Logocentric Theology

“Logic is all about the entertaining of possibilities.”

— Colin McGinn,
Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning,
Harvard U. Press (See yesterday’s entry.)

“God is the sum of all possibilities.”

— Isaac Bashevis Singer, according to
the Associated Press “Today in History“
feature for today, March 30, 2005

“A probability space is a measure space with total measure one.”

— Gregory F. Lawler, Probability Notes

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

— Deuteronomy 6:4

For other illustrations of logocentric theology, see

Matrix of the Death God (May 25, 2003),

Transcendental Meditation (July 30, 2003),

and, for Warren Beatty’s birthday today,

Graphical Password (April 27, 2003).

Crimson
on St. Cecilia’s Day

“… from the Age that is past,
To the Age that is waiting before.”
— Samuel Gilman, “Fair Harvard“

Published by The Harvard Crimson
on Monday, November 22, 2004:

From an entry of October 29, 2004:

From The New York Times today:

“It’s official, I guess. Forty years after he recorded it, Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was just named the greatest rock ‘n’ roll song of all time….”

Song

"Each epoch has its singer."
— Jack London, Oakland, California, 1901

"Anything but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination, to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a compromise with the 'mystery tramp,' as Bob Dylan put it…."
— Dennis Overbye, Quantum Baseball,
    New York Times, Oct.  26, 2004

"You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp,
    but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into
    the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to
    make a deal?"
— Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone

"About a century ago scientists began to realize that beneath the too, too solid veneer of what had passed for reality for 2,000 years there was some pretty funny and fuzzy business going on….

Most of us, I suspect, would rather believe that the devil is running things than that no one is in charge, that our lives, our loves, World Series victories, hang on the whims of fate and chains of coincidences, on God throwing dice, as Einstein once referred to quantum randomness….

[But] we are people, with desires and memories and a sense of humor – not Ping Pong balls."
— Dennis Overbye, Quantum Baseball,
    New York Times, Oct.  26, 2004

"You can be replaced by some Ping Pong balls and a dictionary."
— Anonymous source, March 29, 2001

Epistle and Hymns

In the spirit of Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs, we conclude our Hiroshima Day service with a link to The Epistle of Jeremiah and a deadly trinity of singers:

Cartesian Theatre

From aldaily.com today:

"If my mind is a tiny theatre I watch in my brain, then there is a tinier mind and theatre inside that mind to see it, and so on forever… more»"

This leads to the dream (or nightmare) of the Cartesian theatre, as pictured by Daniel Dennett.

From websurfing yesterday and today…

The tiny theatre of Ivor Grattan-Guinness:

"… mathematicians often treat history with contempt (unsullied by any practice or even knowledge of it, of course)."

— The Rainbow of Mathematics

The contempt for history of the Harvard mathematics department (see previous entry) suggests a phrase….

A search on "Harvard sneer" yields, as the first page found, a memorial to an expert practitioner of the Harvard sneer… Robert Harris Chapman, Professor of English Literature, playwright, theatrical consultant, and founding Director of the Loeb Drama Center from 1960 to 1980.

Continuing the Grattan-Guinness rainbow theme in a tinier theatre, we may picture Chapman's reaction to the current Irish Repertory Theatre production of Finian's Rainbow.  Let us hope it is not a Harvard sneer.

In a yet tinier theatre, we may envision a mathematical version of Finian's Rainbow, with Og the leprechaun played by Andrew P. Ogg.  Ogg would, of course, perform a musical version of his remarks on the Jugendtraum:

"Follow the fellow who follows a dream."

Melissa Errico
in Finian's Rainbow

"Give her a song like…. 'Look to the Rainbow,' and her gleaming soprano effortlessly flies it into the stratosphere where such numbers belong. This is the voice of enchantment…."

— Ben Brantley, today's NY Times

For related philosophical remarks on rainbows, infinite regress, and redheads, see

Loretta's Rainbow and

The Leonardo Code.

American Heaven

Headlines from today’s Google News:

Singer Jan Berry, 62; Half of Surf Music Duo

Screeching for heaven at Mach 7

March 25 news story:

“The promise of 70 virgins in paradise and the equivalent of about $20 was all it took to convince a Palestinian teenager to turn himself into a suicide bomber…”

A more modest paradise, from a Jan Berry obituary today:

With Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, William Jan Berry co-wrote the lyrics for “Surf City” with its lines about taking the station wagon to a place where there are “two girls for every boy.”*

* Theological footnote for feminists:
In some other regions of American Heaven, there may be two boys for every girl.

Song of the Father

The death of Max D. Barnes (previous entry) and the opening of the first Tennessee lottery suggested the following meditations.

Wikipedia on Jimmie Rodgers, known as the father of country music:

“Fundamentally, Rodgers was a white blues singer….”

A song by the father of country music:

T for Texas, T for Tennessee,
T for Texas, T for Tennessee,
T for Thelma, that gal
made a wreck out of me.

Gonna buy me a shotgun,
long as I am tall,
Buy me a shotgun,
long as I am tall,
Gonna shoot po’ Thelma,
just to see her jump and fall.

From Wikipedia:

“In modern Western popular music, call and response is most commonly found in the blues and in blues-derived music like jazz and rock’n’roll.”

If Rodgers’s song is the call, what, one wonders, would be the appropriate response?

String Theory

Phil Sweetland of the New York Times on Gospel singer St. Jake Hess, who died on Sunday, January 4, 2004 — also the feast day of saints T. S. Eliot, T.S. Matthews, and Joan Aiken —

“Mr. Hess was the string that tied together many of Christian music’s most famous quartets and ensembles, and he was an idol and later a colleague of [Elvis] Presley….

Mr. Hess sang at his funeral in 1977, as he had at the funeral of Hank Williams in 1953.”

“Go to other people’s funerals,
otherwise, they won’t go to yours.”

— Proverb attributed to St. Yogi Berra

“… to apprehend
 The point of intersection of the timeless
 With time, is an occupation for the saint…. “

— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“You win again.”

— Keith Richards,
tribute to Hank Williams

The Last Samurai
Grandmother

“The ‘Samurai Grandmother’
Margaret Singer
   has passed away…”

Singer was the author of
Cults in Our Midst.

For some background on
Singer and Scientology,
see The Anti-Cult Movement.

” ‘I might look like a little old grandma, but I’m no pushover,’ she told a reporter last year, just before tossing back another shot of Bushmills Irish whiskey, her libation of choice.”

“Occasionally threatened, Singer refused to back down. In a 2002 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she told how, at 80, she had frightened off someone who’d been leaving menacing notes in her mailbox.”

“I’ve got a 12-gauge shotgun up here with a spray pattern that’ll put a three-foot hole in you, sonny, and you’d better get off my porch, or you’ll be sorry!” she shouted out the window.

A Contribution to Trudeau’s
“Story Theory of Truth” —

Epic of the Chosen People:

After Forty Years
in the Wilderness,

The Winners Are…

Dallas, 1963:

Sam the Sham
“started his music career
in Dallas in the early sixties”
— The Pharaohs Discography

Leesville, La., 2003:

Forty years later,
Leesville to honor
“Wooly Bully” singer

Today in History:
The Comeback Kid

(Courtesy of Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar)

On this date:

In 1962, having lost the California governor’s race, Richard Nixon said to the press, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.”

In 1972, Republican incumbent President Richard Nixon was re-elected, defeating Democratic candidate George McGovern, 520 electoral votes to 17.

From the archives of singer/songwriter Shannon Campbell (“voice of an angel, mouth of a truckdriver”)–

Feb. 6, 2002: The Essential Matrix

NEO: (whines) Who am I?

TRINITY: You are The One.

EVERYONE ELSE: Eh, he might be The One.

TRINITY: He is The One.

NEO: I am not The One.

TRINITY: You are The One.

THE ORACLE: You are not The One, but you can’t tell anybody.

NEO: (whines) But I wanted to be The One. I want to go home….

TRINITY: Fuck. He’s not The One.

EVERYONE ELSE: Told you so.

MORPHEUS: Sure wish someone was The One. I’m in deep shit.

ART WARS for

Trotsky’s Birthday

Part I:
Symbols

From my entry of July 26, 2003, in memory
of Marathon Man director John Schlesinger:

For the meaning of the above symbols, see
Kubrick’s 1x4x9 monolith in 2001,
the Halmos tombstone in Measure Theory,
and the Fritz Leiber Changewar stories.

No se puede vivir sin amar.

Part II:
Sunday in the Park with Death

  To Leon from Diego —
Details of a mural,
A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon
in Alameda Park,
Fresco, 1947-48,
Alameda Hotel, Mexico City:

Three’s a Crowd:

Symbol:

The Mysterious West

Thanks again to KHYI, Plano, Texas, for great poetry.  In tonight’s KHYI playlist…

From Spike and Jamie:

WAIT A WHILE AND YOU’LL GROW OLDER;
NEVER MIND WHAT THE OLD FOLKS SAY.

JUST KEEP AN ANGEL ON YOUR SHOULDER;
AND NEVER THROW YOUR DREAMS AWAY
FOR THEY MIGHT SAVE YOUR LIFE ONE DAY.

SONG IS JUST A BOX OF VISIONS;
YOU CAN UNLOCK IT WITH A KEY–

A MESSAGE ROLLED UP INSIDE A BOTTLE
AND DROPPED INTO THE SALTY SEA.

SONG IS JUST A BOX OF VISIONS,
A JAR OF HARPS AND GYPSY’S EARS,
 
A LABYRINTH OF WILD ROSES,
A JOURNEY THROUGH A HOUSE OF MIRRORS.

WAIT A WHILE AND YOU’LL GROW STRONGER;
NEVER MIND WHAT THE SAD FOLKS SAY.

From Tish Hinojosa:

“It’s the way of life in the real west…”

A search for information on the singer of “Real West” led to a site in Japan that mentions Hinojosa, among many other makers of recommended music:

From Japan–

Random Diary & Essay…

“an example of understand beyond language is still possible”

Such an example is one of the themes in a movie I admire greatly….

Ghost Dog – The Way of the Samurai.

The hero’s understanding of what his friend says, even though he does not know the friend’s language, is a recurring theme in this film.

As for me… “No entiendo.  Sigo trabajando.”

Magic Hawaii

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

In honor of Lewis:

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

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

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

In honor of the angels:

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

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

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

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

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

“beauty simplicity exactness
 crazy magic Hawaii“?

The search yields two results:

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

   

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

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

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

The Aloha Mass.

Bel Canto

The conclusion of tonight’s season-
opening episode of “The West Wing”
was a picture of President Bartlet  
 receiving the Host at Mass.

Related material:

The Source:

Tips On Popular Singing
by Frank Sinatra
in collaboration with
his vocal teacher John Quinlan

What prompted me to find this
booklet on the Web
(at about 8:45 PM tonight) was

40,000 Years of Music
by Jacques Chailley
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1964),
page 162,
on the bel canto style of singing.

I picked up this book this afternoon
at a sale for $1.

See also Sinatra’s remarks on bel canto
(various places on the Web).

For the religious significance of
the page number 162, see my
entry of 9/11 2003,

Particularity.

Added at 3:20 AM Sept. 25…

In Related News:

Source: Google News, about 3:15 AM 9/25/03

Dark Desire

Film star dies after fight
with rock boyfriend

Trick of the Light

For Carly Simon

“… on the dance floor she seemed to be the only one completely alive.  It was a trick of the light that followed one person around.  Joe had seen the quality before; it was rare, but not unknown.

Every time we say good-bye…. Porter had written an intimate ballad…. “

— Martin Cruz Smith, Stallion Gate, Ch. 2

“At night I heard God
                          whisper lullabyes
While Daddy next door
                   whistled whisky tunes
And sometimes
            when I wanted,
                   they would harmonize
There was nothing
                    those two couldn’t do

……………………………………………

Then one night Daddy died
                      and went to Heaven
And God came down to earth
                          and slipped away
I pretended not to notice
                      I’d been abandoned
But no-one sang the night
                                 into the day
And later night time songs
                          came back again
But the singers don’t compare
                        with those I knew
And I never figured out
          where God and Daddy went
But there was nothing
                   those two couldn’t do”

— Carly Simon,
  “Embrace Me, You Child”

Countin’ Flowers on the Wall

Today, the birthday of Bob Keeshan (aka Captain Kangaroo), seems an appropriate day to meditate on religious issues.

The death of minimalist artist Fred Sandback on June 23, coupled with my vitriolic attack on Christianity of that same date, suggest that I should give some recognition to defenders of that bizarre religion.

Two of Christianity’s most able defenders are singer Martina McBride and professor of English Gerald McDaniel.

McBride has stated loudly and clearly her conviction that

“Love’s the only house big enough for all the pain in the world.”

I may be mistaken, but this sounds to me like a profession of faith in the Christian church.

McDaniel’s Cultural Calendar includes many items of Christian interest (saints’ days, etc.) but also includes a greater variety of general cultural history than any other online calendar I know of.  Like all Christian documents, it displays little regard for the truth (dates are often wrong), but its heart seems to be in the right place.  Most important, in light of McBride’s persuasive song lyric, is the fact that McDaniel’s calendar — and therefore, perhaps, his church — does seem to be big enough — at least in principle — for some of the pain in the world, as well as some of the joy.  Unfortunately, the church has much less room for truth than for emotion.

For emotion, see McBride’s album of that title.  For some thoughts on truth, see McBride’s fellow country singer, Patty Loveless (whom I greatly prefer to McBride).

The above reflection was prompted by McDaniel’s having a written a document that includes both of the following items for June 27:

• TV’s Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, was born on this day in 1927. He was also Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody.
  
• On this day in 1928, an American expatriate bookseller, Sylvia Beach, and her companion Adrienne Monnier, had a dinner party to which they invited James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald. It was held at her flat above her bookstore Shakespeare & Company….

These two items appear to have been placed by McDaniel in the right date slot.  (Christians may sometimes have the right values, but should never be trusted to have their facts straight.)

Temptation

In memory of Nina Simone, a singer who died April 21, whose autobiography was titled (after the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song) I Put a Spell on You, and in honor of Aaron Spelling, producer of “Satan’s School for Girls,” whose birthday is today, I suggest the following three cultural milestones.

First, an accurate, if tasteless, recounting of Scripture at a Christian site that correctly notes that Satan may appear as “an angel of light”… rather like Aaron Spelling?  This site also offers, as background music, a lame parody of the evils of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the form of a midi of “Fire” that would hardly tempt even someone Hell-bent on sinning. 

Second, a book, The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte, the basis of the Roman Polanski film “The Ninth Gate.”  This book is notable for the way it skillfully, and perhaps accurately, depicts Satan as an “angel of light” who does not resemble Aaron Spelling in the least.   This Satan could really tempt me.

Finally, my favorite music video of all time: the 1988 Kylie Minogue “Locomotion.”  If the Devil could now look, sing, and dance like Kylie in 1988, I would be lost.  Fortunately, perhaps, the days when Kylie could make me fall in love with one glance are now over.  Still, if I had to fall, I would much rather do it with Kylie than with Spelling.  As she herself says,  

“It’s better the Devil you know.”

For more on Kylie, trains, and death, see the Jan. 3 entry The Shanghai Gesture. 

The locomotive image is courtesy of a website that may, in view of the subject of this entry, prefer to remain anonymous.

Going His Way

October 14 in history:

1888 Katherine Mansfield, author, is born.

1977 Bing Crosby, singer/actor (Going My Way), dies.

“He was given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful…. Happy … happy … All is well, said that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content.”

— Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party“

In honor of Mansfield, Crosby, and other authors and singers, this site’s music is now a midi rendition of Rick Nelson’s classic.