This journal on June 24, 2006—
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , 1974:
"But what's happening is that each year our old flat earth of
conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle
the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings
of topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people
in irrational areas of thought… occultism, mysticism, drug changes
and the like… because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason
to handle what they know are real experiences."
"I'm not sure what you mean by classical reason."
"Analytic reason, dialectic reason. Reason which at the University
is sometimes considered to be the whole of understanding. You've
never had to understand it really. It's always been completely
bankrupt with regard to abstract art. Nonrepresentative art is one of
the root experiences I'm talking about. Some people still condemn it
because it doesn’t make 'sense.' But what's really wrong is not
the art but the 'sense,' the classical reason, which can't grasp it.
People keep looking for branch extensions of reason that will cover
art's more recent occurrences, but the answers aren't in the
branches, they're at the roots."
See also an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that opened Dec. 23—
— and an exhibition in this journal of the image "Root Circle."