Log24

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Meditation in Red and Gray

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:04 am

See also Red and Gray in this  journal.

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Red and Gray

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:29 am

Oh, the red leaf looks to the hard gray stone
To each other, they know what they mean

— Suzanne Vega, “Songs in Red and Gray

Saturday, February 25, 2012

The Rock

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:26 pm

(Continued. See previous post and Red and Gray in this journal.)

“Give faith a fighting chance.” —Country song

From a post of June 3, 2007—

Related illustration relevant to theology—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110625-CubeHypostases.gif

For some background, see Cube Trinity in this journal.

For greater depth, see Levering’s Scripture and Metaphysics:
Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology 
,
Blackwell, 2004, page 150.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

A Songwriter’s Apology

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:59 pm

From this evening's online New York Times , a death from yesterday

Mr. Hardy’s song “St. Clare” was covered by Ms. Vega
and appears on her 2001 album “Songs in Red and Gray.”

[Lyrics here.]

See also "red and gray" and "The Eye" in this journal.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Women’s History Month

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Susanne for Suzanne

From pages 7-8 of William York Tindall’s Literary Symbolism  (Columbia U. Press, 1955)—

                                     ... According to Cassirer's Essay 
on Man, as we have seen, art is a symbolic form, parallel in respect 
of this to religion or science. Each of these forms builds up a universe 
that enables man to interpret and organize his experience; and each 
is a discovery, because a creation, of reality. Although similar in func- 
tion, the forms differ in the kind of reality built. Whereas science
builds it of facts, art builds it of feelings, intuitions of quality, and 
the other distractions of our inner life— and in their degrees so do 
myth and religion. What art, myth, and religion are, Cassirer con- 
fesses, cannot be expressed by a logical definition. 

Nevertheless, let us see what Clive Bell says about art. He calls 
it "significant form," but what that is he is unable to say. Having 
no quarrel with art as form, we may, however, question its signifi- 
cance. By significant he cannot mean important in the sense of 
having import, nor can he mean having the function of a sign; 
for to him art, lacking reference to nature, is insignificant. Since, 
however, he tells us that a work of art "expresses" the emotion of 
its creator and "provokes" an emotion in its contemplator,he seems 
to imply that his significant means expressive and provocative. The 
emotion expressed and provoked is an "aesthetic emotion," contem- 
plative, detached from all concerns of utility and from all reference. 

Attempting to explain Bell's significant form, Roger Fry, equally 
devoted to Whistler and art for art's sake, says that Flaubert's "ex- 
pression of the idea" is as near as he can get to it, but neither Flaubert 
nor Fry tells what is meant by idea. To "evoke" it, however, the artist 
creates an "expressive design" or "symbolic form," by which the 
spirit "communicates its most secret and indefinable impulses." 

Susanne Langer,who occupies a place somewhere between Fry 
and Cassirer, though nearer the latter, once said in a seminar that a 
work of art is an "unassigned syntactical symbol." Since this defini- 

End of page 7 

tion does not appear in her latest book, she may have rejected it, but 
it seems far more precise than Fry's attempt. By unassigned she prob- 
ably intends insignificant in the sense of lacking sign value or fixed 
reference; syntactical implies a form composed of parts in relation- 
ship to one another; and a symbol, according to Feeling and Form, 
is "any device whereby we are enabled to make an abstraction." Too 
austere for my taste, this account of symbol seems to need elaboration, 
which, to be sure, her book provides. For the present, however, taking 
symbol to mean an outward device for presenting an inward state, 
and taking unassigned and syntactical as I think she uses them, let 
us tentatively admire her definition of the work of art.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110301-VegaSongsSm.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110301-Diamond-RedOnGray.bmp

Oh, the red leaf looks to the hard gray stone
To each other, they know what they mean

— Suzanne Vega, “Song in Red and Gray

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Saturday July 11, 2009

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 7:28 am
Mercilessly Tasteful

Diamond logo

Suzanne Vega, 'Songs in Red and Gray'


Related material:

The Literary Symbol
by William York Tindall

(Columbia University Press,
Epiphany 1955)

Friday, May 18, 2007

Friday May 18, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:29 am
Devil in the Details

Today’s Harvard Crimson:

“Paul B. Davis ’07-’08, who contributed to a collection of student essays written in 2005 on the purpose and structure of a Harvard education, said that ‘the devil is in the details’….”

From the weblog of Peter Woit
:

The New Yorker keeps its physics theme going this week with cover art that includes a blackboard full of basic equations from quantum mechanics.”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070518-Cover2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
May 21, 2007
New Yorker cover

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070518-CoverDetail.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
Detail

The detail suggests
the following
religious images from
Twelfth Night 2003:

Devil’s Claws, or
Hourglass Var. 3

Yankee Puzzle, or
Hourglass Var. 5

 
“Mercilessly tasteful”
 
— Andrew Mueller,
review of Suzanne Vega’s
Songs in Red and Gray

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Sunday December 11, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:00 pm

Classic Sixties

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051211-Collins.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked
   upon the water…”
Leonard Cohen   

meets the timeless
Satori at Pearl Harbor:

“Mercilessly tasteful.”
 — Andrew Mueller,
review of Suzanne Vega’s
Songs in Red and Gray

Related material:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051211-SpiritWhole.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Philosophy in
Blue and Green

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Sunday December 19, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:56 pm
Sunday Sermon
on Saturday’s Numbers

Today’s New York Times on a rabbi who died in Jerusalem on Sunday, Dec. 5:

“In the 1950’s, he was a vocal advocate for the relaxation of New York City’s blue laws, which forbade many kinds of commerce on Sundays but not on Saturdays. The laws were repealed in the 1970’s. Solomon Joseph Sharfman was born on Nov. 1, 1915, in Treblinka, Poland; his family immigrated to the United States five years later. His father, Rabbi Label Sharfman, worked as a shochet, or ritual slaughterer….”

Saturday’s lottery numbers from Pennsylvania, the State of Grace:

Saturday Midday:  144
Saturday Evening: 360

A Sunday Sermon:

“Once upon a time there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love with a beautiful dot. But the dot, though perfect in every way, only had eyes for a wild and unkempt squiggle. All of the line’s romantic dreams were in vain, until he discovered . . . angles! Now, with newfound self-expression, he can be anything he wants to be–a square….”

Related material:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04B/041219-Line.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(See Song in Red and Gray
and The Dot and the Line.)

Friday, December 17, 2004

Friday December 17, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:05 pm

Song in Red and Gray

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04B/041217-WaterFlower2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.   The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04B/041217-Agnes.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

From today's New York Times:

Agnes Martin, Abstract Painter, Dies at 92

Background: entry of 7 PM Wednesday.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Wednesday December 15, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm

Judeo-Christian Heritage:
The Wiener Kreis

The meditation below was suggested by this passage:

“… the belief that any sensible discourse had to be formulated within the rules of the scientific language, avoiding the non sense of the ordinary language. This belief, initially expressed by Wittgenstein as aphorisms, was later formalized by the Wiener Kreis [Vienna Circle] as a ‘logical construction of the world’….”

“Deeply Vulgar”

— Epithet applied in 2003 to
Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

“Examples are the stained-glass
windows of knowledge.”
— Vladimir Nabokov

 

In today’s Crimson:
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04B/041215-Crimson.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

Only moderately vulgar, with its sniggering pop-culture reference. But it  should be
Frankfurter
Professor of Law.

 

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04B/041215-Frankfort.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

Those seeking relief from
Judeo-Christian vulgarity may enjoy
the Buddhist Suzanne Vega’s

Songs in Red and Gray.”

“Mercilessly tasteful”
— Andrew Mueller

Sunday, January 5, 2003

Sunday January 5, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:12 am

Whirligig

Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
Twelfth Night. Act v. Sc. 1.

Twelfth night is the night of January 5-6.

Tonight is twelfth night in Australia; 4 AM Jan. 5
in New York City is 8 PM Jan. 5 in Sydney.


An October 6 entry:

Twenty-first Century Fox

On Sunday, October 6, 1889, the Moulin Rouge music hall opened in Paris, an event that to some extent foreshadowed the opening of Fox Studios Australia in Sydney on November 7, 1999.  The Fox ceremonies included, notably, Kylie Minogue singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend." 

 

Red Windmill

Kylie Minogue

For the mathematical properties of the red windmill (moulin rouge) figure at left, see Diamond Theory.

An October 5 entry:

The Message from Vega

"Mercilessly tasteful"
 — Andrew Mueller,
review of Suzanne Vega's
"Songs in Red and Gray"


In accordance with the twelfth-night
"whirligig of time" theme,
here are two enigmatic quilt blocks:

Devil's Claws, or
Hourglass Var. 3

Yankee Puzzle, or
Hourglass Var. 5

 
One can approach these symbols in either a literary or a mathematical fashion. For a purely mathematical discussion of the differences in the two symbols' structure, see Diamond Theory. Those who prefer literary discussions may make up their own stories.
 
"Plato is wary of all forms of rapture other than reason's. He is most deeply leery of, because himself so susceptible to, the literary imagination. He speaks of it as a kind of holy madness or intoxication and goes on to link it to Eros, another derangement that joins us, but very dangerously, with the gods."
 
Rebecca Goldstein in The New York Times,
    December 16, 2002 
 
"It's all in Plato, all in Plato; bless me,
what do they teach them at these schools?"
 
— C. S. Lewis in the Narnia Chronicles 

Saturday, December 7, 2002

Saturday December 7, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:01 pm

Satori at Pearl Harbor

The following old weblog entry seems
relevant both to the Zen concept of satori,
or “awakening,” and to Pearl Harbor Day.

Saturday, October 5, 2002… 11:30 PM

The Message from Vega

“Mercilessly tasteful”
 — Andrew Mueller,
review of Suzanne Vega’s
Songs in Red and Gray

The appropriate response to Vega’s Buddhism today seems to be the following classic by James Taylor:

“Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus?
You’ve got to help me make a stand…”

This is today’s new site background music.

For more log entries relevant to today, see 

Satori at Pearl Harbor.

Saturday, October 5, 2002

Saturday October 5, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:30 pm

The Message from Vega

“Mercilessly tasteful”
 — Andrew Mueller,
review of Suzanne Vega’s
Songs in Red and Gray

 

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