Shiny

I am quickly realizing both in evaluating my own aesthetic values, and in discussing those values with others, that the worth of pure aesthetics in artistic work is a matter of some debate. The argument is particularly potent in works that contain narrative: film, literature etc.—"good graphics don't make a good movie," or (albeit less frequently) "the prose were beautiful, but that's not enough to make a good book."

While I agree that the function of narrative in film or literature is a vital part of making a consummate work of art, I think it is a mistake to require a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk for every movie or book written. Furthermore, I submit that music, the visual arts, and poetry are more often than not purely aesthetic forms (with many notable exceptions).

Is not the Mona Lisa valued for its beauty, rather than its subject? Do we not value the pure emotional expressionism of Rothko for the same reason we value the abstract splashes of color in the tone poems of Debussy? Should we feel shame for giving ourselves over to pure emotion, and forsaking the story, the meaning, the narrative? Is not the great beauty of art that it cannot be explained by narrative?

I often find the subjects of paintings to be uninteresting, vague, stupid, or irrelevant, despite the fact that they were painted with the purpose of conveying that very information (who really cares what Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo looked like?). I often find the programmatic subjects of musical compositions to be riddled with the same flaws. But does that diminish the beauty of the work?

A friend of mine said recently, "Pretty things only hold for so long," but I submit that for many things, particularly artistic things, the prettiness is the only thing that has allowed them to endure.

Things I Remember

I remember (quite more than vaguely)
stretched on giant blades of matted grass
with my sister
while my father played softball.

I didn't care about the game;
only the fictional characters
I had imagined were sitting
with my sister and me.

I do not remember (not even vaguely)
the day I met my first love
nor the day I fell in love with him
nor what I said the last time we spoke.

Yet, I cared more about him
than any game of softball.

Perhaps I was too busy
imagining the characters.

Android Dreams

Idea for a new piece for baritone and orchestra… three movements… the theme being the moral and philosophical dilemma of artificial intelligence. The first movement would be a poem by Wallace Stevens which describes a man imagining immortalizing himself in bronze:

“This Solitude of Cataracts”

He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing

Through many places, as if it stood in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered.

Ruffling its common reflections, thought-like Monadnocks.
There seemed to be an apostrophe that was not spoken.

There was so much that was real that was not real at all.
He wanted to feel the same way over and over.

He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,
To keep on flowing. He wanted to walk beside it,

Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.
He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest

In a permanent realization, without any wild ducks
Or mountains that were not mountains, just to know how it would be,

Just to know how it would feel, released from destruction,
To be a bronze man breathing under archaic lapis,

Without the oscillation of planetary pass-pass,
Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time.


The second movement would be a poem by Costas Dafnis about an android luthier. Still waiting on that from him…

The third movement could be this poem by Jeni Couzyn, which references the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (better known by its movie adaptation “Blade Runner”) by Philip K. Dick:

“Do Androids Dream”

Do androids dream of electric sheep in their pastures
grazing electric grass? Does Winnie dream of
walking in fields with sun on her skin

laid out ready for her coffin
unofficially dead in the home for old people?
Like an image of God as a fierce old woman in stone

flowers on sunday and news of the grandchildren
silent, unseeing, she receives like worship.
The undeniable tick tick tick of her heart

impales her to the living.
I heard an android cry before the bounty hunter
retired her, (unable to kill what is not alive):

"I was made instead of born; my empathy rating is low;
I will not grow old as you will or die of diseases;
the machine that I am will calmly

turn itself off at the proper time. But you’ve made me
so like you—bone marrow and blood and my heart is a big
muscle as yours is. I know fear when footsteps in the dark

pause at my door, and feel murderous, as you would
when you dig sharp fingers into my arm, tearing skin.
There’s saliva under my tongue. There are real

tears in my eyes. The factory that made me and for what
purpose, makes no difference to the way I feel myself
me, know myself mysterious. I am I as sharp as the lowest

creeper on earth is himself, whatever egg he crawled from
or gut he tore open entering, or cell accidentally
dividing created him. There are many ways into life.

Let me live."

Totally Random Emails

So, I obviously know to ignore emails that say "I'm a 95-year-old Yugoslavian duchess, and I need to transfer $10,000,000 into your bank account so that I can save 1,600 African babies from the horrors of AIDS. For your trouble, I will let you keep 35% of the money after I transfer it into my offshore account. Just send me all your personal information and a copy of your DNA." That is probably a scam. Everyone knows that.

But sometimes, I get emails that are COMPLETELY random, and totally benign... they are just clearly not meant for me. Do the tubes of the internets just get clogged? Am I just too stupid to see the scam? I just don't get it sometimes.... take this one, for example:

Frank,

I noticed not many people have a personal curriculum vitae page or is outdated, one reason being of not being familiar with html or find modifying html files quite cumbersome. I believe cestagi would benefit them, as it is an easy to use web service where you can manage your CV online quite easily. Plus it offers export features into NSF/NIH word, latex, and pdf formats. I use it and believe others within the community would benefit from it as well.

Best wishes,

Steve

WHAT?!

Despite the falling snow

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low;
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

(Robert Graves)

Platforms of Persia

We were all sitting in the hotel lobby playing some sort of creepy role-playing game. It was sort of like "Mafia," but it somehow took longer, and I think there were special cards involved… maybe it was "Magic: The Gathering." Who knows; the point is that it was a normal day. There was a large picture window at the back of the room overlooking a thicket behind the hotel. It had a small courtyard-esque clearing in the centre like any decent thicket should have.

My patience was already wearing thin with the tedious game when a woman startled us by entering the room shouting, "Everyone, look outside! There’s a huge creature out there! I think it’s La Chupacabra!" As it turned out, the thing wasn’t the legendary cryptid goat-sucker of Puerto Rico, but instead it was a grizzly-bear sized badger. "Costas! Run and get my camera!" I shouted. He obeyed, at which point, we all can surmise that this was, indeed, a dream.

As I waited for my Costas to return, I started snapping pictures of the action with my camera-phone. There were more animals in the courtyard now, a strange mongoose-type animal, a deer, and I’m pretty sure there was a cow. All gargantuanly proportioned, mind you (in the style of the badger). There were people out there as well—a small group of folks huddled in a circle near the edge of the clearing. Wait, did I recognize one of them? Yes, I’m sure it was Victoria Rice out there with the giant badger and cow. I turned to show my fantastic pictures to everyone, and I realized that despite my best efforts to photograph the tremendous creatures, I had only managed to take several very creepily close-up images of Victoria Rice’s face. Too bad… I guess I will have to go down to the thicket myself.

As I approached the circle, I noticed something in the centre. It looked like a… yes, it was a person. A small boy clad in Persian-style armor. He was lying on the ground… it was all making sense now…! The ancient relay of transport cables, the signs and wonders… he was back from the deep past to help the world through a time of great turmoil. His head was nearly severed, and he was clearly dying… and Victoria knew why.

At this point I apparently assumed control of Victoria’s body. This is one of those things that can really only happen in a dream (obviously)—it was no longer necessary for Philip Rice to take part in the dream to maintain the storyline, and since this was my dream, Victoria and my identities became merged. The newly reincarnated me scooped up the little Persian boy and carried him across the windswept plains to reach the ancient cables. These looked something like telegraph cables or power lines, but when the proper incantation was recited the cables would descend in a geometric formation resembling a platform suitable to stand upon. After a short interval, the platform would ascend back up into the structure of the cables, carrying whoever stood upon it away into (presumably) another dimension. With the help of the young prince (who had regained consciousness by this point) we summoned a platform, and were spirited away down the ancient cables to complete our divine mission for the human race.

Late-Night Ramblings 2010 #1

There is a certain kind of "feeling"—one might call it a desire—that is so potent, so honest, that it becomes part of the definition of oneself... Maybe this is part of what makes us human; I prefer to think that these are little clues as to the nature of God... as beings created in His image, as we learn about ourselves, we learn more about Him: what He thinks, how He feels.

For example, I have a deep desire for peace. Not silly hippie "world-peace" or the quasi-Buddhist "inner-peace," I'm talking about literal peace:

Quiet stillness, time to sit and think for hours, listening to birds, to water, to air, to silence. Time to stare at a blank wall and slowly realize who I love, who my friends are, and who God is. Most importantly, it's time to look at the stars and think about myself versus the universe. Why don't I have more of that in my life? I want more of that.