To Sir Anthony Hopkins From "The Wardrobe Wars," by Paul Willis: "I was back at Wheaton for a conference just a couple of years ago. During a period of announcements, a curator from the Wade Collection invited the conference participants to visit the collection and see the many books and papers that had belonged to Lewis and his associates. At the end of her announcement, she told us, 'We also have the wardrobe that served as the original for the one in the Narnia Chronicles.' There it was, that definite article again. In a remarkable display of maturity I put up my hand and said, 'Excuse me, but the wardrobe is at Westmont College in Santa Barbara.' The woman gave me a long, hard look of the 'we are not amused' variety. That was all. I wasn't able to find her after the session was over to clear things up. Not that we could have, really. Of course, if pressed, I suspect we would both admit the wardrobe we are really concerned with exists only within the covers of a book, and that not even this wardrobe is so important as the story of which it is a part, and that the story is not so important as the sense of infinite longing that it stirs within our souls, and that this longing is not so important as the One—more real than Aslan himself—to whom it directs us. But that would be asking too much of either the curator or myself. To worship at our respective wardrobes, whether they be in Jerusalem or Samaria, is indeed to live in the shadowlands. And that is where we like it. Lewis himself would doubtless say that the physical wardrobes in our possession are but copies of a faint copy. He might even claim, to our horror, that no single wardrobe inspired the one found in his book. Then he might add under his breath, like the professor in The Last Battle who has passed on to the next life, 'It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!'" Posted 12/31/2002 at 3:17 PM |
To Aster, from Plato Asteras eisathreis, Aster emos. You gaze at stars, my Star. — Plato (Sometimes translated as "To Stella." Hence the current site music, "Stella by Starlight." See last midnight's entry, "Three in One.") Posted 12/31/2002 at 2:14 AM |
Three in One This evening's earlier entry, "Homer," is meant in part as a tribute to three goddess-figures from the world of film. But there is one actress who combines the intelligence of Judy Davis with the glamour of Nicole Kidman and the goodness of Kate Winslet-- Perhaps the only actress who could have made me cry Stella! as if I were Brando.... Piper Laurie.
Posted 12/30/2002 at 11:59 PM |
Homer "No matter how it's done, you won't like it." "The evening before Harriet injures Roy, "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" Judy Davis as Harriet Bird Thine eyes I love... "Roy's Guenevere-like lover is named Memo Paris, Nicole Kidman "Iris is someone to watch over Roy." Kate Winslet as young Iris Murdoch From the second-draft screenplay HOOKER Iris Murdoch on Plato's Form of the Good, "For Murdoch as for Plato, the Good belongs to Plato's Realm of Being not the Realm of Becoming.... However, Murdoch does not read Plato as declaring his faith in a divine being when he says that the Good is
Though she acknowledges the influence of Simone Weil in her reading of Plato, her understanding of Plato on Good and God is not Weil's (1952, ch.7)*. For Murdoch,
As she understands Plato:
Mary Warnock, her friend and fellow-philosopher, sums up Murdoch's metaphysical view of the Vision of the Good:
Or as Murdoch herself puts it, 'Good represents the reality of which God is the dream.' (1992, 496)**" *Weil, Simone. 1952. Intimations of Christianity Among The Ancient Greeks. Ark Paperbacks, 1987/1952. **Murdoch, Iris. 1992. Metaphysics As A Guide To Morals. London: Chatto and Windus. From the conclusion of Lila, "Good is a noun. That was it. That was what Phaedrus had been
looking for. That was the homer over the fence that ended the
ballgame." Posted 12/30/2002 at 8:30 PM |
Solace from Hell's Kitchen
This midnight's site music is "Solace: A Mexican Serenade," part of which was used in the film "The Sting." George Roy Hill, the film's director, died Friday, Dec. 27. He turned 81 on Friday, Dec. 20. See my note of that date, Posted 12/28/2002 at 11:59 PM |
On This Date
Zen meditation: "Kylie Eleison!" (For evidence that this is a valid Japanese religious exclamation, click here.) Posted 12/28/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Another Opening of Another Show "To die will be an awfully big adventure."
Posted 12/27/2002 at 7:15 PM |
Least Popular Christmas Present
See also my note "Last-Minute Shopping" On the bright side: Berrie joins comedians Posted 12/27/2002 at 3:43 PM |
Saint Hoagy's Day Today is the feast day of St. Hoagy Carmichael, who was born on the feast day of Cecelia, patron saint of music. This midnight's site music is "Stardust," by Carmichael (lyrics by Mitchell Parish). See also "Dead Poets Society" — my entry of Friday, December 13, on the Carmichael song "Skylark" — and the entry "Rhyme Scheme" of later that same day. Posted 12/27/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Holly for Miss Quinn Tonight's site music is for Stephen Dedalus and Miss Quinn, courtesy of Eithne Ní Bhraonáin.
Posted 12/26/2002 at 12:00 AM |
State of Morelos "Heaven is a state, a sort of metaphysical state." — John O'Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938 In memory of soldier-priest José Morelos, producer Darryl Zanuck ("Viva Zapata!"), and actress Helene Stanley ("Holiday in Mexico" and action model for "Cinderella"), each of whom died on a December 22, tonight's midnight midi is "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes." See also Heaven, Hell, and Hollywood and Posted 12/22/2002 at 11:59 PM |
A white horse comes as if on wings. See also Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star. Posted 12/22/2002 at 5:00 PM |
For the Green Lady "The oral history of Los Angeles Tonight's midnight music in the garden of good and evil is a shamelessly romantic classic from a site titled simply Piano Bar. De Rêve En Rêverie Tu es le pianiste Washington Square Press paperback, 1981, page 222 Posted 12/21/2002 at 11:59 PM |
To Ophelia Introduction "There is one story and one story only ... is it of the Virgin's silver beauty, Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched, — Robert Graves, "To Juan at the Winter Solstice" Illustrations The Virgin's Beauty On the Beach A Maiden's Prayer Answered Prayer DialogueAct III Scene ii: Hamlet Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Quotations "Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?" "At the still point, there the dance is." "I know what 'nothing' means...." "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" "...problems can be solved by manipulating just two symbols, 1 and 0...." "The female and the male continue this charming dance, populating the world with all living beings." "According to Showalter’s essay*, 'In Elizabethan slang, ‘nothing’ was a term for the female genitalia . . . what lies between maids’ legs, for, in the male visual system of representation and desire.... Ophelia’s story becomes the Story of O — the zero, the empty circle or mystery of feminine difference, the cipher of female sexuality to be deciphered by feminist interpretation.' (222)* Ophelia is a highly sexual being..." — Leigh DiAngelo, S. H. Cullinane: "No shit, Sherlock." *Showalter, Elaine. "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism." Hamlet. Ed. Susanne L. Wofford. Boston: Bedford Books of St.Martin’s Press, 1994. 220-238.
Dénouement
See also The Ya-Ya Monologues. Posted 12/21/2002 at 7:00 PM |
Nightmare Alley Tonight's site music in the garden of good and evil is "Hooray for Hollywood," with lyrics by Johnny Mercer:
From Pif magazine: Nightmare Alley (1947) "Edmund Goulding’s film of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel Nightmare Alley may just be the great forgotten American film; it is certainly the darkest film that came from the Hollywood studio system in the '40s.... A never better Tyrone Power stars as Stan Carlisle, a small-time carny shill.... Stan shills for mind reader Zeena.... The... pretty 'electric girl'... tells Stan that Zeena... had a 'code' for the mind-reading act... Stan... decides to seduce... Zeena in hopes of luring the code from her." The rest of this review is well worth reading, though less relevant to my present theme — that of my which points out that the article on "nothing" is on page 265 of The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. (This is also the theme of yesterday's journal entry "Last-Minute Shopping.") Here is another work that prominently features "nothing" on page 265... As it happens, this is a web page describing a mind-reading act, titled simply"Imagine this: A spectator is invited to take a readable and 100% examinable, 400 page, 160,000 word novel, open it to any page and think of any word on that page. Without touching the book or approaching the spectator, you reveal the word in the simplest, most startlingly direct manner ever! It truly must be seen to be believed. All pages are different. Nothing is written down. There are no stooges of any kind. Everything may be examined.... 'Throw away your Key. This is direct mindreading at its best.'"
Hooray. Mercer's lyrics are from the 1937 film Posted 12/21/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Last-Minute Shopping In celebration of today's nationwide opening of Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" —
See also my Sermon for St. Patrick's Day. This contains the following metaphysical observation from Mark Helprin's novel Winter's Tale: "Nothing is random." For those who, like the protagonist of Joan Didion's feel that they "know what nothing means," I recommend the following readings:
Gnosticism in Derrida's The Gift of Death — |
Irish Lament In keeping with Irish themes in the Mark Helprin novel Winter's Tale (see yesterday's entry with that title) and in the new Martin Scorsese film "Gangs of New York," as well as in observance of Maud Gonne's birthday today, our site music returns to the theme of October 17, "Lament for Kilcash." Posted 12/20/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Winter's Tale The title is that of a novel by Mark Helprin. On this date in 1903, the Williamsburg Bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan was opened to traffic. From the opening of Helprin's 1983 novel: "The horse.... trotted alone over the carriage road of the Williamsburg Bridge, before the light, while the toll keeper was sleeping by his stove and many stars were still blazing above the city."
See also Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star. "The Forms are abstract but real." Posted 12/19/2002 at 5:30 PM |
ART WARS: Bach at Heaven's Gate From a weblog entry of Friday, December 13, 2002:
From The Hollywood Reporter:
Recommended reading — Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of From Newmarket Press:
"Steven Bach was the senior vice-president and head of worldwide production for United Artists at the time of the filming of Heaven's Gate.... Apart from the director and the producer, Bach was the only person to witness the evolution of Heaven's Gate from beginning to end."
"Back to Bach" of 1:44 a.m. EST Saturday, December 14, 2002. Posted 12/19/2002 at 4:07 AM |
Plain Hunt Maximus This midnight's site music is in honor of Sinatra's first recording session for Reprise on December 19, 1960 (which included "Ring-a-Ding-Ding"). See also The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers, and this applet for devising your own peal of changes. Those who prefer Disney may go to this web page and click on the title "The Bells of Notre Dame" for a different midi. For Mary Gaitskill's more mature approach to Victor Hugo's classic, click here. Posted 12/19/2002 at 12:00 AM |
ART WARS: Birthdate of Paul Klee To accompany today's site music, "Nica's Dream" — Posted 12/18/2002 at 1:23 AM |
For the Dark Lady On this midnight in the garden of good and evil, our new site music is "Nica's Dream." From a website on composer Horace Silver: "Horace Silver apparently composed Nica's Dream (1956) for Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter-Rothschild, an English aristocrat and a very dear friend of his. She was known to the New York press as the Jazz Baroness and to the black musicians for whom she was something of a patron, simply as Nica. Her apartment in the fashionable Hotel Stanhope on Fifth Avenue became a 'hospitality suite for some of the greatest jazz players of the day, whom she treated generously.' (Jack Chambers, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis, University of Toronto Press, 1985, 1:248) This music is not unrelated to the work of Thomas Pynchon. From an essay by Charles Hollander: "There are some notable parallels between Nica and the woman Stencil knows as V., who started her career with '...a young crude Mata Hari act.' (V.; 386).... Not that V. is Nica in any roman a clef sense: she is not. But the resonances are powerful at the level of the subtext. Nica is a Rothschild whose life reflects the issues Pynchon wants us to attend in V.: disinheritance, old dynasty vs. new dynasty, secret agents and couriers, plots and counter-plots, 'The Big One, the century's master cabal,' and 'the ultimate Plot Which Has No Name' (V.; 226)...." See also my journal entry for the December 16-17 midnight, "Just Seventeen." Posted 12/18/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Not Amusing Anymore I need a photo-opportunity From The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2002 (See yesterday's notes) —
Posted 12/17/2002 at 1:06 AM |
From a June/July 1997 "Plato is obviously Jewish." — Rebecca Goldstein Readings on the Dark Lady From a July 27, 1997 "The single most important and sustained model for Khmer culture was India, from which Cambodia inherited two religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, and an immensely sophisticated art. This influence announces itself early in this exhibition in a spectacular seventh-century figure of the Hindu goddess Durga, whose hip-slung pose and voluptuous torso, as plush and taut as ripe fruit, combine the naturalism and idealism of the very finest Indian work." From The Dancing Wu Li Masters, "The Wu Li Masters know that physicists are doing more than 'discovering the endless diversity of nature.' They are dancing with Kali [or Durga], the Divine Mother of Hindu mythology." "Eastern religions have nothing to say about physics, but they have a great deal to say about human experience. In Hindu mythology, Kali, the Divine Mother, is the symbol for the infinite diversity of experience. Kali represents the entire physical plane. She is the drama, tragedy, humor, and sorrow of life. She is the brother, father, sister, mother, lover, and friend. She is the fiend, monster, beast, and brute. She is the sun and the ocean. She is the grass and the dew. She is our sense of accomplishment and our sense of doing worthwhile. Our thrill of discovery is a pendant on her bracelet. Our gratification is a spot of color on her cheek. Our sense of importance is the bell on her toe. This full and seductive, terrible and wonderful earth mother always has something to offer. Hindus know the impossibility of seducing her or conquering her and the futility of loving her or hating her; so they do the only thing that they can do. They simply honor her." How could I dance with another....? — John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1962-1963 Posted 12/17/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Rebecca Goldstein This entry is in gratitude for Rebecca Goldstein's She talks about the perennial conflict between two theories of truth that Richard Trudeau called the "story theory" and the "diamond theory." My entry of December 13, 2002, "Rhyme Scheme," links the word "real" to an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that contains the following: "According to a platonist about arithmetic, the truth of the sentence ‘7 is prime’ entails the existence of an abstract object, the number 7. This object is abstract because it has no spatial or temporal location, and is causally inert. A platonic realist about arithmetic will say that the number 7 exists and instantiates the property of being prime independently of anyone's beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on. A certain kind of nominalist rejects the existence claim which the platonic realist makes: there are no abstract objects, so sentences such as ‘7 is prime’ are false..." This discussion of "sevenness," along with the discussion of "eightness" in my December 14, 2002, note on Bach, suggest that I supply a transcription of a note in my paper journal from 2001 that deals with these matters. From a paper journal note of October 5, 2001:
Added 12/17/02: See also For more on the Jewish propensity to For the significance of "seven" in Judaism, see For the cabalistic significance of For the significance of the date 12.17, see Posted 12/16/2002 at 10:00 PM |
Beethoven's Birthday "Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132, is one of the transcendent masterworks of the Western classical tradition. It is built around its luminous third movement, titled 'Holy song of thanksgiving by one recovering from an illness.' In this third movement, the aging Beethoven speaks, clearly and distinctly, in a voice seemingly meant both for all the world and for each individual who listens to it. The music, written in the ancient Lydian mode, is slow and grave and somehow both a struggle and a celebration at the same time. This is music written by a supreme master at the height of his art, saying that through all illness, tribulation and sorrow there is a strength, there is a light, there is a hope." "Eliot's final poetic achievement—and, for many, his greatest—is the set of four poems published together in 1943 as Four Quartets.... Structurally—though the analogy is a loose one—Eliot modeled the Quartets on the late string quartets of Beethoven, especially... the A Minor Quartet; as early as 1931 he had written the poet Stephen Spender, 'I have the A Minor Quartet on the gramophone, and I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaiety about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.'" — Anonymous author at a "Each of the late quartets has a unique structure, and the structure of the Quartet in A Minor is one of the most striking of all. Its five movements form an arch. At the center is a stunning slow movement that lasts nearly half the length of the entire quartet... The third movement (Molto adagio) has a remarkable heading: in the score Beethoven titles it 'Hymn of Thanksgiving to the Godhead from an Invalid,' a clear reflection of the illness he had just come through. This is a variation movement, and Beethoven lays out the slow opening section, full of heartfelt music. But suddenly the music switches to D major and leaps ahead brightly; Beethoven marks this section 'Feeling New Strength.' These two sections alternate through this movement (the form is A-B-A-B-A), and the opening section is so varied on each reappearance that it seems to take on an entirely different character each time: each section is distinct, and each is moving in its own way (Beethoven marks the third 'With the greatest feeling'). This movement has seemed to many listeners the greatest music Beethoven ever wrote. and perhaps the problem of all who try to write about this music is precisely that it cannot be described in words and should be experienced simply as music." — Eric Bromberger, In accordance with these passages, here is a web page with excellent transcriptions for piano by Steven Edwards of Beethoven's late quartets: Our site music for today, Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Opus 132, Movement 3 (1825), is taken from this web page. Posted 12/16/2002 at 2:22 AM |
Back to Bach Our site music now moves from the romantic longing of "Skylark" to a classical theme: what might be called "the spirit of eight," by Bach: Canon 14 Fourteen Canons on the First Eight Notes For more details, click here. For a different set of variations on the theme Generating the Octad Generator. For more details, click here. Posted 12/14/2002 at 1:44 AM |
ART WARS: Two stories related to my recent entries on the death of Stan Rice (Sequel, 12/11/02) and the career of Jodie Foster (Rhyme Scheme, 12/13/02) —
See also my entry of December 5, 2002, I faced myself that day — Joan Didion, "On Self-Respect," Divine Comedy Didion and her husand John Gregory Dunne If the incomparable Max Bialystock Posted 12/13/2002 at 5:24 PM |
Rhyme Scheme "The introduction of Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) "They should have sent a poet."
On the question of what reality is: — Erving Goffman, Posted 12/13/2002 at 2:27 PM |
Dead Poets Society Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best, — The Caged Skylark, In accordance with this sentiment, Posted 12/13/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Play It From a Kol Nidre sermon: "...in every generation 36 righteous A scene at the Sands in Las Vegas, "What do you think," "Thirty-six," the girl said. For the rest of the time Today's site music, in honor of Posted 12/12/2002 at 2:14 PM |
Sequel
"This world is not conclusion; — Emily Dickinson (See yesterday's notes.) And the hair of my flesh stood up (Job 4:15). — Stan Rice, "Doing Being" (See yesterday's notes.) Stan Rice died on Monday.
Posted 12/11/2002 at 12:08 PM |
Culture Clash at Midnight
In a future life, if not in this one, Dante might assign these two theologians to Purgatory, where they could teach one another. Both might benefit if Shepard took Apczynski's course "The Intellectual Journey" and if Apczynski read Shepard's new book of short stories, Great Dream of Heaven. Background music might consist of Sinatra singing "Three Coins in the Fountain" (for Shepard -- See my journal notes of December 10, 2002) alternating with the Dixie Chicks singing "Cowboy, Take Me Away" (for Apczynski, who is perhaps unfamiliar with life on the range). Today's site music is this fervent prayer by the Dixie Chicks to a cowboy-theologian like Shepard. Posted 12/11/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Point of No Return From Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar for December 10:
An album recorded in September 1961: Songs in the above list: September Song * When the World was Young Not in the list, but in the album: As Time Goes By The Savannah Connection: Augustus Saint-Gaudens From by Wallace Stevens "The theory of poetry, that is to say, the total of the theories of poetry, often seems to become in time a mystical theology or, more simply, a mystique. The reason for this must by now be clear. The reason is the same reason why the pictures in a museum of modern art often seem to become in time a mystical aesthetic, a prodigious search of appearance, as if to find a way of saying and of establishing that all things, whether below or above appearance, are one and that it is only through reality, in which they are reflected or, it may be, joined together, that we can reach them. Under such stress, reality changes from substance to subtlety...." Part of a journal entry for
Point of No Return was Sinatra's Note the strategic placement Posted 12/10/2002 at 9:00 PM |
Great Dream of Heaven The title is that of Sam Shepard's new book of short stories. It is relevant to several of my recent journal entries. This author's own title also seems relevant. Here is an excerpt from a web page on The Church of the Good Shepherd: "This is the oldest church in Beverly Hills, and over the years, this small house of worship has been the local parish church for most of the Catholic movie stars who live in Beverly Hills.... It has seen numerous celebrity weddings and funerals. Although the church's interior is modest (it seats just 600), and its decor surprisingly simple, the Church of the Good Shepherd has been featured in several Hollywood films: most notably, it was the location for the funeral scene in the 1954 version of 'A Star is Born.'" Today's Birthday: Emily Dickinson Complete Poems, 1924 Part Four: Time and Eternity This world is not conclusion;
Born Yesterday: Kirk Douglas From Douglas's Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning (Simon & Schuster, 1997) — "Selling artwork, devoting time to charitable causes, writing novels, are all worthwhile means of occupying your time when good scripts aren't coming your way. But then, in the spring of 1993, one did. It was called Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, a story of a growing friendship betwen two old men dealing with the twilight of their lives.... It was brilliant.... I called my agent... "So make the deal." A long pause. "But the director wants to meet you." .... .... My agent called the next day. "She really likes you, Kirk... but... ah," he started to stutter. "What?" "She wants Richard Harris." In the film of Dead on October 25, 2002, Actor Richard Harris A journal entry of October 25, 2002: Wrestling Pablo Picasso The old men know when an old man dies. A description of the title story "Two old men who share a house are as close as a married couple until a competition to wake up first in the morning and a mutual fascination with a Denny's waitress drive them apart." Posted 12/10/2002 at 2:00 PM |
Three Coins in the Fountain
The reverse of three bronze coins "Constantine like many of his predecessors had worshipped the Greek and Roman gods, particularly Apollo, Mars and Victory. This fact is evident in the portrayal of these gods on the earliest of Constantine’s coins. Yet surprisingly, even after his dream experience, and subsequent victory over Maxentius, it is recorded that he continued to worship these gods. Although the images of Apollo, Mars and Victory quickly disappeared from his coinage, later coins minted under Constantine shows that he likely continued to worship the sol invicta [sic] or ‘Unconquered Sun’ for 10 years or more after his dream experience. Yet, over a period of years, the experience of the sign, and the victory at the Milvian bridge, eventually led Constantine to favour and later to convert to the Christian faith." — Ross Nightingale, "The 'Sign' that Changed the Course of History," in Ancient Coin Forum "Three coins in the fountain, -- Sinatra's version of the 1954 song Which one will the fountain bless? In order to answer this theological conundrum, we need to know more about the unfamiliar god Sol Invictus. A quick web search reveals that some fanatical Protestants believe that the Roman deities Sol Invictus and Mithra were virtually the same. Of course, it is unwise to take the paranoid ravings of Protestants too seriously, but in this case they may be on to something. The Catholic Church itself seems to identify Sol Invictus with Mithra: "Sunday was kept holy in honour of Mithra.... The 25 December was observed as his birthday, the natalis invicti, the rebirth of the winter-sun, unconquered by the rigours of the season. A Mithraic community was not merely a religious congregation..." — The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 edition. Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor It would seem, therefore, that as December 25 approaches we are preparing to celebrate the festival of Sol Invictus. This perhaps answers the theological riddle posed by Sammy Cahn. From "Things Change," starring Don Ameche: Today's site music celebrates Posted 12/10/2002 at 1:06 AM |
ART WARS: A Metaphysical State
"Heaven is a state, a sort of metaphysical state." — John O'Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938 "I've always been enthralled by the notion that Time is an illusion, a trick our minds play in an attempt to keep things separate, without any reality of its own. My experience suggests that this is literally true, but not the kind of truth that can be acted upon.... I'm always sad and always happy. As someone says in Diane Keaton's film 'Heaven,' 'It's kind of a lost cause, but it's a great experience.'" — Charles Small, Harvard '64 25th Anniv. Report, 1989 "As a child she would wait out her naptime like a prison sentence. She would lie in bed and stare at the wallpaper pattern and wonder what would happen if there were no heaven. She thought the universe would probably go on and on, spilling all over everything. Heaven was kind of a hat on the universe, a lid that kept everything underneath it where it belonged." — Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge, 1987 Today's site music illustrates Posted 12/9/2002 at 2:27 PM |
in the New York Times of December 5. The photo, from a different website, is of a room by the architect Luis Barragán. From the Nobel Prize lecture of Octavio Paz on December 8, 1990 — twelve years ago today: "Like every child I built emotional bridges in the imagination to link me to the world and to other people. I lived in a town on the outskirts of Mexico City, in an old dilapidated house that had a jungle-like garden and a great room full of books. First games and first lessons. The garden soon became the centre of my world; the library, an enchanted cave. I used to read and play with my cousins and schoolmates. There was a fig tree, temple of vegetation, four pine trees, three ash trees, a nightshade, a pomegranate tree, wild grass and prickly plants that produced purple grazes. Adobe walls. Time was elastic; space was a spinning wheel. All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence. Space transformed itself ceaselessly. The beyond was here, all was here: a valley, a mountain, a distant country, the neighbours' patio. Books with pictures, especially history books, eagerly leafed through, supplied images of deserts and jungles, palaces and hovels, warriors and princesses, beggars and kings. We were shipwrecked with Sindbad and with Robinson, we fought with d'Artagnan, we took Valencia with the Cid. How I would have liked to stay forever on the Isle of Calypso! In summer the green branches of the fig tree would sway like the sails of a caravel or a pirate ship. High up on the mast, swept by the wind, I could make out islands and continents, lands that vanished as soon as they became tangible. The world was limitless yet it was always within reach; time was a pliable substance that weaved an unbroken present." Today's site music is courtesy of the Sinatra MIDI Files. Posted 12/8/2002 at 12:48 PM |
This space reserved for a glass slipper. Posted 12/7/2002 at 11:59 PM |
ART WARS: Shall we read? From Contact, by Carl Sagan: "You mean you could decode a picture hiding in pi From The Nation - Thailand New Jataka books Published on Dec 8, 2002 "The Ten Jataka, or 10 incarnations of the Lord Buddha before his enlightenment, are among the most fascinating religious stories.... His Majesty the King wrote a marvellous book on the second incarnation of the Lord Buddha.... It has become a classic, with the underlying aim of encouraging Thais to pursue the virtue of perseverance.
For her master's degree at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Arts, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn wrote a dissertation related to the Ten Jataka of the Buddha. Now with the 4th Cycle Birthday of Princess Sirindhorn approaching on April 2, 2003, a group of artists, led by prominent painter Theeraphan Lorpaiboon, has produced a 10-volume set, the "Ten Jataka of Virtues", as a gift to the Princess.
Once launched on December 25, the "Ten Jataka of Virtues" will rival any masterpiece produced in book form...." "How much story do you want?" Posted 12/7/2002 at 9:30 PM |
Satori at Pearl HarborThe following old weblog entry seems
The appropriate response to Vega's Buddhism today seems to be the following classic by James Taylor: "Won't you look down upon me, Jesus? This is today's new site background music. For more log entries relevant to today, see Posted 12/7/2002 at 4:01 PM |
Great Simplicity
according to the Zen Calendar. "Daisetsu" is said to mean "Great Simplicity." For those who prefer Harry Potter and To Have and Have Not Those who prefer traditional Western religions may like a site on the Trinity that contains this: "Zen metaphysics is perhaps most succinctly set forth in the words 'not-two." But even when he uses this expression, Suzuki is quick to assert that it implies no monism. Not-two, it is claimed, is not the same as one.* But when Suzuki discusses the relationship of Zen with Western mysticism, it is more difficult to escape the obvious monistic implications of his thinking. Consider the following:
*See: Daisetz T. Suzuki, 'Basic Thoughts Underlying Eastern Ethical and Social Practice' in Philosophy and Culture — East and West: East-West Philosophy in Practical Perspective, ed. Charles A. Moore (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1968), p. 429 ** Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, Mysticism Christian and Buddhist (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957, Unwin paperback, 1979), p. 57. Personally, I am reminded by Suzuki's satori on this date that today is the eve of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. I am also reminded by the rather intolerant tract on the Trinity quoted above that the first atomic bomb was exploded in the New Mexico desert at a test site named Trinity. Of course, sometimes intolerance is justified. Concluding unscientific postscript: On the same day in 1896 that D. T. Suzuki attained satori, Dies irae, dies illa. Posted 12/6/2002 at 1:06 PM |
St. Nicholas versus Mt. Doom Today is the feast day of St. Nicholas, who is thought to have died on December 6. For some meditations on time, click here. For a perhaps more pleasant meditation — on eternity — listen to this site's background music, which has been changed in honor of the birth, on December 6, 1896, of lyricist Ira Gershwin. Posted 12/6/2002 at 12:25 AM |
For Otto Preminger's birthday: Lichtung! Today's symbol-mongering (see my Sept. 7, 2002, note The Boys from Uruguay) involves two illustrations from the website of the Deutsche Schule Montevideo, in Uruguay. The first, a follow-up to Wallace Stevens's remarks on poetry and painting in my note "Sacerdotal Jargon" of earlier today, is a poem, "Lichtung," by Ernst Jandl, with an illustration by Lucia Spangenberg.
The second, from the same school, illustrates the meaning of "Lichtung" explained in my note The Shining of May 29:
From the Deutsche Schule Montevideo mathematics page, an illustration of the Pythagorean theorem:
Posted 12/5/2002 at 3:00 PM |
Key Today is Joan Didion's birthday. It is also the date that the first Phi Beta Kappa chapter was formed, at the College of William and Mary. A reading for today, from a web page called Respect: "In her book Slouching Toward Bethlehem Didion writes about being a student in college. She says she expected to be voted into Phi Beta Kappa but discovered she didn't have the grades for it. She says: 'I had somehow thought myself [as being] exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others.' But, Didion continues: Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked tragic stature, the day that I did not make Phi Beta Kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man. I lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proven competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplused apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix in hand. What Joan Didion discovered in the wake of this incident was that self-respect, although it was of importance, had to come from something inside her, rather than from the approval of others. She says she learned that self-respect has to do with 'a separate peace, a private reconciliation,' and at the heart of it is a willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life, whatever its rewards or lack of them. Didion says: ... people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things.... People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. — Comments by David Sammons For more of Didion's essay, click here. Posted 12/5/2002 at 12:00 PM |
Sacerdotal Jargon From the website Abstracts and Preprints in Clifford Algebra [1996, Oct 8]: Paper: clf-alg/good9601 The following is a picture of K6, the complete graph on six points. It may be used to illustrate various concepts in finite geometry as well as the properties of Dirac matrices described above. From "The theory of poetry, that is to say, the total of the theories of poetry, often seems to become in time a mystical theology or, more simply, a mystique. The reason for this must by now be clear. The reason is the same reason why the pictures in a museum of modern art often seem to become in time a mystical aesthetic, a prodigious search of appearance, as if to find a way of saying and of establishing that all things, whether below or above appearance, are one and that it is only through reality, in which they are reflected or, it may be, joined together, that we can reach them. Under such stress, reality changes from substance to subtlety, a subtlety in which it was natural for Cézanne to say: 'I see planes bestriding each other and sometimes straight lines seem to me to fall' or 'Planes in color. . . . The colored area where shimmer the souls of the planes, in the blaze of the kindled prism, the meeting of planes in the sunlight.' The conversion of our Lumpenwelt went far beyond this. It was from the point of view of another subtlety that Klee could write: 'But he is one chosen that today comes near to the secret places where original law fosters all evolution. And what artist would not establish himself there where the organic center of all movement in time and space—which he calls the mind or heart of creation— determines every function.' Conceding that this sounds a bit like sacerdotal jargon, that is not too much to allow to those that have helped to create a new reality, a modern reality, since what has been created is nothing less." Posted 12/5/2002 at 3:17 AM |
Symmetry and a Trinity From a web page titled Spectra: "What we learn from our whole discussion and what has indeed become a guiding principle in modern mathematics is this lesson: Whenever you have to do with a structure-endowed entity S try to determine its group of automorphisms, the group of those element-wise transformations which leave all structural relations undisturbed. You can expect to gain a deep insight into the constitution of S in this way. After that you may start to investigate symmetric configurations of elements, i.e., configurations which are invariant under a certain subgroup of the group of all automorphisms . . ." — Hermann Weyl in Symmetry, Princeton University Press, 1952, page 144
"... any color at all can be made from three different colors, in our case, red, green, and blue lights. By suitably mixing the three together we can make anything at all, as we demonstrated . . .
Further, these laws are very interesting mathematically. For those who are interested in the mathematics of the thing, it turns out as follows. Suppose that we take our three colors, which were red, green, and blue, but label them A, B, and C, and call them our primary colors. Then any color could be made by certain amounts of these three: say an amount a of color A, an amount b of color B, and an amount c of color C makes X: Now suppose another color Y is made from the same three colors: Then it turns out that the mixture of the two lights (it is one of the consequences of the laws that we have already mentioned) is obtained by taking the sum of the components of X and Y: It is just like the mathematics of the addition of vectors, where (a, b, c ) are the components of one vector, and (a', b', c' ) are those of another vector, and the new light Z is then the "sum" of the vectors. This subject has always appealed to physicists and mathematicians." — According to the author of the Spectra site, this is Richard Feynman in Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics, The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, by Feynman and Steven Weinberg, Cambridge University Press, 1989. These two concepts -- symmetry as invariance under a group of transformations, and complicated things as linear combinations (the technical name for Feynman's sums) of simpler things -- underlie much of modern mathematics, both pure and applied. Posted 12/4/2002 at 11:22 PM |
From the Erlangen Program See the following, apparently all by Jean-Pierre Marquis, Département de Philosophie, Université de Montréal:
See also the following by Marquis:
Posted 12/3/2002 at 9:25 PM |
Symmetry, Invariance, and Objectivity The book Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World, by Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, was reviewed in the New York Review of Books issue dated June 27, 2002. On page 76 of this book, published by Harvard University Press in 2001, Nozick writes:
Compare this with Hermann Weyl's definition in his classic Symmetry (Princeton University Press, 1952, page 132):
It has finally been pointed out in the Review, by a professor at Göttingen, that Nozick's book should have included Weyl's definition. I pointed this out on June 10, 2002. For a survey of material on this topic, see this Google search on "nozick invariances weyl" (without the quotes). Nozick's omitting Weyl's definition amounts to blatant plagiarism of an idea. Of course, including Weyl's definition would have required Nozick to discuss seriously the concept of groups of automorphisms. Such a discussion would not have been compatible with the current level of philosophical discussion at Harvard, which apparently seldom rises above the level of cocktail-party chatter. A similarly low level of discourse is found in the essay "Geometrical Creatures," by Jim Holt, also in the issue of the New York Review of Books dated December 19, 2002. Holt at least writes well, and includes (if only in parentheses) a remark that is highly relevant to the Nozick-vs.-Weyl discussion of invariance elsewhere in the Review:
This is perhaps suitable for intelligent but ignorant adolescents; even they, however, should be given some historical background. Holt is talking here about the Erlangen program of Felix Christian Klein, and should say so. For a more sophisticated and nuanced discussion, see this web page on Klein's Erlangen Program, apparently by Jean-Pierre Marquis, Département de Philosophie, Université de Montréal. For more by Marquis, see my later entry for today, "From the Erlangen Program to Category Theory." Posted 12/3/2002 at 1:45 PM |
Art isn't Easy In honor of Georges Seurat, whose birthday is today, this site's music is now "Putting It Together," by Stephen Sondheim. For a relevant quote by Sondheim and some related material, see Posted 12/2/2002 at 10:00 PM |
Milestones in Catholic History From Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar:
Shamrock Bingo Angel "It never hurts to have an Irish angel on your team! This adorable red-headed fabric cherub, complete with sparkling golden wings and a shamrock necklace, just may be someone’s lucky charm." For a Jewish approach to this milestone of theology, see my note commemorating the death, on Christmas Day, 2000, of one of the twentieth century's great Scrooge figures, Willard van Orman Quine:
As that note observes, we may imagine Quine to have escaped the torments of Hell. For some further adventures, see my note Quine in Purgatory. Posted 12/1/2002 at 12:25 PM |