Everybody's An Artist

Well, it is April Fool's Day, or about to be, (this video was posted 3 days ago at youtube) — so who knows? — but if this is a fake, they have done a great job…

Kenneth Koch

I noticed when I was trying to figure out what science was doing lately that the best sources of information were the very people doing the research. Science has become such an aggregate of specialties that you would think the real experts would embed their words in an arcane guild-speak that would be un-parsable and you would need a popularizer. But rather, the prime researchers were often the clearest and I later realized, the deepest of interpreters. The latter is no surprise given it is their daily bread, but the fact that they could communicate with such clarity and simplicity astonishingly complex ideas always stuck with me.

This is from an interview with the poet Kenneth Koch about the soul-trigger for a poem:

…the way I was inspired to write that poem was I was in Africa, I was in Kenya. And I was on a bus going from one game preserve to another, these 10,000-mile expanses where you see wild animals in their native habitat. And we had just passed a Masai village and right at the end of the Masai village, in the middle of the bush, were railroad tracks and a sign that said, “One Train May Hide Another.” And it seemed—I figured out after a while what it meant, but in the middle of the bush of Kenya, it seemed to me to mean everything, very mysterious. And this sort of stayed in my mind for six years, and then I wrote the poem about it.

Reading Koch again I was reminded of that realization about science and its explicators; about the capacity to unpack the complex transparently. Koch was such a wonderful writer. His interpretations of the dauntingly complex poetry of our common heritage has such fine-grained love, sincerity and depth it is hard to communicate. His book, Making Your Own Days is a good place to start. Brilliant poet, brilliant teacher of children, luminous spirit.

From Koch's poem, (sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya),

In a poem, one line may hide another line,

As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.

That is, if you are waiting to cross

The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at

Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read

Wait until you have read the next line—

Then it is safe to go on reading.

In a family one sister may conceal another,

So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view

Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.

Koch understood that art is at root level what Auden called “serious play”,

To be rid of troubles

Of one person by turning into

Someone else, moving and jolting

As if nothing mattered but today

In fact nothing

But this precise moment…

(Excerpt from To Kidding Around, 2000)

Obama Explains His Pastor

When you try to sound like Lincoln you better pull it off. Obama's speech about his challenged pastor attempted to make him a normative figure, a simple product of history without personal responsibility; in the process, Obama patronized his audience, providing a lecture on “understanding” the history of race in the US. Obama diminished himself, making himself so average as to be anonymous.

To defend his pastor he uses his grandmother, his faith, comparisons with other religions and races, and his perception of a putative common indifference to nutcase ranting:

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

Far from Lincoln, Obama rather sounds like someone who doesn't get it. What the public really wanted to hear was someone who currently is seen as untested standing up to his own constituency. You want to feel someone in an office of power has the flexibility to hear other voices — not rhetorically by being in the same room (“let's all just talk”) — but being open to changing course, and if necessary, by telling your supporters that they are wrong.

Obama doesn't think his pastor is wrong. He thinks his pastor needs excusing and those who don't excuse him are to blame — despite Obama's proactive attempt to diffuse that criticism. Instead of now “explaining” to Americans that things have changed he should have years ago explained those things to his pastor. Instead of mind-numbing euphemisms such as “fierce” and “controversial” for junk rhetoric about Israel being a “terrorist state” he should have told his pastor to discard such hate rants as the white community has disowned hate speech about African-Americans.

Obama joined that Church because it was the big one in town and Obama was interested in public office — that is the way it is done. No shame there. But when he heard the nonsense, if he didn't have the courage to try to change the leadership, he should have gotten up and walked out of the room. Sometimes that is how you bring people together, by showing you expect something of them — even the ones that like you.

Dylan, Modern Times

If you didn't think Dylan was great before, you have to listen to Modern Times, a 2006 album that is yet another brilliant extension of his remarkable career. The richness and scope of Dylan's music raises it far above other pop music, creating almost another category. He just keeps getting better. As usual, Dylan swims in a sea of music created by yet another great backup band. Dylan delivers the whole package, the words, the music, the aura, the sweet yearning heart of the seeker.

Big Bang and Inflation

In this brief note a physicist stipulates his doubts about the inflationary model as an add-on to the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

And what of the theorists who have been developing the inflationary theory for the last twenty-five years? Some, like me, have been in denial, harboring the hope that a way can be found to tame the quantum effects and restore the classical view. Others have embraced the idea that cosmology may be inherently unpredictable…

This doubt about the paradigm is a Big Deal.

Obama's Pastor

When claims of purity fail the explanations fall on hard ears. Obama has based his campaign on the fragile premise of simple answers to complicated questions: “Let's all just talk”; sounds convivial, until you consider some of the interlocutors he would be enabling.

Now Obama claims he has no knowledge of who his pastor is. He was just an aw-shucks “dotty uncle” who married him, gave him spiritual counseling, and a slogan for his campaign. But what this dotty pastor believed, his root level, histrionic contempt, that was invisible to Obama? It apparently wasn't invisible to the smiling congregants at this posted rant . Why is Obama distancing himself now and not long ago?

Spitzer and Obama

Spitzer was something of a Nader (in his better days) — ferociously representing the public interest against egregious power and profit. But Spitzer's very advantage of character worked against him: his truculence left him with little support in a roiling political sea and the resignation came with breath-taking speed. He probably should have fought the onslaught, but he finally couldn't for a singular reason — he was a goody two shoes in his public stance. If he were known as a brawling but likable reprobate he probably could have slipped through; but the public celebrates, or at the very least is indifferent, to the fall of hypocritical sanctimony.

There seems a clear association with Obama, who also wants to live on the bright city on the hill, where we all talk together and get along because we all mean well. (Obama seems to indicate that includes Syria and Iran.) Any significant slip, any familiar political tactics, and Obama will be waived off as “just another politician”. And waiting in the wings, McCain will be pushing hard on Obama's early stance about public financing of campaigns. Will Obama forego his distinct advantage in fund raising, or risk being another hypocritical politician? Obama has set himself up for a fierce scrutiny.

It would be hard not to share the excitement of his supporters. Obama truly could be a new beginning — an impressive man. But the best hope can fall all the harder, and in this case, that hope is resting on a fragile promise.

Orwell and Dali

The convergence of George Orwell and Salvador Dali is a mind mashup that gives pause. In this review of Dali's autobiography Orwell has some clever and quaint things to say. Dali is a fabulist, but Orwell notes,

… even the most flagrantly dishonest book… can without intending it give a true picture of its author .

Every gesture, intonation and surface manifestation yields information, if you pay attention, so why wouldn't the way people lie? Dali it turns out is a pretty weird cat. This is no surprise — it is old news. But Orwell makes it fresh in his remarkably current voice and in the moral framework in which he places Dali.

Dali was one of the best and earliest of media artists. He understood modern culture and the value of publicity. Orwell says, “But from his Surrealist paintings and photographs the two things that stand our are sexual perversity and necrophilia. ” What part those obsessions were of Dali and what part were assumed by him we will never know. The fascination with Dali's work circles the seductive craft and imaginative reach.

Orwell makes a sweeping condemnation, saying that Dali,

[makes..] a direct, unmistakable assault on sanity and decency; and even — since some of Dali's pictures would tend to poison the imagination like a pornographic postcard — on life itself. What Dali has done and what he has imagined is debatable, but in his outlook, his character, the bedrock decency of a human being does not exist. He is as anti-social as a flea. Clearly, such people are undesirable, and a society in which they can flourish has something wrong with it.

Orwell goes back and forth, from outrage that would please the Puritan in us in its wholesale contempt — as in the above, giving Dali a power that doesn't adhere to his work on inspection — to Orwell's civilized acknowledgment that censorship won't work in this circumstance. He is upset, confused, and what Dali of course wants, Orwell is provoked. The art of provocation is not an art I am interested in myself. I think the pop culture does a lot better job of it in any case.

Dali pushes the edges of convention, but a society that recoils is a healthy society, not one in which there is something wrong. Better to have the bright sunlight wither the tainted soul.

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These are mostly under the hood updates — the pages run faster and cleaner and the presentation is very nice. The templates were written by Matt Campagna @ The Turning Gate. Matt is a nice guy, an ESL teacher in Seoul, Korea; Matt writes great templates — he also is a talented photographer and designs fine websites. Thanks Matt.

Gogol Bordello

Gogol Bordello is the world's greatest band. They live up to their origins as a house and party band, but they are more than that. They call themselves a Gypsy punk band, but their style overflows into an energy that reminds you of Klezmer and the ecstatic traditions going back to the Beginning. Here is a selection. It makes you smile with delight.

Julian Bell About Lucian Freud

This article by Julian Bell about the recent Lucian Freud show is written with an intensity and caring that is admirable. Bell, a painter himself, feels strongly about the issues raised by Freud's work and, by implication, about the value of the medium of painting itself.

I can't say I agree with all of Bell's judgments — they seem to make too much of Freud's own statements about his work, to which Bell responds with great energy and subtlety. But Freud's statements themselves seem something of a deflection to me — perhaps even manipulations. Freud's work is another matter — more substantial, but also dubious in many of the ways in which Bell points out. Bell's own depth of instruction in literature infuses the piece with a fine-grained, satisfyingly complete quality. As Bell notes about himself, he was early influenced by Freud, and so the struggle in the review has a layered complexity; “killing the father” as Bell puts it, and also sorting out his own feelings as he considers this mature artist.

Here is a link to Bell's own work.

Obama is the Man; Global Warming is Getting Hot

Received notions are so powerful because they require so little. You just go along to get along. Right now the meme is that Hillary has lost and she should cash out. Why won't she is the question, or when will she. Well, it could be stubbornness, could be denial, could be all sorts of stuff. But she hasn't lost as yet. Basing it all on the current rumor becomes self-fulfilling and it looks like that is what is going to happen — critical mass probably has been reached and Obama is the man. But it would have been better if the media stood aside and let things play out. Obama seems fine really. In fact, this is the first election in a long time that, even with the caveats you might reasonably apply, is an election in which any of above would probably be okay.

Speaking of received notions, the meme mind has established global warming as accomplished fact, with the sole discussion of interest in the media circling how quickly and drastically to act. You would never know that there were a large group of scientists and honorable intellectuals who question the easy assertions.

Denis Dutton, the man who made Arts and Letters Daily into the intellectual hub on the net has started a site called Climate Debate Daily in which the battle is more fairly engaged.

Hitchens and Buckley

Orwell said, “…any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” Christopher Hitchens' piece about Buckley doesn't mince words about Buckley's many poor judgments, but gives the man his due.

Buckley's return to a version of rightist isolationism in the matter of Iraq in the last few years [can be seen as]…skepticism if not indeed pessimism about large state-sponsored or state-sponsoring schemes. (I recall teasing him about his famous 1968 debate with Gore Vidal, and pointing out that this angry joust was actually between two former young enthusiasts for Charles Lindbergh and “America First.”…

Hitchens' slipping in the America Firsters and the dubious Lindbergh is a necessary antidote to romanticizing Buckley. But reading the accounts of those who knew him, you come to understand that Buckley had the complexity of any evolved human being.

The baggy human character, with all its unresolved internal battles, is summoned to the fore in this description of Buckley by Hitchens:

Scott Fitzgerald's old observation, about the need to be able to manage contradiction within oneself, is obviously germane here. One of the most startling discoveries to be made—it occurs in John Judis's excellent early biography of Buckley—is that Whittaker Chambers himself beseeched Buckley to have nothing to do with Senator McCarthy. In spite of such advice, and from such a source, Buckley went ahead and published McCarthy and His Enemies, a book that by no means erred on the critical side.

To take another example from a quite different point of the compass, Buckley was willing to be immensely friendly with figures from the gay Right, like the doomed congressman Bob Bauman of Maryland or the flamboyant Marvin Liebman, but nonetheless wrote a column in the early 1980s saying that promiscuous homosexuals with AIDS should be tattooed on the buttocks as a sort of health-warning…

Buckley, with all his failings, reportedly had great personal generosity and an evident public charm, an honorable work ethic, a lack of insecurity — looking for talent and appreciating attainment — reflecting a character that was uniquely American in its eccentricities. Buckley reshaped conservatism, making it a respectable, robust alternative.