Continuing the Hall of Philosophy series…
Et in Arcadia ego and
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Candlemas Requiem
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Friday, February 2, 2024
The Code
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From the film Hurlyburly — I'm hungry. You want a Jack-in-the-Box? I love Jack-in-the-Box. Is that code for something? What? What? Is what code for what? I don't know. I don't know the goddamn code! |
Today is known to some as "Candlemas."
A Log24 search for that term yields, as its final result,
a post from Candlemas 2003 that may or may not
be relevant to the above dialogue.
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Saturday, December 31, 2022
Dies Natalis: The Frame
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Tuesday, February 22, 2022
The Feuerstein Gambit
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Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Nexus
Midrash
The adding machine, a reference to William S. Burroughs,
links to a web page based on a 1938 passage by John O’Hara.
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Saturday, January 4, 2014
Learning Guide
"The festival opened with The Great Gatsby ,
directed by Baz Luhrmann."
Midrash on an earlier film version (Mira Sorvino's, 2000):
"Daisy, when she comes to tea at Nick's house,
refers to the flowers brought by Gatsby as being
appropriate for a funeral and asks 'Where's the corpse?'
Gatsby enters immediately thereafter. This foreshadows
what will happen to Gatsby. The dialogue is not in the novel…."
— Learning Guide to The Great Gatsby
Correction to the midrash:
Sorvino actually says, when there is a knock at the door,
"That must be the corpse."
Update of Candlemas, 2014, in memory of Philip Seymour Hoffman—
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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Logo
"The universe, then, is less intimation
than cipher: a mask rather than a revelation
in the romantic sense. Does love meet with love?
Do we receive but what we give? The answer is
surely a paradox, the paradox that there are
Platonic universals beyond, but that the glass
is too dark to see them. Is there a light beyond
the glass, or is it a mirror only to the self?
The Platonic cave is even darker than Plato
made it, for it introduces the echo, and so
leaves us back in the world of men, which does
not carry total meaning, is just a story of events."
than cipher: a mask rather than a revelation
in the romantic sense. Does love meet with love?
Do we receive but what we give? The answer is
surely a paradox, the paradox that there are
Platonic universals beyond, but that the glass
is too dark to see them. Is there a light beyond
the glass, or is it a mirror only to the self?
The Platonic cave is even darker than Plato
made it, for it introduces the echo, and so
leaves us back in the world of men, which does
not carry total meaning, is just a story of events."
– Betty Jay, reader's guide to A Passage to India
Judy Davis in the Marabar Caves
The above image is from this journal on Sunday, April 13, 2008.
The preceding cover of a book by Northrop Frye was suggested
by material in this journal from February 2003.
See also Yankee Puzzle and Doodle Dandy.
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Saturday, February 6, 2010
Conceptual Art
The Plane of Time
From tomorrow's NY Times Book Review, Geoff Dyer's review of DeLillo's new novel Point Omega is now online—
"The book begins and ends with Douglas Gordon’s film project '24 Hour Psycho' (installed at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan in 2006), in which the 109-minute Hitchcock original is slowed so that it takes a full day and night to twitch by. DeLillo conveys with haunting lucidity the uncanny beauty of 'the actor’s eyes in slow transit across his bony sockets,' 'Janet Leigh in the detailed process of not knowing what is about to happen to her.' Of course, DeLillo being DeLillo, it’s the deeper implications of the piece— what it reveals about the nature of film, perception and time— that detain him. As an unidentified spectator, DeLillo is mesmerized by the 'radically altered plane of time': 'The less there was to see, the harder he looked, the more he saw.'
This prologue and epilogue make up a phenomenological essay on one of the rare artworks of recent times to merit the prefix 'conceptual.'"
Related material:
Steering a Space-Plane
(February 2, 2003)
Holly Day
(February 3, 2010)
Attitude Adjustment
(February 3, 2010)
Cover illustration by Stephen Savage,
NY Times Book Review,
Feb. 2 (Candlemas), 2003
“We live the time that a match flickers.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson, Aes Triplex
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Monday, May 5, 2008
Monday May 5, 2008
Time and the River
“At the edge of the meadow
flowed the river.
Nick was glad
to get to the river.
He walked upstream
through the meadow.”
Pennsylvania Lottery
May 5, 2008:
Related material:
“In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any further today.”
— Ernest Hemingway,
Big Two-Hearted River
Big Two-Hearted River
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Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Tuesday February 12, 2008
Centerpiece
"Kirk Browning… television director of 'Live* From Lincoln Center,' died on Sunday [Feb. 10, 2008] in Manhattan. He was 86.
The cause was a heart attack, his son, David, said.
… In addition to his 'Live From Lincoln Center' programs, 10 of which won Emmy Awards, Mr. Browning… directed, among other productions… the first TV show with Frank Sinatra as host (1957); and 'Hallmark Hall of Fame' music and drama specials (1951 to 1958)."
* The timestamp of this entry is, however, not live. The entry was actually produced at about 5:55 AM on Feb. 13. The timestamp of the entry, 5:01 PM on Lincoln's Birthday, is a veiled reference to Cemetery Ridge, to the meadow in "Readings for Candlemas" (see also the previous two entries) and to a Gettysburg address.
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Tuesday February 12, 2008
At the Still Point…
"Rhapsody in Blue was commissioned in January of 1924 by Paul Whiteman for an experimental concert of popular music. It was… premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York City on February 12, 1924 with the composer at the piano." —Matthew Naughtin
"Whiteman's concept of the 'true form of jazz,' even as late as 1924, was the original Dixieland Jazz Band's 1917 recording of… Livery Stable Blues, with which he opened the program." —The New York Times
For another sort of livery stable blues, see Readings for Candlemas (Log24, Feb. 2, 2008).
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Thursday, January 31, 2008
Thursday January 31, 2008
As the black moon
of some divine eclipse,
As the black sun
of the Apocalypse,
As the black flower
that blessed Odysseus back
From witchcraft; and
he saw again the ships.
of some divine eclipse,
As the black sun
of the Apocalypse,
As the black flower
that blessed Odysseus back
From witchcraft; and
he saw again the ships.
In all thy thousand images
we salute thee.
Earlier in the poem….
Clothed with the sun
or standing on the moon
Crowned with the stars
or single, a morning star,
Sunlight and moonlight
are thy luminous shadows,
Starlight and twilight
thy refractions are,
Lights and half-lights and
all lights turn about thee.
or standing on the moon
Crowned with the stars
or single, a morning star,
Sunlight and moonlight
are thy luminous shadows,
Starlight and twilight
thy refractions are,
Lights and half-lights and
all lights turn about thee.
From Oct. 16, 2007,
date of death of Deborah Kerr:
date of death of Deborah Kerr:
"Harish, who was of a
spiritual, even religious, cast
and who liked to express himself in
metaphors, vivid and compelling,
did see, I believe, mathematics
as mediating between man and
what one can only call God."
— R. P. Langlands
From a link of Jan. 17, 2008—
Time and Eternity:
Jean Simmons (l.) and Deborah Kerr (r.)
in "Black Narcissus" (1947)
and from the next day,
Jan. 18, 2008:
… Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte.
— Rubén Darío,
born January 18, 1867
Related material:
Dark Lady and Bright Star,
Time and Eternity,
Damnation Morning
Happy birthday also to
the late John O'Hara.
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Sunday, February 11, 2007
Sunday February 11, 2007
George Sadek, 78,
Graphic Design Educator,
Dies
Graphic Design Educator,
Dies
Sadek died on Feb. 5.
Related material:
“Geometry and Death”
(entries of December 2006),
“Release Date”
in “Immortal Diamond”
(Feb. 5 four years ago).
The design over Sadek’s
head is a St. Bridget’s cross.
(See the “Release Date”
link above.)
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Thursday, March 2, 2006
Thursday March 2, 2006
Father Figure
Women’s History Month
continues…
continues…
“My father is, of course,
as mad as a hatter.”
— Diana Rigg in “The Hospital,”
as transcribed at
script-o-rama.com
“A vesicle pisces* is the name that author Philip K. Dick gave to a symbol he saw (on February 2**, 1974) on the necklace of a delivery woman.
PKD was probably conflating the names of two related symbols, the ichthys consisting of two intersecting arcs resembling the profile of a fish… used by the early Christians as a secret symbol, and the vesica piscis, from the centre of which the ichthys symbol can be drawn.”
Related material at Wikipedia:
Related material at Log24:
Related material elsewhere:
* Wikipedia’s earliest online history for this incorrect phrase is from 25 November, 2003, when the phrase was attributed to Dick by an anonymous Wikipedia user, 216.221.81.98, who at that time apparently did not know the correct phrase, “vesica piscis,” which was later supplied (16 February, 2004) by an anonymous user (perhaps the same as the first user, perhaps not) at a different IP address, 217.158.203.103. Wikipedia authors have never supplied a source for the alleged use of the phrase by Dick. This comedy of errors would be of little interest were it not for its strong resemblance to the writing process that resulted in what we now call the Bible.
** Other accounts (for instance, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, by Lawrence Sutin, Carroll & Graf paperback (copyright 1989, republished on August 9, 2005), page 210) say Dick’s encounter was not on Groundhog Day (also known as Candlemas), but rather on February 20, 1974.
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Thursday, December 8, 2005
Thursday December 8, 2005
Matchwood
The New York Times
Book Review,
Sunday, February 2, 2003:
Cover illustration
by Stephen Savage
‘A Box of Matches’:
A Miniaturist’s
Novel of Details
In Nicholson Baker’s novel,
things not worth noticing
eventually become
all there is to notice.
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Saturday, March 12, 2005
Saturday March 12, 2005
Three Eleanors
Continued from March 10:
Continued from March 10:
For some children…
It takes three Eleanors.
1 2 3
For Alice, a beautiful child
who died in London
on Tuesday
at 72:
Today’s New York Times says that
Alice, the author of Fairy Tale,
was a
“passionately traditional Catholic.”
For related material, see
Immortal Diamond:
O’Hara, Hopkins, and Joyce.
See also the conflict between Trudeau’s
“diamond theory” and
“story theory”
of truth,
and Suzanne Keen‘s article from the
Catholic publication Commonweal:
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Friday, January 2, 2004
Friday January 2, 2004
“Heaven was kind of a hat on the universe,
a lid that kept everything underneath it
where it belonged.”
— Carrie Fisher,
Postcards from the Edge
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“720 in |
Musical Note: A Star is Born
Natalie Wood played a six-year-old
in “Miracle on 34th Street,”
six factorial equals 720,
and Wood was born on 7/20, 1938.
“How I love music.”
— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938
For related metaphors, see
Immortal Diamond,
The Diamond Archetype, and
the first log24.net entry…
for July 20, 2002.
Friday January 2, 2004
What, and Give Up Show Biz?
"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."
— Saying attributed to Edmund Gwenn, star of "Miracle on 34th Street," and also attributed to "Noel Coward, David Garrick, William Holden, Edmund Kean, Marcel Marceau, Groucho Marx, and Oscar Wilde."
See also yesterday's entry on the Dark Lady. For more on Santa and the Dark Lady, see my archive for Aug.-Sept. 2002.
"Drink up, sweet. You gotta go some. How I love music. Frère Jacques, Cuernavaca, ach du lieber August. All languages. A walking Berlitz. Berlitz sounds like you with that champagne, my sweet, or how you're gonna sound."
— Hope of Heaven, by John O'Hara,
"another acidic writer to whom he
[John Gregory Dunne]
was often compared"
(Adam Bernstein, Washington Post)
For some context for the Hope of Heaven quotation, see Immortal Diamond: O'Hara, Hopkins, and Joyce, or click on the adding machine in yesterday's entry.
For more on miracles and the afterlife, see my archive for September 2002.
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Thursday, January 1, 2004
Thursday January 1, 2004
The Dark Lady
“… though she has been seen by many men, she is known to only a handful of them. You’ll see her — if you see her at all — just after you’ve taken your last breath. Then, before you exhale for the final time, she’ll appear, silent and sad-eyed, and beckon to you.
She is the Dark Lady, and this is her story.”
“… she played (very effectively) the Deborah Kerr part in a six-hour miniseries of From Here to Eternity….”
— John Gregory Dunne on Natalie Wood
in the New York Review of Books
dated Jan. 15, 2004
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Thursday, November 13, 2003
Thursday November 13, 2003
Dream of the Unified Field
Quartet:
Shanavasa, Ananda,
Jorie Graham, Robert Louis Stevenson
“Shanavasa asked Ananda,
‘What is the fundamental uncreated essence of all things?’ “
— Jorie Graham,
“Relativity: A Quartet”
in The Dream of the Unified Field:
Selected Poems 1974-1994,
Ecco Press, 1995
“Ananda to Shanavasa:
‘Buddha is Alive! Buddha is Alive!’
Shanavasa to Upagupta:
‘Space is Consumed by Flaming Space.’ “
— Table of Contents, Living Buddha Zen
Cover illustration
by Stephen Savage,
NY Times Book Review,
Feb. 2 (Candlemas), 2003
“We live the time that a match flickers.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson, Aes Triplex
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on this date in 1850.
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Thursday, March 13, 2003
Thursday March 13, 2003
ART WARS:
From The New Yorker, issue of March 17, 2003, Clive James on Aldous Huxley:
“The Perennial Philosophy, his 1945 book compounding all the positive thoughts of West and East into a tutti-frutti of moral uplift, was the equivalent, in its day, of It Takes a Village: there was nothing in it to object to, and that, of course, was the objection.”
For a cultural artifact that is less questionably perennial, see Huxley’s story “Young Archimedes.”
Plato, Pythagoras, and
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From the New Yorker Contributors page for St. Patrick’s Day, 2003:
“Clive James (Books, p. 143) has a new collection, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002, which will be published in June.”
See also my entry “The Boys from Uruguay” and the later entry “Lichtung!” on the Deutsche Schule Montevideo in Uruguay.
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Wednesday, February 5, 2003
Wednesday February 5, 2003
Release Date
From Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar
—
- Novelist William S. Burroughs [of the Burroughs adding machine family], author of Naked Lunch, was born on this day in 1914.
- The Charlie Chaplin film “Modern Times“ was released on this day in 1936.
- The adding machine employing depressible keys was patented on this day in 1850.
“It all adds up.” — Saul Bellow, book title
“I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.”
— Bob Dylan
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“The theme of the film is heavily influenced by its release date….” — Jonathan L. Bowen, review of “Modern Times” At left:
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See also my journal entry “Time and Eternity”
of 5:10 AM EST Saturday, February 1, 2003.
of 5:10 AM EST Saturday, February 1, 2003.
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5:10 AM Feb. 1
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9:00 AM Feb. 1
TIME |
From Robert Morris’s page on Hopkins (see note of Sunday, February 2 (Candlemas)):
“Inscape” was Gerard Manley Hopkins’s term for a special connection between the world of natural events and processes and one’s internal landscape–a frame of mind conveyed in his radical and singular poetry….
This is false, but suggestive.
Checked, corrected, and annotated
Sunday, February 2, 2003
Sunday February 2, 2003
Steering a Space-Plane
Head White House speechwriter Michael Gerson:
“In the last two weeks, I’ve been returning to Hopkins. Even in the ‘world’s wildfire,’ he asserts that ‘this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/Is immortal diamond.’ A comfort.”
— Vanity Fair, May 2002, page 162
Yesterday’s note, “Time and Eternity,” supplies the “immortal diamond” part of this meditation. For the “matchwood” part, see the cover of The New York Times Book Review of February 2 (Candlemas), 2003:
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N.Y. Times Feb. 2, 2003
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See also the Times’s excerpt from Baker‘s first chapter,
about “steering a space-plane.”
For the relationship of Hopkins to Eastern religions,
see “Out of Inscape,” by Robert Morris.
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