Log24

"If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance,
 baffle 'em with bullshit." — Folk saying

Brilliance —

Bullshit —

A New York Times  book review on All Saints' Day 2002 —

"Like every villain, Sill has an origin story. This one involves
the murder of his father and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
As vengeance, Sill resolves to destroy America using a weapon
called a 'complex projective plane orbiter.' What does that mean?
Don’t worry about it."

Related reading:  The Aloha Grid .

The Aloha Grid

Some less demanding reading:  Mysteries of the Rectangle .

From May 15 through May 26, there is a women-only meeting on zeta functions at the  Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.  Today’s activities:

Sequel

From an entry of July 27, 2003…

Catholic Tastes, Part I:

Catholic Tastes, Part II:

A Catholic priest on “The Passion of the Christ”:

“By the time it’s over, the make-up artists give his skin the texture of spaghetti marinara.”

— The Rev. Richard A. Blake, S.J., professor of fine arts and co-director of the film studies program at Boston College, in America magazine, issue dated March 15, 2004.

Related material:

“I’m waiting for Mel’s sequel:

‘He’s back. Christ Almighty!
The Resurrection.
This time, it’s personal.’ “

— Bruce Feirstein in The New York Observer

Magic Hawaii

Today, the birthday of singer Jerry Lee Lewis, is also the feast of St. Michael and All Angels.

In honor of Lewis:

Killer Radio, an entry of July 31, 2003, that contains the following…

“When the light came she was sitting on the bed beside an open suitcase, toying with her diamond rings.  She saw the light first in the depths of the largest stone.”

— Paul Preuss, Broken Symmetries,
    scene at Diamond Head, Oahu,
    Hawaii

In honor of the angels:

Mathematics as an Adequate Language,
by Israel Gelfand, Sept. 2, 2003, which contains the following…

“Many people consider mathematics to be a boring and formal science.  However, any really good work in mathematics always has in it: beauty, simplicity, exactness, and crazy ideas.  This is a strange combination.  I understood earlier that this combination is essential on the example of classical music and poetry.  But it is also typical in mathematics.  It is not by chance that many mathematicians enjoy serious music.

This combination of beauty, simplicity, exactness, and crazy ideas is, I think, common to both mathematics and music.”

These qualities seem also to be sought by practitioners of religion and physics… for example, by the spiritually-minded physicist in Preuss’s Broken Symmetries.  Skeptics might prefer, to the word “religion,” the word (pronounced with a sneer) “magic.”

What do we find if, following in the footsteps of Gelfand and Preuss, we do a Google search on the following words…

“beauty simplicity exactness
 crazy magic Hawaii“?

The search yields two results:

1. The Pupil: Poems by W. S. Merwin.
   The above link is to a poem, “Prophecy,” that seems suitable for these, the High Holy Days at the end of one year and the beginning of another.

   

   For a follow-up to the poem, see
   The Shining of Lucero.

2. “Striking Through the Mask, or
    The Allegorical Meanings
    in Moby Dick.”

These two selections, both on the theme of light and darkness, offer a language that is perhaps more adequate than mathematics for dealing with the nature of the High Holy Days.  For a more lighthearted approach to these concerns, also with a Hawaiian theme, see

The Aloha Mass.

Time is a Weapon

“Time is a weapon, it’s cold and it’s cruel.”

— Max D. Barnes song lyric,
sung by Ray Price
(See Aug. 1, 2003, entry.)

3:57

was the time of yesterday afternoon’s entry,

Aloha.

“Only through time time is conquered.”
— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

A Mass for
Rosh Hashanah

In memory of playwright Herb Gardner, who died on Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2003, in honor of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sunset today, and in celebration of T. S. Eliot’s birthday, which is today, here is an illustrated Mass from the Catholic News Service dated Sept. 24 (Saint Herb’s Day):

See also the two previous entries,
and “Max’s Hawaiian Ecstasies” in
Gardner’s play “The Goodbye People.”

For a musical accompaniment to this
requiem for Gardner,
 the “Aloha Mass,”
click here.

Among
those
at the
Mass:

The Mass, at Max’s Hawaiian Ecstasies
in Paradise, will conclude with
“Simply Irresistible,” sung by
Saint Robert Palmer and performed by…

Irresistible Grace.

The role of the congregation will, as usual,
be performed by George Plimpton.
Payment for our sins will be made by
Johnny Cash.

In Memory of Playwright
 Herb Gardner

eBay item 3243620848:

“Up for auction is a Hawaiian hula girl music box. It plays ‘Tiny Bubbles’ and spins around. It is approx. 12″ tall and the top part of the body is made of hard plastic. It is in great condition.”

Aloha.

Catholic Tastes

In memory of New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, who died Saturday, July 26, 2003:

Nous Voici Dans La Ville – A Christmas song from 15th century France (midi by John Philip Dimick).

In memory of my own youth:

Formaggio Address Paseo del Conquistador # 144 Food Type Italian Dress Casual Tel 777-313-0584 Comment Chef Lorenzo Villagra is formally trained in Italian Cuisine. Great food and views of the valley of Cuernavaca.

In memory of love:

Volverán del amor en tus oídos

Las palabras ardientes a sonor;

Tu corazón de su profundo sueño

Tal vez despertará;

Pero mudo y absorto y de rodillas,

Como se adora a Dios ante su altar,

Como yo te he querido…desengáñate,

¡Así no te querrán!

— from “Rima LIII“
    by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
   (1836-1870)

Translation by Young Allison, 1924:

Burning words of love will come
Again full oft within thine ears to sound;
Perchance thy heart will even be aroused
From its sleep profound;

But mute and prostrate and absorbed,
As God is worshipped in His holy fane,
As I have loved thee…undeceive thyself:
Thou wilt not be thus loved again!

The Robert Lowell version of
the complete poem by Bécquer:

Will Not Come Back
(Volverán)

Dark swallows will doubtless come back killing
the injudicious nightflies with a clack of the beak:
but these that stopped full flight to see your beauty
and my good fortune… as if they knew our names–
they’ll not come back. The thick lemony honeysuckle,
climbing from the earthroot to your window,
will open more beautiful blossoms to the evening;
but these… like dewdrops, trembling, shining, falling,
the tears of day–they’ll not come back…
Some other love will sound his fireword for you
and wake your heart, perhaps, from its cool sleep;
but silent, absorbed, and on his knees,
as men adore God at the altar, as I love you–
don’t blind yourself, you’ll not be loved like that.

See, too, my entry for the feast day of
Saint Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer,
which happens to be December 22.

Elevation of the Host

Some religious fanatics may be offended by my account, in the note below, of a theatrical bartender-priest at Lincoln Center who last night held a CD aloft in what may seem a parody or satire of the elevation of the host in the Mass. They should consider the following account of how a medieval nun viewed the host:

…she saw a great brightness between the priest’s hands, so vivid and so bright and of such wonderful beauty that in her opinion it could not be compared to anything the human spirit could imagine. And it seemed to her that this brightness had a circular shape….

For another appearance of a priest associated, if only by synchronicity, with Lincoln Center, see the photographs below, both from the New York Times obituaries section of Friday, August 30, 2002.

	Richard Lippold, a sculptor known for radiant, expansive abstractions in metal, died on Aug. 22…. Richard Lippold’s ‘‘Orpheus and Apollo’’ at Avery Fisher Hall in 1996. Jack Manning/The New York Times
	Bill Wassmuth, a former Roman Catholic priest who opposed the Aryan Nations group in northern Idaho, died on Tuesday, Aug. 27.

In this little drama of August 30, played out in the obituary section of the New York Times, it is not clear from the Lippold sculpture who is to play the role of Orpheus and who the role of Apollo. One might interpret the note below, written two days later, as implying that Orpheus is to be played by Lionel Hampton and Apollo by Christ himself.  Such a drama is neither parody nor satire.  It is, on the contrary, deadly serious. 

“A great brightness,” as seen by the medieval nun described above, is traditionally associated with the Aryan sun god Apollo.  For more on this theme in Roman Catholic art, see

Sun-Worship and Catholicism,

The Monstrance and the Wafer God, and

A Catholic rebuttal.

For a less dogmatic approach to these matters, see my journal note of June 13, 2002,

 A Mass for Lucero.