Log24

War of Ideas

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently declared a “war of ideas.”

Here is some background– notes made to help clarify my own thoughts.

Today, the 22nd “Socialist International Conference,” held every 4 years, concludes.  This is a non-communist gathering of various countries’ Social Democratic parties.  It has been called a gathering of “dinosaurs” (rather like the Democratic Party in the United States, or Tony Blair).

More relevant is the following history:

The First International
1864-1876
Founded in London, led by Karl Marx.

The Second International
1889-1914
Founded at a Paris congress, collapsed with the outbreak of World War I.

The Third International
1919-1939
Founded by the Russian revolution, also known as the Comintern.  Said to have ended with the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, officially dissolved in 1943.  Succeeded by a Stalinist, hence non-international, organization.

The Fourth International
Founded by Trotsky in 1938.  Ended in various splinter groups after World War II.

The Fifth International
In process of formation.
See Movement for a Socialist Future and
The Fifth International?.

Pulitzer Ritual

Today is the feast day of
Saint Joseph Pulitzer,
who died on October 29, 1911.

In his memory, here are two links:

A Columbia Journalism Review article

on the Indymedia movement, and the movement’s own site,

http://www.indymedia.org/.

In Memory of Soong Mayling

Dissing Dissent:
In White House actions, a troubling echo of life in communist China
By Liu Baifang

This is from the well-organized leftist site
http://indymedia.org/.

Related links:

Commentary on Baifang essay, and

two links that appear to be about this same Liu Baifang:

Liu Baifang, wife of Orville Schell, and

Liu Baifang, Producer
(Red Corner, Gate of Heavenly Peace).

Going Beyond

“Any American who tries to go beyond ‘America good, terrorists evil,’ who tries to understand — not condone — the growing world backlash against the United States, faces furious attacks delivered in a tone of high moral indignation.”

— Paul Krugman, 10/28/03 NY Times

And those who launch those furious attacks face a reborn, well-armed, well-organized, international socialist movement with their own grandchildren in the vanguard.  No, Communism is not dead.

For a view of this movement from the left, click here.

For a view from the right, click here.

Dream of Heaven, continued

“…I am going up the hill on the grass behind juniper trees birches the road dusty she is coming up the other side yes there she is look it is who is it not Berty no Molly no a girl with red hair comes through the oak trees beautiful loves me puts out her hand kisses me we are kissing become one face floating in air with wings one fused face with wings Turner sunset and this and this and this and this and this WINGbeat and WINGbeat where whirled and well where whirled and well where whirled and well —”

— Great Circle, by Conrad Aiken, 1933.
    Pp. 297-298 in paperback published by
    Arbor House, New York, 1984.

For related material, see the poems of Conrad Aiken, the 1947 novel Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, and the 1936 poem “Altarwise by Owl-Light,” by Dylan Thomas, whose birthday is today.

Surrealist postscripts:

The above dream contains a Turner sunset; a critic once called the work of Turner “pictures of nothing.”  For details, see my entry of 8/23.

The time of this entry, 8:28, is a reference to the date, 8/28, of the Feast of St. Augustine, who was puzzled, as many still are, by the nature of time.  For details, see my entry of 8/28.

Dream of Heaven

“Heaven is a state, a sort of
metaphysical state.”

— John O’Hara,
Hope of Heaven, 1938

“Frère Jacques, Cuernavaca,
ach du lieber August.”

— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven 

Frère Jacques
is a
  “canon à quatre voix.”

For another, purely visual,
four-part canon, see the
owl-like picture

in the web page
Poetry’s Bones.

See, too, the Wallace Stevens poem
“The Owl in the Sarcophagus,”
and hear Stevie Nicks as the voice
of The Wizard Owl in a story titled
 Frère Jacques.

Long Time Gone

Today’s hymn from KHYI, Plano, Texas…
(played at 11:15 AM Sunday, CST):

They got money but they don’t got Cash;
They got Junior but they don’t got Hank.

From the album Real Time,
by Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott.

Update of 1:50 PM EST…

Thanks, too, KHYI, for what may be
becoming my favorite Texas hymn
(played at about 12:45 PM CST)….

Love at the Five and Dime,
by Nanci Griffith

ART WARS for

Trotsky’s Birthday

Part I:
Symbols

From my entry of July 26, 2003, in memory
of Marathon Man director John Schlesinger:

For the meaning of the above symbols, see
Kubrick’s 1x4x9 monolith in 2001,
the Halmos tombstone in Measure Theory,
and the Fritz Leiber Changewar stories.

No se puede vivir sin amar.

Part II:
Sunday in the Park with Death

  To Leon from Diego —
Details of a mural,
A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon
in Alameda Park,
Fresco, 1947-48,
Alameda Hotel, Mexico City:

Three’s a Crowd:

Symbol:

On the Left

See this analysis of the organizers of today’s March on Washington.  For a much better organized Commie effort, click here.

On the right

A site in honor of Picasso’s birthday

Rummy, here’s your
“war of ideas” —
The Hunt for Red October

Today is the anniversary of the triumph of Lenin in the October Revolution.

General background on the two sides:

News
    Politics
        Conservative
        Progressive and Left

In today’s news: March on Washington

War of Ideas

Toby Ziegler
of West Wing

Click on the above picture for
my Aug. 17, 2003, entry,

A Thorny Crown of Ideas.

For the details of a rather famous religious text that shows Rumsfeld to be lying, see my note of July 31, 1997,

Vacation Bible School.

(The detail that makes Rumsfeld’s statement a lie is the word “all,” which is contradicted by the religion of Orthodox Judaism.  Another detail of interest is the word “Joshua” in the Vacation Bible School entry.  Recall that this was the real name of the Jew now known as Jesus, and that many of his followers may have hoped he would star in a bloody sequel to the Book of Joshua.  Hence the “thorny crown” phrase in the West Wing link above.)

x

For the Dead of
St. Ursula’s Day

In the spirit of Southie…

“To admirers, Mrs. Hicks
spoke the truth
to liberal power
in simple declarative sentences.”

— Mark Feeney, Boston Globe

“The time had come for him
to set out on his journey westward.
Yes, the newspapers were right:
snow was general all over Ireland.”

— James Joyce, “The Dead”

Saint Ursula’s Day

“What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?”

— Saying attributed to 
   Saint Ursula K. Le Guin
   (10/21/1929 – )

Enter Dancing

From Daily Quotational Lattice:

The story of the day is “Dance in America,” about a dancer who has dinner with some friends.  Take note if you’re a dancer: Ariel, a bona fide dancer, deems the quotes about dancing to be “very powerful.”

“I tell them dance begins when a moment of hurt combines with a moment of boredom.  I tell them it’s the body’s reaching, bringing air to itself.  I tell them that it’s the heart’s triumph, the victory speech of the feet, the refinement of animal lunge and flight, the purest metaphor of tribe and self. It’s life flipping death the bird.  I make this stuff up.”

“I am thinking of the dancing body’s magnificent and ostentatious scorn.  This is how we offer ourselves, enter heaven, enter speaking: we say with motion, in space, This is what life’s done so far down here; this is all and what and everything it’s managed–this body, these bodies, that body– so what do you think, Heaven?  What do you fucking think?”

— “Dance in America,” by Lorrie Moore

Cursing the Darkness

From my entries on this date last year…

“…we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God’s grace shall never be put out.”

Thought for today:

Render unto Rome that which is Rome’s.

See also my remarks of January 29, 2003,
on the opening in New Zealand of
Cullinane College.

The One Culture

Today’s birthdays:
Friedrich Nietzsche and C. P. Snow.

Recommended reading–

The Two Cultures Today, by Roger Kimball, which begins with a quotation from Nietzsche:

“It is not a question of annihilating science, but of controlling it.”

Saint Leonard’s Day

From a review of Leonard Bernstein’s 1973 Norton lectures at Harvard:

The truly emblematic twentieth-century composer is Mahler, whose attempts to relinquish tonality are reluctant and incomplete, and whose nostalgia for past practice is overt and tragic. Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, his “last will and testament,” shows “that ours is the century of death, and Mahler is its musical prophet.” That is the “real reason” Mahler’s music suffered posthumous neglect–it was, Bernstein says, “telling something too dreadful to hear.” The Ninth Symphony embodies three kinds of death–Mahler’s own, which he knew was imminent; the death of tonality, “which for him meant the death of music itself”; and “the death of society, of our Faustian culture.” And yet this music, like all great art, paradoxically reanimates us.

— Joseph Horowitz, New York Review of Books, June 10, 1993

Hello, Columbus

“Dunne is to Irish Catholics as
Philip Roth is to Eastern European Jews,
and True Confessions is Dunne’s
Goodbye Columbus.”
— Amazon.com review

Spinnin’ Wheel, Spinnin’ True

See last year’s
October 12 entry,

“She’s a Twentieth Century Fox.”

For Patricia Collinge

of Collinge-Pickman Casting, Boston, whose credits include casting for the film A Civil Action.

“Take us the foxes, the little foxes…”

KHYI just played Tish Hinojosa’s “Something in the Rain.”  Here, Ms. Collinge, is a rather strange website related to the themes of A Civil Action and to Hinojosa’s song:

Something in the Rain

The Mysterious West

Thanks again to KHYI, Plano, Texas, for great poetry.  In tonight’s KHYI playlist…

From Spike and Jamie:

WAIT A WHILE AND YOU’LL GROW OLDER;
NEVER MIND WHAT THE OLD FOLKS SAY.

JUST KEEP AN ANGEL ON YOUR SHOULDER;
AND NEVER THROW YOUR DREAMS AWAY
FOR THEY MIGHT SAVE YOUR LIFE ONE DAY.

SONG IS JUST A BOX OF VISIONS;
YOU CAN UNLOCK IT WITH A KEY–

A MESSAGE ROLLED UP INSIDE A BOTTLE
AND DROPPED INTO THE SALTY SEA.

SONG IS JUST A BOX OF VISIONS,
A JAR OF HARPS AND GYPSY’S EARS,
 
A LABYRINTH OF WILD ROSES,
A JOURNEY THROUGH A HOUSE OF MIRRORS.

WAIT A WHILE AND YOU’LL GROW STRONGER;
NEVER MIND WHAT THE SAD FOLKS SAY.

From Tish Hinojosa:

“It’s the way of life in the real west…”

A search for information on the singer of “Real West” led to a site in Japan that mentions Hinojosa, among many other makers of recommended music:

From Japan–

Random Diary & Essay…

“an example of understand beyond language is still possible”

Such an example is one of the themes in a movie I admire greatly….

Ghost Dog – The Way of the Samurai.

The hero’s understanding of what his friend says, even though he does not know the friend’s language, is a recurring theme in this film.

As for me… “No entiendo.  Sigo trabajando.”

Pro-Semitism

As the president of Harvard has pointed out,  many have found good reasons recently to become anti-Semites.

Here are three good reasons to be pro-Semitic:

1. Jordan Ellenberg’s course on Numbers, Equations, and Proofs this fall at Princeton,
2. Ellenberg’s phrase, contained in a syllabus for that course (3-7 Nov. 2003):
   “The heartbreaking failure of unique factorization,” and
3. Ellenberg himself.

Unlike many with a Harvard background who project with success the appearance of intelligence, Ellenberg seems to be in fact genuinely intelligent… a rare thing.

He also seems to be Jewish… This may be false, though, since Elllenberg, intelligently, does not state any ethnic or religious preferences.

Fine Hall 1201

The classic question of Sir Laurence Olivier– “Is it safe?”– may, in view of the above, be answered in the affirmative… provided, that is, that the “it” refers to number theory at Princeton… one of the crowning glories of Western civilization.

Storyline

To hear a story, or to read it straight through from start to finish, is to travel along a one-dimensional line.  A well-structured story has, however, more than one dimension.

Juxtaposing scenes shows that details that seem to be far apart in the telling (or the living) of a story may in fact be closely related.

Here is an example from the film “Contact,” in which a young girl’s drawing and a vision of paradise are no longer separated by the time it takes to tell (or live) the story:

(See my entry of Michaelmas 2002.)

For details of how time is “folded”
by artists and poets, see the following:

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle,

and Time Fold, by S. H. Cullinane.

The West Wing’s
Story Line

See also the “story theory of truth”
versus the “diamond theory of truth.”

“Fair and Balanced”?

“Schwarzenegger made a lot of promises that we know are lies,” Bob Mulholland, the campaign adviser to the California Democratic Party, said today. “And now he’s going to find out that being in the governor’s office is not a movie script. We’ll be holding his feet to the fire.” — Kirk Semple, NY Times, Oct. 8, 2003

Franken disgusts me, so I’m with Arnie.

As for Mulholland… click here.

Update of 5:35 PM:

I see the NY Times has killed the Semple story and replaced it with another at the above Times link.

Annunciation

“A ray of light striking through a wall or window… is a conventional sign of the Annunciation.”

Annunciation,
by James Cameron, 1991

ART WARS:
Judgment Day

“…Mondrian and Malevich are not discussing canvas or pigment or graphite or any other form of matter.  They are talking about Being or Mind or Spirit.  From their point of view, the grid is a staircase to the Universal….”

— Rosalind Krauss, “Grids”

Krauss is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University.

For more on Meyer Schapiro, see the link on the phrase “art historian” in my March 10, 2003, entry.

To view that entry in a larger context, see the web page Art at the Vanishing Point, which includes a picture of Mondrian’s own Paris staircase.  The picture below might be thought of as illustrating Krauss’s “grid is a staircase”… a staircase to, in fact, a vanishing point.

Frame not included in
 Terminator 2: Judgment Day

For a different view of what the New York Times Book Review has characterized as “high culture,” see the link on that phrase also in my March 10, 2003, entry.  This leads to a work by T. S. Eliot titled Christianity and Culture.   See too the remarks of the Meyer Schapiro Professor in my Oct. 5, 2003, entry, “Art Theory for Yom Kippur,”  in which she likens the Cross to Pandora’s box.

Eliot’s attitude toward this Jewish approach to high culture might be summarized by the following remarks of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day—

Dr. Silberman: You broke my arm!

Sarah Connor: There are two-hundred-fifteen bones in the human body, [expletive deleted]. That’s one.

Today’s birthday: ageless Charlton Heston.

Happy Birthday, Moses!

Elaine Pagels,
authority on the Gnostic gospels,
p. 12, New York Review of Books,
issue dated Oct. 23, 2003

Meditation for the High Holy Days:

Noble Lies or Criminal Fraud?

On Noble Lies:

“Leo Strauss, who for many years taught an esoteric reading of Plato at the University of Chicago, believed that an educated elite could rule through deception. A circle of his former students, now in appointed public office, are in a position to make Strauss’s teaching national practice.”

— America, the Jesuit weekly, July 7, 2003

(“Words are events.”– Walter J. Ong, S.J.) 

On Criminal Fraud:

“There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas…. This whole thing was a fraud.”

— Sen. Ted Kennedy on the Iraq war, Sept. 18, 2003

“Nothing could be a more serious violation of public trust than to consciously make a war based on false claims…. [The Bush administration’s] handling of intelligence and its retaliation against its critics may have been criminal.”

— Gen. Wesley Clark, Oct. 3, 2003

On the Good versus the True

According to one reading of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance– a book that deals with, among other things, the reading of Plato at the University of Chicago (see the Jesuit remarks above)– the Good is the enemy of the True.  This is a reading that may well appeal to Bush supporters, who would of course like to be on the side of the Good.  Let them recall two Middle Eastern sayings:

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,”
 
 and

“Satan is the father of lies.” 

ART WARS:
Time and the Grid

Art theorist Rosalind Krauss and poet T. S. Eliot on time, timelessness, and the grid.

For Wallace Stevens’s Birthday

Unlicensed Metaphysics:
Annie Dillard Revisited

Noticer: The Visionary Art
of Annie Dillard