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A Long Story
Robert
M. Pirsig in "The
rhetoricians
of ancient Greece were the first teachers in the history of the Western
world. Plato
vilified them in all his works to grind an axe of his own and since
what we know about
them is almost entirely from Plato they’re unique in that they’ve stood
condemned throughout history without ever having their side of the
story told. The Church
of Reason that I talked about was founded on their graves. It’s
supported today by
their graves. And when you dig deep into its foundations you come
across ghosts."
I look at my
watch.
It’s after two.
"It’s a long story," I say. "You should
write all
this down," Gennie
says. Quod
erat For
more information, Related material: Posted 11/29/2007 at 12:00 PM |
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Final Club Related material: A phrase from Moses, Sophocles, and the Oedipal Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land Posted 11/25/2007 at 1:44 AM |
Standards "The undermining of standards of seriousness is almost complete." -- Susan Sontag Doonesbury 11/23/07: For standards of comedy, see Angels in Arabia. For standards of tragicomedy, see Molly Ivins on the owner of Condé Nast Publications: "Murray
Kempton once observed, 'I think Si Newhouse has lost his moral compass since Roy Cohn died.'" -- Molly Ivins
Happy Holidays from Roy Cohn, Mike Nichols, Al Pacino, and Elvis: "Thousands have impersonated Elvis Presley over the years. Now, Bill
Murray offers his own indelible tribute to the king of rock 'n' roll--
on the cover of Condé Nast's new music/movie magazine, Movies Rock.
The magazine, which covers music and its impact on filmmaking, launches in November as a supplement in the December subscriber issues of 14 Condé Nast publications." Posted 11/24/2007 at 12:06 AM |
Another Pattern "It seems, as one becomes older, That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence...." -- T. S. Eliot, Harvard '10 Quoted in Log24 on November 11, 2003 A search at the New York Times for the subject of the previous entry reveals another aspect of that date: What Happened Before the Big Bang? "...trying to imagine how the universe made its 'quantum leap from eternity into time,' as the physicist Dr. Sidney Coleman of Harvard once put it. Some physicists speculate that on the other side of the looking glass of Time Zero is another..." November 11, 2003 - By DENNIS OVERBYE - Technology - 819 words Related material: Peter Woit in his weblog on Nov. 12, 2007: "Is it a good idea for physicists to appear on a radio show
discussing what happened before the big bang, or does the lack of any
evidence about this or of a convincing model mean that this is just
inherently too speculative a topic to be sold as serious science to a
wide audience? Should one perhaps leave this topic to the Bogdanovs?" Or to T.S. Eliot, Annie Dillard, and William Shakespeare? For more on the date 11/11, see Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star. Posted 11/23/2007 at 5:24 AM |
Aspects of Symmetry
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Death on a Friday and the Magic of Numbers Above: PA Lottery on Friday, November 16th, the date of death for noted leftist attorney Victor Rabinowitz "Mr. Rabinowitz was a member of the Communist Party from 1942 until the early 1960s, he wrote in his memoir, Unrepentant Leftist (1996). He said the party seemed the best vehicle to fight for social justice." -- The New York Times, Nov. 20, 2007 Related material: 7/17, 4/19, and Friday. From the Harvard Crimson on Friday: "Robert Scanlan, a professor of theater who knew Beckett personally, directed the plays.... He said that performing Beckett as part of the New College Theatre's inaugural series represents an auspicious beginning." From Log24 on 4/19-- "Drama Workshop"-- a note of gratitude from the Virginia Tech killer: "Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.'' "It's not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters... I did it for them.'' -- Manifesto of Cho Party on, Victor. For further drama, see The Crimson Passion. Posted 11/20/2007 at 1:44 AM |
Lament for a DJ In memory of Philadelphia DJ Hy Lit, who died on Saturday at 73: "Chuck Berry didn't need prompting to insert, in his 'Sweet Little Sixteen,' the lines 'Well, they'll be rockin' on Bandstand, Philadelphia, P.A.' I remember 'Bandstand' before it was 'American...' It started in 1952, when Walter Annenberg, whose Triangle Publications owned the WFIL radio and television stations, suggested an afternoon TV dance party...." -- Richard Corliss, TIME magazine, July 14, 2001 Related material: Back to the Future (Log24 on Sunday) Posted 11/19/2007 at 2:56 PM |
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For Martin Scorsese on his birthday, from the New York Lottery: Words and Music Words: In the Details "It was only in retrospect that the silliness became profound. The players were becoming possessors of 'a truth with implicit powers of good and evil,' Gino Segrè writes in Faust in Copenhagen... And 'the devil... was in the details.'" -- George Johnson of The New York Times, quoted in Log24 on 6/23. Music: A Black Berry "Her wallet's filled with pictures, she gets 'em one by one...." Chuck Berry, quoted in Log24 on 2/13. Related material: Yesterday's Log24 entry... Posted 11/18/2007 at 2:02 AM |
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Sacralizing the Place: Love, Age, and a Face Yesterday evening was, according to today's Harvard Crimson, "the opening night of three usually neglected works by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. The three plays, originally produced in April 2006 to commemorate what would have been Beckett's 100th birthday, were part of the inaugural series for the New College Theatre. Robert Scanlan, a professor of theater who knew Beckett personally, directed the plays.... He said that performing Beckett as part of the New College Theatre's inaugural series represents an auspicious beginning. 'I personally think it sacralizes the place to perform Beckett here,' he said." "The first play, 'Words and Music,' displayed the frustrations of the creative process: a writer, Joe, and Bob, a character personified by [a] musical trio, worked with and against each other to create art. The duo first tried to capture love through words, but Joe's attempts quickly descended into clichés. Then, Joe and Bob tried to capture age, but they failed there too. Finally, they tried to capture 'the face'-- a vision of a lost love. While they were able to achieve some meaning, this soon came to an abrupt end when the elderly man who'd been leading their creative endeavor simply stood up and walked away." -- BONNIE J. KAVOUSSI Related material: Log24 on Holy Thursday 2006: the alleged centenary of Beckett's birth Catholic Tastes Pasta Monster Gets Academic Attention (Today's NY Times) An Elderly Man Posted 11/16/2007 at 4:07 PM |
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Aesthetics for Jesuits, continued from St. Ignatius Loyola's Day -- "Highly instructive and readable" -- Description of Dorothy Sayers's The Mind of the Maker on page 106 of Joyce and Aquinas, Yale University Press paperback, 1963, by William T. Noon, Society of Jesus Related material: Posted 11/7/2007 at 12:00 PM |
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The Third Person Of Modern Art The New York Times November 6, 2007 More on the Career of the Genius Who Boldly Compared Himself to God By MICHIKO KAKUTANI "Picasso... once said... '... No wonder his [Picasso's] style is so ambiguous. It's like God's. God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things. The same with this sculptor....' The comparison to God, like the use of the third person, was deliberate, of course." Of Modern Poetry -- Wallace Stevens in Of Modern Metaphysics "For every work [or act] of creation is threefold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly. First, [not in time, but merely in order of enumeration] there is the Creative Idea, passionless, timeless, beholding the whole work complete at once, the end in the beginning: and this is the image of the Father. Second, there is the Creative Energy [or Activity] begotten of that idea, working in time from the beginning to the end, with sweat and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter: and this is the image of the Word. Third, there is the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul: and this is the image of the indwelling Spirit. And these three are one, each equally in itself the whole work, whereof none can exist without other: and this is the image of the Trinity." -- Concluding speech of St. Michael the Archangel in a 1937 play, "The Zeal of Thy House," by Dorothy Sayers, as quoted in her 1941 book The Mind of the Maker. That entire book was, she wrote, an expansion of St. Michael's speech. Related material:
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High Concept On this date in 1948, T. S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Non ha l'ottimo artista in se alcun concetto, Ch'un marmo solo in se non circoscriva Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva La man che ubbidisce all'intelletto. (The best artist has in himself no concept in a single block of marble not contained; only the hand obeying mind will find it.) -- Michelangelo, as quoted by Erwin Panofsky in Idea: A Concept in Art Theory Posted 11/4/2007 at 3:00 AM |
The Answer
"Our existence is beyond understanding. Nobody has an answer." -- Anthony Hopkins "Si me de veras quieres, deja me en paz." -- Lucero Hernandez Related material: outis.blogspot.com Posted 11/3/2007 at 2:00 PM |