Wednesday, October 9, 2024
October 9 Apollo
Monday, October 7, 2024
Apollo Theater Love Song:
“Keep Smiling, Keep Shining”
“Keep Smiling, Keep Shining”
Thursday, May 23, 2024
Friday, December 13, 2019
Apollo’s 13 Revisited
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Apollo and the Furies
Narration by the fictional schoolgirl Pagan Moore in a novel
apparently first published on March 4, 2004 —
"Now, can anyone else tell me or shall I ask Miss Moore again to help us out?” “Apollo is a symbol for the male, the rational, the young, and the civilized. The Furies represent the female, the violent, the old, and the primal. Aeschylus captures a mythical moment in history, one in which the world was torn between a savage and archaic past and the bold new order of Greek civilization, the young Olympian gods, and rationality. The difficulty of the struggle between these two worlds is dramatized by the cycle of violence in the House of Atreus and the clash between Apollo and the Furies.” No one giggled after Dank finished.
—Existence (first novel of a trilogy), pp. 80-81. |
Update at 1:37 PM ET the same day —
A check for the source of the above speech yields …
"Apollo is a symbol for the male, the rational, the young, and the civilized.
The Furies represent the female, the violent, the old, and the primal."
This passage is from
https://www.gradesaver.com/the-eumenides/study-guide/themes.
From the citation data there —
"By Borey, Eddie. 'The Eumenides Themes.'
GradeSaver, 24 October 2000 Web."
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Installation: Area 51 Meets Apollo
Ben Lerner on Judd's art at Marfa —
"as if the installation were waiting to be visited
by an alien or god" — 10:04: A Novel
Oslo artist Josefine Lyche's public Instagram today —
See also Space (May 13, 2015).
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
To Apollo*
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Blessings from the Apollo
Part I, Midday —
Yesterday's midday NY Lottery "689" suggests (from April 3, 2005)—
689 | [fú] blessing, good fortune |
Diagram taken from R. Sing,
“Chinese New Year’s Dragon Teacher’s Guide”
— and the 4-digit midday number suggests a NASA Picture of the Day
that was published (not taken) on 7795 (7/7/95)—
Part II, Evening —
Suggested by yesterday's evening NY Lottery "068"
and by Weltschmerz and the Ursprache —
— Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and On the Language of Man” (1916),
Edmund Jephcott, tr., Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume I: 1913-1926 ,
Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, eds., Cambridge, MA,
Harvard University Press, 1996, pp. 62-74. The above is page 68.
A more entertaining meditation is suggested by yesterday's 4-digit evening NY number—
a video tribute to a song said to have been released as a single on 7383 (7/3/83)—
Related material— "Dark Side of the Moon" in this journal.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Apollo’s 13
Continued … See related previous posts.
Those who prefer narrative to mathematics
may consult Wikipedia on The Cosmic Cube.
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Apollo* Meme
In the May Smithsonian magazine— "What Defines a Meme?"
Related — Seven is Heaven…
* For the connection to Apollo, see Oct. 9, 2006.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Sunday at the Apollo
27
The 13 symmetry axes of the (Euclidean) cube–
exactly one axis for each pair of opposite
subcubes in the 27-part (Galois) 3×3×3 cube–
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
To Apollo
Yesterday's post may, if one likes, be regarded
as a nod to Dionysus, god of tragedy.
Here is a complementary passage:
Related material:
Jung and the Imago Dei
Saturday, November 2, 2024
For Julia Cicero: Ex Fano Apollinis
Cicero, In Verrem II. 1. 46 —
He reached Delos. There one night he secretly 46 carried off, from the much-revered sanctuary of Apollo, several ancient and beautiful statues, and had them put on board his own transport. Next day, when the inhabitants of Delos saw their sanc- tuary stripped of its treasures, they were much distressed . . . .
Delum venit. Ibi ex fano Apollinis religiosissimo noctu clam sustulit signa pulcherrima atque anti- quissima, eaque in onerariam navem suam conicienda curavit. Postridie cum fanum spoliatum viderent ii
See also "Ex Fano" in this journal.
For more crazed gravitas, vide . . .
Addendum:
The above New Yorker passage is dated Sept. 26, 2024.
Also on that date . . .
Monday, September 30, 2024
September Song, Day XXX:
“One, two, three . . . But where is the fourth?”
The "Where is the fourth?" question above is also by Plato.
One possible answer . . .
Other possible "fourth" locations . . .
Pizza photo credit: Marcela Nowak on Instagram
“One, two, three . . . But where is the fourth?”
Monday, September 9, 2024
Walpurgisnacht 2021: Seams Dreams
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Sunday Morning Koppel
Today's host for a special political edition of CBS Sunday Morning
is Ted Koppel. Vocabulary review:
Koppel's appearance today was backed by the usual CBS Sunday Morning
sun-disk Apollo symbol. An Apollo symbol that some may prefer —
The Ninefold Square
Rosalind Krauss "If we open any tract– Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non-Objective World , for instance– we will find that 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, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete. Or, to take a more up-to-date example…."
"He was looking at the nine engravings and at the circle,
"And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
The nine engravings of The Club Dumas
An example of the universal— or, according to Krauss,
"This is the garden of Apollo, the field of Reason…." |
Wednesday, June 5, 2024
For a future Michael Crichton*— The Tachikawa Hint
Hat tip to Peter Woit for quoting the above yesterday.
* See Crichton in this weblog and the solar Apollo symbols
of CBS Sunday Morning, which this week featured Crichton.
As an Apollo symbol, I prefer the Chinese "holy field" —
a ninefold square.
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Close Enough
“… the walkway between here and there would be colder than a witch’s belt buckle. Or a well-digger’s tit. Or whatever the saying was. Vera had been hanging by a thread for a week now, comatose, in and out of Cheyne-Stokes respiration, and this was exactly the sort of night the frail ones picked to go out on. Usually at 4 a.m. He checked his watch. Only 3:20, but that was close enough for government work.”
— King, Stephen (2013-09-24). |
Related material: Apollo Shining.
Friday, May 24, 2024
For Harrison Ford at the Temple of Doom
Related philosophy . . . Apollo October.
Friday, April 12, 2024
Carmel Review
"Clint Eastwood, 93, appears frail but spirited
as he is seen in rare public appearance at
primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall event in Carmel"
— By Karen Ruiz For Dailymail.com
Published: 10:39 am EDT, 12 April 2024
The event, on Sunday, March 24, 2024, suggests a review —
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Friday, June 30, 2023
Trickster Fuge (German for Joint)
Margaret Atwood on Lewis Hyde's "Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159) What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld…. The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning "to join," "to fit," and "to make." (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart. |
"Drop me a line" — Request attributed to Emma Stone
Saturday, June 3, 2023
Space Drama
"It seems fitting that a handsome, professional and future-minded
space drama in fine color, like 'Marooned,' should open a new
jewel box of a theater, the Ziegfeld."
— Howard Thompson in The New York Times , Dec. 19, 1969
A related film tells of a real-life April 1970 sequel
to the 1969 film "Marooned."
Then there is my own "jewel box" picture with three horses . . .
Sunday, January 2, 2022
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Ex Fano Apollinis
Margaret Atwood on Lewis Hyde's "Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159) What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld…. The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning "to join," "to fit," and "to make." (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart. |
"As a Chinese jar . . . ."
— Four Quartets
Rosalind Krauss "If we open any tract– Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non-Objective World , for instance– we will find that 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, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete. Or, to take a more up-to-date example…."
"He was looking at the nine engravings and at the circle,
"And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
The nine engravings of The Club Dumas
An example of the universal— or, according to Krauss,
"This is the garden of Apollo, |
The "Katz" of the August 7 post Art Angles
is a product of Princeton's
Department of Art and Archaeology.
ART —
ARCHAEOLOGY —
"This pattern is a square divided into nine equal parts.
It has been called the 'Holy Field' division and
was used throughout Chinese history for many
different purposes, most of which were connected
with things religious, political, or philosophical."
– The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China,
by Alfred Schinz, Edition Axel Menges, 1996, p. 71
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Persons of Interest
Margaret Atwood on Lewis Hyde's "Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159) What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld…. The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning "to join," "to fit," and "to make." (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart. |
Punch Line . . .
Wrap Party!
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Search Detail
“If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo.“
And if it’s not? . . .
Compare and contrast: Ex Fano .
Friday, April 23, 2021
“And . . . Cut!”
The title is a line spoken by an independent film maker
in “The Big Bang” . . . which opened in limited theaters
on May 13, 2011.
Also on May 13, 2011 —
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Grids
Wikipedia on what has been called “the doily” —
“The smallest non-trivial generalized quadrangle
is GQ(2,2), whose representation* has been dubbed
‘the doily’ by Stan Payne in 1973.”
A later publication relates the doily to grids.
From Finite Generalized Quadrangles , by Stanley E. Payne
and J. A. Thas, December 1983, at researchgate.net, pp. 81-82—
“Then the lines … define a 3×3 grid G (i.e. a grid
consisting of 9 points and 6 lines).”
. . . .
“So we have shown that the grid G can completed [sic ]
in a unique way to a grid with 8 lines and 16 points.”
. . . .
“A 4×4 grid defines a linear subspace
of the 2−(64,4,1) design, i.e. a 4×4 grid
together with the affine lines on it is AG(2,4).”
A more graphic approach from this journal —
Click the image for further details.
* This wording implies that GQ(2,2) has a unique
visual representation. It does not. See inscape .
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Template
Roberta Smith on Donald Judd’s BY ALEX GREENBERGER February 28, 2020 1:04pm If Minimalist artist Donald Judd is known as a writer at all, it’s likely for one important text— his 1965 essay “Specific Objects,” in which he observed the rise of a new kind of art that collapsed divisions between painting, sculpture, and other mediums. But Judd was a prolific critic, penning shrewd reviews for various publications throughout his career—including ARTnews . With a Judd retrospective going on view this Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, ARTnews asked New York Times co-chief art critic Roberta Smith— who, early in her career, worked for Judd as his assistant— to comment on a few of Judd’s ARTnews reviews. How would she describe his critical style? “In a word,” she said, “great.” . . . . |
And then there is Temple Eight, or Ex Fano Apollinis —
Cicero, In Verrem II. 1. 46 —
He reached Delos. There one night he secretly 46 carried off, from the much-revered sanctuary of Apollo, several ancient and beautiful statues, and had them put on board his own transport. Next day, when the inhabitants of Delos saw their sanc- tuary stripped of its treasures, they were much distressed . . . .
Delum venit. Ibi ex fano Apollinis religiosissimo noctu clam sustulit signa pulcherrima atque anti- quissima, eaque in onerariam navem suam conicienda curavit. Postridie cum fanum spoliatum viderent ii qui Delum incolebant, graviter ferebant . . . .
Monday, February 17, 2020
RIP Charles Portis
See also "True Grid " in this journal.
Rosalind Krauss "If we open any tract– Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non-Objective World , for instance– we will find that 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, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete. Or, to take a more up-to-date example…."
"He was looking at the nine engravings and at the circle,
"And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
The nine engravings of The Club Dumas
An example of the universal— or, according to Krauss,
"This is the garden of Apollo, the field of Reason…." |
See as well . . .
Monday, March 25, 2019
Friday, February 15, 2019
A Simple Interlacing
Paul Valéry, "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci,"
La Nouvelle Revue , Paris, Vol. 95 (1895)—
"Regarded thus, the ornamental conception is to the individual arts
what mathematics is to the other sciences. …the objects chosen
and arranged with a view to a particular effect seem as if disengaged
from most of their properties and only reassume them in the effect,
in, that is to say, the mind of the detached spectator. It is thus
by means of an abstraction that the work of art can be constructed,
and is more or less easy to define according as the elements borrowed
from reality for it are more or less complex. Inversely it is by a sort of
induction, by the production of mental images, that all works of art are
appreciated, and this production must equally be more or less active,
more or less tiring, according as it is set in motion by a simple interlacing
on a vase or a broken phrase by Pascal."
— Translated by Thomas McGreevy (Valéry's Selected Writings,
New Directions, 1950)
Related art —
-
Departure dates in "Where Gravity Makes You Float,"
by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche - Apollo and Niobe at the Meadow
- "Enter the Matrix" game
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
An Inscape for Douthat
Some images, and a definition, suggested by my remarks here last night
on Apollo and Ross Douthat's remarks today on "The Return of Paganism" —
In finite geometry and combinatorics,
an inscape is a 4×4 array of square figures,
each figure picturing a subset of the overall 4×4 array:
Related material — the phrase
"Quantum Tesseract Theorem" and …
A. An image from the recent
film "A Wrinkle in Time" —
B. A quote from the 1962 book —
"There's something phoney
in the whole setup, Meg thought.
There is definitely something rotten
in the state of Camazotz."
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Review
See also a theater review of a Walpurgisnacht 2008
Brooklyn Academy of Music production —
The New York Times on the Walpurgisnacht production —
"Specifically grim but never merely glum, the production fully taps
the self-conscious theatricality of the play ('I’m warming up for
my last soliloquy,' Hamm announces toward the end) without
letting us forget that its strange figures are appallingly real,
enacting a grotesque pantomime of humanity’s hungry need to
distract itself by wresting order, meaning and a sliver of satisfaction —
just one more sugarplum, please, or maybe a Vicodin — from
the formless, aimless, timeless nothingness of life."
— Charles Isherwood
Carried Away
"The word 'ablative' derives from the Latin ablatus ,
the (irregular) perfect passive participle of auferre 'to carry away'.[1]"
Example —
See as well Cicero, In Verrem II. 1. 46 —
He reached Delos. There one night he secretly 46
carried off, from the much-revered sanctuary of
Apollo, several ancient and beautiful statues, and
had them put on board his own transport. Next
day, when the inhabitants of Delos saw their sanc-
tuary stripped of its treasures, they were much
distressed . . . .
Delum venit. Ibi ex fano Apollinis religiosissimo noctu clam sustulit signa pulcherrima atque anti- quissima, eaque in onerariam navem suam conicienda curavit. Postridie cum fanum spoliatum viderent ii qui Delum incolebant, graviter ferebant . . . .
Monday, August 20, 2018
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Drama Queen in Yellow Dress
Related literature —
Related video —
(Recall, in light of the previous post, that
Apollo is the lord of the dance.)
The Girl in the Yellow Dress
(from the Broadway musical "Contact")
True Grids
From a search in this journal for "True Grid,"
a fanciful description of the 3×3 grid —
"This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason…."
– John Outram, architect
A fanciful instance of the 4×2 grid in
a scene from the film "The Master" —
A fanciful novel referring to the number 8,
and a not -so-fanciful reference:
Illustrated above are Katherine Neville's novel The Eight and the
"knight" coordinatization of the 4×2 grid from a page on the exceptional
isomorphism between PSL(3,2) (alias GL(3,2)) and PSL(2,7) — groups
of, respectively, degree 7 and degree 8.
Literature related to the above remarks on grids:
Ross Douthat's New York Times column yesterday purported, following
a 1946 poem by Auden, to contrast students of the humanities with
technocrats by saying that the former follow Hermes, the latter Apollo.
I doubt that Apollo would agree.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
A Titan of the Field
On the late Cambridge astronomer Donald Lynden-Bell — "As an academic at a time when students listened and lecturers lectured, he had the disconcerting habit of instead picking on a random undergraduate and testing them on the topic. One former student, now a professor, remembered how he would 'ask on-the-spot questions while announcing that his daughter would solve these problems at the breakfast table'. He got away with it because he was genuinely interested in the work of his colleagues and students, and came to be viewed with great affection by them. He also got away with it because he was well established as a titan of the field." — The London Times on Feb. 8, 2018, at 5 PM (British time) |
Related material —
Two Log24 posts from yesteday, Art Wars and The Void.
See as well the field GF(9) …
… and the 3×3 grid as a symbol of Apollo
(an Olympian rather than a Titan) —
Monday, October 9, 2017
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Pip
The title is from a poem in The New Yorker last December —
. . . pip trapped inside, god’s
knucklebone . . . .
The conclusion of yesterday's Google Image Search for Göpel Inscape —
See also "Pray to Apollo" in this journal.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Special Topics
A roundup of posts now tagged "Apollo Psi" led to the name
Evan Harris Walker in the post Dirac and Geometry of
Dec. 14, 2015. That post mentions …
"… Evan Harris Walker’s ingenious theory of
the psi force, a theory that assigned psi
both positive and negative values in such a way
that the mere presence of a skeptic in the near
vicinity of a sensitive psychic investigation could
force null results. Neat, Dr. Walker, thought
Peter Slater— neat, and totally without content."
— From the 1983 novel Broken Symmetries
by Paul Preuss
It turns out that Walker died "on the evening of August 17, 2006."
From this journal on that date —
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Delos Incorporated* Sunday School
Friday, March 3, 2017
PSI
(Notes for Josefine, continued from December 22, 2013)
From a prequel to The Shining , by Stephen King—
You had to keep an eye on the boiler
because if you didn’t, she would creep on you.
What did that mean, anyway? Or was it just
one of those nonsensical things that sometimes
came to you in dreams, so much gibberish?
Of course there was undoubtedly a boiler
in the basement or somewhere to heat the place,
even summer resorts had to have heat sometimes,
didn’t they (if only to supply hot water)? But creep ?
Would a boiler creep ?
You had to keep an eye on the boiler.
It was like one of those crazy riddles,
why is a mouse when it runs,
when is a raven like a writing desk,
what is a creeping boiler?
A related figure —
Adventure
The New York Times on Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012 —
This journal on the previous afternoon —
For greater artistic depth, see Tetrads in this journal.
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Easy E for Cullinan*
See the "symbol of Apollo" in the previous post
as well as posts tagged on050730, and
Conrad H. Roth on "The E at Delphi."
* The now-famous Oscars accountant
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Sermon
"I don't care about what anything was designed to do,
I care about what it can do."
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Class of 64
The previous post dealt with one of the 64 symbols
(in a redesigned format) of the ancient Chinese classic
The I Ching .
For those who prefer to be guided by programmed
responses to alphabetical symbols …
A lyric by Ira Gershwin —
A cinematic "T" —
See also "T for Texas" in this journal and
George Clooney's recent attempt to commercialize
both the space program and the letter Omega:
From a post of May 13, 2015 —
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
There the Dance Is
In memory of ballet designer
Yolanda Sonnabend, who
reportedly died at 80 on Nov. 9,
see posts on Apollo, Ballet Blanc,
maps of New Haven, etc., etc., etc.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
It’s 10 PM
Do you know where your watch is?
From a post of May 13, 2015 —
From the recent film "Interstellar" —
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Motto
See the previous post, "Space," as well as…
SymOmega in this journal and a suggested motto
for The University of Western Australia.
Space
Notes on space for day 13 of May, 2015 —
The 13 symmetry axes of the cube may be viewed as
the 13 points of the Galois projective space PG(2,3).
This space (a plane) may also be viewed as the nine points
of the Galois affine space AG(2,3) plus the four points on
an added "line at infinity."
Related poetic material:
The ninefold square and Apollo, as well as …
Thursday, October 9, 2014
October Nine: Lyche at Bodø
Click to enlarge.
See also Apollo in this journal.
“Nine is a very powerful Nordic number.”
— Katherine Neville, who deserves some sort of prize for literature.
— Heidegger, “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry,”
translated by Douglas Scott, in Existence and Being ,
Regnery, 1949
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
A Dark and Stormy Night
This journal on the morning of January 27, 2010,
the day of J. D. Salinger’s death, had a post on
Nietzsche and Heraclitus titled “To Apollo.”
Related material:
“… the wind was noisy the way it is in spooky movies
on the night the old slob with the will gets murdered.”
— From the opening sentence of the first Holden Caulfield
story, published in the Collier’s of December 22, 1945
See also Peter Matthiessen on Zen, Salinger and Vedanta,
and Heraclitus in this journal. Some background—
A quotation from Nietzsche…
(Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden (KSA).
Herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari.
Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980):
“Nietzsche wrote:
‘Seeing the world as a divine game and beyond good and evil:
in this both the Vedanta and Heraclitus are my predecessors.'”
— KSA vol. 11, page 26, as quoted by André van der Braak
in a chapter from his 2011 book Nietzsche and Zen
(Darin, dass die Welt ein göttliches Spiel sei
und jenseits von Gut und Böse —
habe ich die Vedanta-Philosophie
und Heraklit zum Vorgänger.)
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Angel in the Wings
Or: Corrections
Factually Incorrect:
Ed Koch in the Las Vegas Sun , May 26, 2014:
“In addition to Pearl, Bob’s other cousin, Bill Bailey,
was a song and dance man who was the inspiration
for the hit song ‘Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home.’
In fact, when William Bailey went into show business,
he took the nickname ‘Bob’ to avoid any confusion
with his older, more established cousin Bill.”
(Links added for greater depth.)
Politically Incorrect:
Correction:
Sunday, May 11, 2014
For the Perplexed
From a New York Times obituary by Bruce Weber tonight—
Charles Marowitz, Director and Playwright, Dies at 82
“There are two kinds of bafflement in the theater: the kind that fascinates as it perplexes, and the kind that just perplexes,” he wrote in The Times in 1969 in an essay about Mr. Shepard’s play “La Turista,” which had recently opened in London. “If a play doesn’t make quick sense, but enters into some kind of dialogue with our subconscious, we tend to admit it to that lounge where we entertain interesting-albeit-unfamiliar strangers.
“If it only baffles, there are several courses open to us: we can assume it is ‘above our heads’ or directed ‘to some other kind of person,’ or regretfully conclude that it confuses us because it is itself confused. However, the fear of being proved wrong is so great today that almost every new work which isn’t patently drivel gets the benefit of the doubt.”
Another play by Sam Shepard mentioned in the obituary suggests a review of…
- “From the Witch Ball,” a post from May 2,
the reported date of Marowitz’s death - “Two Satanic Majesties Request All-Devouring Fame,”
a NY Times review from October 9, 2006 - This journal on that date— October 9, 2006—
“Art Wars: To Apollo.”
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Field of Reason*
Or perhaps the Richman.
Roger Richman, agent who represented image rights for the
estates of celebrities, reportedly died on October 9, 2013.
This journal on that date —
* For the title, see Apollo + Outram in this journal.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
According to Hoyle
Monday, August 26, 2013
Dark Side Tales
"Got to keep the loonies on the path."
— Lyrics to Dark Side of the Moon
For those who, like Tom Stoppard, prefer the dark side—
NEW ANGLE:
INT. OFFICE BUILDING – NIGHT
NIGHT WATCHMAN
Bateman wheels around and shoots him.
NEW ANGLE:
INT. PIERCE & PIERCE LOBBY – NIGHT
— AMERICAN PSYCHO |
Not quite so dark—
"And then one day you find ten years have got behind you."
— Lyrics to Dark Side of the Moon
This journal ten years ago, on August 25, 2003—
… We seek
The poem of pure reality, untouched
At the exactest point at which it is itself,
The eye made clear of uncertainty, with the sight
Everything, the spirit's alchemicana
The solid, but the movable, the moment,
— Wallace Stevens, "An Ordinary Evening |
"A view of New Haven, say…." —
"This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason…."
John Outram, architect
A similar version of this Apollonian image —
Detail:
Related material for the loonies:
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Lyric Intelligence
Тут Аполлон — идеал, там Ниобея — печаль….
The source: The link from St. Lucia's Day to "Congregated Light,"
and the link from there to the Pushkin verse.
See also St. Lucia's Day ten years ago in posts tagged Meadow-down.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Quine’s Dagger
This post was suggested by other weblogs'
posts on Owen Barfield* quoted here recently, by
the Apollo Guidance Computer (see below and
MIT Technology Review), and by James Joyce:
"Unsheathe your dagger definitions." — Ulysses
* See The Appearances (Sept. 20, 2009), for
a correction of Quine by Barfield.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Art Wars (continued)
Today's previous post, "For Odin's Day," discussed
a mathematical object, the tesseract, from a strictly
narrative point of view.
In honor of George Balanchine, Odin might yield the
floor this evening to Apollo.
From a piece in today's online New York Times titled
"How a God Finds Art (the Abridged Version)"—
"… the newness at the heart of this story,
in which art is happening for the first time…."
Some related art—
and, more recently—
This more recent figure is from Ian Stewart's 1996 revision
of a 1941 classic, What Is Mathematics? , by Richard Courant
and Herbert Robbins.
Apollo might discuss with Socrates how the confused slave boy
of Plato's Meno would react to Stewart's remark that
"The number of copies required to double an
object's size depends on its dimension."
Apollo might also note an application of Socrates' Meno diagram
to the tesseract of this afternoon's Odin post—
Sunday, April 1, 2012
The Palpatine Dimension
A physics quote relayed at Peter Woit's weblog today—
"The relation between 4D N=4 SYM and the 6D (2, 0) theory
is just like that between Darth Vader and the Emperor.
You see Darth Vader and you think 'Isn’t he just great?
How can anyone be greater than that? No way.'
Then you meet the Emperor."
Some related material from this weblog—
(See Big Apple and Columbia Film Theory)
The Meno Embedding:
Some related material from the Web—
See also uses of the word triality in mathematics. For instance…
A discussion of triality by Edward Witten—
Triality is in some sense the last of the exceptional isomorphisms,
and the role of triality for n = 6 thus makes it plausible that n = 6
is the maximum dimension for superconformal symmetry,
though I will not give a proof here.
— "Conformal Field Theory in Four and Six Dimensions"
and a discussion by Peter J. Cameron—
There are exactly two non-isomorphic ways
to partition the 4-subsets of a 9-set
into nine copies of AG(3,2).
Both admit 2-transitive groups.
— "The Klein Quadric and Triality"
Exercise: Is Witten's triality related to Cameron's?
(For some historical background, see the triality link from above
and Cameron's Klein Correspondence and Triality.)
Cameron applies his triality to the pure geometry of a 9-set.
For a 9-set viewed in the context of physics, see A Beginning—
From MIT Commencement Day, 2011— A symbol related to Apollo, to nine, and to "nothing"— A minimalist favicon—
This miniature 3×3 square— — may, if one likes, |
Happy April 1.
Monday, March 5, 2012
For the Nine Muses
From "The Talented," a post of April 26, 2011—
And for Josefine Lyche—
Unity in Multiplicity —
Pink in Wikipedia
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
High White Noon
Grid from a post linked to in yesterday's 24 Hour DeLillo—
For an example of this grid as slow art , consider the following—
"One can show that the binary tetrahedral group
is isomorphic to the special linear group SL(2,3)—
the group of all 2×2 matrices over the finite field F3
with unit determinant." —Wikipedia
As John Baez has noted, these two groups have the same structure as the geometric 24-cell.
For the connection of the grid to the groups and the 24-cell, see Visualizing GL(2,p).
Related material—
The 3×3 grid has been called a symbol of Apollo (Greek god of reason and of the sun).
"This is where we sat through his hushed hour,
a torchlit sky, the closeness of hills barely visible
at high white noon." — Don DeLillo, Point Omega
Friday, September 9, 2011
A Beginning
From MIT Commencement Day, 2011— A symbol related to Apollo, to nine, and to "nothing"— A minimalist favicon—
This miniature 3×3 square— — may, if one likes, |
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Midnight in the Garden (continued)–
Tracking Shot
Related material—
See also this journal's September 2009 posts.
This post was suggested by today's previous post and by today's NY Lottery.
For some background to the ioncinema.com post numbered 4210 above,
see, in conjunction with the page headed "Azazel" linked to here earlier today,
the ioncinema.com post numbered 5601.
“Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, Translation by A.T. Murray, in two volumes. Quoted in a press release for the film "Two Gates of Sleep." |
From the post numbered 460 in this journal—
At the still point… from the film "Absolute Power" :
Photo credit – Graham Kuhn
I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly plutonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
CMT Awards Night
A meditation, while watching the Country Music Television
CMT Awards, on today's evening NY lottery number 469.
For Reese Witherspoon* and Dionysus, not Apollo—
A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Edifice
— Page 469 of Wallace Stevens's Collected Poems
See also page 469 of Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics 1995 paperback)—
* Not the Witherspoon Church of this evening's 6 PM entry.
Reese won Sunday's 2011 MTV Movie Awards' Generation Award .
Both the MTV Movie Awards and the CMT Awards are productions
of MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom Inc. For some background,
see Sumner Redstone (formerly Rothstein).
A Look Back
Friday, June 3, 2011
MIT Day
Today is Commencement Day at MIT.
“To measure the changes — Shing-Tung Yau, To measure the changes: The smartest are nothing: |
Well, perhaps not quite nothing.
The above pictures were posted here on the day the following book was published—
The lives of the nine Jews in the above book amount to more than Yau's "nothing."
Note, however, that claims by Jews (see Jill Abramson yesterday)
that their secular publications constitute a substitute for religion
and contain only "absolute truth" should be viewed with at least one
raised eyebrow.
Abramson's remark yesterday that her promotion to New York Times executive editor
was like "ascending to Valhalla" had a religious flavor worthy of yesterday's
Feast of the Ascension.
In related news from yesterday's Times—
See also a symbol related to Apollo, to nine, and to "nothing"—
A minimalist 3×3 matrix favicon—
This may, if one likes, be viewed as the "nothing"
present at the Creation. See Jim Holt on physics.
Monday, May 2, 2011
The Vine*
See "Nine is a Vine" and "Hereafter" in this journal.
As quoted here last October 23—
Margaret Atwood on Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art—
"Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159)
What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld….
The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning "to join," "to fit," and "to make." (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Meadow
From Nabokov's The Gift —
Click for more about the Pushkin verse.
See also Trevanian + meadow and Congregated Light.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Unity and Multiplicity
Today's earlier post mentions one approach to the concepts of unity and multiplicity. Here is another.
Unity:
The 3×3×3 Galois Cube
Multiplicity:
One of a group, GL(3,3), of 11,232
natural transformations of the 3×3×3 Cube
See also the earlier 1985 3×3 version by Cullinane.
The Talented
"It's going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things."
— Anne McCaffrey, Radcliffe ’47, To Ride Pegasus
"Character, as we have stated, is revealed through action.
We are not yet telepathic; we must embody even the most intellectual traits
and express them physically."
— The Craftsmen of Dionysus: An Approach to Acting by Jerome Rockwood
Dionysus Meets Apollo
in "Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould"—
Step I — Tiny Dancer in My Hand (0.48.46)
Step II — The Bridge (0.52.46)
Step III — Liftoff (1.27.37)
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Kristen Effect
From the author of The Abacus Conundrum—
Harlan Kane's sequel to The Apollo Meme—
THE KRISTEN EFFECT
"Thus the universal mutual attraction between the sexes is represented."
— Hexagram 31
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Sunday School
Apollo and the Tricksters
From The Story of N (Oct. 15, 2010)—
Roberta Smith on what she calls "endgame art"—
"Fear of form above all means fear of compression— of an artistic focus that condenses experiences, ideas and feelings into something whole, committed and visually comprehensible."
Margaret Atwood on tricksters and art—
"If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo."
Here is some related material In memory of CIA officer Clare Edward Petty, who died at 90 on March 18—
A review of a sort of storyteller's MacGuffin — the 3×3 grid. This is, in Smith's terms, an "artistic focus" that appears to be visually comprehensible but is not as simple as it seems.
- The Pope in Plato's Cave (Sept. 16, 2006)
- A search for "einsatz" in this journal
- True Grid (Jan. 8, 2011)
- The Hesse configuration revisited (a post initially from the date of Petty's death, but later much reworked)
The Hesse configuration can serve as more than a sort of Dan Brown MacGuffin. As a post of January 14th notes, it can (rather fancifullly) illustrate the soul—
" … I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight…."
— Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Frames
"I just seemed to have more frames per second than other kids."
— Mary Karr, "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer"
See also "Signs and Symbols."
Saturday, January 8, 2011
True Grid (continued)
"Rosetta Stone" as a Metaphor
in Mathematical Narratives
For some backgound, see Mathematics and Narrative from 2005.
Yesterday's posts on mathematics and narrative discussed some properties
of the 3×3 grid (also known as the ninefold square ).
For some other properties, see (at the college-undergraduate, or MAA, level)–
Ezra Brown, 2001, "Magic Squares, Finite Planes, and Points of Inflection on Elliptic Curves."
His conclusion:
When you are done, you will be able to arrange the points into [a] 3×3 magic square,
which resembles the one in the book [5] I was reading on elliptic curves….
This result ties together threads from finite geometry, recreational mathematics,
combinatorics, calculus, algebra, and number theory. Quite a feat!
5. Viktor Prasolov and Yuri Solvyev, Elliptic Functions and Elliptic Integrals ,
American Mathematical Society, 1997.
Brown fails to give an important clue to the historical background of this topic —
the word Hessian . (See, however, this word in the book on elliptic functions that he cites.)
Investigation of this word yields a related essay at the graduate-student, or AMS, level–
Igor Dolgachev and Michela Artebani, 2009, "The Hesse Pencil of Plane Cubic Curves ."
From the Dolgachev-Artebani introduction–
In this paper we discuss some old and new results about the widely known Hesse
configuration of 9 points and 12 lines in the projective plane P2(k ): each point lies
on 4 lines and each line contains 3 points, giving an abstract configuration (123, 94).
PlanetMath.org on the Hesse configuration—
A picture of the Hesse configuration–
(See Visualizing GL(2,p), a note from 1985).
Related notes from this journal —
From last November —
From the December 2010 American Mathematical Society Notices—
Related material from this journal— Consolation Prize (August 19, 2010) |
From 2006 —
Sunday December 10, 2006
“Function defined form, expressed in a pure geometry
– J. G. Ballard on Modernism
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance –
— Daniel J. Boorstin, |
Also from 2006 —
Sunday November 26, 2006
Rosalind Krauss "If we open any tract– Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non-Objective World , for instance– we will find that 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, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete. Or, to take a more up-to-date example…."
"He was looking at the nine engravings and at the circle,
"And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
The nine engravings of The Club Dumas
An example of the universal*– or, according to Krauss,
"This is the garden of Apollo, the field of Reason…."
For more on the field of reason, see
A reasonable set of "strange correspondences" Unreason is, of course, more popular. * The ninefold square is perhaps a "concrete universal" in the sense of Hegel: "Two determinations found in all philosophy are the concretion of the Idea and the presence of the spirit in the same; my content must at the same time be something concrete, present. This concrete was termed Reason, and for it the more noble of those men contended with the greatest enthusiasm and warmth. Thought was raised like a standard among the nations, liberty of conviction and of conscience in me. They said to mankind, 'In this sign thou shalt conquer,' for they had before their eyes what had been done in the name of the cross alone, what had been made a matter of faith and law and religion– they saw how the sign of the cross had been degraded."
– Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy ,
"For every kind of vampire, |
And from last October —
Friday, October 8, 2010
Starting Out in the Evening This post was suggested by last evening's post on mathematics and narrative and by Michiko Kakutani on Vargas Llosa in this morning's New York Times .
"One must proceed cautiously, for this road— of truth and falsehood in the realm of fiction— is riddled with traps and any enticing oasis is usually a mirage."
– "Is Fiction the Art of Lying?"* by Mario Vargas Llosa,
* The Web version's title has a misprint— |
Monday, December 13, 2010
Plan 9 Revisited
Leading today's New York Times obituaries —
— is that of Nassos Daphnis, a painter of geometric abstractions
who in 1995 had an exhibition at a Leo Castelli gallery
titled "Energies in Outer Space." (See pictures here.)
Daphnis died, according to the Times, on November 23.
See Art Object, a post in this journal on that date—
There is more than one way
to look at a cube.
Some context— this morning's previous post (Apollo's 13,
on the geometry of the 3×3×3 cube), yesterday's noon post
featuring the 3×3 square grid (said to be a symbol of Apollo),
and, for connoisseurs of the Ed Wood school of cinematic art,
a search in this journal for the phrase "Plan 9."
You can't make this stuff up.
Mathematics and Narrative continued…
Apollo's 13: A Group Theory Narrative —
I. At Wikipedia —
II. Here —
See Cube Spaces and Cubist Geometries.
The 13 symmetry axes of the (Euclidean) cube–
exactly one axis for each pair of opposite
subcubes in the 27-part (Galois) 3×3×3 cube–
A note from 1985 describing group actions on a 3×3 plane array—
Undated software by Ed Pegg Jr. displays
group actions on a 3×3×3 cube that extend the
3×3 group actions from 1985 described above—
Pegg gives no reference to the 1985 work on group actions.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Brightness at Noon continued…
A picture one might view as
related to the novel An Object of Beauty
and the film "The Object of Beauty" —
"If it's a seamless whole you want,
pray to Apollo." — Margaret Atwood
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Paranormal Jackass
The follow-up to last year's runaway horror hit, "Paranormal Activity 2," kicked off its first weekend in theaters with a major haul. The creepy tale… pulled in $20.1 million on Friday.
Trailing behind "Paranormal" is last week's box-office busting debut "Jackass 3D. " The prank-fest, which landed about $50 million its first weekend in theaters, slipped to the second-place slot….
…
The Clint Eastwood-helmed ensemble drama "Hereafter" landed in fourth place. Exploring the lives of three people who are dealing with death and the afterlife in several ways, including the story of a psychic played by Matt Damon, the screen legend's latest turn in the director's chair made approximately $4.1 million on Friday.
Related material—
Margaret Atwood on Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art—
"Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159)
What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld….
The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning "to join," "to fit," and "to make." (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart.
George P. Hansen on Martin Gardner and the paranormal.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Mandelbrot Numbers
Benoît Mandelbrot died on Oct. 14.
— New York Lottery on Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010
Related material on 109: See 1/09, 2009.
Related material on 060: See Hexagram 60 of the I Ching and…
Margaret Atwood on Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art—
"Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159)
What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld….
The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning "to join," "to fit," and "to make." (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Mathematics and Narrative, continued
The Story of N
Roberta Smith in the New York Times of July 7, 2006—
Art Review
Endgame Art? It's Borrow, Sample and Multiply in an Exhibition at Bard College
"… The show has an endgame, end-time mood, as if we are looking at the end of the end of the end of Pop, hyperrealism and appropriation art. The techniques of replication and copying have become so meticulous that they are beside the point. This is truly magic realism: the kind you can't see, that has to be explained. It is also a time when artists cultivate hybridism and multiplicity and disdain stylistic coherence, in keeping with the fashionable interest in collectivity, lack of ego, the fluidity of individual identity. But too often these avoidance tactics eliminate the thread of a personal sensibility or focus.
I would call all these strategies fear of form, which can be parsed as fear of materials, of working with the hands in an overt way and of originality. Most of all originality. Can we just say it? This far from Andy Warhol and Duchamp, the dismissal of originality is perhaps the oldest ploy in the postmodern playbook. To call yourself an artist at all is by definition to announce a faith, however unacknowledged, in some form of originality, first for yourself, second, perhaps, for the rest of us.
Fear of form above all means fear of compression— of an artistic focus that condenses experiences, ideas and feelings into something whole, committed and visually comprehensible. With a few exceptions, forms of collage and assemblage dominate this show: the putting together (or simply putting side by side) of existing images and objects prevails. The consistency of this technique in two and three dimensions should have been a red flag for the curators. Collage has driven much art since the late 1970's. Lately, and especially in this exhibition, it often seems to have become so distended and pulled apart that its components have become virtually autonomous and unrelated, which brings us back to square one. This is most obvious in the large installations of graphic works whose individual parts gain impact and meaning from juxtaposition but are in fact considered distinct artworks."
Margaret Atwood on art and the trickster—
"The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie— this line of thought leads Hyde* to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning 'to join,' 'to fit,' and 'to make.' If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart."
* Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art, Farrar Straus & Giroux, January 1998
Smith mentions "an artistic focus that condenses experiences, ideas and feelings into something whole, committed and visually comprehensible."
Atwood mentions "a seamless whole."
For some related remarks, see "A Study in Art Education" and the central figure pictured above. (There "N" can stand for "number," "nine," or "narrative.")
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Consolation Prize
For Kathrin Bringmann, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for a Fields Medal.
The four Fields medal winners were announced today at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, India. Bringmann was not among them.
Bringmann was, however, the winner of the 2009 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize—
See The Hindu of September 30, 2009 and this journal on that date—
For more about Bringmann's work, see an article on what has been called Ramanujan's "final problem."
For another problem with a claim to this title, see "Mathematician Untangles Legendary Problem" and search in this journal for Dyson + crank.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
A Problem
From Telegraph.co.uk (published: 5:56 PM BST 10 Aug 2010), a note on British-born Canadian journalist Bruce Garvey, who died at 70 on August 1—
In 1970, while reporting on the Apollo 13 mission at Nasa Mission Control for the Toronto Star, he was one of only two journalists— alongside Richard Killian of the Daily Express— to hear the famous message: "Houston we've had a problem."
See also Log24 posts of 10 AM and noon today.
The latter post poses the problem "You're dead. Now what?"
Again, as in this morning's post, applying Jungian synchronicity—
A check of this journal on the date of Garvey's death yields a link to 4/28's "Eightfold Geometry."
That post deals with a piece of rather esoteric mathematical folklore. Those who prefer easier problems may follow the ongoing struggles of Julie Taymor with "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark."
The problems of death, geometry, and Taymor meet in "Spider Woman" (April 29) and "Memorial for Galois" (May 31).
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Today’s Sermon
New York Lottery on Saturday, July 17, 2010—
Midday 049, Evening 613.
Related material:
Hexagram 49 and 6/13.
A quotation from this journal on 6/13—
"Christianity offers the critic a privileged ontological window…."
— Aaron Urbanczyk's 2005 review of Christ and Apollo
by William Lynch, S.J., a book first published in 1960
Picture from today's New York Times (page ST1 in New York edition)—
Monday, June 28, 2010
Byrd Song
Robert Byrd, longest-serving member of Congress, dead at 92
CNN – 7 minutes ago at Google News
the self-educated son of a coal miner who became
the longest-serving member of Congress …
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sunday School
“What on earth is a 'concrete universal'?"
— Said to be an annotation (undated)
by Robert M. Pirsig of A History of Philosophy,
by Frederick Copleston, Society of Jesus.
From Aaron Urbanczyk's 2005 review of Christ and Apollo by William Lynch, S.J., a book first published in 1960—
"Lynch's use of analogy vis-a-vis literature provides, in a sense, a philosophical basis to the theoretical paradox popularized by W. K. Wimsatt (1907-1975), which contends that literature is a sort of 'concrete universal.'"
The following figure has often been
offered in this journal as a symbol of Apollo—
Arguments that it is, rather, a symbol of Christ
may be left to the Society of Jesus.
One possible approach—
Urbanczyk's review says that
"Christianity offers the critic
a privileged ontological window…."
"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."
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Trickster
Margaret Atwood (pdf) on Lewis Hyde’s
Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art –
“Trickster,” says Hyde, “feels no anxiety when he deceives…. He… can tell his lies with creative abandon, charm, playfulness, and by that affirm the pleasures of fabulation.” (71) As Hyde says, “… almost everything that can be said about psychopaths can also be said about tricksters,” (158), although the reverse is not the case. “Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists.” (159)
What is “the next world”? It might be the Underworld….
The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning to join, to fit, and to make. (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart.
See also George P. Hansen on Martin Gardner, Trickster.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
For Miss Prothero (and Dylan Thomas)
Friday’s post “Religion at Harvard” continues…
This list may be of some use to
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, who, like Prothero,
spoke recently at Harvard Book Store.
See also Rosalind Krauss on Grids,
An Education, and Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Readers more advanced than Harvard audiences
may wish to compare yesterday’s linked-to story
“Loo Ree” with the works of Alison Lurie—
in particular, Imaginary Friends and Familiar Spirits.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Veritas
Some historians consider today's date, April 7, to be the date of the Crucifixion in the Roman calendar (a solar calendar, as opposed to the Jewish lunar scheme).
Since the ninefold square has been called both a symbol of Apollo and the matrix of a cross, it will serve as an icon for today–
Adapted from
Ad Reinhardt
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Space Cowboy
From yesterday's Seattle Times—
According to police, employees of a Second Avenue mission said the suspect, clad in black and covered in duct tape, had come into the mission "and threatened to blow the place up." He then told staffers "that he was a vampire and wanted to eat people."
The man… also called himself "a space cowboy"….
This suggests two film titles…
and Apollo's 13—
The 13 symmetry axes of the (Euclidean) cube–
exactly one axis for each pair of opposite
subcubes in the (Galois) 3×3×3 cube–
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday September 30, 2009
Midnight in the Garden, Autumn 2009
Review:
|
From this journal on the following day, Sept. 21:
Happy birthday, Stephen King.
Today's previous entry is based on a song, "Unthought Known,"
from the above album; the cover of the album uses the 3×3 grid
shown in Sept. 20's midnight review. For related material
on the unconscious, see June 13-15, 2005.
I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at mortal wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Thursday February 19, 2009
A Sunrise
for Sunrise
“If we open any tract– Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non-Objective World, for instance– we will find that 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, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete.”
Yesterday’s entry featured a rather simple-minded example from Krauss of how the ninefold square (said to be a symbol of Apollo)
may be used to create a graphic design– a Greek cross, which appears also in crossword puzzles:
Illustration by
Paul Rand
(born Peretz Rosenbaum)
A more sophisticated example
of the ninefold square
in graphic design:
“That old Jew
gave me this here.”
— A Flag for Sunrise
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Wednesday January 21, 2009
“… while some are elected,
others not elect are
passed by….”
— A commentary on the
Calvinist doctrine of preterition
Gravity’s Rainbow, Penguin Classics, 1995, page 742:
“… knowing his Tarot, we would expect to look among the Humility, among the gray and preterite souls, to look for him adrift in the hostile light of the sky, the darkness of the sea…. Now there’s only a long cat’s-eye of bleak sunset left over the plain tonight, bright gray against a purple ceiling of clouds, with an iris of 742″ |
“God is the original
conspiracy theory.”
“We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.”
— President Obama yesterday
It is not entirely clear what these “childish things” are. Perhaps the young nation’s “childish things” that the new President refers to are part of what Robert Stone memorably called “our secret culture.” Stone was referring to Puritanism, which some advocates of the new religion of Scientism might call “childish.” I do not. Lunatic, perhaps, but not childish.
Related meditations:
A year ago yesterday, on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2008, the mid-day lottery for New York State was 605.
A midrash in the Judeo-Christian tradition of paranoia a year ago today suggested that 605 might be a veiled reference to “God, the Devil, and a Bridge,” a weblog entry on mathematician André Weil.
Continuing in this vein a year later, we are confronted with the mid-day New York lottery for yesterday:
Taking a hint from another
entry on Weil, this may be
regarded as a reference to
The Oxford Book of
English Verse (1919 edition):
Selection 742 in that book
comports well with this
jounal’s recent meditations
on death and Brooklyn:
“Let me glide noiselessly forth; | |
With the key of softness unlock the locks….” — Walt Whitman |
Applying this method of
exegesis to last year’s
lottery, we have
“And all that did then attend and follow, |
|
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, |
|
With envy of my sweet pipings.” |
— Pan: God of Shepherds, Flocks, and Fornication
Hymn 605 thus supplies a reference to the devil mentioned by Weil in the entry of 6/05.
“… thus far, I have not heard any priests of Apollo, nor of any other God, issuing any auguries.”
Neither have I, but hearing is only one of the senses.
“Heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard
Are sweeter.”— John Keats
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Wednesday December 10, 2008
ho anax, hou to manteion esti
to en Delphois, oute legei oute
kruptei, alla sêmainei
— Heraclitus, DK 22 B 93,
Kahn XXXIII:
“The lord whose oracle is
at Delphi neither reveals nor
conceals, but gives a sign.“
A sign, perhaps of the sort
given by Apollo’s oracle:
Click on the sign for further details.
Related material:
… as well as
today’s previous entry —
“Symbol,” discussing Apollo
and a web page
by Nick Wedd —
and Wedd’s home page,
which states that
“I have now found a
source of Polish sandals.”
Wednesday December 10, 2008
“If it’s a seamless whole you want,
pray to Apollo, who sets the limits
within which such a work can exist.”
— Margaret Atwood,
quoted here on
November 17, 2008
Related material:
A web page by
Nick Wedd at Oxford
with a neater version
of pictures I drew on
March 26, 1985
(Recall that Apollo is the god
of, among other things, reason.)
Monday, November 17, 2008
Monday November 17, 2008
From the previous entry:
“If it’s a seamless whole you want,
pray to Apollo, who sets the limits
within which such a work can exist.”
— Margaret Atwood,
author of Cat’s Eye
Happy birthday
to the late
Eugene Wigner
… and a belated
Merry Christmas
to Paul Newman:
— Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize Lecture, December 12, 1963
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sunday November 16, 2008
From the previous entry:
“If it’s a seamless whole you want,
pray to Apollo, who sets the limits
within which such a work can exist.”
— Margaret Atwood,
author of Cat’s Eye
“The power of the dark is ascending.
The light retreats to security, so that
the dark cannot encroach upon it.”
Related material:
Darkness Visible
Sunday November 16, 2008
Observations suggested by an article on author Lewis Hyde– "What is Art For?"– in today's New York Times Magazine:
Margaret Atwood (pdf) on Lewis Hyde's
Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art —
"Trickster," says Hyde, "feels no anxiety when he deceives…. He… can tell his lies with creative abandon, charm, playfulness, and by that affirm the pleasures of fabulation." (71) As Hyde says, "… almost everything that can be said about psychopaths can also be said about tricksters," (158), although the reverse is not the case. "Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159)
What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld….
The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning to join, to fit, and to make. (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart.
The Trickster
and the Paranormal
and
Martin Gardner on
a disappearing cube —
"What happened to that… cube?"
Apollinax laughed until his eyes teared. "I'll give you a hint, my dear. Perhaps it slid off into a higher dimension." "Are you pulling my leg?" "I wish I were," he sighed. "The fourth dimension, as you know, is an extension along a fourth coordinate perpendicular to the three coordinates of three-dimensional space. Now consider a cube. It has four main diagonals, each running from one corner through the cube's center to the opposite corner. Because of the cube's symmetry, each diagonal is clearly at right angles to the other three. So why shouldn't a cube, if it feels like it, slide along a fourth coordinate?" — "Mr. Apollinax Visits New York," by Martin Gardner, Scientific American, May 1961, reprinted in The Night is Large |
For such a cube, see
ashevillecreative.com
this illustration in
The Religion of Cubism
(and the four entries
preceding it —
Log24, May 9, 2003).
Beware of Gardner's
"clearly" and other lies.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Saturday November 8, 2008
AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM
MEAM ET PORTAE INFERI
NON PRAEVALEBUNT
ADVERSUS EAM
Benedict XVI, before he became Pope:
“… a purely harmonious concept of beauty is not enough…. Apollo, who for Plato’s Socrates was ‘the God’ and the guarantor of unruffled beauty as ‘the truly divine’ is absolutely no longer sufficient.”
“The lapis manalis (Latin: ‘stone of the Manes‘) was a name given to two sacred stones used in the Roman religion. One covered a gate to Hades, abode of the dead….
One such stone covered the mundus Cereris, a pit thought to contain an entrance to the underworld….
The… mundus was located in the Comitium, on the Palatine Hill. This stone was ceremonially opened three times a year, during which spirits of the blessed dead (the Manes) were able to commune with the living. The three days upon which the mundus was opened were August 24, October 5, and November 8. Fruits of the harvest were offered to the dead at this time.”
Log24 on
August 24,
October 5, and
November 8.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Sunday October 5, 2008
Last night's entry presented a
short story summarized by
four lottery numbers.
Today's mid-day lotteries
and associated material:
Pennsylvania, 201– i.e., 2/01:
Kindergarten Theology —
"In a game of chess, the knight's move is unique because it alone goes around corners. In this way, it combines the continuity of a set sequence with the discontinuity of an unpredictable turn in the middle. This meaningful combination of continuity and discontinuity in an otherwise linear set of possibilities has led some to refer to the creative act of discovery in any field of research as a 'knight's move' in intelligence."
I Have a Dreamtime —
"One must join forces with friends of like mind"
Related material:
"Schizophrenia is not a psychological disorder peculiar to human beings. Schizophrenia is not a disease at all but rather a localized traveling discontinuity of the space time matrix itself. It is like a travelling whirl-wind of radical understanding that haunts time. It haunts time in the same way that Alfred North Whitehead said that the color dove grey 'haunts time like a ghost.'"
"'Knight's move thinking' is a psychiatric term describing a thought disorder where in speech the usual logical sequence of ideas is lost, the sufferer jumping from one idea to another with no apparent connection. It is most commonly found in schizophrenia."
I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at mortal wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.
For more on the sleep of Apollo,
see the front page of today's
New York Times Book Review.
Garrison Keillor's piece there,
"Dying of the Light," is
about the fear of death felt
by an agnostic British twit.
For relevant remarks by
a British non-twit, see
William Dunbar–
Friday, September 19, 2008
Friday September 19, 2008
O dark dark dark
They all go into the dark
— Four Quartets
This morning’s NY Times obituaries:
(Click to enlarge.)
“I love those Bavarians…
so meticulous.”
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Saturday August 2, 2008
You Are, C. B.
(continued from
June 23, 2007)
Front page top center, online New York Times, 3:12 PM Saturday, August 2, 2008: Finlay MacKay for The New York Times
PLAY MAGAZINE
The Great Endorsement Scramble For gold-medal hopefuls like Nastia Liukin, there’s just one big chance to make it as a marketing darling. |
Possible titles
for the above photo:
The Eye of Apollo
or
The Hidden Sign.
See also the conclusion
of the Wallace Stevens
poem linked to in
the previous entry.
Saturday August 2, 2008
(continued from
June 15, 2007)
Today is the anniversary
of the 1955 death of poet
Wallace Stevens.
Related material:
an essay on the
relationships between
poets and philosophers —
“Bad Blood,” by
Leonard Michaels —
and
Monday, July 30, 2007
Monday July 30, 2007
Some fear that the Harry Potter books introduce children to the occult; they are not entirely mistaken.
According to Wikipedia, the “Deathly Hallows” of the final Harry Potter novel are “three fictional magical objects that appear in the book.”
The vertical line, circle, and triangle in the symbol pictured above are said to refer to these three magical objects.
One fan relates the “Deathly Hallows” symbol above, taken from the spine of a British children’s edition of the book, to a symbol for “the divine (or sacred, or secret) fire” of alchemy. She relates this fire in turn to “serpent power” and the number seven:
Kristin Devoe at a Potter fan site:
“We know that seven is a powerful number in the novels. Tom Riddle calls it ‘the most powerfully magic number.‘ The ability to balance the seven chakras within oneself allows the person to harness the secret fire. This secret fire in alchemy is the same as the kundalini or coiled snake in yogic philosophy. It is also known as ‘serpent power’ or the ‘dragon’ depending on the tradition. The kundalini is polar in nature and this energy, this internal fire, is very powerful for those who are able to harness it and it purifies the aspirant allowing them the knowledge of the universe. This secret fire is the Serpent Power which transmutes the base metals into the Perfect Gold of the Sun.
It is interesting that the symbol of the caduceus in alchemy is thought to have been taken from the symbol of the kundalini. Perched on the top of the caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, the messenger of the gods and revealer of alchemy, is the golden snitch itself! Many fans have compared this to the scene in The Order of the Phoenix where Harry tells Dumbledore about the attack on Mr. Weasley and says, ‘I was the snake, I saw it from the snake’s point of view.‘
The chapter continues with Dumbledore consulting ‘one of the fragile silver instruments whose function Harry had never known,’ tapping it with his wand:
The instrument tinkled into life at once with rhythmic clinking noises. Tiny puffs of pale green smoke issued from the minuscule silver tube at the top. Dumbledore watched the smoke closely, his brow furrowed, and after a few seconds, the tiny puffs became a steady stream of smoke that thickened and coiled into he air… A serpent’s head grew out of the end of it, opening its mouth wide. Harry wondered whether the instrument was confirming his story; He looked eagerly at Dumbledore for a sign that he was right, but Dumbledore did not look up.
“Naturally, Naturally,” muttered Dumbledore apparently to himself, still observing the stream of smoke without the slightest sign of surprise. “But in essence divided?”
Harry could make neither head not tail of this question. The smoke serpent, however split instantly into two snakes, both coiling and undulating in the dark air. With a look of grim satisfaction Dumbledore gave the instrument another gentle tap with his wand; The clinking noise slowed and died, and the smoke serpents grew faint, became a formless haze, and vanished.
Could these coiling serpents of smoke be foreshadowing events to come in Deathly Hallows where Harry learns to ‘awaken the serpent’ within himself? Could the snake’s splitting in two symbolize the dual nature of the kundalini?”
and the following
famous illustration of
the double-helix
structure of DNA:
This is taken from
a figure accompanying
an obituary, in today’s
New York Times, of the
artist who drew the figure.
The double helix
is not a structure
from magic; it may,
however, as the Rowling
quote above shows, have
certain occult uses,
better suited to
Don Henley’s
Garden of Allah
than to the
Garden of Apollo.
Similarly, the three objects
above (Log24 on April 9)
are from pure mathematics–
the realm of Apollo, not
of those in Henley’s song.
The similarity of the
top object of the three —
the “Fano plane” — to
the “Deathly Hallows”
symbol is probably
entirely coincidental.
Monday July 30, 2007
"And the serpent's eyes shine
As he wraps around the vine…"
"But not, perhaps,
in the Garden of Apollo":
— "Garden Party" —
Log24, April 9, 2007
Related material:
"When, on the last day of February 1953 Francis told her excitedly of the double helix discovery, she took no notice: 'He was always saying that kind of thing.' But when nine years later she heard the news of the Nobel Prize while out shopping, she immediately rushed to the fishmonger for ice to fill the bath and cool the champagne: a party was inevitable."
— Matt Ridley on Odile Crick (The Independent, July 20, 2007), who drew what "may be the most famous [scientific] drawing of the 20th century, in that it defines modern biology," according to Terrence J. Sejnowski, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla quoted by Adam Bernstein in The Washington Post, July 21, 2007
See also "Game Boy"
(Log24 on the Feast
of the Transfiguration–
August 6, 2006):
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Sunday May 13, 2007
Prime Blue
"To the two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we owe our recognition that… there is a tremendous opposition, as regards both origins and aims, between the Apolline art of the sculptor and the non-visual, Dionysiac art of music."
— The Birth of Tragedy,
by Friedrich Nietzsche,
Penguin, 1993, page 14.
Quoted in "A Mass for Lucero."
Half the Answer:
Commentary by spookytruth
from Log24, 2/22/2005:
"I mean, come on, Hunter, a stupid bullet through the head??? how creative, you brain-addled simpleton… if you take the assignment, if you are going to hook up your afterlife keyboard and transmit back and tell us about what it is REALLY like out there, if you decided to let your electric-shock fingers hot wire us the truth of the afterlife… if you really planned to tell us the answer to our ultimate, emotional question…… 'does God prefer beer, wine, or a shot of whiskey.' well, if that is what you decided to do well then, for God's sake, don't forget (oh, wait, yeah, you already DID FORGET, you half-baked, half brained, half witted, half-a-loaf, half pint pin head, you forgot, THE JOURNEY IS HALF THE ANSWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
On Dionysus:
"For wine, he loves to view
his altars stain,
But prime blue ruin*–
goes against the grain."
— page 69, Jack Randall's Diary
* name "given by
the modern Greeks to gin"
— page 4, Jack Randall's Diary
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Thursday May 10, 2007
The above scene from
The Best of Riverdance
furnishes an exercise in
what Victor Turner has called
“comparative symbology.”
The circular symbol at top
may be seen as representing
the solar deity Apollo,
Leader of the Muses.
The nine female dancers
may be seen as
the nine muses,
with Jean Butler
at the center
as Terpsichore,
Muse of Dance.
Related Material —
“This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason….”
John Outram, architect
For another look at
Terpsichore in action,
see Jean Butler at
CRC Irish Dance Camp.
For those who prefer
a different sort of camp
there is of course
Xanadu.
I prefer Butler.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Logic of Dreams
From A Beautiful Mind–
“How could you,” began Mackey, “how could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof…how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world? How could you…?”
Nash looked up at last and fixed Mackey with an unblinking stare as cool and dispassionate as that of any bird or snake. “Because,” Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, as if talking to himself, “the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.”
Ideas:
A link in the 7/11 entry leads to a remark of Noel Gray on Plato’s Meno and “graphic austerity as the tool to bring to the surface, literally and figuratively, the inherent presence of geometry in the mind of the slave.”
Also Friday: an example of graphic austerity– indeed, Gray graphic austerity– in Log24:
(Related material: the Harvard Gazette of April 6, 2006, “Mathematician George W. Mackey, 90: Obituary“– “A memorial service will be held at Harvard’s Memorial Church on April 29 at 2 p.m.“)
Friday’s Pennsylvania evening number 038 tells two other parts of the story involving Mackey…
As Mackey himself might hope, the number may be regarded as a reference to the 38 impressive pages of Varadarajan’s “Mackey Memorial Lecture” (pdf).
More in the spirit of Nash, 38 may also be taken as a reference to Harvard’s old postal address, Cambridge 38, and to the year, 1938, that Mackey entered graduate study at Harvard, having completed his undergraduate studies at what is now Rice University.
Returning to the concept of graphic austerity, we may further simplify the already abstract chessboard figure above to obtain an illustration that has been called both “the field of reason” and “the Garden of Apollo” by an architect, John Outram, discussing his work at Mackey’s undergraduate alma mater:
Let us hope that Mackey,
a devotee of reason,
is now enjoying the company
of Apollo rather than that of
Tom O’Bedlam:
For John Nash on his birthday:
I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at mortal wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Tuesday December 19, 2006
at the Apollo
Click on picture
for related symbolism.
“This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason….”
John Outram, architect
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon
In memory of Joseph Barbera–
co-creator ot the Flintstones–
who died yesterday, a photo
from today’s Washington Post:
Playing the role of
recording angel —
Halle Berry as
Rosetta Stone:
Related material:
“Citizen Stone“
and
“Putting the X in Xmas.”
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Sunday December 10, 2006
"Like all men of the Library,
I have traveled in my youth."
— Jorge Luis Borges,
The Library of Babel
"Papá me mandó un artículo
de J. G. Ballard en el que
se refiere a cómo el lugar
de la muerte es central en
nuestra cultura contemporánea."
— Sonya Walger,
interview dated September 14
(Feast of the Triumph of the Cross),
Anno Domini 2006
Sonya Walger,
said to have been
born on D-Day,
the sixth of June,
in 1974
Walger's father is, like Borges,
from Argentina.
She "studied English Literature
at Christ Church College, Oxford,
where she received
a First Class degree…. "
"… un artículo de J. G. Ballard…."–
A Handful of Dust, by J. G. Ballard
(The Guardian, March 20, 2006):
"… The Atlantic wall was only part of a huge system of German fortifications that included the Siegfried line, submarine pens and huge flak towers that threatened the surrounding land like lines of Teutonic knights. Almost all had survived the war and seemed to be waiting for the next one, left behind by a race of warrior scientists obsessed with geometry and death.
Death was what the Atlantic wall and Siegfried line were all about….
… modernism of the heroic period, from 1920 to 1939, is dead, and it died first in the blockhouses of Utah beach and the Siegfried line…
Modernism's attempt to build a better world with the aid of science and technology now seems almost heroic. Bertolt Brecht, no fan of modernism, remarked that the mud, blood and carnage of the first world war trenches left its survivors longing for a future that resembled a white-tiled bathroom. Architects were in the vanguard of the new movement, led by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus design school. The old models were thrown out. Function defined form, expressed in a pure geometry that the eye could easily grasp in its entirety."
"This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason…."
— John Outram, architect
(Click on picture for details.)
Related material:
Monday, December 4, 2006
Monday December 4, 2006
Related material:
All Hallows’ Eve,
2005:
as well as
C. S. Lewis,
That Hideous Strength,
Chapter 15,
“The Descent of the Gods,”
and
Charles Williams,
“The Carol of Amen House“:
Beauty arose of old
And dreamed of a perfect thing,
Where none shall be angry or cold
Or armed with an evil sting;
Where the world shall be made anew,
For the gods shall breathe its air,
And Phoebus Apollo there-through
Shall move on a golden stair.
(For the musical score, see
The Masques of Amen House.)
See also
A Mass for Lucero.