness extinguishes blood-consciousness, and consumes the blood.”
“We are all of us conscious in both ways. And the two ways are antagonistic in us.”
“They will always remain so. That is our cross.”
“There is a basic hostility in all of us between the physical and the mental, the blood and the spirit. "The mind is “ashamed” of the blood. And the blood is destroyed by the mind, actually. Hence pale-faces."
"Every time you “conquer” the body with the mind (you can say “heal” it if you like) you cause a deeper, more dangerous complex or tension somewhere else.”
“For a long time men believed that they could be perfected through the mind, through the spirit. They believed, passionately. They had their ecstasy in pure consciousness.”
“America soon plucked the bird of the spirit.”
“The Scarlet Letter gives the show away.”
I’ve been reading Lawrence and Jean Borella at the same time, and, a bit surprisingly, they have something to say to each other.
*Lawrence: the mind-body or soul-body distinction destroys something in man.
Borella: “When Scripture calls upon man to gather together all elements of his being in order to venture toward God, it generally articulates a tripartition of elements [Borella refers to the Old and New testament “law” of love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart (“blood-consciousness,” Lawrence would call it), with all your soul (“mind-consciousness”), and with all your strength (“body”)”]. Conversely, when it calls upon man to divide himself, to renounce what--within himself--is not truly himself, it generally articulates a bipartition, and simply opposes the soul to the body. The first point of view has a more doctrinal value, while the second has, rather, a methodical or ascetic value. Man is, in fact, more truly himself when standing lovingly recollected before God, in the perfection of his nature, than when struggling sorrowfully in the world to conquer the imperfections of his sinful condition.”
**Lawrence: The Cross is the ultimate symbol of the destructive conflict between the soul (vertical plane) and body (horizontal plane).
Borella: The “Cross-Circle” is the ultimate symbol of the unity and restoration of Divine Nature in man. [Here’s where I get in over my head, but I’ll try anyway.] The broken circle is kind of like the Cross: it is the “symbolon” or the “vestigial,” concrete form of the pact of unity between God and man. The symbolon, however, is only completed and made to live through the “traditional significance” given to the symbol (through the authority of the Church, the body of Christ) and the “ritual activity” involving the symbol (the daily life of the members of the Church; that is, members of Christ’s body).
Perhaps, D. H. Lawrence is justified in seeing the Cross (if it is considered just as a symbolon) as the symbol of an incomplete relationship between God and man. Lawrence sees that there is something greater than that: his allegiance to the Holy Ghost (which Christ sent to look after his Church and its activities on earth). I think Borella’s consideration of the “tripartition of man” and its symbol of the “Cross-Circle” lends Lawrence’s precedence of “blood-knowledge” over Franklin moral “mind-knowledge” its true significance.
Labels:
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June 26, 2010
June 23, 2010
Gerrymeandering
It's difficult to keep Jerry away from me. I had my first real Scranton adventure of the summer last night.
I parked in the Scranton Mall parking lot yesterday. I read another essay by Borella, "Brooklyn Bridge" by Hart Crane (just as a side-note--in my opinion, the attempted epic, though pretty weak as a whole, is better than the actual thing), an essay by Tate, almost finished reading B16’s (at the time, Ratzinger’s) Principles of Catholic Theology, and sat around in Scranton drinking coffee until ten at night. Unfortunately, the mall parking garage closes at 9 PM, and the authorities that be are quick to tow any abandoned cars. I had several options. I could have--and this would have been the prudent decision--tried to get hold of someone at Saint Greg’s to pick me up, and resolved the car issue next morning. (Obviously, I’m not an exemplar of prudence: I did not take this road. Also, my cellular device died last night around midnight.) I could just run back, I thought; no need to bother the lads at this time. That would be an appropriately Jerryish decision, no? Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen, either. See, I was carrying a heavy backpack. And, that would be about a ten mile run. And, I didn't have appropriate shoes. And, most importantly, I was low on cigarette papers. Well, I worried that too much exercise without enough remedial carcinogens might lower my blood pressure too much, causing my instantaneous death. Luckily, I had another Jerryish option out there: find a bar, close it out, and spend the rest of the night trying to stay awake by reading a Milan Kundera novel (they’re so good!), some poetry (Roethke and Stevenson), and essays by Auerbach (I’m almost done with Mimesis), and then try to pick up my car the next morning.
Life in Scranton is pretty slow on Tuesday night. After about 2 AM, I gerrymeandered to a lovely area, scented with pine, outside of the Scranton University library. It was a freshman year sort of gerrymeander, too, accompanied by the familiar sounds of “step, swish, slap:” most of the fake leather of my fake penny loafers has already rubbed off, and last night my right sole began to come off as well. The only person I met on the streets was a tiny guy about fifty years old, a bum I will refer to as “Jerry,” whom I have run into many times before. He always has the same few questions for me ("Gerry"). Last night, our conversation went something like this.
Jerry (catching sight of Gerry): “Hey! Hey! Do you speak English?”
(Gerry pretends not to hear.)
Jerry (hurrying up to Gerry): “What are you doing tonight?”
Gerry (having failed to avoid an encounter): “Well, I’m planning on going to sleep pretty soon.” (Gerry is not, strictly speaking, truthful in this.)
Jerry (concerned): “You got a place to stay?”
Gerry (again exercising mental reservation): “Yes, I’ve got a place.”
Jerry (disappointed at this answer, but hopeful for a negative answer to the following): “You staying there with a girlfriend?”
Gerry (thinking, ‘uh oh; hard to reserve mentally for this one’): “No….”
Jerry (exuberant): “OK, so you want to come to my place then?” (Conspiratorially): “I’ve got a secret place!”
Gerry (uncomfortable): “Thanks very much, but ... I don’t think so.”
Jerry (pensive): “So … what do you want to do for fun?”
(Gerry says something about drinking heavily, because Jerry doesn’t dig on the booze at all.)
Jerry (glum): “When will I see you again?”
Gerry (having seen him wearing a Scranton Marathon Volunteer shirt): “Well, I plan on doing the marathon again next Fall.”
Jerry (bright again): “OK! So … what are you doing tonight?”
Gerry: “Cheesesticks?”
Jerry (as a last resort): “You got a cigarette?”
Gerry: “I can roll you one.”
His last question makes me wish that his other questions were less uncomfortable, because he’s harmless, and it seems that he would have some neat things to say, and because he could really be a type of Jerry. He is always so grateful to me for being willing to spend time talking with him (which consists in, mostly, answering variations of the above questions) over a cigarette. Plus (and this is a dead Jerry giveaway) he has even asked me for the time before.
His questioning and his manner suggests that he is some slightly eccentric man who is nevertheless harmless, and who spends his days sleeping and his nights/mornings wandering around the streets of Scranton. This is conjecture, but I would even bet that his “secret place” he claims to have is owned by his brother, who Jerry claims is the parish priest at Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Scranton. I think that he's telling the truth. He is always clean (for a bum), always dressed neatly (for a bum), his shoes are in better shape than mine, and I have walked into the cathedral for Confession before Mass of mornings and found him there chatting comfortably with the ushers and with those awesome old ladies who seem to be the backbone of every parish. Everybody knows him, and everybody seems to know of and be indulgent toward his eccentricity. (I wish I had paid attention to those conversations in the church. Does he ask those old ladies the same questions about girlfriends and his “secret place?” I really want to hear him try to bum a cigarette off of them, too.)
Yes, I made a Jerryish decision last night, and I’m kind of glad I did. Now, I’m sitting here in Scranton, drinking some more coffee (gotta keep that blood pressure up), trying to sober up, slightly tanked after starting drinking at ten AM so I could watch Landon Donovan score in the 91st minute to send USA, winners of group C, into the round of 16 (now, that game got my blood pressure up). Needless to say, I celebrated said score in true American fashion, by taking turns buying rounds with a group of recent university graduates. My Joshua Mahan-chosen “sexy jeans,” though quite blue, and my Dad-given purplish polo shirt (mixture of blue and pink [mixture of red and white]) did not even come close to competing with the outfits and paint that these guys were wearing. I'm not goning to lie; I like me some American Spirit.
Well, this Gerry is off to try to get his car back. I have an expired license and no registration, which might make things difficult. If I fail? Well, I know that I can always count on Jerry to provide.
I parked in the Scranton Mall parking lot yesterday. I read another essay by Borella, "Brooklyn Bridge" by Hart Crane (just as a side-note--in my opinion, the attempted epic, though pretty weak as a whole, is better than the actual thing), an essay by Tate, almost finished reading B16’s (at the time, Ratzinger’s) Principles of Catholic Theology, and sat around in Scranton drinking coffee until ten at night. Unfortunately, the mall parking garage closes at 9 PM, and the authorities that be are quick to tow any abandoned cars. I had several options. I could have--and this would have been the prudent decision--tried to get hold of someone at Saint Greg’s to pick me up, and resolved the car issue next morning. (Obviously, I’m not an exemplar of prudence: I did not take this road. Also, my cellular device died last night around midnight.) I could just run back, I thought; no need to bother the lads at this time. That would be an appropriately Jerryish decision, no? Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen, either. See, I was carrying a heavy backpack. And, that would be about a ten mile run. And, I didn't have appropriate shoes. And, most importantly, I was low on cigarette papers. Well, I worried that too much exercise without enough remedial carcinogens might lower my blood pressure too much, causing my instantaneous death. Luckily, I had another Jerryish option out there: find a bar, close it out, and spend the rest of the night trying to stay awake by reading a Milan Kundera novel (they’re so good!), some poetry (Roethke and Stevenson), and essays by Auerbach (I’m almost done with Mimesis), and then try to pick up my car the next morning.
Life in Scranton is pretty slow on Tuesday night. After about 2 AM, I gerrymeandered to a lovely area, scented with pine, outside of the Scranton University library. It was a freshman year sort of gerrymeander, too, accompanied by the familiar sounds of “step, swish, slap:” most of the fake leather of my fake penny loafers has already rubbed off, and last night my right sole began to come off as well. The only person I met on the streets was a tiny guy about fifty years old, a bum I will refer to as “Jerry,” whom I have run into many times before. He always has the same few questions for me ("Gerry"). Last night, our conversation went something like this.
Jerry (catching sight of Gerry): “Hey! Hey! Do you speak English?”
(Gerry pretends not to hear.)
Jerry (hurrying up to Gerry): “What are you doing tonight?”
Gerry (having failed to avoid an encounter): “Well, I’m planning on going to sleep pretty soon.” (Gerry is not, strictly speaking, truthful in this.)
Jerry (concerned): “You got a place to stay?”
Gerry (again exercising mental reservation): “Yes, I’ve got a place.”
Jerry (disappointed at this answer, but hopeful for a negative answer to the following): “You staying there with a girlfriend?”
Gerry (thinking, ‘uh oh; hard to reserve mentally for this one’): “No….”
Jerry (exuberant): “OK, so you want to come to my place then?” (Conspiratorially): “I’ve got a secret place!”
Gerry (uncomfortable): “Thanks very much, but ... I don’t think so.”
Jerry (pensive): “So … what do you want to do for fun?”
(Gerry says something about drinking heavily, because Jerry doesn’t dig on the booze at all.)
Jerry (glum): “When will I see you again?”
Gerry (having seen him wearing a Scranton Marathon Volunteer shirt): “Well, I plan on doing the marathon again next Fall.”
Jerry (bright again): “OK! So … what are you doing tonight?”
Gerry: “Cheesesticks?”
Jerry (as a last resort): “You got a cigarette?”
Gerry: “I can roll you one.”
His last question makes me wish that his other questions were less uncomfortable, because he’s harmless, and it seems that he would have some neat things to say, and because he could really be a type of Jerry. He is always so grateful to me for being willing to spend time talking with him (which consists in, mostly, answering variations of the above questions) over a cigarette. Plus (and this is a dead Jerry giveaway) he has even asked me for the time before.
His questioning and his manner suggests that he is some slightly eccentric man who is nevertheless harmless, and who spends his days sleeping and his nights/mornings wandering around the streets of Scranton. This is conjecture, but I would even bet that his “secret place” he claims to have is owned by his brother, who Jerry claims is the parish priest at Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Scranton. I think that he's telling the truth. He is always clean (for a bum), always dressed neatly (for a bum), his shoes are in better shape than mine, and I have walked into the cathedral for Confession before Mass of mornings and found him there chatting comfortably with the ushers and with those awesome old ladies who seem to be the backbone of every parish. Everybody knows him, and everybody seems to know of and be indulgent toward his eccentricity. (I wish I had paid attention to those conversations in the church. Does he ask those old ladies the same questions about girlfriends and his “secret place?” I really want to hear him try to bum a cigarette off of them, too.)
Yes, I made a Jerryish decision last night, and I’m kind of glad I did. Now, I’m sitting here in Scranton, drinking some more coffee (gotta keep that blood pressure up), trying to sober up, slightly tanked after starting drinking at ten AM so I could watch Landon Donovan score in the 91st minute to send USA, winners of group C, into the round of 16 (now, that game got my blood pressure up). Needless to say, I celebrated said score in true American fashion, by taking turns buying rounds with a group of recent university graduates. My Joshua Mahan-chosen “sexy jeans,” though quite blue, and my Dad-given purplish polo shirt (mixture of blue and pink [mixture of red and white]) did not even come close to competing with the outfits and paint that these guys were wearing. I'm not goning to lie; I like me some American Spirit.
Well, this Gerry is off to try to get his car back. I have an expired license and no registration, which might make things difficult. If I fail? Well, I know that I can always count on Jerry to provide.
June 22, 2010
A Neverthriving of Jugglers
I found this website full of collective nouns, including "a neverthriving of jugglers".
"Really? You like rap?"
About rap in general, I have this to say: it is easy to see why rap is so popular with athletes, because rapping is a sort of athleticism transformed into words. How does a point guard, or a running back, or an inside center beat his defender? Now, one way is to overpower the defender; another is simply to outrun the defender. I suggest that neither of those ways requires athleticism as I define it. It doesn’t take an athlete to run someone into the ground (apologies to Misko, but no one would accuse him of being athletic, even though he frequently trucks people into the ground), nor does it take an athlete to outrun someone--I mean straight-line speed here. This part of my judgment stems from my long-distance-runner bias that speed is a pure and simple God-given talent--not that sprinters don’t have to work at things as well, but you never say of a sprinter, “Wow, that was athletic!” (I make no claim, mind, that long-distance running requires athleticism, either.) No, the athletic way to defeat a defender is with some type of juke. It seems also that more athletic pleasure derives from “faking someone out of their shorts,” or “breaking someone’s ankles,” than from trucking someone or outrunning someone (though these perhaps give more aesthetic pleasure). Any running back or inside center or point guard worth his salt knows that the best juke consists of the principle movements of “fast, slow, fast.” Put even simpler, the juke consists simply in changing the speed at which your body is moving, while keeping your running motion fluid and under control.
Music, or at least the music that holds the most interest for me, works similarly. Gregorian chant does not move at a straight-line speed; it moves in a free-flowing line of two- and three-note neums that may be sped up or slowed down at the discretion of the choirmaster. The free-rhythmic character of the beat in chant within otherwise strict guidelines is one of chant’s distinctive characteristics. The masters of classical music are known for their mastery of counterpoint, which served to check or speed up the otherwise regular meter of their songs. To give just one more suggestion, I remember Eileen’s insistence that the great lyricists are those whose irregular substitutions both work against the beat and uphold it. In other words, the beat is upheld but kind of violated at the same time. By contrast, Kundera’s judgment of the primitivism of rock: “The heart’s beat is amplified so that man can never for a moment forget his march toward death.”
Two kinds of rap that are not athletic: I need only refer to the "dey-dey" or the "wee-wee" schools of rap. The speech of deys impresses in its onslaught of verbiage that is, quite simply, words without thought. This type of rap may correspond with those “athletes” who simply have a God-given talent for speed, who can blow by their defender by simple virtue of having more talent. The speech of the wees, on the other hand, impresses with a sort of dull, rhythmic mind-numbing, sort of like those running backs who just try to run over everything in their path. Much as I love Ludacris, it seems that Chris isn’t that good at mixing these two styles. For example, the verses in “Roll Out” have the invariable sequence of wee, dey, wee, dey. For another, Luda's memorable “Act the Fool” is written completely in the wee style. It’s sad, because I have great respect for Mr. Bridges’s beats and bass lines. An ideal rap world: Luda’s beats and Eminem’s words.
Give me, on the other hand, the speech of a true athlete, like those verbal athletes Slim and Dre in “Forgot about Dre,” who will rap without succumbing to a single speed, who will linger over the short “i”s and the long “a”s at the end of every line--(this technique reminds me of early French poets, who employed rich rhyme, trying to rhyme assonantally at the end of lines as much as possible--see the three assonances at the end of each line below: i.e., “Slim Shady,” “twin babies,” “mid-eighties;” Marshall doesn’t just stop with three, either; for example, earlier in the song, “So, what do you say to somebody you hate? / Or, anyone trying to bring trouble your way? / Wanna resolve things in a bloodier way? / Just study a tape of NWA!” I apologize for the esoteric 'junior poet terminolgy,' but nothing else can come close to explaining the genius of these lines. See, each 'line' in the 'stanza' concludes with four 'rich rhymes,' and the first and last lines kind of give the stanza a 'closed' feel, 'enveloping' the middle two lines with ‘double rich rhymes.’ Dre does this well, too. Check out his verses in “Forgot about Dre." First of all, it’s impressive that Dre is able to structure the entire first verse on just the assonance of long o plus long e (even though it gets a bit annoying, especially by the end of the verse); but, it’s even more athletic that Dre manages to include rich rhyme almost throughout the entire lines in the following section: “Hated on by most of these [people] / with no cheese, no deals, / and no gs, no wheels, / and no keys, no boats / no snowmobiles and no skis; / mad at me ‘cause I can finally afford / to provide my family with groceries….” Again [and it hurts me to do it; I love me Ludacris], compare Chris’s lyrical abilities negatively to really rich rhyme)--yet still pack words linked from line to line in a fast patter. The following is the bit that first enticed me to Mr. Mathers years ago (I first heard this at the Fort Scott swimming pool from the mouth of the instructor who was teaching swimming lessons with me):
Slim shady,
hotter than a set of twin babies,
in a Mercedes Benz with the windows up
when the temp goes up to the mid-eighties,
calling men ladies;
sorry doc, but I been crazy,
there’s no way that you can save me;
it’s OK, go with him, Hailey….
Let’s look, just briefly, at how Shady poetically grows his subjects. He might be praising himself, sure, but his diction and imagery seem well done, and his tone seems to me to develop away from simple egotism. Twin babies? Come on, you’ve got to admit that twins are pretty hot … and they’re in a Mercedes-Benz? Hot! With windows rolled up in eighty-degree weather? Now, that’s hot. Slim is working with “heat” on different levels here. Babies are “hot” in one sense; a nice car in another; and, of course, temperature involves a different type of heat than babies or cars. He is so hot, that he is going crazy, and must eventually lose his daughter (baby--note the repetition and development of Slim’s original image), and, even his impressive opinion of his own “hotness,” as reflected by the falling, resigned, almost tender tone of his voice as he concludes his verse. It is appropriate that Marshall resigns that blown-up image of himself at the end of the verse, because the chorus is a praise of Shady’s own mentor and the co-writer of “Forgot About Dre,” the good Doctor himself: “Nowadays everybody wanna talk / like they got something to say, but nothing comes out / when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish; / mother[lovers] act like they forgot about Dre.”
It’s not a question of verbal aesthetics, but of verbal athletics--and oh! but “Forgot About Dre” is a vintage draught of verbal athleticism!
Music, or at least the music that holds the most interest for me, works similarly. Gregorian chant does not move at a straight-line speed; it moves in a free-flowing line of two- and three-note neums that may be sped up or slowed down at the discretion of the choirmaster. The free-rhythmic character of the beat in chant within otherwise strict guidelines is one of chant’s distinctive characteristics. The masters of classical music are known for their mastery of counterpoint, which served to check or speed up the otherwise regular meter of their songs. To give just one more suggestion, I remember Eileen’s insistence that the great lyricists are those whose irregular substitutions both work against the beat and uphold it. In other words, the beat is upheld but kind of violated at the same time. By contrast, Kundera’s judgment of the primitivism of rock: “The heart’s beat is amplified so that man can never for a moment forget his march toward death.”
Two kinds of rap that are not athletic: I need only refer to the "dey-dey" or the "wee-wee" schools of rap. The speech of deys impresses in its onslaught of verbiage that is, quite simply, words without thought. This type of rap may correspond with those “athletes” who simply have a God-given talent for speed, who can blow by their defender by simple virtue of having more talent. The speech of the wees, on the other hand, impresses with a sort of dull, rhythmic mind-numbing, sort of like those running backs who just try to run over everything in their path. Much as I love Ludacris, it seems that Chris isn’t that good at mixing these two styles. For example, the verses in “Roll Out” have the invariable sequence of wee, dey, wee, dey. For another, Luda's memorable “Act the Fool” is written completely in the wee style. It’s sad, because I have great respect for Mr. Bridges’s beats and bass lines. An ideal rap world: Luda’s beats and Eminem’s words.
Give me, on the other hand, the speech of a true athlete, like those verbal athletes Slim and Dre in “Forgot about Dre,” who will rap without succumbing to a single speed, who will linger over the short “i”s and the long “a”s at the end of every line--(this technique reminds me of early French poets, who employed rich rhyme, trying to rhyme assonantally at the end of lines as much as possible--see the three assonances at the end of each line below: i.e., “Slim Shady,” “twin babies,” “mid-eighties;” Marshall doesn’t just stop with three, either; for example, earlier in the song, “So, what do you say to somebody you hate? / Or, anyone trying to bring trouble your way? / Wanna resolve things in a bloodier way? / Just study a tape of NWA!” I apologize for the esoteric 'junior poet terminolgy,' but nothing else can come close to explaining the genius of these lines. See, each 'line' in the 'stanza' concludes with four 'rich rhymes,' and the first and last lines kind of give the stanza a 'closed' feel, 'enveloping' the middle two lines with ‘double rich rhymes.’ Dre does this well, too. Check out his verses in “Forgot about Dre." First of all, it’s impressive that Dre is able to structure the entire first verse on just the assonance of long o plus long e (even though it gets a bit annoying, especially by the end of the verse); but, it’s even more athletic that Dre manages to include rich rhyme almost throughout the entire lines in the following section: “Hated on by most of these [people] / with no cheese, no deals, / and no gs, no wheels, / and no keys, no boats / no snowmobiles and no skis; / mad at me ‘cause I can finally afford / to provide my family with groceries….” Again [and it hurts me to do it; I love me Ludacris], compare Chris’s lyrical abilities negatively to really rich rhyme)--yet still pack words linked from line to line in a fast patter. The following is the bit that first enticed me to Mr. Mathers years ago (I first heard this at the Fort Scott swimming pool from the mouth of the instructor who was teaching swimming lessons with me):
Slim shady,
hotter than a set of twin babies,
in a Mercedes Benz with the windows up
when the temp goes up to the mid-eighties,
calling men ladies;
sorry doc, but I been crazy,
there’s no way that you can save me;
it’s OK, go with him, Hailey….
Let’s look, just briefly, at how Shady poetically grows his subjects. He might be praising himself, sure, but his diction and imagery seem well done, and his tone seems to me to develop away from simple egotism. Twin babies? Come on, you’ve got to admit that twins are pretty hot … and they’re in a Mercedes-Benz? Hot! With windows rolled up in eighty-degree weather? Now, that’s hot. Slim is working with “heat” on different levels here. Babies are “hot” in one sense; a nice car in another; and, of course, temperature involves a different type of heat than babies or cars. He is so hot, that he is going crazy, and must eventually lose his daughter (baby--note the repetition and development of Slim’s original image), and, even his impressive opinion of his own “hotness,” as reflected by the falling, resigned, almost tender tone of his voice as he concludes his verse. It is appropriate that Marshall resigns that blown-up image of himself at the end of the verse, because the chorus is a praise of Shady’s own mentor and the co-writer of “Forgot About Dre,” the good Doctor himself: “Nowadays everybody wanna talk / like they got something to say, but nothing comes out / when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish; / mother[lovers] act like they forgot about Dre.”
It’s not a question of verbal aesthetics, but of verbal athletics--and oh! but “Forgot About Dre” is a vintage draught of verbal athleticism!
June 21, 2010
Borella
I guess I need some help from the theologians/philosophers. See, I am reading this stuff by Jean Borella, and loving it--a collection of essays by Borella, arranged by some guy named Champeaux into The Secret of the Christian Way after the pattern of Itinerarium Mentis In Deum. I guess my question is, who is this Borella guy? At Josh--how legit is he?
Anyway, his essay on the essence of symbol is excellent; Paul McCleary/Boomer directed me towards Borella as someone who has a good grasp of what they are trying to define as poetic inspiration. Borella points toward three aspects of the symbol. There is the “concrete form,” or “vestigial being” of the symbolon, which reveals itself as “the present part of the absent whole” (62). There is the “memorial symbol,” which is the “traditional significance” of the symbol, passed down orally by authority. A symbol doesn’t just have meaning in itself, it also has meaning “for someone else” (64-66). There is also a third aspect of the symbol: it “directs” us towards recognition of reality through “ritual activity” (66). It is this third aspect of the symbol that I think best captures the poetry or the making behind any work of art. I mean, anyone can give us symbols without doing anything special with them (just offhand, I think of A Separate Peace and The Great Gatsby), and the second characteristic has more to do with something received in the symbol itself, not really created by the poet.
Borella concludes that the rainbow (Iris, in Greek mythology), is the ultimate symbol of God’s covenant with man. The rainbow, or rather, the half-completed arch, or the broken circle, is “the revelatory sign of that primordial pact at the foundation of every religion[; it] is also the [symbolon] that signs and seals the restoration of the divine nature in creatures: the nimbus of the Roman gods and Buddhist wisdom, the halo of the Christian saints, the noble turban of Islam, and the radiant war-bonnet of the Native American. In truth the orb of the symbol encircles everything: it is the radiance of Divine Glory” (68-69).
Rain, rain, and sun! A rainbow in the sky;
A young man will be wiser by and by;
An old man’s wit may wander ere he die.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
Anyway, his essay on the essence of symbol is excellent; Paul McCleary/Boomer directed me towards Borella as someone who has a good grasp of what they are trying to define as poetic inspiration. Borella points toward three aspects of the symbol. There is the “concrete form,” or “vestigial being” of the symbolon, which reveals itself as “the present part of the absent whole” (62). There is the “memorial symbol,” which is the “traditional significance” of the symbol, passed down orally by authority. A symbol doesn’t just have meaning in itself, it also has meaning “for someone else” (64-66). There is also a third aspect of the symbol: it “directs” us towards recognition of reality through “ritual activity” (66). It is this third aspect of the symbol that I think best captures the poetry or the making behind any work of art. I mean, anyone can give us symbols without doing anything special with them (just offhand, I think of A Separate Peace and The Great Gatsby), and the second characteristic has more to do with something received in the symbol itself, not really created by the poet.
Borella concludes that the rainbow (Iris, in Greek mythology), is the ultimate symbol of God’s covenant with man. The rainbow, or rather, the half-completed arch, or the broken circle, is “the revelatory sign of that primordial pact at the foundation of every religion[; it] is also the [symbolon] that signs and seals the restoration of the divine nature in creatures: the nimbus of the Roman gods and Buddhist wisdom, the halo of the Christian saints, the noble turban of Islam, and the radiant war-bonnet of the Native American. In truth the orb of the symbol encircles everything: it is the radiance of Divine Glory” (68-69).
Rain, rain, and sun! A rainbow in the sky;
A young man will be wiser by and by;
An old man’s wit may wander ere he die.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
Summer Reading
As I work on compiling my summer reading list, I will post my “short list” of books that you “have to read.” Below is a list of works from my favorite novelists; I’m just kind of browsing through my bookshelf. I’ve used kind of specific criteria to shorten the list.
1. They must be novels. This excludes all verse, drama, epic, collections of short stories; many religious or metaphysical or autobiographical discourses that are novel-like--i.e., The Confessions, Consolation of Philosophy, Plato’s Dialogues, Sartor Resartus, Lavengro and the Romany Rye, etc.; and generally, anything Bakhtin might label as a monologic, rather than a dialogic novel--The Napoleon of Nottingham Hill, Till We Have Faces, Tom Brown’s School Days, etc. (the first two are more pure allegory than monologue--whatever).
2. This kind of follows from number one. They must be “great” novels, or “canonical” in Bloom’s sense, by which I mean they add much to the genre of the novel. Much as I love, say, Greenes, Amises, Wodehouses, Chestertons, Smolletts, Kiplings, etc., I can’t say that their novels are seminal to the genre of novel. Some considerations: A. Are they included in core English studies at UD? B. Should they be? Rather subjective, I admit, and perhaps hard to back up with a few of the selections: The Satyricon, The Dangerous Liaisons, The Pickwick Papers, etc.; but, oh well.
3. They must be novels that I can pick up at just about any time, open to just about any point in the story, and read and enjoy. Thus, while I at least should love Beloved, The Return of the Native, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Emma, The Stranger, etc., I have reservations about the extent to which I love that stuff.
4. This kind of follows out of number three: I must know the novel itself well enough to enter discourse with it wherever I pick it up. Thus, though things like Anna Karenina, Jacques the Fatalist, On the Road, The Immoralist, Henderson the Rain King, Things Fall Apart, etc., probably should be on the list, I can’t say that I intimately know them.
5. I have listed only one novel per novelist--thus excluding many works that meet the four previous criteria. Most notably, this excludes novels of Garcia Marquez, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Kundera, McCarthy, Fielding, James, and Kazantzakis (each of these novelists should have at least three novels that make the list).
Pre-Eighteenth Century: Don Quixote--Cervantes; The Satyricon--Petronius; Gargantua and Pantagruel--Rabelais. Eighteenth Century: Joseph Andrews--Henry Fielding; The Dangerous Liaisons--[Choderlos??!!] de Laclos; Tristram Shandy--Sterne. Nineteenth Century: The Pickwick Papers--Dickens; The Brothers Karamazov--Dostoevsky; Madame Bovary--Flaubert; Moby Dick--Melville. Twentieth Century: Light in August--Faulkner; One Hundred Years of Solitude--Garcia Marquez; The Ambassadors--James; Zorba the Greek--Kazantzakis; Mrs. Dalloway--Woolf. Contemporary: Slowness--Kundera; All the Pretty Horses--McCarthy; Gilead--Robinson.
Some works that I suspect I could add to the list after this summer: Remembrance of Things Past, Jacques the Fatalist (reread), Henderson the Rain King (reread), The Moviegoers, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (reread), A House for Mr. Biswas. Also, I hear that Dr. Whalen really digs him some Alice Thomas Ellis, who I remember annoying me (27th Kingdom), so I probably need to appreciate her novels too.
Hopefully, I haven’t been neglecting anything too important. Apologies to those senior novel(ist)s I’ve rejected. Suggestions? Objections? Disagreements over which novel from which novelist?
1. They must be novels. This excludes all verse, drama, epic, collections of short stories; many religious or metaphysical or autobiographical discourses that are novel-like--i.e., The Confessions, Consolation of Philosophy, Plato’s Dialogues, Sartor Resartus, Lavengro and the Romany Rye, etc.; and generally, anything Bakhtin might label as a monologic, rather than a dialogic novel--The Napoleon of Nottingham Hill, Till We Have Faces, Tom Brown’s School Days, etc. (the first two are more pure allegory than monologue--whatever).
2. This kind of follows from number one. They must be “great” novels, or “canonical” in Bloom’s sense, by which I mean they add much to the genre of the novel. Much as I love, say, Greenes, Amises, Wodehouses, Chestertons, Smolletts, Kiplings, etc., I can’t say that their novels are seminal to the genre of novel. Some considerations: A. Are they included in core English studies at UD? B. Should they be? Rather subjective, I admit, and perhaps hard to back up with a few of the selections: The Satyricon, The Dangerous Liaisons, The Pickwick Papers, etc.; but, oh well.
3. They must be novels that I can pick up at just about any time, open to just about any point in the story, and read and enjoy. Thus, while I at least should love Beloved, The Return of the Native, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Emma, The Stranger, etc., I have reservations about the extent to which I love that stuff.
4. This kind of follows out of number three: I must know the novel itself well enough to enter discourse with it wherever I pick it up. Thus, though things like Anna Karenina, Jacques the Fatalist, On the Road, The Immoralist, Henderson the Rain King, Things Fall Apart, etc., probably should be on the list, I can’t say that I intimately know them.
5. I have listed only one novel per novelist--thus excluding many works that meet the four previous criteria. Most notably, this excludes novels of Garcia Marquez, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Kundera, McCarthy, Fielding, James, and Kazantzakis (each of these novelists should have at least three novels that make the list).
Pre-Eighteenth Century: Don Quixote--Cervantes; The Satyricon--Petronius; Gargantua and Pantagruel--Rabelais. Eighteenth Century: Joseph Andrews--Henry Fielding; The Dangerous Liaisons--[Choderlos??!!] de Laclos; Tristram Shandy--Sterne. Nineteenth Century: The Pickwick Papers--Dickens; The Brothers Karamazov--Dostoevsky; Madame Bovary--Flaubert; Moby Dick--Melville. Twentieth Century: Light in August--Faulkner; One Hundred Years of Solitude--Garcia Marquez; The Ambassadors--James; Zorba the Greek--Kazantzakis; Mrs. Dalloway--Woolf. Contemporary: Slowness--Kundera; All the Pretty Horses--McCarthy; Gilead--Robinson.
Some works that I suspect I could add to the list after this summer: Remembrance of Things Past, Jacques the Fatalist (reread), Henderson the Rain King (reread), The Moviegoers, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (reread), A House for Mr. Biswas. Also, I hear that Dr. Whalen really digs him some Alice Thomas Ellis, who I remember annoying me (27th Kingdom), so I probably need to appreciate her novels too.
Hopefully, I haven’t been neglecting anything too important. Apologies to those senior novel(ist)s I’ve rejected. Suggestions? Objections? Disagreements over which novel from which novelist?
June 18, 2010
The Adventures of Mary and Abe
Although I read this blog with the same hungry passion that I read such luminaries as “Hark a Vagrant” and “Hyperbole and a Half”, I have yet to really write anything for it. Granted, I did once post a humorous short film about Kant, the brilliance of which, I was sure, would radiate as a testament to my blogging genius even if I never posted anything again. But I feel the time has come to damage (possibly) my exalted status and post something that is not a video of five minutes of philosophical adumbration about Kant set to a catchy beat.
Let that suffice as an introduction.
Next year, having relinquished my post as Magistra Latinae, I will be teaching Ancient and Medieval History to middle schoolers and American History, Literature, and Philosophy to 9th graders. I think this qualifies me as a 'History Teacher'. And I am excited. Near giddy, truth be told.
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(The coolest people are history teachers.)
But I am also scared. As I've been preparing to make
the transition to history teacher, a sense of foreboding with a touch of panic has been growing with increasing poignancy. It's a panic I didn't feel with Latin. I knew that teaching the kiddos Latin was important. I knew it was an impressive responsibility, as the education of children in anything is. But I wasn't overwhelmed by it. Or frightened into a frozen, fetal-positioned ball of craven anxiety.
I'm not quite to that point yet, but the anxiety has been mounting. This is some really important stuff. Especially the American tradition. I mean, I'm teaching these newly high-schooled people about the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution. Did you hear me—the CONSTITUTION!
What if I cannot convey to them just how badass the signers of the Declaration of Independence are? What if I cannot fully describe to them that the Founding Fathers had the strength and courage and perseverance of Lance Armstrong wielding Excalibur against a grizzly bear (at least)? What if I fail to demonstrate that Jay, Hamilton, and Madison (especially Madison) had the intelligence of Stephen Hawking plus Bobby Fischer? And the prudence of...well...I can't really think of any prudent people. Let's just say Madison's prudence is the acme to BP's nadir of prudence.
So these thoughts have been weighing on me lately and I've been freaking out a little (read: a lot) about them. That is, until Abraham Lincoln set me free.
I'm currently reading Harry V. Jaffa's “A New Birth of Freedom”, which was at first adding untold weight to my already Atlas-like pressure. He does a great job of giving the background to the Civil War by highlighting the completely unique and crazily difficult thing the founding of America was. Then, of course, with the Civil War the huge question is: Is this unique and difficult government sustainable? Or did our grand experiment just flop?
Lincoln believes with all his heart that the government founded in the Declaration of Independence and more perfectly established by the Constitution of 1787 is perpetual and should be perpetual. This government more than any other in all of history acknowledges, reveres, and protects the natural rights of all human beings. With an almost child-like faith, Lincoln never sways from his stance that this is the best government for America, this is the Union that must be protected for it protects the invaluable and inalienable rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Lincoln also never veers from his belief that slavery is a contradiction to the principle of natural rights.
As impressive as his indomitable faith is Lincoln's near-pristine prudence, by which he stitches together the theological virtue of his faith with the practical virtues required of a leader of men. To this end, after receiving the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1860, Lincoln went silent.
Before earning the nomination, Lincoln gave “four major speeches in which he developed and set forth the arguments in virtue of which he became the political leader of the anti-slavery cause and president of the United States” (240). In those speeches as well as other speeches and his debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln had fully given his position on all the disputed matters. To repeat and belabor his position and points would counter the efficacy of those positions. “For him to repeat now what he had said before the election, as if it needed justification, would only, he wrote,
make me appear as if I repented for the crime of having been elected, and was anxious to apologize and beg forgiveness. To so represent me, would be the principal use made of any letter I might now thrust upon the public. My old record cannot be so used; and that is precisely the reason that some new declaration is so much sought” (246).
I am thoroughly impressed by this public silence not only because I think more (all?) politicians should follow suit, but also because I think it will be quite a handy tactic for me this upcoming school year. I realize that I should imitate Lincoln when I start getting antsy about making sure my students know important this stuff is. I should imitate his simple, single faith that the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution are good and worthy in and of themselves. I don't need to fancy them up with grizzly bears or hammer them into my students' skulls. They are true, good, and beautiful principles. To decorate them with over-wrought analogies (see above) would be to detract from their solid, unapologetic integrity. To dwell on, harp on, and over-and over-and-over-again emphasize the importance of these principles would be an imprudent presentation of the material. I would be thrusting them upon my students, thereby effecting a feeling similar to what Lincoln describes above.
Armed with this trust in the perpetual goodness of the principles of natural rights, and trying oh so hard to imitate Lincoln's ever-impressive prudence, I feel much more confident about my role as history teacher. I will try to present these principles, these documents, these men clearly and accurately, and then let my students poke, prod, examine, and judge as they will.
Not to say that I don't still occasionally get all quivery about this looming responsibility, but I feel much better now that I've got Abe in my corner. If only I could pull off that beard.
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June 15, 2010
Summer Plans
My only definite plan this summer is to post more regularly here, because I will be writing a lot this summer. See, when the doctor released me from the hospital in Scotland, he said (after giving me lots of drugs!) that he was worried about my blood pressure.
Doctor: "It's right on the edge of being dangerously low."
Me, filled with incredulity and mirth: "Don't worry, doctor, I'll take care of that back in the States."
To that end, I plan, this summer, to sit on my butt during the days, avoiding exercise and eating fatty foods (read: grease-fest), while drinking lots and lots of coffee, and smoking lots and lots of cigarettes--and read tons and tons and tons of stuff. Then I'll get to write about that stuff.
Just a warning.
Doctor: "It's right on the edge of being dangerously low."
Me, filled with incredulity and mirth: "Don't worry, doctor, I'll take care of that back in the States."
To that end, I plan, this summer, to sit on my butt during the days, avoiding exercise and eating fatty foods (read: grease-fest), while drinking lots and lots of coffee, and smoking lots and lots of cigarettes--and read tons and tons and tons of stuff. Then I'll get to write about that stuff.
Just a warning.
Shutter Island
Just to reassure you all, I don’t spend all my time thinking about the tragedy of Slipknot or the existential situation of being on a boat. One thing I’m thinking, more and more, is that Scorsese is a director worth examining more in a personal attempt to address in what way film relates to art. I am trying to avoid the problem Walter Benjamin articulates; namely, that “commentators had earlier expended much fruitless ingenuity on the question of whether photography was an art--without asking the more fundamental question of whether the invention of photography had not transformed the entire character of art--film theorists quickly adopted the same ill-considered standpoint” (28). I try to consider in what way film has transformed art. One approach I take is to compare films to their corresponding art--generally, the book from which they are derived. I watched “Shutter Island” (Scorsese) on the way to Ireland and read the book (Lehane) on the way back. That film is most interesting to me at least in part because it improves on the book (I haven’t found too many that do that--possibly some Steven Kings, possibly “The Silence of the Lambs,” to name others).
The literal story introduces themes common to both book and film. A quite literal theme: what is the proper way to treat diseases of the mind? Another, perhaps more aesthetic, theme common to book and film: the portrayal of insanity in light of Chesterton’s statement: ‘Insanity means losing everything except your reason.’ Another aesthetic theme, and here is where the movie goes beyond the book: the role of the actor and his humanity in the face of a dominating “apparatus” (Benjamin). [I have no qualms about spoiling the end of the movie for anyone, because I recognize that I'm pretty behind y'all on the movie front.] There is a pretty good possibility, at the end of the movie, that the main character is not actually insane, but rather is choosing to play a part, a role, that is not true, for the sake of preserving his personal integrity.
I am reminded of Benjamin’s statements about film-making as opposed to theatre. The actor in the theatre measures himself against nature; or, against the role he plays. The film actor, on the other hand, measures himself against “the apparatus” (30). To perform well before the demands of the apparatus is a “test performance of the highest order. To accomplish it is to preserve one’s humanity in the face of the apparatus. Interest in this performance is widespread. For the majority of city dwellers, throughout the workday in offices and factories, have to relinquish their humanity in the face of an apparatus. In the evening, these same masses fill the cinemas, to witness the film actor taking revenge on their behalf not only by asserting his humanity (or what appears to them as such) against the apparatus, but by placing that apparatus in service of his triumph” (31). In “Shutter Island,” the main character engages his humanity, the question of his own real identity, against what he perceives to be the false apparatus that is placed around him; he even uses that apparatus in service of his own heroism. The tragedy lies in that he chooses to hold onto his personal integrity , which turns out to be false (and thus "die" by undergoing a lobotomy), at the cost of the integrity of the apparatus, which turns out to be real (instead of living with the knowledge that he and his wife are "monsters"). (I won’t address the question here of how real that apparatus actually is--I mean, why would Scorsese end the film with a last shot of the lighthouse? It seems that Scorsese, by closing with that shot, invites at least some possibility that the character actually is sane.)
The last line from the main character in the movie does not occur in the book. It is solely the basis of that last line that I think the movie surpasses the book. The book concludes with the patient a confirmed criminally insane person, about to undergo out of necessity an operation that will destroy both his ability to harm others and destroy his ability to think rationally. The movie concludes similarly (just before the shot of the lighthouse), except with a person who I think consciously chooses to play the role of an insane person: “I’d rather die a good man than live a monster.” Brilliant. If the guy actually thinks he is sane, why would he say that?
Also, as a postscript, I have heard that there is massive controversy over the film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” another Scorsese film. I think that Kazantzakis’s book from which the film was derived was excellent, and I don’t think it was any more “heretical,” than, say, Paradise Lost (keeping in mind that 'the morality of art is different than the morality of the church'--drawn from comments by Louise, among others). Is the film worth seeing? Is “Mean Streets?” Other Scorsese recommendations?
The literal story introduces themes common to both book and film. A quite literal theme: what is the proper way to treat diseases of the mind? Another, perhaps more aesthetic, theme common to book and film: the portrayal of insanity in light of Chesterton’s statement: ‘Insanity means losing everything except your reason.’ Another aesthetic theme, and here is where the movie goes beyond the book: the role of the actor and his humanity in the face of a dominating “apparatus” (Benjamin). [I have no qualms about spoiling the end of the movie for anyone, because I recognize that I'm pretty behind y'all on the movie front.] There is a pretty good possibility, at the end of the movie, that the main character is not actually insane, but rather is choosing to play a part, a role, that is not true, for the sake of preserving his personal integrity.
I am reminded of Benjamin’s statements about film-making as opposed to theatre. The actor in the theatre measures himself against nature; or, against the role he plays. The film actor, on the other hand, measures himself against “the apparatus” (30). To perform well before the demands of the apparatus is a “test performance of the highest order. To accomplish it is to preserve one’s humanity in the face of the apparatus. Interest in this performance is widespread. For the majority of city dwellers, throughout the workday in offices and factories, have to relinquish their humanity in the face of an apparatus. In the evening, these same masses fill the cinemas, to witness the film actor taking revenge on their behalf not only by asserting his humanity (or what appears to them as such) against the apparatus, but by placing that apparatus in service of his triumph” (31). In “Shutter Island,” the main character engages his humanity, the question of his own real identity, against what he perceives to be the false apparatus that is placed around him; he even uses that apparatus in service of his own heroism. The tragedy lies in that he chooses to hold onto his personal integrity , which turns out to be false (and thus "die" by undergoing a lobotomy), at the cost of the integrity of the apparatus, which turns out to be real (instead of living with the knowledge that he and his wife are "monsters"). (I won’t address the question here of how real that apparatus actually is--I mean, why would Scorsese end the film with a last shot of the lighthouse? It seems that Scorsese, by closing with that shot, invites at least some possibility that the character actually is sane.)
The last line from the main character in the movie does not occur in the book. It is solely the basis of that last line that I think the movie surpasses the book. The book concludes with the patient a confirmed criminally insane person, about to undergo out of necessity an operation that will destroy both his ability to harm others and destroy his ability to think rationally. The movie concludes similarly (just before the shot of the lighthouse), except with a person who I think consciously chooses to play the role of an insane person: “I’d rather die a good man than live a monster.” Brilliant. If the guy actually thinks he is sane, why would he say that?
Also, as a postscript, I have heard that there is massive controversy over the film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” another Scorsese film. I think that Kazantzakis’s book from which the film was derived was excellent, and I don’t think it was any more “heretical,” than, say, Paradise Lost (keeping in mind that 'the morality of art is different than the morality of the church'--drawn from comments by Louise, among others). Is the film worth seeing? Is “Mean Streets?” Other Scorsese recommendations?
June 12, 2010
Summer Update: IN DC; Funny Insightful Blog; Dr. Moran and Stibora; Painting
Summer Update:
To my dearests:
I'm in D.C. now, after a long and broken up drive. It's good to be here where the things are green and swampy. It's funny to be back in the east where the service is bad and the people don't care. I rediscovered a few things: green plants, hills, mailboxes, and humidity. If you're in town, holla atchya boy.
My brother John showed me this little blog called Hyperbole and a Half.
It's got some pretty funny stuff, such as this:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/05/sneaky-hate-spiral.html
T'night I'll be heading into Old Town Alexandria to Murphy's Irish Pub to visit with other UDers and Dr. Moran and Dr. Stibora. They're in town for the night as they make their way to Italy. They're teaching on the Rome campus this summer as part of Baroque Rome for UD alumns and I think also Shakespeare in Italy Program. Can't wait!
To my dearests:
I'm in D.C. now, after a long and broken up drive. It's good to be here where the things are green and swampy. It's funny to be back in the east where the service is bad and the people don't care. I rediscovered a few things: green plants, hills, mailboxes, and humidity. If you're in town, holla atchya boy.
_____________________________
My brother John showed me this little blog called Hyperbole and a Half.
It's got some pretty funny stuff, such as this:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/05/sneaky-hate-spiral.html
____________________________
T'night I'll be heading into Old Town Alexandria to Murphy's Irish Pub to visit with other UDers and Dr. Moran and Dr. Stibora. They're in town for the night as they make their way to Italy. They're teaching on the Rome campus this summer as part of Baroque Rome for UD alumns and I think also Shakespeare in Italy Program. Can't wait!
______________________________
Starting this Monday I will be taking an intensive Master Artist Portrait Painting workshop with instructor Rick Weaver. I am very excited, and will now go give my canvass a light tone of burnt umber alkyd paint so that it's surely dried by class on Monday.
Ciao ciao,
PB
June 10, 2010
I'm back in the States, despite a brief stay in Belford Hospital in Port William. Having time on my hands in the hospital, I was able to learn a new favorite poem ("I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow"), and, of course, think through a quick defense of music such as that produced by Slipknot and Rage Against the Machine. I owe my inspiration for the following to many drugs and to Glenn Cannon(!) Arbery.
To use the words of Nietzsche, Slipknot participates in the Dionysian element of tragedy: "an assured premonition of highest pleasure through destruction and negation." [To clarify, Nietzsche says this about Dionysian music in general, not about Slipknot in particular.] To summarize elements in The Birth of Tragedy that call to mind heavy metal, the Dionysian and the Apollinian (I use Kaufman's spelling to reflect the debt I owe to his thought), "appear coupled with each other, and through this coupling ultimately generate an equally Dionysian and Apollinian form of art--Attic tragedy." For Nietzsche, the Apollinian functions through beautiful images. It has vanquished the primal order of the Titans that ruled before. It is not, however, just a "healing;" it is also a type of "illusion:" Apollinian art hides from the viewer the brutal, primal terrors and energies that are hidden under the phenomenal world.
Dionysian art, on the other hand, functions through music. "Through music," says Nietzsche, "the viewer participates in an assured premonition of highest pleasure through destruction and negation, so he feels as if the innermost abyss of things spoke to him perceptibly;" this innermost abyss has a "hidden substratum of suffering and knowledge, revealed by the Dionysian."
What kind of knowledge do we gain from seeing the Oresteia, or from watching King Lear, or from attending a Slipknot concert? We do, as Aristotle says, achieve some kind of catharsis, or purging, of unclean emotions; yes; but, I think Nietzsche advances our understanding of the knowledge of tragedy even further: "the metaphysical joy in the tragic is a translation of the instinctive unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of images;" those who enter the Dionysian become, for a moment, "primordial being itself, feeling its raging desire for existence and joy in existence.... We are pierced by the maddening stings of these pains just when we have become, as it were, one with the joy in primordial existence, and when we anticipate, in Dionysian ecstasy, the indestructability and eternity of this joy." That is, Nietzsche doesn't say that only when fear and pity have been purged do we gain some kind of knowledge; no, "in spite of fear and pity, we are the happy living beings, not as individuals, but as the one living being, with whose creative joy we are united." This rapturous joy is something of what Dmitri lives in The Brothers Karamazov: "I'm a Karamazov. For when I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degraded attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of that degradation I begin a hymn of praise." I can't help but draw parallels between the Dionysian abyss and the Psalmist: "De profundis clamavi ad te Domine;" or Job, scraping his back with a potsherd; in such tragic moments, "Man, jack, joke, poor potsherd, / Patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, / Is immortal diamond."
This is all well and good and true for tragedy, but I guess I should at least try to suggest some parallels between tragedy and that things I like to listen to (sometimes).
There seems to be little of the Apollinian in metal, but the Apollinian image need not be beautiful in the way that we think of it normally: it is not "pretty." As Socrates says, sometimes, you have to tell your eyes, irresistably drawn to scenes of carnage, "All right then, fine, look and have your fill!" "Feed apace then, greedy eyes," agrees Samuel Daniel. The eyes are drawn to these images of pain and suffering, beautiful in their scenery of desctuction and begation. There are plenty of movements toward Appolinian, image-driven beauty in the music itself, and in the lyrics, of most heavy metal. To take just one example, there is that great section in the Rage song about Danny and Lisa: "They take me away from / The strangest places, / Sweet Danny and Lisa." Something translates the "strange" forces of the Dionysian abyss into sweet and Apollinian imagery. The entire song seems to suggest a translation of the primal forces of rock considered as just music (aural and Dionysian) into those forces being conveyed in a visual medium (Apollinian) as well: "Hey man, look at me rocking out: / I'm the radio; / Hey man, look at me rocking out, / I'm on the video."
For another parallel between the old tragedy of yore and the new tragedy of metal, I think of Wagner's theory of gesamptkunstwerk. Wagner wanted to combine all different mediums of art into his opera with a view towards creating true tragedy. Slipknot definitely embraces the operatic gesamptkunstwerk, shown most clearly by their live shows. They combine music enhanced by huge loudspeakers (aural art), painting in their backdrops, crazy light shows, and special effects (visual art), lyrics of a sort (poetry), and, of course, masks, drummers running all over their set, band members leaping into the mosh pit to crowd-surf, long and stringy hair thrashed to the beat of the music in the "heavy" sections of music... (theatrical, dramatic art).
The song "Psychosocial" provides an excellent example of the tragic hero as presented by the lyrics of the song. I wish I knew the lyrics to the verses so I could back this up even better, but just check the chorus: "The rain will kill us all, / We throw ourselves against the wall; / And no one else can see / The preservation of the martyr in me." Glenn Cannon says, "The tragic hero of the Dionysian [such as the character in "Psychosocial," and the members of Slipknot] is actually Dionysius himself undergoing in disguise the agony of appearing at all, having to be and act in a circumscribed and limited mode of being." Just as Nietzsche says that only the actors behind their masks truly face the tragic abyss, Slipknot acknowledges that "no one else can see the preservation of the martyr" in the characters that they assume.
To conclude, heavy metal today is actively participating in the genre of tragedy. All right, my drugs are wearing off, and I need bed.
"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. / I learn by going where I have to go."
To use the words of Nietzsche, Slipknot participates in the Dionysian element of tragedy: "an assured premonition of highest pleasure through destruction and negation." [To clarify, Nietzsche says this about Dionysian music in general, not about Slipknot in particular.] To summarize elements in The Birth of Tragedy that call to mind heavy metal, the Dionysian and the Apollinian (I use Kaufman's spelling to reflect the debt I owe to his thought), "appear coupled with each other, and through this coupling ultimately generate an equally Dionysian and Apollinian form of art--Attic tragedy." For Nietzsche, the Apollinian functions through beautiful images. It has vanquished the primal order of the Titans that ruled before. It is not, however, just a "healing;" it is also a type of "illusion:" Apollinian art hides from the viewer the brutal, primal terrors and energies that are hidden under the phenomenal world.
Dionysian art, on the other hand, functions through music. "Through music," says Nietzsche, "the viewer participates in an assured premonition of highest pleasure through destruction and negation, so he feels as if the innermost abyss of things spoke to him perceptibly;" this innermost abyss has a "hidden substratum of suffering and knowledge, revealed by the Dionysian."
What kind of knowledge do we gain from seeing the Oresteia, or from watching King Lear, or from attending a Slipknot concert? We do, as Aristotle says, achieve some kind of catharsis, or purging, of unclean emotions; yes; but, I think Nietzsche advances our understanding of the knowledge of tragedy even further: "the metaphysical joy in the tragic is a translation of the instinctive unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of images;" those who enter the Dionysian become, for a moment, "primordial being itself, feeling its raging desire for existence and joy in existence.... We are pierced by the maddening stings of these pains just when we have become, as it were, one with the joy in primordial existence, and when we anticipate, in Dionysian ecstasy, the indestructability and eternity of this joy." That is, Nietzsche doesn't say that only when fear and pity have been purged do we gain some kind of knowledge; no, "in spite of fear and pity, we are the happy living beings, not as individuals, but as the one living being, with whose creative joy we are united." This rapturous joy is something of what Dmitri lives in The Brothers Karamazov: "I'm a Karamazov. For when I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degraded attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of that degradation I begin a hymn of praise." I can't help but draw parallels between the Dionysian abyss and the Psalmist: "De profundis clamavi ad te Domine;" or Job, scraping his back with a potsherd; in such tragic moments, "Man, jack, joke, poor potsherd, / Patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, / Is immortal diamond."
This is all well and good and true for tragedy, but I guess I should at least try to suggest some parallels between tragedy and that things I like to listen to (sometimes).
There seems to be little of the Apollinian in metal, but the Apollinian image need not be beautiful in the way that we think of it normally: it is not "pretty." As Socrates says, sometimes, you have to tell your eyes, irresistably drawn to scenes of carnage, "All right then, fine, look and have your fill!" "Feed apace then, greedy eyes," agrees Samuel Daniel. The eyes are drawn to these images of pain and suffering, beautiful in their scenery of desctuction and begation. There are plenty of movements toward Appolinian, image-driven beauty in the music itself, and in the lyrics, of most heavy metal. To take just one example, there is that great section in the Rage song about Danny and Lisa: "They take me away from / The strangest places, / Sweet Danny and Lisa." Something translates the "strange" forces of the Dionysian abyss into sweet and Apollinian imagery. The entire song seems to suggest a translation of the primal forces of rock considered as just music (aural and Dionysian) into those forces being conveyed in a visual medium (Apollinian) as well: "Hey man, look at me rocking out: / I'm the radio; / Hey man, look at me rocking out, / I'm on the video."
For another parallel between the old tragedy of yore and the new tragedy of metal, I think of Wagner's theory of gesamptkunstwerk. Wagner wanted to combine all different mediums of art into his opera with a view towards creating true tragedy. Slipknot definitely embraces the operatic gesamptkunstwerk, shown most clearly by their live shows. They combine music enhanced by huge loudspeakers (aural art), painting in their backdrops, crazy light shows, and special effects (visual art), lyrics of a sort (poetry), and, of course, masks, drummers running all over their set, band members leaping into the mosh pit to crowd-surf, long and stringy hair thrashed to the beat of the music in the "heavy" sections of music... (theatrical, dramatic art).
The song "Psychosocial" provides an excellent example of the tragic hero as presented by the lyrics of the song. I wish I knew the lyrics to the verses so I could back this up even better, but just check the chorus: "The rain will kill us all, / We throw ourselves against the wall; / And no one else can see / The preservation of the martyr in me." Glenn Cannon says, "The tragic hero of the Dionysian [such as the character in "Psychosocial," and the members of Slipknot] is actually Dionysius himself undergoing in disguise the agony of appearing at all, having to be and act in a circumscribed and limited mode of being." Just as Nietzsche says that only the actors behind their masks truly face the tragic abyss, Slipknot acknowledges that "no one else can see the preservation of the martyr" in the characters that they assume.
To conclude, heavy metal today is actively participating in the genre of tragedy. All right, my drugs are wearing off, and I need bed.
"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. / I learn by going where I have to go."
June 7, 2010
John Prine Tribute Album Recently Unveiled - Feat. Old Crow Medicine Show and More!
Recently I was G-Chatted by a good friend, JT Kennelly, who let me know about a new musical sensation: a John Prine Tribute album! titled Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows. This album is to feature a great group of bands and singers including The Avett Brothers, OCMS, My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst, and many more. This is pretty exciting!
Short Bio from The Prine Shrine
Born in Maywood, IL on October 10, 1946, John Prine’s body of work has become the high-water mark of American songwriting and his songs have found a home in the repertoire of musical luminaries such as Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash and George Strait.
On March 9, 2005, at the request of Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, John Prine became the first singer/songwriter to read and perform at the Library of Congress.
Prine takes his own sweet time dancing with his muse -- and truly writes what's in his soul. So if it takes him a little longer to compose the songs that capture the moments that reveal the gently folded human truths that bind us all together, it's always worth the wait.
Listen to Prine on youtube or grooveshark, but you ought to at least hear some of his work, it's quite good, sometimes a little cheesy and sometimes old-timey.
Pre-Order and Sample some of the songs from the upcoming release here:
http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Hearts-Dirty-Windows-Songs/dp/B003JDQJLE/ref=pd_krex_fa_t_dp_img
Born in Maywood, IL on October 10, 1946, John Prine’s body of work has become the high-water mark of American songwriting and his songs have found a home in the repertoire of musical luminaries such as Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash and George Strait.
On March 9, 2005, at the request of Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, John Prine became the first singer/songwriter to read and perform at the Library of Congress.
Prine takes his own sweet time dancing with his muse -- and truly writes what's in his soul. So if it takes him a little longer to compose the songs that capture the moments that reveal the gently folded human truths that bind us all together, it's always worth the wait.
Listen to Prine on youtube or grooveshark, but you ought to at least hear some of his work, it's quite good, sometimes a little cheesy and sometimes old-timey.
Pre-Order and Sample some of the songs from the upcoming release here:
http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Hearts-Dirty-Windows-Songs/dp/B003JDQJLE/ref=pd_krex_fa_t_dp_img
June 6, 2010
Summer Plans! What are yours?
To whom it may concern:
Thus it begins, a Summer Road-Trip of limited sorts.
I am going to be driving from Phoenix to D.C. starting this
Tuesday morning (6.08).
Tuesday morning (6.08).
I will be in Dallas on Tuesday night and will leave Thursday (6.10).
I will be arriving in D.C. on Friday or Saturday at the latest (6.11/12).
I will be in D.C. taking an art class and visiting old haunts (Prospect Hill is top o' the list; and I want Sponge-Bob back. You know who you are).
I will be attending the wedding of one MP[3] Jones and Sam. I will be in Dallas for a week for that, and then back to D.C.
I will be in D.C. until around July 15th or so. This would be a good time to get everyone together as I will be free and not taking classes. Maybe some of your norther NY & PA folk can come down for something?
I will be in D.C. until around July 15th or so. This would be a good time to get everyone together as I will be free and not taking classes. Maybe some of your norther NY & PA folk can come down for something?
On my way back to Phoenix I was thinking of hitting up Raleigh, Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, Austin, Houston, and anything else in the way if you invite me.
Let me know if you are going to be around in these places and would like to grab lunch or hang out for a more extended time. I have a pretty loose schedule as much as things go.
Leave a comment on here with your summer plans so that we can figure something out!
June 5, 2010
Advice
Salvete amici
Yesterday my boss, a mother of twelve, a grandmother of three or four hundred, and an energetic soul sixty years my senior who refers to Josh and I as "the boys," informed me that my duties next year will include a new elective class: journalism.
This is a new class for our school with no materials and no objectives except that we write and publish the school's newsletter twice a year. As I create this class during the summer, I would appreciate any suggestions that you all may have pertaining to materials or methods that I could employ.
"the pig"
June 2, 2010
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