Camus on the Spiritual

"Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But out task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. Rebellion, the secular will not to surrender of which Barres speaks, is still today at the basis of the struggle. Origin of form, source of real life, it keeps us always erect in the savage, formless movement of history."

What does Camus mean when he marries excess and solitude in the church of the human heart?

Camus on Rebellion and Man

Camus introduces The Rebel:

"...the reasons for rebellion cannot be explained except in terms of an inquiry into its attitudes pretensions, and conquests. Perhaps we may discover in its achievements the rule of action that the absurd has not been able to give us; an indication, at least, about the right or the duty to kill and, finally, hope for anew creation. Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. The problem is to know whether this refusal can only lead to the destruction of himself and of others, whether all rebellion must end in the justification of universal murder, or whether, on the contrary, without laying claim to an innocence that is impossible, it can discover the principle of reasonable culpability."

Let's hope he finds a solution.

Hamlet on the Subjugation of Beauty to Self

".... indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erchanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire: why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; nor woman neither...."

Forty-third day

And there, right where the lights filter
cigarette stench thick,
on plastic chairs, stuck in a blur,
common, alone, thinking

Alone; and then your mind your world,
cosmos and towers dark
towering in your head; yet still
unhurried, loneliness

In infinitude; don't ask what
is worth the time you have,
to make westing, chaos the womb
grave of Nature, a lone
nightingale floats life calmly,
quiet strings shiver, her song.

First day

This morning I had one of those rare feelings of excitement. Who knew that a good cup of coffee, a crisp bite in the air, and a cafe full of healthy, happy people could invest such a feeling of living in my vest? It could be the anticipation of a worthy challenge, or the open door of the future, or Goethe's worldly yet deeply personal verses expressed by Dr Faust that accompanied the cafe creme sitting in front of me and made me taste the very wind brushing over the cobbled streets and flying through the orange-tinted trees. despite the want of permanent lodging or any knowledge of tomorrow, i felt like grabbing the nearest violin and having my way with it. it was eternal youth that flowed through my veins just for an instant, grasping the very straws of permanence that are so often mistaken for real, live straws, straws that limit the intake of your preferred beverage; is it moderation that is so grotesque, or is it this one-sided conversation which lives without structure or direction that can turn any talk of rejuvenation into nonsense? with your best interests at heart, I will now relinquish the proverbial pen, pull up my socks and move onto my much-needed french lessons; wish me good mental health.

Bringing Higher Education back to Reality

Read Charles Murray's (Wiki) article in the Journal: College is a Waste of Time

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121858688764535107.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Should I call this one... pointless?

"Once, when I was about twenty-five and not yet entirely aware of the extremity of my unclubbability, I did try to go to a writers conference. Thirty minutes into the keynote address I had a migraine. It turns out I have an aversion to cooperative endeavors of all sorts. I couldn’t imagine making a play or movie, for instance; so many people involved. I don’t like orchestral music. I don’t like team sports. I love the solitary, the hermetic, the cranky self-taught. Make mine the desert saints, the pole-sitters, the endurance cyclists, the artist who paints rocks cast from bronze so that they look exactly like the rocks they were cast from; you can’t tell the difference when they’re side by side. It took her years to do a pocketful. You just know she doesn’t go to art conferences. Certainly not zillion-strong international ones, giant wheeling circuses of panel discussions."

says Kay Ryan (poets.org; wiki), our new poet laureate, in her article, I Go to AWP.

Assessing the new poet laureate.

Enjoy

Comment dit t'on...

What is there to say about l'Institut de Francais? Too many things of interest. I will come back to this topic later. For the time being I'll just mention something almost completely unrelated, that is, the most remarkable drawings to ever have been created. I'm sure you've read the article on the ancient cave drawings in Southern France and Northern Spain by Judith Thurman. If not, then its worth a read.

Read it here>>>

"Modern Life" in poetry

Interesting verse (examples from Joan Houlihan's review of Matthea Harvey's new book of poems Modern Life):

I put on my coat of pastilles and glass and hit the road
with a Phillips screwdriver. Dog Pants. The way out is in,
cried a newly promoted magpie. Look inside me, Trojan
the Horse said. Someone succumbed to a shape of stars.
Someone folded in like an Robo-accordian. Someone
smelled a herd of centipedes. Someone wondered why
poetry so publicly acclaimed could be so barren of life.

Read More>>>

Required reading

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (and Wiki). I like this guy. He speaks espresso-black, concrete blocks of Truth. This is a man with a ferocious ego. Read it.

A simple illustration:

He reads for 60 hours a week, but almost never a newspaper, and he never watches television.

“If something is going on, I hear about it. I like to talk to people, I socialise. Television is a waste of time. Human contact is what matters.”

But the biggest rule of all is his eccentric and punishing diet and exercise programme. He’s been on it for three months and he’s lost 20lb. He’s following the thinking of Arthur De Vany, an economist – of the acceptable type – turned fitness guru. The theory is that we eat and exercise according to our evolved natures. Early man did not eat carbs, so they’re out. He did not exercise regularly and he did not suffer long-term stress by having an annoying boss. Exercise must be irregular and ferocious – Taleb often does four hours in the gym or 360 press-ups and then nothing for 10 days. Jogging is useless; sprinting is good. He likes to knacker himself completely before a long flight. Stress should also be irregular and ferocious – early men did not have bad bosses, but they did occasionally run into lions.

Read more>>>

Compiled Reading List

I know I already posted about what books are on my list for post-graduation but it's much more convenient for me if they are in one place and updated. They are in some kind of order, with most wanted near the top. From here on I'll just modify this post as the list expands rather than add new posts.

Round 1 (immediate):
V.S. Naipaul: Guerillas
Hesse: Steppenwolf
Goethe: Faust part 1
Keats
Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
Auster
Jonathan Culler: Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature
Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality, Social Contract
Wilde: Dorian Gray
Mishima: Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Round 2:
Homer: the Iliad and/or Odyssey
Dylan Thomas
Hesse: The Glass Bead Game
Rupert Brooke: Collected poems
Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and Damned
Plath
Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five
Kafka: The System, The Metamorphosis

Round 3:
Faulkner: Light in August, A Fable
T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land
Dante: Divine Comedy
Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls, Moveable Feast
Shakespeare: sonnets, King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet
Lord Tennyson: Ulysses
Nietzsche: The Genealogy of Morals
Emily Dickinson
Wittgenstein: Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics), or Philosophische Bemerkungen
Mann: The Magic Mountain
Sophocles: Antigone
Vasilii Semenovich Grossman: Life and Fate
Tennyson: suggestions?
Shaw: Pygmalion (maybe)
Goethe: Götz von Berlichingen
Oppen
Carver: Will you Please be Quiet, Please?, Cathedral
Bertrand Russell: Principles of Mathematics
Schiller: William Tell

Pre-concert lecture

I just lost half my dignity by having to record a pre-concert lecture for my music history course. It's on Haydn's Symphony No. 4, Szymanowski's first Violin Concerto, and Mendelssohn's "Italian" symphony. Simply listening to my voice over and over when editing, saying horrible horrible things, squeezed what little happiness I had in me straight out into the open, where it was caught by huge invisible butterfly nets, jumbled up a bit and deposited some place where I won't be able to find it; somewhere in a tiny pocket of time.

Click here for the link.

Imagine if space/time had little pockets everywhere, that you could see and slip things into, like little cotton bulges in mid-air. or maybe little black holes sitting just over your head, sucking ideas out of you without you even noticing.

Ives and the Music of The Future

From an article by Charles Ives, Music and Its Future:

THe future of music may not lie entirely with music itself, but rather in the way it encourages and extends, rather than limits, the aspirations and ideals of the people, in the way it makes itself a part with the finer things that humanity does and dreams of. Or to put it the other way around, what music is and is to be may lie somewhere in the belief of an unknown philosopher of half a century ago who said: "How can there be any bad music? All music is from heaven. If there is anything bad in it, I put it there - by my implications and limitations. Nature builds the mountains and meadows and man puts in the fences and labels." He may have been nearer right than we think.

Gas Tax

There's been a lot of talk about a gas tax, what with the Lieberman-Warner bill being debated on the Senate floor. I read an enlightening op-ed in the Journal a few weeks ago that contextualized the discussion of such a tax in such a way that helped form my own opinion into a somewhat more concrete form. Summarizing, the article shed light on the progressive view, at least currently progressive, that ultimately, in the struggle to stop global warming, society should strive to reduce できれば the consumption of gas by the masses; a gas tax does exactly this. There are other effects, however, on businesses and such that raise prices of goods and services, which happens to be the core argument against such a tax. The appropriate approach to "solving" global warming through this conduit is reducing the public's reliance on gasoline by improving mass transit. Cap and trade seems to be a decent solution for the other sector, but politics has of course infiltrated this system by inappropriately compensating large corporations and others with heavy influence in Washington. This is completely unacceptable and defeats the purpose entirely. Someone needs to step into the scene with the reputation, strength, and integrity to slap the lobbyists on the wrist, wrest the opium pipe away from the corrupt, and return the system to something even close to resembling a functioning and accountable government.

The Mikado

Some great Gilbert humor from The Mikado by G&S:

(of the Mikado's son and his fleeing from his unattractive wife-to-be, Katisha)

Pooh-Bah: I'm surprised that he should have fled from one so lovely.

Katisha: That is not true. You hold that I'm not beautiful because my face is plain. But you know nothing. You are still unenlightened. Learn, then, that it is not in the face alone that Beauty should be sought.
My face is unattractive.
But I have a left shoulder blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it.

My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.

Pooh-Bah: Allow me.

Katisha: It is on view Tuesdays and Fridays on presentation of visiting card.

As for my circulation, it is the largest in the world.

Ko-Ko: And yet he fled.

The Mikado: And he is masquarading in this town disguised as a second trombone.

America's New Favorite Past-time

Elite-bashing. A term that encapsulates many of the problems I have with American culture. Susan Jacoby has written a beautiful article on the subject in the Times. And I quote:

"During the past few months, I have received hundreds of e-mail messages calling me an elitist for drawing attention to America’s knowledge deficit. One of the most memorable came from a man who objected to my citation of a statistic, from a 2006 National Geographic-Roper survey, indicating that nearly two-thirds of Americans age 18 to 24 cannot find Iraq on a map. “Why should I care whether my mechanic knows where Iraq is, as long as he knows how to fix my car?” the man asked.

But what could be more elitist than the idea that a mechanic cannot be expected to know the location of a country where thousands of Americans of his own generation are fighting and dying?"

Read more here...

"Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes?"

A great Scientific American article by Sean Carroll, who is at UofC. Definately worth a read if you are interested in time asymmetry, the origin of the universe, or cosmology in general. Excerpt:

"[The] scenario, proposed in 2004 by Jennifer Chen of the University of Chicago and me, provides a provocative solution to the origin of time asymmetry in our observable universe: we see only a tiny patch of the big picture, and this larger arena is fully time-symmetric. Entropy can increase without limit through the creation of new baby universes."

"...A striking feature of our observable cosmos—the arrow of time, arising from very low entropy conditions in the early universe—can provide us with clues about the nature of the unobservable universe."

Read more...

Debussy

I've found a new battle cry in an article by Debussy's imaginary critic, named Monsieur Croche (Mr. Eighth-note), who Debussy used as a mouthpiece in the Revue blanche:

"Remain unique!... unblemished! Being too influenced by one's milieu spoils an artist: in the end he becomes nothing but the expression of his milieu"

"Search for a discipline within freedom! Don't let yourself be governed by formulae drawn from decadent philosophies: they are for the feeble-minded. Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees. That can recount the whole history of mankind..."

21st Century America(ns)

How to Define Yourself in a World of Definitions

1. Research
"I have a mind!" should be the first words out of your mouth. Second should be, "And how shall I use it?" with a healthy, dramatic pause for the audience, who mercifully gasp holes in the air. Go out there. Observe. Choose role-models. Throw them away. Choose others. Place yourself in unorthodox situations and work your way through with that courage you've been waiting to use. Throw some of that youthful instinct on the burner, toss some broccoli or orange slices in there with a pinch of enthusiasm, and take a whiff. What's it smell like? Terror? panic? death...? Not a chance. There should be a spiral of smoke circling from your concoction thats tinged with a fresh sprig of parsley-scented opportunity. Now take it and...

2. Bend the Rules
"Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness" as the saying goes. I prefer "demand adherence." if the irony is not immediately apparent, let me just add that i'm one of the most lily-livered idea-men out there; if only i could drop the social obligation and take a page out of the objectivist handbook I would be allll right. Innovation is the name of the game and if you don't have dreams of Greatness then hand the reins over to your non-existent ego, sit back in your carriage pulled by two surging steads named Nescience and Oblivion, and enjoy the ride.

3. Persona
"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character" and character breaths life into the fabric of our modern reality. True character can be found in the work of Brauer or Frobenius, but our character comes from negation and a healthy suspicion of society. Re-creation, in the literal meaning of the word, and rediscovery, as psychoanalysts breath it, both lie beneath the warm, comforting covering of the self. The uncovering happens in step 1, harvesting comes in step 2, and profits flow here, when your exuberantly unique personality is established and nationally recognized. Craft every thought with a pre-thought and dominate yourself with deliberate ease. This is the Schillerian moment when the two impulses flow as one from without and within, ebbing and flowing with balance, ever intertwined, complementing each other. Cash it in: sell your self on the stock exchange and watch your stock grow.

4. The Part
Play the Part. Your Persona that you created in the previous steps steps into this all-star role with confidence and poise. Sharpened by experience, enlightened by Truth, protected by dignity and ego, experienced by protection, truthed by sharpen-ment, ego-ed by enlightenment, dignity protected by ego, truth sharpened to enlightenment through experience, and ..... and loved by all.

Coffee Breath

I'm sitting in Unicorn reading the newspaper, listening to Shosta 4, and suddenly the humor slaps me with gusto. A large man wearing a thin mustache and holding his belly laughing with deliberate power. In a sinister way I think. That's what's coming through my headphones, molded from earwax; if that doesn't steel your breath to a deep metal-hue then I'm not sure what will. But then again who am I to pass judgement.

Love in the time of Boredom

I once told friends that life around me tasted bland, like my mind's tongue had turned into a dusty piece of cardboard. I feel now that I was right. But I can't help from thinking how hackneyed my feelings are, how utterly and exactly average. At the risk of sounding like I need gallons of self-pity poured down my throat, i recall a time when I went to the doctor in high school for a check up and was confused to hear that I was exactly average height and average weight; someone please tell me I have average sentiments as well. Thankfully I have been successfully bred to have a violent gut-reaction to average-ness, so that I feel horrible about it. In a society where labeling is a thinly-veiled substitute for intellect and value, the paradox seems to be lost on everyone including me, or, rather, its simply accepted and brushed under the rug.

What is needed is a firm, irrefutable passion to walk through the door wearing robes of thyme and singing odes of joy at the top of its translucent lungs that fill the entire room, wall to wall. I need to drown in an endless golden pond, going down and down to its depths weighted by my own, seeing singing fish holding lutes with their mouths full; a lightness like day-dreaming. Mmm... cloudberries. I'm glad I no nothing of poetry. Imagine the trouble I'd get in if I did.

I just read that McCain proposed forming an organization of true "democratic" states to promote and protect the democratic spirit, something he says the UN is hopelessly failing at. Discuss.

Spring Inspiration

or lack there of. This spring quarter ranks unmistakeably and prominently among the tired and soiled dregs of the past 5 years of college quarters. Outside the sun shines, flowers blossom, trees regain foliage, hyped students fresh from their winter hide-aways run around on fields of new grass throwing flirtatious glances at one another. Impervious to all the world's reinvigorated sparkle, I sit thinking of things I should be thinking about, not doing any of them. And there are indeed important things that need to be done right now (as I write about doing them), like making sure the Registrar knows that I'm graduating next month.

but it ruffles the feathers of my equanimity. i dont picture myself as the lazy, unmotivated type, but that's exactly what I have become over the last few weeks. it would be a cop out to lay the blame on senioritis, but what else is there. I am tired of the classes, the homework that doesn't lead anywhere, that seems so incongruous to what I feel. and online TV doesnt help at all. its probably the best worst part of the internet. i'm looking forward to lausanne where internet connections are scarce and email isnt the default crutch i lean on everytime i'm in my apartment. with graduation just around the corner, lets all hope for a gentle end to this chapter.

Summer list addendum

Reading This Side of Paradise has added some members to my reading list [1][2]:

Rupert Brooke: Collected poems
Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
Tennyson: suggestions?
Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality, Social Contract
Shaw: Pygmalion (maybe)
Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and Damned
Oppen
Faulkner: A Fable
T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land

5 best things post-trip

This article is just too fun to pass up. Famous outdoor athletes name their 5 favorite things about returning to civilization after an extended trip into the brush.

Fun Snowboarding/Skiing Video

I found this video over on the GoBlog earlier. Great clips of some beautiful carving and even cooler paragliding/skiing.

EXTREME - RIDE THE PLANETS
by tv8montblanc

Teton Gravity Research

If you're into cliff jumping on skis, or even if you've never done it but still consider it a worthwhile way to wile away those empty hours, then you may find this video from the Teton Gravity Research site riveting:

http://www.tetongravity.com/viewer/Clip_RECORDCLIFFHUCK.aspx

Rafters Get Last Look at the Great Bend of the Yangtze

"A year from now, it will be impossible to repeat the eight-day rafting trip we just completed down the Great Bend of the Yangtze. This 120-mile section of the Yangtze, like many of China's rivers, will be dammed in 2009. It was amazing to experience this world-class stretch of whitewater before it changes forever...."

View some pictures and read the rest of the story>>>

Summer reading list

Going through Daniel Marcus' book on Number Fields, completing the proofs of the elementary results about number rings in Microsoft Word is getting tedious so I'm extending my break again. In the same vain as the post on my summer poetry list, I'm starting to compile another list. The two are really one list, but we can think of them as subgroups or, more aptly, orders. ok -

Goethe: Götz von Berlichingen, and maybe Faust part 1


Bertrand Russell: Principles of Mathematics

Wittgenstein: Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics), or Philosophische Bemerkungen (Philosophical Remarks) if I don't like Russell's

Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise, The Last Tycoon


Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Mann: The Magic Mountain
Hesse: Steppenwolf(!), The Glass Bead Game


Nietzsche: The Genealogy of Morals

Secondaries:

Schiller: William Tell (maybe)
Sophocles: Antigone
Vasilii Semenovich Grossman: Life and Fate

Have any recommendations?

Poets to read

I'm taking a break from writing my thesis, which is due in a week, and I started thinking about all the post-graduation reading I'd like to do. And this got me thinking about poetry. With the internet at my fingertips, I searched for poets I'd like to invite to sit on my never-ending reading list. Given the sheer volume of the poetic repertoire, one can easily imagine the difficulty anyone has in narrowing down the potentials to a manageable collection. I've come up with the following poets so far. Feel free to add or subtract, keeping in mind my position as a genuine new-comer to the world of poetry and the limited amount of time and energy I have to gobble up these works. (Remember, this is not a complete list, but rather a realistic list of the poets I can approach this summer and next year)

Homer: the Iliad and/or Odyssey
Dante: Divine Comedy
Shakespeare: sonnets
Lord Tennyson: Ulysses

Emily Dickinson

Dylan Thomas

Keats

Sylvia Plath


What does your list look like?

Roma Journeys

The photographer Joakim Eskildsen has an incredible show at Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center about the Roma people, spanning many countries. A few pictures from this incredible compilation can be found on his website, and I urge you to take a moment and riffle through them.

Tricky Linguistics

A great example of the absurdly hilarious comedic style that Fry & Laurie excel at.

"Hold the news-reader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers".... a unique child delivered to a unique mother

Gelliant Gutfright

Between imagination and desire, between reality and ambition, between what is known and what is feared, between purpose and despair, between sense and shite, between the outer world and the inner world, that straddles the curtain between what we know and what we think we suspect, hangs a dark veil that waves gently between the beckoning finger drawing us into the world of what could be and what never couldn't be possible to have dreamt; or do they? Perhaps it isn't. Maybe we were only dreaming. Perhaps the answers could be found in that other realm, that lies between the boundary of the heart and the sweaty laundry room of the imagination, where the only rhythms are the smiles of the forgotten winter and the incessant beating of the human thigh that we call fear...

"When your knight is a perilous yo-yo eaten by Destiny's right hand." Stephen Fry's narration is fantastic.

"Memo to Bush on Darfur"

Nicholas Kristof has written a great article on what steps the Bush administration should take toward tackling the situation in Darfur. A great read that stands solidly sober in a teeming sea of indignation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/opinion/10kristof.html?ex=1365566400&en=a3d65fc4bc87211e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Googly Eyes Gardener

I try not to post videos of no consequence, but I found this one hilarious:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/16417/saturday-night-live-googly-eyes-gardener#s-p1-st-i0

Sage Wohns, the Rakuten Warrior

I'd like to bring to everyone's attention Sage's profile on page 11 (if you're going by the web viewing application, or page 9 if you're going by the magazine) of the May edition of J-Life.

One can immediately tell by his sinister stance and dangerously stylish suit that his presence in Japan is hazardous to the well-being of the Japanese nation. If it wasn't for his mystifyingly cabalistic look that says, "I may be dangerous, but man I look good in this suit," in a monastic sort of way, but with a touch of dash, I would notify the authorities forthwith.

Posthumous Poet

O here is my left hand and here is my right hand,
And I on myself cast up as on a desert island,
In my right hand a dagger and on my left hand a ring,
And from under my feet the earth falling.

O here is my beginning, and here is my ending,
And at my bedside the armoured day standing,
Saying, Rise up, my lost one, and begone
Into reality as into a prison.

- Sylvia Townsend Warner


Claire Harman's discussion of Warner's love poetry in "The Guardian"

Tibet protests

Critical Review or Loving Fantasy

The following is the most outrageous review of... well I'll let you guess until you get to the end. Hint: think 19th century piano virtuoso.

After the concert, he stands there like a conqueror on the field of battle, like a hero in the lists; vanquished pianos lie about him, broken strings flutter as trophies and flags of truce, frightened instruments flee in their terror into distant corners, the hearers look at each other in mute astonishment as after a storm from a clear sky, as after thunder and lightning mingled with a shower of blossoms and buds and dazzling rainbows; and he the Prometheus, who creates a form from every note, a magnetizer who conjures the electric fluid from every key, a gnome, an amiable monster, who now treats his beloved, the piano, tenderly, then tyranically; caresses, pouts, scolds, strikes, drags by the hair, and then, all the more fervently, with all the fire and glow of love, throws his arms around her with a shout, and away with her through all space; he stands there, bowing his head, leaning languidly on a chair, with a strange smile, like an exclamation mark after the outburst of universal admiration: this is Franz Liszt!

Old critical reviews of Prokofiev and his work

Here is New York Times music critic James Gibbons Huneker's opinion (from a 1918 issue) of Prokofiev's first piano concerto:

The First Piano Concerto of Prokofiev was in one movement, but compounded of many rhythms and recondite noises...The first descending figure -- it is hardly a theme -- is persistently affirmed in various nontonalities by the orchestra, the piano all the while shrieking, groaning, howling, fighting back, and in several instances it seemed to rear and bite the hand that chastised it...There were moments when the piano and orchestra made sounds that evoked not only the downfall of empires, but also of fine crockery, the fragments flying in all directions. He may be the Cossack Chopin for the next generation -- this tall, calm young man. The diabolic smiles press upon you as his huge hands, the hands of a musical primate, tear up trees and plow the soil. That fetching, old expression, 'Hell to pay and no pitch hot,' applies to Prokofiev: only he owns his Hades and has the necessary pitch in abundance.

And now an excerpt from "Musical America" about the 1916 premiere of Prokofiev's Scythian Suite in St. Petersburg:

Crashing Siberias, volcano hell, Krakatoa, sea-bottom crawlers. Incomprehensible? So is Prokofiev. A splendid tribute was paid to his Scythian Suite in Petrograd by Glazunov. The poor tortured classicist walked out of the hall during the performance of the work. No one walked out of Aeolian Hall, but several respectable pianists ran out.

Excerpts from my Bhutan journal, again

Here's another ditty from my journal I kept while trekking through Bhutan:

A rat prances to Prague
for breakfast
2 in the afternoon, melting
coffee beans sizzling on a
platter.
rattle.
ring the police

Now don't be so critical. Remember, I was short on oxygen.

And now my favorite one so far:

rain like a leg fallen asleep
a gray tent house, amorphous
water dribbling through its skin
dirt specks like ticks
spelling constellations
a chocolate milky way

I'm guessing on that last one, I was in the tent, probably trying to sleep. Unfortunate things happen to people who can't sleep.

Excerpts from my Bhutan journal

Its 12:30 and not wanting to go to sleep I reached for my journal from my Bhutan trip, which was sitting above my bed. I remember, Near the end of the trip, strands of nonsense twirled through my head and I was compelled to write some down. Here's a sample:

Wake at 5.
Its 8. hours bundled
in a dream of seconds
stretching the dawn
along the rough horizon

Its 5. light dinner. Its 6.
Dark. Step out into nothing
the world at your feet
like a tight rope line
Now its 11. The thinnest silence
you've ever heard
Your heart beating time.
One by 2. One by 2.

Its 11. Enclosed by immeasurable
counters, counting each
day each hour each minute

Each minute, one foot at a time
along the rough rope.
grasp it. it is morning

minutes flowing into an eddy
of time
collected like stamps
sent off to distant places,
locomotion.

Miss Rosie by Lucille Clifton

when I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your old man's shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week's grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
through your destruction
I stand up

-- Lucille Clifton

thanks Tara

A play comparing two proofs of the quadratic reciprocity law

Two hilarious math professors at New Mexico State University wrote a play, set in 1844, featuring a discussion between Gauss and Eisenstein about quadratic reciprocity.


http://www.math.nmsu.edu/~history/schauspiel/schauspiel.html

The Book of Thel

I just ran across a great poem by William Blake which starts with Thel's Motto:

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl?

I'm writing the midterm essay for my music history course. The assignment, named "The Tale of Two Periods," is to contrast one Baroque piece of music with one Classical, in conjunction with the contrast of two corresponding poems.

Here's the rest of The Book of Thel

Gorilla evacuation

The evacuation of a dead Mountain Gorilla in the Virunga National Park of Eastern Congo

thanks to Brent Stirton and bbc.com

Schiller and Hesse

This passage from On the Aesthetic Education of Man reminds me of Herman Hesse's powerful interpretation of Siddhartha's passage to enlightenment through the world of Man.

One of the chief reasons why our physical sciences make such slow progress is obviously the widespread and almost insurmountable tendency towards teleological judgements, in which, as soon as they are used constitutively, the determining faculty is substituted for the receptive. Nature may touch our organs as vigorously and variously as you please -- all her diversity is lost upon us, because we are looking for nothing in her but what we have put there, because we do not allow her to come forward to meet us, from without, but rather strive with impatiently anticipating reason to go out from within ourselves to meet her. And if in the course of centuries one man comes along who approaches her with calm, pure and open senses, and therefore encounters a number of phenomena which we by our anticipation have overlooked, we are mightily astonished that so many eyes in such bright daylight should not have noticed anything. This premature striving for harmony before we have gathered together the separate sounds of which it is to consist, this violent usurpation of the intellectual faculty in a field where its authority is only conditional, is the cause of the sterility of so many thinkers for the greatest benefit of science, and it is hard to say whether sense-faculty which admits of no form, or reason which abides no content, has done the greater harm to the extension of our knowledge.

Not to say Schiller is leading us to the conclusion that these problems can be resolved through the adherence to and practice of transcendental philosophy. On the contrary, he states earlier that the nature of such views contradicts the harmony and unity of opposing forces that is the hallmark of aesthetic philosophy, that is, the subjugation of the natural impulse by the purely intellectual impulse. This antagonism breeds division and discord.

Goethe's view of my frivolous ambitions

"Distance is like the future. A vast twilit entity lies before us, our perception is lost in it and becomes as blurred as our eyesight, and we yearn, ah, we yearn to surrender all of our Self and let ourselves be filled to the brim with a single, tremendous, magnificent emotion, but alas... when we hurry to the spot, when There becomes Here, everything is as it was before and we are left standing in our poverty and constraint, our souls longing for the balm that has eluded us. Thus the most restless vagabond yearns in the end to return to his native land and find in his cottage, in the arms of his wife, with his children around him, and in the occupations that provide for them, the joys he sought vainly elsewhere."

From The Sorrows of Young Werther

No, I do not have a wife and kids. But the There being Here and Here being There could foreshadow the time to come.

genius

I've started reading Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, and if there's anything like a rose-colored wish, a magical romantic wonderland, then here it is in prose and spades.

"Oh my dear friend, would you like to know why genius so rarely breaks its bonds, why it so seldom bursts upon us like a raging torrent to shatter our astounded souls? My friend, it is because of the sober gentlemen who reside on either side of the river, whose precious little summerhouses, tulip beds, and vegetable gardens would be ruined by it, and who know so well how to build dams and divert all such threatening danger in good time."

the Artificial problem

From The New Yorker:

"If the “best” move is simply the result of multiple calculations, why isn’t the best chess player the one whose brain is most like a computer? Why isn’t rooting for a chess player like rooting for a microchip? Commentators talk about a player’s daring or originality; but a daring or original move is worthless if it’s not also, from a strictly computational point of view, the optimal move—in which case, a computer could have made it. Since there is so little to look at otherwise, the players’ styles and personalities come to seem important to describe. But what does style or personality have to do with it, really?"

Bobby Fischer dies at age 64

From the 1957 archives of The New Yorker:

"Most of this [Bobby's] intelligence we gleaned from Robert’s mother, Mrs. Regina Fischer, when we talked with her one evening recently. We also gathered that Mrs. Fischer, though proud of her son’s triumphs, is by no means convinced that his devotion to chess is a good thing. “For four years, I tried everything I knew to discourage him,” she said, with a sigh, “but it was hopeless.” She told us that almost any evening during the summer vacation her son was to be found at the Manhattan Chess Club, on West Sixty-fourth Street—a venerable institution, with an imposing number of champions and chess masters in its membership. “That’s Bobby’s favorite hangout,” Mrs. Fischer said. “Sometimes I have to go over there at midnight to haul him out of the place.” Robert’s mother and father have been divorced for some years."

Was his genius "good" in the broader sense. Yes, he is considered by some to be one of the most talented chess players. But considering his tortured life, probably self-imposed, it was most likely not really a choice, of course, for him to pursue his talent, but should career-success usurp personal mental health in importance. ...

On a separate note, there should be more "hang-outs" like the Manhattan Chess Club.

when dealing with people

"Live with your century, but do not be its creature; render to your contemporaries what they need, not what they praise. Without sharing their guilt, share with noble resignation their penalties, and bow with freedom beneath the yoke which they can as ill dispense with as they can bear it. By the steadfast courage with which you disdain their good fortune, you will prove to them that it is not your cowardice that submits to their sufferings. Think of them as they ought to be when you have to influence them, but think of them as they are when you are tempted to act on their behalf. Seek their approbation through their dignity, but impute their good fortune to their unworthiness; thus on the one hand, your own nobility will awaken theirs, and on the other, their unworthiness will not defeat your purpose. The gravity of your principles will scare them from you, but in play they will continue to tolerate them; their taste is purer than their heart, and it is here that you must lay hold of the timorous fugitive. In vain you will assail their maxims, in vain condemn their deeds; but you can try your fashioning hand upon their idleness. Drive away lawlessness, frivolity and coarseness from their pleasure, and you will imperceptibly banish them from their actions, and finally from their dispositions. Wherever you find them, surround them with noble, great and ingenious forms, enclose them all around with the symbols of excellence, until actuality is overpowered by appearance and Nature by Art."

Schiller had his friend Goethe in mind when writing this, or so I am told. Clearly, the ideal and most noble of friends.

From On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Macbeth

"Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Truth and Art

"But how does the artist secure himself against the corruptions of his time, which everywhere encircle him? By disdaining its opinion. Let him look upwards to his own dignity and to Law, not downwards to fortune and to everyday needs. Free alike from the futile activity which would gladly set its mark upon the fleeting moment and from the impatient spirit of extravagance which applies the measure of the Absolute to the sorry production of Time, let him resign the sphere of the actual to the intellect, whose home it is; but let him strive, through the union of the possible with the necessary, to produce the Ideal.

Let him stamp it on illusion and truth, coin it in the play of his imagination and in the gravity of his actions, in every sensuous and spiritual form, and quietly launch it into infinite Time."


From the Ninth Letter of On the Aesthetic Education of Man

This excerpt is a good example of why I hold Schiller in great regard. His poetic and philosophical tendencies live simultaneously in his phrases. This harmony is exactly what he espouses in this classic work; that is, the reconciliation and unification of the sensuous and intellectual through Art, through Beauty.

Since it is so relevant to what I do, I'll be quoting from it in the next few posts.

why we need to train the sensibility

Again from Schiller:

"The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error. Content if they themselves escape the hard labour of thought, men gladly resign to others the guardianship of their ideas, and if it happens that higher needs are stirred in them, they embrace with eager faith the formulas which State and priesthood hold in readiness for such an occasion. If these unhappy people earn out sympathy, we should be rightly contemptuous of those others whom a better lot has freed from the yoke of necessity, but their own choice continues to stoop beneach it."

And now,

"These men prefer the twilight of obscure conceptions, where feeling is livelier and fancy fashions comfortable images at its own pleasure, to the beams of truth which dispel the fond delusion of their dreams. On the very deceptions which the hostile light of knowledge should dissipate, they have based the whole structure of their happiness, and are they to purchase so dearly a truth which begins by depriving them of everything they value? They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom...."

"It is, therefore, not enough to say that all intellectual enlightenment deserves our respect only insofar as it reacts upon the character; to a certain extent it proceeds from the character, since the way to the head must lie through the heart. Training of the sensibility is then the more pressing need of our age, not merely because it will be a means of making the improved understanding effective for living, but for the very reason that it awakens this improvement."

On the Aesthetic Education of Man

"...culture itself inflicted this wound upon modern humanity..."

"It was culture itself that inflicted this wound upon modern humanity. As soon as enlarged experience and more precise speculation made necessary a sharper division of the sciences on the one hand, and on the other, the more intricate machinery of States made necessary a more rigorous dissociation of ranks and occupations, the essential bond of human nature was torn apart, and a ruinous conflict set its harmonious powers at variance. The intuitive and the speculative understanding took up hostile attitudes upon their respective fields, whose boundaries they now began to guard with jealousy and distrust, and by confining our activity to a single sphere we have handed ourselves over to a master who is not infrequently inclined to end up by suppressing the rest of our capacities. While in one place a luxuriant imagination ravages the hard-earned fruits of the intellect, in another the spirit of abstraction stifles the fire at which the heart might have warmed itself and the fancy been enkindled.
....enjoyment was separated from labour, means from ends, effort from reward. Eternally chained to only one single little fragment of the whole, Man himself grew to be only a fragment; with the monotonous noise of the wheel he drives everlastingly in his ears, he never develops the harmony of his being, and instead of imprinting humanity upon his nature he becomes merely the imprint of his occupation, of his science." !!!!

"But even the meagre fragmentary association which still links the individual members to the while, does not depend on forms which present themselves spontaneously (for how could such an artificial and clandestine piece of mechanism be entrusted to their freedom?), but is assigned to them with scrupulous exactness by a formula in which their free intelligence is restricted."

and now with emphasis:
"The lifeless letter takes the place of the living understanding, and a practised memory is a surer guide than genius and feeling."

- from Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man translated by Snell