Killer Radio "See the girl with the diamond ring? -- Jerry Lee "Killer" Lewis on "And on this point I pass the same judgment as those who say that geometricians give them nothing new by these rules, because they possessed them in reality, but confounded with a multitude of others, either useless or false, from which they could not discriminate them, as those who, seeking a diamond of great price amidst a number of false ones, but from which they know not how to distinguish it, should boast, in holding them all together, of possessing the true one equally with him who without pausing at this mass of rubbish lays his hand upon the costly stone which they are seeking and for which they do not throw away the rest." -- Blaise Pascal, De l'Esprit Géométrique "When the light came she was sitting on the bed beside an open suitcase, toying with her diamond rings. She saw the light first in the depths of the largest stone." -- Paul Preuss, Broken Symmetries, Now playing (6:41 PM EDT) on Killer Radio: "Jack of Diamonds, that's "This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond...." -- Gerard Manley Hopkins, Society of Jesus
See also "Top Ten Most Overheard Comments by new KHYI listeners" at Miss Lana's Anything Page, entry for Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 2002. Posted 7/31/2003 at 6:41 PM |
Twanged! The Father of Rock and Roll, See also my entry Wednesday morning Meditation for this, the feast day of the founder of the Society of Jesus: "If there's a rock and roll heaven, Posted 7/31/2003 at 4:07 AM |
Toronto Day Today is said to be the day Toronto was founded, and is the day, they say, of what will be the largest concert in the history of Canada.... The Rolling Stones at Comparisons to Woodstock have been made, with attendance expected to be about half a million strong. Thoughts of Woodstock reminded me of Joni Mitchell, and so I sought Joni's advice for an alternative to the spirit of this event, recalling her words Oh honey you turn me on A search for the promised The redneck alternative....
Today's culture wars quote: "God help me, I do love it so." Posted 7/30/2003 at 10:29 AM |
Into the Day "...no-one sang the night into the day" -- Carly Simon, "Embrace Me, You Child," quoted in yesterday's entry Trick of the Light. I have no song to bring night into day; the best I can do for this morning, the birthday of director/author Peter Bogdanovich, is supply a Frank Russo RealAudio rendition of "Long Ago and Far Away," from his CD "Quiet Now." The song's connection with Bogdanovich, who turns 64 today, is through Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles. Posted 7/30/2003 at 5:55 AM |
Transcendental Meditation
The bicentennial of Ralph Waldo Emerson was on May 25, 2003. For a commemoration of Emerson on that date, click on the picture below of Harvard University's Room 305, Emerson Hall. This will lead you to a discussion of the properties of a 5x5 array, or matrix, with a symbol of mystical unity at its center. Although this symbol of mystical unity, the number "1," is not, pace the Shema, a transcendental number, the matrix is, as perhaps a sort of Emersonian compensation, what postmodernists would call phallologocentric. It is possible that Emerson is a saint; if so, his feast day (i.e., date of death), April 27, might reveal to us the sort of miraculous fact hoped for by Fritz Leiber in my previous entry. A check of my April 27 notes shows us, lo and behold, another phallologocentric 5x5 array, this one starring Warren Beatty. This rather peculiar coincidence is, perhaps, the sort of miracle appropriate to a saint who is, as this week's politically correct New Yorker calls him, a Big Dead White Male. Leiber's fiction furnishes "a behind-the-scenes view of the time change wars." "It's quarter to three..." -- St. Frank Sinatra Posted 7/30/2003 at 2:45 AM |
The Big Time
Posted 7/29/2003 at 9:11 PM |
Trick of the Light For Carly Simon "... on the dance floor she seemed to be the only one completely alive. It was a trick of the light that followed one person around. Joe had seen the quality before; it was rare, but not unknown. Every time we say good-bye.... Porter had written an intimate ballad.... " -- Martin Cruz Smith, Stallion Gate, Ch. 2 "At night I heard God Then one night Daddy died -- Carly Simon, Posted 7/29/2003 at 10:00 AM |
11:11 At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, the Great War ended. See Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star. Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
Posted 7/28/2003 at 11:11 PM |
With a Smile On parent knees, Reuters, July 28, 2003 5:56 PM ET: Bob Hope Dies With a Smile "... surrounded by family, including his wife of 69 years, the former Dolores Reade, and their children, as well as his personal physician, several nurses and a priest who celebrated mass in Hope's bedroom." Posted 7/28/2003 at 7:59 PM |
City of God Today's site music is The central aim of Western religion -- "Each of us has something to offer the Creator... the bridging of masculine and feminine, life and death. It's redemption.... nothing else matters." -- Martha Cooley in The Archivist (1998) The central aim of Western philosophy -- Dualities of Pythagoras as reconstructed by Aristotle: Limited Unlimited Odd Even Male Female Light Dark Straight Curved ... and so on .... "Of these dualities, the first is the most important; all the others may be seen as different aspects of this fundamental dichotomy. To establish a rational and consistent relationship between the limited [man, etc.] and the unlimited [the cosmos, etc.] is... the central aim of all Western philosophy." "In the garden of Adding Today is the feast of St. Johann Sebastian Bach. Posted 7/28/2003 at 9:00 AM |
The Transcendent A sequel to my recent entries From a July 28 New York Times story on a controversy over the Latin Mass: "Granted, most of the people don't understand Latin," he said, "yet they understand its evocation of the transcendent." -- Father John A. Perricone From the excellent site Quotations on Sound, Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth Campbell: "We want to think about God. God is a thought. God is a name. God is an idea, but its reference is to something that transcends all thinking. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of thought. My friend Heinrich Zimmer of years ago used to say, 'The best things can't be told,' because they transcend thought. 'The second best are misunderstood,' because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about, and one gets stuck in the thoughts. 'The third best are what we talk about.' And myth is that field of reference, metaphors referring to what is absolutely transcendent." Moyers: "What can't be known or can't be named except in our own feeble attempt to clothe it in language." Campbell: "And the ultimate word in our language for that which is transcendent is God." Posted 7/28/2003 at 12:01 AM |
Midnight Cowboy A Last Hurrah for Harold C. Schonberg, New York Times music critic (not to be confused with Arnold Schoenberg, composer):
The serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg, on the other hand, wrote:
To which the appropriate reply is:
Posted 7/28/2003 at 12:00 AM |
Catholic Tastes In memory of New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, who died Saturday, July 26, 2003: Nous Voici Dans La Ville - A Christmas song from 15th century France (midi by John Philip Dimick). In memory of my own youth:
In memory of love: Volverán del amor en tus oídos Las palabras ardientes a sonor; Tu corazón de su profundo sueño Tal vez despertará; Pero mudo y absorto y de rodillas, Como se adora a Dios ante su altar, Como yo te he querido…desengáñate, ¡Así no te querrán!
Translation by Young Allison, 1924: Burning words of love will come The Robert Lowell version of Will Not Come Back Dark swallows will doubtless come back killing
See, too, my entry for the feast day of Posted 7/27/2003 at 11:59 PM |
The Transcendent "God is both the transcendent signifier — Caryn Broitman, "Central to deconstructive theory is the notion that there is no 'transcendent signified,' or 'logos,' that ultimately grounds 'meaning' in language...." — Henry P. Mills, "It is said that the students of medieval Paris came to blows in the streets over the question of universals. The stakes are high, for at issue is our whole conception of our ability to describe the world truly or falsely, and the objectivity of any opinions we frame to ourselves. It is arguable that this is always the deepest, most profound problem of philosophy. It structures Plato's (realist) reaction to the sophists (nominalists). What is often called 'postmodernism' is really just nominalism, colourfully presented as the doctrine that there is nothing except texts. It is the variety of nominalism represented in many modern humanities, paralysing appeals to reason and truth." -- Simon Blackburn, Think, The question of universals is still being debated in Paris. See my July 25 entry, That entry discusses an essay on A different essay by Harris has a discussion that gets to the heart of this matter: whether pi exists as a platonic idea apart from any human definitions. Harris notes that "one might recall that the theorem that pi is transcendental can be stated as follows: the homomorphism Harris illustrates this with For the complete passage, click here. If we rotate the Harris X by 90 degrees, we get a representation of the Christian Logos that seems closely related to the God-symbol of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the left below, we have a (1x)4x9 black monolith, representing God, and on the right below, we have the Harris slab, with X representing (as in "Xmas," or the Chi-rho page of the Book of Kells) Christ... who is, in theological terms, also "the variable par excellence."
Posted 7/26/2003 at 11:11 PM |
Funeral March
Schlesinger also directed The Day of the Locust, based on a novel by Nathanael West. See Heaven, Hell, and Hollywood and From the latter: "Then you know your body's sent, — The Day of the Locust, This song may be downloaded at That same site begins with a traditional Mexican song... "La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ("The cockroach, the cockroach, This suggests an appropriate funeral march for John Schlesinger: "Ya murió la cucaracha, ya la llevan a enterrar..." - La Cucaracha Those attending Schlesinger's wake, as opposed to his funeral, may wish to perform other numbers from the Pot Culture page, which offers a variety of "viper" songs.
For the meaning of the above symbols, see Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Oh, yes... the question of Recall that he also directed the delightful Posted 7/26/2003 at 5:29 AM |
Realism in Literature:
Here are 3 webcam views of the volcano. Nothing to see at the moment. Literary background: Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star, and, as background for today's earlier entry on Platonism and Derrida,
In the above two-step vignette, the part of Gollum is played by the author of "Further Into the Depths of Satan," who called C. S. Lewis a fool† "that was and is extremely useful to his father the devil." † See Matthew 5:22: "...whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." Posted 7/25/2003 at 11:59 PM |
For Jung's 7/26 Birthday: Leftist academics are trying to pull a fast one again. An essay in the most prominent American mathematical publication tries to disguise a leftist attack on Christian theology as harmless philosophical woolgathering. In a review of Vladimir Tasic's Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought, the reviewer, Michael Harris, is being less than candid when he discusses Derrida's use of "logocentrism":
We find a rather different version of logocentrism in Tasic's own Sept. 24, 2001, lecture "Poststructuralism and Deconstruction: A Mathematical History," which is "an abridged version of some arguments" in Tasic's book on mathematics and postmodernism:
The unsuspecting reader would not know from Harris's review that Derrida's main concern is not mathematics, but theology. His 'deconstruction of metaphysics' is actually an attack on Christian theology. From "Derrida and Deconstruction," by David Arneson, a University of Manitoba professor and writer on literary theory:
Some further background, putting my July 23 entry on Lévi-Strauss and structuralism in the proper context: Part I. The Roots of Structuralism
Part II. Structuralism/Poststructuralism
Part III. Structuralism and
And so we are back to logocentrism, with the Logos — God in the form of story, myth, or archetype — in the "central cultural position." What does all this have to do with mathematics? See
Another Michael Harris Essay, Note 47 -
and Jung on Quaternity:
What attitude should mathematicians have towards all this? Towards postmodern French Mathematicians should adopt the attitude toward "the demimonde of chic academic theorizing" expressed in Roger Kimball's essay, Feeling Sorry for Rosalind Krauss. Towards logocentric German Mathematicians should, of course, adopt a posture of humble respect, tugging their forelocks and admitting their ignorance of Christian theology. They should then, if sincere in their desire to honestly learn something about logocentric philosophy, begin by consulting the website The Quest for the Fiction of an Absolute. For a better known, if similarly disrespected, "illegitimate child of the spirit," see my July 22 entry. Posted 7/25/2003 at 5:24 PM |
Democracy in America Jay Leno's man-in-the-street "Duh" interviews are no longer funny. See Posted 7/25/2003 at 4:17 PM |
Intelligence Test On July 17, my entry "British Intelligence" linked to a Guardian story about a bumbling amateur spy organization set up by the Bush administration. The headline of that entry, together with Tony Blair's remark quoted there, implied that The Guardian was a much better example of real British intelligence than Blair's minions. On July 21, my entry "Meet D. B. Norton" attacked Blair as a puppet of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. Now The Guardian has come through with a story confirming the picture of puppetmaster Murdoch. See
For background on Rupert Murdoch, see Murdoch's Mean Machine in the Columbia Journalism Review Edward Arnold portrays Rupert Murdoch For more details, see Congress Vote May Stymie Murdoch and Scramble to Overturn House Media Bill. Posted 7/24/2003 at 6:48 AM |
Being Pascal Sauvage Pascal "Voilà ce que je sais par une longue expérience de toutes sortes de livres et de personnes. Et sur cela je fais le même jugement de ceux qui disent que les géomètres ne leur donnent rien de nouveau par ces règles, parce qu' ils les avaient en effet, mais confondues parmi une multitude d' autres inutiles ou fausses dont ils ne pouvaient pas les discerner, que de ceux qui cherchant un diamant de grand prix parmi un grand nombre de faux, mais qu' ils n' en sauraient pas distinguer, se vanteraient, en les tenant tous ensemble, de posséder le véritable aussi bien que celui qui, sans s' arrêter à ce vil amas, porte la main sur la pierre choisie que l' on recherche, et pour laquelle on ne jetait pas tout le reste." -- Blaise Pascal, De l'Esprit Géométrique La Pensée Sauvage "....the crowning image of the kaleidoscope, lavishly analogized to the mythwork in a three-hundred-word iconic apotheosis that served to put the wraps on the sustained personification of “la pensée sauvage” in the figure of the bricoleur, in an argument developed across two chapters and some twenty pages in his [Claude Lévi-Strauss's] most famous book...." -- Robert de Marrais in
For more on pensée sauvage, see "Claude Lévi-Strauss, Posted 7/23/2003 at 4:17 PM |
Xmas in July
Today is the feast of Posted 7/22/2003 at 12:24 AM |
Meet D. B. Norton
In this touching sequel to the 1941 Frank Capra classic "Meet John Doe," the late, great Edward Arnold is replaced by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, publisher of Sun News. Synopsis: Thousands of "D. B. Norton" clubs have sprung up around the world, inspired by the genius of D. B. Norton (Murdoch) in combining socialist appeals to "the people," cunningly orchestrated by Labour Party head Tony Blair, with capitalist know-how, skillfully organized by U. S. President George Bush. Threatening the success of the Norton clubs is troublemaker "John Doe," a nobody who must be dealt with before a new day can dawn for humanity, with Murdoch leading both the masses of the East and the investors of the West into the glorious future. Required reading:
Compare and contrast. Posted 7/21/2003 at 11:22 PM |
For Hemingway's Birthday:
"Blair, on his first trip to China in five years, expressed his belief that the strengthened relationship between Britain and China would, beyond any doubt, continue to develop..." "Now he's poppin' the piano just to raise the price of a ticket to the land of the free...." "The U.S. government repatriated on Monday 15 migrants from a Cuban government vessel that was taken illegally from Cuba.... The island's communist government said the ship was hijacked and demanded the return of the occupants and the boat." As a review at Amazon.com notes, "The movie concerns a brave fishing-boat captain in World War II-era Martinique who aids the French Resistance, battles the Nazis, and gets the girl in the end. The novel concerns a broke fishing-boat captain who agrees to carry contraband between Cuba and Florida in order to feed his wife and daughters. Of the two, the novel is by far the darker, more complex work." Posted 7/21/2003 at 2:40 PM |
Janet Reno's Birthday: It's Not Just the Republicans
Years before the above actions, None of the above seems to have made any impression on students at UC Berkeley, who invited Reno in 2001 to be a commencement speaker. From an April 2001 UC Berkeley press release: "Reno was among the most requested keynote speakers for Commencement Convocation in a survey taken last summer of more than 9,000 UC Berkeley students eligible to be seniors in fall 2001, said UC Berkeley senior Humaira Merchant. Merchant cited Reno's 'liberal and progressive policies.' " Your kind of love drives a man insane. Political-birthday postscript of 4:15 AM: The New Yorker magazine, in its issue dated July 28, has caught up with a quote in my July 16 entry ("The Tailor of Washington," for Rubén Blades's birthday) on "faith-based policy." See "Faith-Based Intelligence," by David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. Posted 7/21/2003 at 2:46 AM |
Weapons of Mass Distraction "Ironically, the Bush strategy seems to mimic the most recent James Bond flick...." -- The Straits Times, Singapore, July 19 Whereas the Blair strategy... Posted 7/18/2003 at 7:14 PM |
Hideous Strength On a Report from London: Assuming rather prematurely that the body found in Oxfordshire today is that of David Kelly, Ministry of Defence germ-warfare expert and alleged leaker of information to the press, the Financial Times has the following: "Mr Kelly's death has stunned all the players involved in this drama, resembling as it does a fictitious political thriller." -- Financial Times, July 18, I feel it resembles rather a fictitious religious thriller... Namely, That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis. The use of the word "idea" in my entries' headlines yesterday was not accidental. It is related to an occurrence of the word in Understanding: On Death and Truth, a set of journal entries from May 9-12. The relevant passage on "ideas" is quoted there, within commentary by an Oberlin professor: "That the truth we understand must be a truth we stand under is brought out nicely in C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength when Mark Studdock gradually learns what an 'Idea' is. While Frost attempts to give Mark a 'training in objectivity' that will destroy in him any natural moral sense, and while Mark tries desperately to find a way out of the moral void into which he is being drawn, he discovers what it means to under-stand. 'He had never before known what an Idea meant: he had always thought till now that they were things inside one's own head. But now, when his head was continually attacked and often completely filled with the clinging corruption of the training, this Idea towered up above him-something which obviously existed quite independently of himself and had hard rock surfaces which would not give, surfaces he could cling to.' This too, I fear, is seldom communicated in the classroom, where opinion reigns supreme. But it has important implications for the way we understand argument." -- "On Bringing One's Life to a Point," by Gilbert Meilaender, First Things, November 1994 The old philosophical conflict between realism and nominalism can, it seems, have life-and-death consequences. I prefer Plato's realism, with its "ideas," such as the idea of seven-ness. A reductio ad absurdum of nominalism may be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy under Realism: "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...." The claim that 7 is not prime is, regardless of its motives, dangerously stupid... A quality shared, it seems, by many in power these days. Posted 7/18/2003 at 4:09 PM |
British Intelligence: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ "The British intelligence that we had, we believe is genuine. We stand by that intelligence." -- Reuters, July 17, 2003, 6:12 PM ET The ad at left, from reuters.com, Building an Intelligent Organisation. The ad at right, from cullinane.com, cullinane: create communicate connect. Note the four C's. Posted 7/17/2003 at 7:07 PM |
A Constant Idea: 759 From Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 1919:
"Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before." — G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy The number 759 is courtesy of Plato; the quotation 759 above is courtesy of Shakespeare. The song that Shakespeare suggests is "A Day in the Life of a Fool." Posted 7/17/2003 at 7:59 AM |
A Constant Idea "From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool [of daily life] is hidden a pattern; that we — I mean all human beings — are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. 'Hamlet' or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself." — Virginia Woolf, "A Sketch of the Past," 1939-40, in Moments of Being Posted 7/17/2003 at 6:23 AM |
Rocket Billie "Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain." -- Billie Holiday, who died at 3:20 AM on July 17, 1959. For more on death, summer, and Lady Day, see the film Rocket Gibraltar. Posted 7/17/2003 at 3:20 AM |
For Rubén Blades on his birthday: The Tailor of Washington From a review of The Tailor of Panama: "Pendel believes in the imaginary world he has created and pretty soon, it becomes a reality to him."
From Nashville City Paper, July 16, 2003: "It is more and more clear, as former senior State Department official Greg Thielmann stated this week, that the Bush administration had a 'faith-based policy' on Iraq. They 'believed' Saddam was tied to bin Laden and still had weapons of mass destruction, so they manipulated or simply misstated the available evidence in order to make their case." "Where is Evelyn Waugh when you need him?" Posted 7/16/2003 at 5:04 AM |
Bishop and Saint Today is the birthday of Clement Clarke Moore, author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," also known as "The Night Before Christmas." Here is a biography of Moore: Here is a related biography: Here is an attack on Clement Moore: Here is a defense of Clement Moore: Yes, Virginia, Moore Did Write It. It seems the real creep here is Greg Hill. First runner-up creep: Gerald McDaniel, whose Cultural Calendar for today has the following entries: Actually, the Marseillaise has "Aux armes, citoyens!" not "Allons, citoyens" as the self-described liberal McDaniel claims. The former phrase goes well with the populist song lyrics of Jimmie Rodgers: "I’m gonna buy myself a shotgun, For more on Rodgers and shotguns, see my July 8 entry on the pursuit of happiness in Meridian, Mississippi, A Face in the Crowd. * I can find no other mention of any such lawsuit on the Web. It seems to be a figment of McDaniel's liberal imagination. Posted 7/15/2003 at 7:30 PM |
Funeral or Wedding? From the New York Times of Bastille Day, 2003:
The Countess was associated with the ville d'Eu in Haute-Normandie. The patron saint of the ville d'Eu is Lawrence O'Toole, also the patron saint of Dublin, Ireland. He is known in France as Saint Laurent, and here is a picture of his chapel near the ville d'Eu: Two pieces of music seem appropriate to memorialize both the dark and the bright sides of life on this Bastille Day. Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings was played at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco, and so should be sufficiently royal for the Comtesse de Paris. For the midi, click here. Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," originally sung (in a 1943 film) by Don Ameche, will serve to recall the bright side of life. It was written after the 1931 Palermo wedding of the Comtesse but may, in a jazz arrangement, be pleasing to St. Norman J. O'Connor, the jazz priest in my entry of July 5 — the date of death of the Comtesse, who may or may not have also been a saint. For the midi, click here. "Now you has jazz." Posted 7/14/2003 at 7:00 PM |
xxx Posted 7/14/2003 at 4:00 PM |
ART WARS, 5:09 The Word in the Desert For Harrison Ford in the desert.
The link to the word "devilish" in the last entry leads to one of my previous journal entries, "A Mass for Lucero," that deals with the devilishness of postmodern philosophy. To hammer this point home, here is an attack on college English departments that begins as follows:
For more, see The Word in the Desert, See also the link on the word "contemptible," applied to Jacques Derrida, in my Logos and Logic page. This leads to an National Review essay on Derrida, The Philosopher as King, A reader's comment on my previous entry suggests the film "Scotland, PA" as viewing related to the Derrida/Macbeth link there. I prefer the following notice of a 7-11 death, that of a powerful art museum curator who would have been well cast as Lady Macbeth:
From the Whitney Museum site: "Max Anderson: When artist Frank Stella first showed this painting at The Museum of Modern Art in 1959, people were baffled by its austerity. Stella responded, 'What you see is what you see. Painting to me is a brush in a bucket and you put it on a surface. There is no other reality for me than that.' He wanted to create work that was methodical, intellectual, and passionless. To some, it seemed to be nothing more than a repudiation of everything that had come before—a rational system devoid of pleasure and personality. But other viewers saw that the black paintings generated an aura of mystery and solemnity. From Play It As It Lays:
I smoke old stogies I have found... Cigar Aficionado on artist Frank Stella: " 'Frank actually makes the moment. He captures it and helps to define it.' This was certainly true of Stella's 1958 New York debut. Fresh out of Princeton, he came to New York and rented a former jeweler's shop on Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side. He began using ordinary house paint to paint symmetrical black stripes on canvas. Called the Black Paintings, they are credited with paving the way for the minimal art movement of the 1960s. By the fall of 1959, Dorothy Miller of The Museum of Modern Art had chosen four of the austere pictures for inclusion in a show called Sixteen Americans." For an even more austere picture, see
For more on art, Derrida, and devilishness, see Deborah Solomon's essay in the New York Times Magazine of Sunday, June 27, 1999: "Blame Derrida and See, too, my site Art Wars: Geometry as Conceptual Art. For those who prefer a more traditional meditation, I recommend ("Behold the Wood of the Cross") For more on the word "road" in the desert, see my "Dead Poet" entry of Epiphany 2003 (Tao means road) as well as the following scholarly bibliography of road-related cultural artifacts (a surprising number of which involve Harrison Ford): A Bibliography of Road Materials Posted 7/13/2003 at 5:09 PM |
Ground Zero Today's birthday: Harrison Ford is 61.
7-11 Evening Number: 000. From the conclusion of "I know what 'nothing' means, From a review of the 1970 film Zabriskie Point: "The real star of Zabriskie Point... is the desolate, parched-white landscape of Death Valley...." For Harrison Ford and Zabriskie Point, see Harrison Ford - Le Site En Français The Harrison Ford of the 1970 film Zabriskie Point and the "Harrison Porter" of the 1970 novel Play It As It Lays may not be completely unrelated. For the religious significance of the names "Porter" and "BZ" in Play It As It Lays, see both the devilish site
and the Princeton site
Posted 7/13/2003 at 6:13 AM |
Before and After From Understanding the (Net) Wake:
G. H. Hardy in A Mathematician's Apology: "We do not want many 'variations' in the proof of a mathematical theorem: 'enumeration of cases,' indeed, is one of the duller forms of mathematical argument. A mathematical proof should resemble a simple and clear-cut constellation, not a scattered cluster in the Milky Way. A chess problem also has unexpectedness, and a certain economy; it is essential that the moves should be surprising, and that every piece on the board should play its part. But the aesthetic effect is cumulative. It is essential also (unless the problem is too simple to be really amusing) that the key-move should be followed by a good many variations, each requiring its own individual answer. 'If P-B5 then Kt-R6; if .... then .... ; if .... then ....' — the effect would be spoilt if there were not a good many different replies. All this is quite genuine mathematics, and has its merits; but it just that 'proof by enumeration of cases' (and of cases which do not, at bottom, differ at all profoundly*) which a real mathematician tends to despise. * I believe that is now regarded as a merit in a problem that there should be many variations of the same type." (Cambridge at the University Press. First edition, 1940.) Brian Harley in Mate in Two Moves: "It is quite true that variation play is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the soul of a problem, or (to put it more materially) the main course of the solver's banquet, but the Key is the cocktail that begins the proceedings, and if it fails in piquancy the following dinner is not so satisfactory as it should be." (London, Bell & Sons. First edition, 1931.) Posted 7/12/2003 at 6:23 PM |
Wake From my entry of Epiphany 2003, Dead Poet in the City of Angels:
On this, the day when Orangemen parade in Northern Ireland, it seems appropriate to expand on the two links I cited last Epiphany. For the implicate order and Finnegans Wake, see sections 33 and 34 of The second link in the box above is to the Chi-Rho page in the Book of Kells. For a commentary on the structure of this page and the structure of Finnegans Wake, see James Joyce's Whirling Mandala. Posted 7/12/2003 at 7:00 AM |
Father, Son, Here are some religious meditations for the holy day 7-11: As the website Hollywood Jesus perceptively points out, defending the story theory of truth, "Images that carry universal truths move us from the mundane to the sacred. Jesus knew this when he spoke in parables." Here is a parable about my own name. The Hollywood Jesus site tries to connect the cross of Christ, "holy wood," with Hollywood by claiming that the words "holly" and "holy" are cognate. From the Online Etymology Dictionary: holly - O.E. holegn, from P.Gmc. *khuli-. holy - O.E. halig "holy," from P.Gmc. *khailagas. Adopted at conversion for L. sanctus. Primary meaning may have been "that must be preserved whole or intact, that cannot be transgressed or violated," which would connect it with O.E. hal (see whole). This shows that the holly-holy connection is, pace Neil Diamond, like nearly every other Christian claim, a damned lie. Connoisseurs of junk culture may enjoy Here is a different Hollywood etymology that may be somewhat truer. From the RootsWeb.com archives: Re: CULLINANE-HOLLYWOOD-holly tree "Cullen in Irish is Ó Cuillin (holly tree). ... This astonishingly simple name has worked its way through an astonishing number of variations including Cullion, Culhoun, MacCullen and Cullinane. ... In a message dated 6/5/01 8:24:18 PM Pacific Daylight Time, lawlerc@aol.comnojunk writes: the English equivalent of the surname CULLINANE is HOLLYWOOD. Posted 7/11/2003 at 10:23 PM |
Las Manos de Gershwin Today is the feast day of St. George Gershwin.
For related material, see Saint Nicholas vs. Mount Doom and See also related material on Judaism and on Lord of the Rings in this morning's links to the Conference of Catholic Bishops and to Stormfront.org. More on the film "Las Manos de Orlac" discussed briefly in the Under the Volcano link above: Facetious: Digits of Death Serious: Under the Volcano: A Dissertation. From the latter -- "The ubiquitous posters advertising the 1935 MGM film Mad Love, advertised in Spanish as Las Manos de Orlac [The Hands of Orlac]... reiterates this theme. ... Moreover, the current showings of Las Manos de Orlac represent a revival, the film having been shown in Quauhnahuac a year or so before. A 'revival' is literally a return to life...." Recall where the letters of transit in Casablanca were hidden. Posted 7/11/2003 at 6:00 PM |
Links for St. Benedict Today is the feast of St. Benedict. Here is a link from the left: The Trial of Depleted Uranium, Here is a link from the right: On a Preview of "The Passion," Both Berrigan and Gibson are devout Catholics. (I use the present tense for Berrigan, though he is dead, since, as a saint, he is not very dead.) Both are worthy of respect, and should be listened to carefully, even though the religion they espouse is that of Hitler and Torquemada. For more details, see sites related to the above links.... Click on either of the logos below -- on the left, a Jewish meditation from the Conference of Catholic Bishops; on the right, an Aryan meditation from Stormfront.org. Both logos represent different embodiments of the "story theory" of truth, as opposed to the "diamond theory" of truth. Both logos claim, in their own ways, to represent the eternal Logos of the Christian religion. I personally prefer the "diamond theory" of truth, represented by the logo below. Posted 7/11/2003 at 6:00 AM |
Cut to Condon From today's New York Times:
Break. Cut to Condon. Recommended reading and viewing: Winter Kills, a novel by Richard Condon. "Winter Kills," a film based on the novel. From a review of the film: "Winter Kills's storytelling style is the narrative equivalent of throwing a bag over the audience's head and pushing it down some dark stairs." Exactly the style needed for the California State Board of Education. Posted 7/10/2003 at 1:29 PM |
T is for Texas "Gimme a T for Texas" "T is for Texas" -- Anne Bustard, "From 1928 to 1933 "'Is this Hell? Or is this Texas?" Posted 7/9/2003 at 5:17 PM |
Six Dead in Mississippi Shooting "I’m gonna buy myself a shotgun, -- Jimmie Rodgers, Related material: Jimmie Rodgers Museum, Meridian, MS East Mississippi Insane Hospital, Meridian, MS Location of East Mississippi Insane Hospital
Posted 7/8/2003 at 5:04 PM |
"Peace is Hell" — Cover headline, TIME magazine, Yeah, and ________ (fill in the blank) Posted 7/7/2003 at 11:11 PM |
Burying Andrew Heiskell Matthew Book 8: Andrew Heiskell, former chairman and CEO of TIME, Inc., died on Sunday, July 6, 2003. The nauseating mixture of piety and warmongering instituted by Henry Luce continued under Heiskell in the Vietnam years, and continues today online, with a pious quotation from Mel Gibson and a cover headline, "Peace is Hell." A search for a Heiskell eulogy at TIME.com yields the following "quote of the week": "The Holy Ghost was working through me on this film, and I was just directing traffic." — Mel Gibson Recent TIME traffic included covers on Ben Franklin, Crusaders, and Harry Potter.
How Mel would direct this traffic is not clear. He would do well to pray, not to the ghost he calls holy, but to the ghost of T. S. Matthews, which may be summoned by clicking on the "jazz priest" link in yesterday's entry, "Happy Trails." Matthews, who succeeded Luce as editor of TIME, can be trusted to dispose of Heiskell's immortal soul with intelligence and taste, in accordance with the company policy of Jesus quoted above. Should Militant Mel require more spiritual guidance, he might consult my entry of May 27, 2003, which seems appropriate on this, the birthday of storyteller Robert A. Heinlein, author of Job: A Comedy of Justice. Posted 7/7/2003 at 4:30 PM |
Happy Trails Today is the birthday of Texans Nanci Griffith and George W. Bush. It is also the feast day of Saint Roy Rogers and the alleged saint Thomas More. Seeking spiritual guidance from the life of Paulist "jazz priest" Norman J. O'Connor (see previous entry), who worked at a rehab called "Straight and Narrow," I did a Google search on "Nanci Griffith" + "Straight and Narrow." At the top of the resulting list was a website that might have pleased Saint Roy: Welcome to the Wild West Show! Happy trails, indeed. Posted 7/6/2003 at 2:14 PM |
Elementary, "What is space, how can it be understood and given a form?" -- Walter Gropius
"Stoicheia," Elements, is the title of
Euclid's treatise on geometry. Stoicheia is apparently also related to a Greek verb meaning "march" or "walk."
According to a website on St. Paul's phrase
"ta stoicheia tou kosmou," which might be translated
"... the verbal form of the root stoicheo was used to mean, 'to be in a line,' 'to march in rank and file.' ... The general meaning of the noun form (stoicheion) was 'what belongs to a series.' "
As noted in my previous entry, St. Paul used a form of stoicheo to say "let us also walk (stoichomen) by the Spirit." (Galatians 5:25) The lunatic ravings* of Saul of Tarsus aside, the concepts of walking, of a spirit, and of elements may be combined if we imagine the ghost of Gropius strolling with the ghosts of Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid, and posing his question about space. Their reply might be along the following lines:
Combining stoicheia with a peripatetic peripateia (i.e., Aristotelian plot twist), we have the following diagram of Aristotle's four stoicheia (elements),
which in turn is related, by the "Plato's diamond" figure in the monograph Diamond Theory, to the Stoicheia, or Elements, of Euclid. Quod erat demonstrandum.
* A phrase in memory of the Paulist Norman J. O'Connor, the "jazz priest" who died on St. Peter's day, Sunday, June 29, 2003. Paulists are not, of course, entirely mad; the classic The Other Side of Silence: A Guide to Christian Meditation, by the Episcopal priest Morton Kelsey, was published by the Paulist Press. Its cover (above), a different version of the four-elements theme, emphasizes the important Jungian concept of quaternity. Jung is perhaps the best guide to the bizarre world of Christian symbolism. It is perhaps ironic, although just, that the Paulist Fathers should distribute a picture of "ta stoicheia tou kosmou," the concept that St. Paul himself railed against. The above book by Kelsey should not be confused with another The Other Side of Silence, a work on gay history, although confusion would be understandable in light of recent ecclesiastical revelations. Let us pray that if there is a heaven, Father O'Connor encounters there his fellow music enthusiast Cole Porter rather than the obnoxious Saul of Tarsus. Posted 7/5/2003 at 7:21 PM |
"Bonus question of the night (what Chris Culter would call the 'Person of the Day' award): Can anyone tell me, without looking it up (don't cheat, seriously, I want to know), what the word 'peripatetic' means?" -- EmilyMuse, 11:24 PM July 4, 2003 See EmilyMuse's site for my answer. Her reply on July 5: "Person of the Day is you!" My response:
Documentation of my answer to Emily, "walking around," from the site Aristotle: "Aristotle's school, his philosophy, and his followers were called peripatetic, which in Greek means 'walking around,' because Aristotle taught walking with his students." Posted 7/5/2003 at 6:44 PM |
Elements In memory of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and head of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Gropius died on this date in 1969. He said that "The objective of all creative effort in the visual arts is to give form to space. ... But what is space, how can it be understood and given a form?" "Alle bildnerische Arbeit will Raum gestalten. ... Was ist Raum, wie können wir ihn erfassen und gestalten?"
— "The Theory and Organization I designed the following logo for my Diamond Theory site early this morning before reading in a calendar that today is the date of Gropius's death. Hence the above quote. "And still those voices are calling
from far away..." — The Eagles
("Stoicheia," Elements, is the title of Euclid's treatise on geometry.) Posted 7/5/2003 at 4:17 AM |
Self-Evident Today many Americans celebrate a declaration of certain "self-evident" truths. Others feel that these alleged "truths" are misleading. Seeking a worthy opponent for the authors of the Declaration on this secular holy day, I settled on the following recently published book, a sort of Declaration of Dependence of government on God (an imaginary entity who speaks only through politicians, clergymen, and other liars): Christian Faith From a review in the Dec. 24, 2001, issue of America, a Jesuit publication: "The author, who identifies himself as a practicing Catholic, asserts that Christianity is weakened by its close alliance with the contemporary version of democracy and human rights.... The author states that 'modern liberal democracy...subverts in practice the dignity of man.' He defends his thesis relentlessly and persuasively.... Some readers of this well-organized volume will be disappointed that the author makes no mention of the four billion non-Christians among the world’s 6.1 billion inhabitants. The four billion Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists must be included in any attempt to make the modern state responsive to traditional and generally accepted norms of morality." -- Robert F. Drinan, S.J. Jefferson would probably appreciate Drinan's remark on catholic (i.e., universal, or "generally accepted") norms. The "traditional and generally accepted norms of morality" Drinan mentions are discussed ably by Christian apologist C. S. Lewis in his book The Abolition of Man, which argues for the existence of a universal moral code that I am pleased to note he calls, rightly, the Tao. As an Amazon.com reviewer notes, Lewis uses this term in the manner of Confucius rather than that of Lao Tsu. I prefer the latter. For details, see the Tao Te Ching, (The Way and Its Power). This is a far more holy scripture than the collections of lies called sacred by most other religions. Both the leftist Jefferson and the rightist Kraynak wrongly assume that talk of a "Creator" means something. It does not. Classical Chinese thought is free from this absurd Western error. Lewis at least had the grace to acknowledge the importance of non-Western thought, though he himself was unable to escape the lies of Christianity. Posted 7/4/2003 at 12:00 AM |
Yesterday On July 2, in various years, authors
died. They may serve as a sort of Trinity for those who admire excellence in style, character, and art. Quotations from Papa Hemingway that seem relevant to yesterday's entry: "Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you." "There is never any ending to Paris...."
See also entries of Sept. 27, 2002. Posted 7/3/2003 at 2:14 PM |
Three Days Late
This is a book that attempts to recreate the myth of Saint Peter. See the New York Times review of this book from today, July 2, 2003, three days late. The Feast of St. Peter was on June 29. The price, $24, also falls short of the theological glory reflected in the number 25, the common denominator of Christmas (12/25) and AntiChristmas (6/25), as well as the number of the heart of the Catholic church, the Bingo card. For all these issues, see my entries and links in memory of St. Peter, from June 29. The real "book against God," a novel by Robert Stone, is cited there. The legend of St. Peter is best described by Stone, not Wood. Posted 7/2/2003 at 7:00 PM |
Jew's on First This entry is dedicated to those worshippers of Allah who have at one time or another cried
Posted 7/1/2003 at 5:37 PM |