Log24

Academy Awards
for Cambridge

“First of all, I’d like
 to thank the Academy.”
— Remark attributed to Plato

“A poem cannot exhaust reality,
  but it can arrest it.“

— At War with the Word:
   Literary Theory and
   Liberal Education,
   by R. V. Young,
   Chapter One

For one such poem, see

“Life and Death United:
An Intimate Portrait of
a Man Named Miles Davis,”
from a seminar’s weblog
at DePauw University on
Sunday, November 21, 2004.

See also the four Log24
entries on that date as well
as yesterday’s entry on Davis
and the entries preceding it.

Lydian Mode

In memory of composer
George Russell, who
died at 86 on Monday —

Russell’s thoughts on the Lydian mode
strongly influenced Miles Davis,
notably in Davis’s “Kind of Blue.”

“The power of the Lydian mode,
  Russell realized, is
  freedom from time’s restraints.
  The major scale is in a state of becoming.
  The Lydian scale already is.”

— The Gravity Man, by Alice Dragoon,
    quoted at LydianChromaticConcept.com 

Related material:

“Field Dance,” from the date of Russell’s death.

“The Tables of Time,” from Nov. 13, 2003,
  and the four entries that preceded it.

Today’s previous entry and
The Reversible Diamond Puzzle
(from St. Nicholas, November 1874)–

Icon

“Unsheathe your dagger definitions.“

— James Joyce, Ulysses

The entry of 12:06 PM Thursday, July 23, contained a link to the journal Red Kite Prayer. The “red kite” is the red flag posted near the end of the Tour de France.

Thanks for a definition are due to the journal Flahute. A quotation from that journal:

“There’s only one shot that’s in harmony with the field. The home of your authentic swing. That flag… and all that you are.”

— The Legend of Bagger Vance

See also yesterday’s Log24 post.

The White Itself

David Ellerman has written that

"The notion of a concrete universal occurred in Plato's Theory of Forms [Malcolm 1991]."

A check shows that Malcolm indeed discussed this notion ("the Form as an Ideal Individual"), but not under the name "concrete universal."

See Plato on the Self-Predication of Forms, by John Malcolm, Oxford U. Press, 1991.

From the publisher's summary:

"Malcolm…. shows that the middle dialogues do indeed take Forms to be both universals and paradigms…. He shows that Plato's concern to explain how the truths of mathematics can indeed be true played an important role in his postulation of the Form as an Ideal Individual."

Ellerman also cites another discussion of Plato published by Oxford:

For a literary context, see W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., "The Structure of the Concrete Universal," Ch. 6 in Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.

Other uses of the phrase "concrete universal"– Hegelian and/or theological– seem rather distant from the concerns of Plato and Wimsatt, and are best left to debates between Marxists and Catholics. (My own sympathies are with the Catholics.)

Two views of "the white itself" —

 "So did God cause the big bang?
 Overcome by metaphysical lassitude,
 I finally reach over to my bookshelf
 for The Devil's Bible.
 Turning to Genesis I read:
 'In the beginning
 there was nothing.
 And God said,
 'Let there be light!'
 And there was still nothing,
 but now you could see it.'"
 
 -- Jim Holt, Big-Bang Theology,
    Slate's "High Concept" department 

 

  

"The world was warm and white when I was born:
Beyond the windowpane the world was white,
A glaring whiteness in a leaded frame,
Yet warm as in the hearth and heart of light."

-- Delmore Schwartz

“Vega writes from a perspective of memory and maturity… applying a musical Brazilian wax to ‘Pornographer’s Dream‘….”

— Review of Suzanne Vega’s album “Beauty & Crime” by Don McLeese

1895: Charles Proteus Steinmetz receives a patent for a “system of distribution by alternating currents.” His engineering work makes it practical to build a widespread power grid for use in lighting and machinery alike.

An Aleph for Pynchon

A California Sixties version
of Heaven’s Gate:
Aleph Sanctuary, by Mati Klarwein

Part II:

Log24 entries of April 29, 2009
(esp. the link to Anastasia Ashley)

Part III:

Inherent Vice,
a novel by Thomas Pynchon
to be published in August 2009