JOLLY DAYS, an artist's journal

A number of great thoughts pop up in Adam Kirsch’s review of a book by William Gass, Life Sentences.

Gass insists that “neither story (which can be told in many media and in many ways) nor meaning (which can be expressed with similar flexibility) are active elements in literary work.
…
“What works of art testify to is the presence in this world of consciousness, consciousness of many extraordinary kinds,” …

… “not that of the artists themselves, for theirs are often much the same as any other person’s.…It is not the writer’s awareness I am speaking of but the awareness he or she makes. For that is what fine writing does: it creates a unique verbal consciousness.”

I’m quoting this because I agree with it. Not quite in the way Kirsch describes it in summary, but close enough; I spot on agree as far as the way Gass says it and would expand the idea to all the arts.

Art is about consciousness. Art is an expression of the cloud of identity which is what an individual really is, expressed at a moment in time. It is not a lecture, nor affirmation, nor negation of concept, nor political statement, nor craft decoration to impress, but an opening up of the spirit, mind and heart. Those elements of Being coalesce hopefully, and return the work, which the viewer can better sense than describe.

Art becomes something other than a single person, as the process affects the outcome, like a quantum experiment. That is what persists in art; art which succeeds. A unique voice, not of the ego, as the pop culture often portrays it, but of the sense of living; of a single life, speaking to others at the most fundamental, and trusting (because that is what civilization is) the audience to engage — sharing a brief portal of time.

I once asked an old man in art school what he regretted. He said he wished he had traveled more.

This piece, recorded at tumblr by Kelly Oxford, was written by a nurse who cared for those in the last stages of life — in palliative care — and records the caregiver’s conclusions.

Common themes from those who had gone home to die:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Sometimes we don’t allow ourselves to remember the full context — the reasons we made the choices we did, and are wishing rather that life were different. Whether facing death really does clear the fog from our eyes, or is yet another delusion of clarity in our lives, is not for us to know, I suppose.

After the NYT indicated PBS was trying to compete with cable in Downton Abbey, or “Downtown” Abbey — my own misreading of the title which didn’t affect the Google search one bit — we thought we would give it a go. Season 1 is online until the 17th.

I can’t say another Upstairs/Downstairs drama from England, a historical drama set in the early 20th century, had much urgency for us, but we thought: maybe they can pull off a Sopranos or Breaking Bad. It’s not that good, but soap opera and all, it is very fine indeed, if overly long.

The best thing: the characters are given space; the direction allows the “human” into the plot. And it is a resonant show, rich with human caring and coldness. The next best thing: TV shows have become gorgeous vehicles; production values for yet another TV show, were terrific, and the acting superb, which somehow you expect from Brit actors.

Apparently a member of the aristocracy (quaint term for anything other than a value judgment) wrote the fine dialog. With the exception of the “dead Turk” subplot, which seemed to be pasted in, the drama holds.

It is soft core history. The working classes, the servants, aren’t shown as they lived, in truly deplorable conditions, treated as objects by a callous elite who earned nothing to deserve their privilege. The fact the servants identified with the system so strongly, out of economics and their own constipated snobbishness most likely (Stockholm Syndrome), doesn’t forgive the arrogant system.

But, it’s TV and close to as good as it gets. So catch up online with Season 1 and Season 2 will be coming at you on Sunday.

It was immensely fascinating listening to David Brooks on Charlie Rose the other night. Brooks instantiates the standards he espouses. You don’t feel he is thrusting his ego at you when he talks about ideas. He isn’t trying to prove he is smart and has all the answers. He sorts things out and provides some nuance. “Nuance,” there’s a quality that long ago evaporated into the ether.

It was a wide ranging discussion that seemed to be generated by a roundtable Obama has yearly as Obama sorts out what direction he wants to take. Brooks gave his own take, presumably what he told Obama:

He feels that Obama sees himself as an FDR progressive; that the Democrats tend toward parsing policy to install that agenda. Brooks feels the times are too different to apply the FDR model. The vaunted “vision thing,” as they used to say about Bush, or Bush said about himself, is not Obama’s strength. Brooks felt it should be.

Brooks feels that the country needs to feel hope which comes from a clearly defined destination for the society. He feels the sense of motivation has been lost as the sense of unfairness has grown. Whether on the Right, who despise entitlements as vitiating motivation, or the Left, who despise Wall Street, it amounts to the same thing finally. The country is enraged. It’s a Howard Beale world these days. People are mad as hell and they won’t take it anymore. More plainly: people who play by the rules don’t see the results of their hard work pay off fairly; or see others get the same or better without effort, or with unfair connections to power.

Along the way he touched on the toxic effect of the popular culture (although he didn’t feel it had any decisive effect — I disagree — it is primary). He mentioned an idea Mickey Kaus had some time ago, — that the status, or respectability as Brooks calls it, of middle class attainment is the real goal for many rather than great wealth, as junk culture would suggest.

Brooks also engaged in some goofy theorizing: he felt “creativity comes from networks”— his examples were Steve Jobs and Picasso. I won’t go into the Steve Jobs reference, but as to art: Brooks thinks Picasso brought the defaults of African Art into the mainstream of western art. By this estimate Picasso networked African Art. Hmmm.

Cultural issues are more complex than politics. Picasso’s work could as easily, in its cubist manifestation, be thought of as an absorption of scientific ideas of the time, as a Newtonian, logical universe, became the probabilistic chaos of quantum physics. Such scientific and philosophical ideas do enter art, even if artists don’t realize it themselves. The surface absorption of African Art, and it was a shallow, undigested inclusion, is a surface manifestation of the groundbreaking work of Picasso. But even with the drifting analysis of creativity, Brooks said many insightful things.

The takeaway: Brooks feels that entitlements, tax reform, and the culture of the family (family values — Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s emphasis) are the principal issues in reviving America. He didn’t say it with any cogency, but he clearly doesn’t think Obama has the chops to deliver on either a vision for the future of America, or an insight into the essential issues facing the country. In other words, Obama would be a disaster if re-elected. This has been plain for a long time.

Brooks never did address his complete failure to see Obama as the media construction he is; Brooks’ failure to identify early on Obama’s dissociated self-absorption, his dubious affiliations, and cynical center, are discrediting for a commentator. Brooks said Obama is more liberal than he understood. But what he still doesn’t understand is that Obama is just going with the flow —just another cynical politician who wants to be elected but has no idea what he wants to do, and is liberal when he wants hoots of approval from the crowd. No core values, just career. This is probably just as true of Romney.

Brooks’ ideas could be summarized as a renewal of Isaiah Berlin, where the emphasis is on having many ideas, with flexibility being the primary value, rather than a single “feel-good” delusion that will inevitably fall apart or turn dangerously sour. And has.

At 62, Hitchens died far too young. His curmudgeonly, or “contrarian”, as he would have it, angle on the politics of our time, was a blessed commodity in a consensus society like America. Toward the end he rejected the contrarian label, wanting to be thought more substantial than that. But well-articulated contrarian notions are invaluable to a society in correcting course; one of the great strengths of freedom is that allowance for difference.

The current sheep on the left and right, which is what they are, conformists all, repeating slogans without nuance, trivializing and attacking ad hominem, seem nearly a different species from Hitchens, who was polite, but never seemed to ingratiate or seek the kindness of friends. He believed in reason, an odd preference in the political realm, but quite effective in debate.

Remarkably, Hitchens had a surprising array of friends – differing in any and all ways from his own ways of thinking. This most likely came about because of his mother, who, arguing with his father, a father who disdained both working class and upper class, said that, if there was to be an upper class, then Christopher should be part of it. Hitchens managed conviviality to those with whom he disagreed.

He gave a wonderful voice to those who agreed with him. He said things well, with intelligence, crafted almost as though written. It is no surprise he could write fast and on a moment’s notice. Writing for Hitchens must have been like taking dictation. It was an admirable facility which he possessed.

I’m sad to hear of his passing.

Some snippets from around the web:

Michael Totten:

He was the greatest writer of our time who could talk off the top of his head better than most of his colleagues can write.

Ron Radosh, an admirer:

Christopher was a bundle of contradictions, a “contrarian” for life as he put it himself, a man who was charming, witty, a wonderful guest and raconteur, and a man who simply could not put up with hypocrisy and tyranny. I miss him greatly, and like so many others who knew him only from his writing, mourn his loss. R.I.P. And if you meet St. Peter and he asks you why you were not a believer, like the late Sidney Hook, you can tell him: “You didn’t give me enough evidence.”

David Frum about Hitchens’ wit:

He especially liked gallows humor. When the nurses asked him, in that insinuatingly cheerful way they have, how he was feeling that day, he’d answer, “I seem to have a little touch of cancer.” If he was late to emerge from his living room to see you because of the exhaustion and nausea of chemotherapy, he’d excuse himself with, “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I was brushing my hair”–of which of course there were only a few wisps left.

Perhaps most resonantly, remembered by his brother , Peter Hitchens (a traditionalist/conservative Brit most distinct from Hitchens’ fiercely independent mind):

We got on surprisingly well in the past few months, better than for about 50 years as it happens. At such times one tends to remember childhood more clearly than at others, though I have always had a remarkably clear memory of much of mine. I am still baffled by how far we both came, in our different ways, from the small, quiet, shabby world of chilly, sombre rented houses and austere boarding schools, of battered and declining naval seaports, not specially cultured, not book-lined or literary or showy but plain, dutiful and unassuming, we took the courses we did.

Articles at the Atlantic

We will miss you Chris, even though we didn’t know you; you raised the level of the debate and reminded us, in more than a few ways, of what it means to be civilized.

Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, an organization which advocates more taxes on those earning a million bucks or more, had its advocate on the Newshour today. It is a fascinating subject. I’ll meander a bit…

The individual doing the advocacy on the Newshour had started many businesses in California. He seemed an admirable man. Not like that ingratiating rich guy who in a public meeting with Obama said, “Please raise my taxes.” Obama himself seemed slightly disgusted by this deferential showboating.

But the Newshour millionaire had more substance. It’s difficult to disagree. Since at least Clinton, America has been drifting into a banana republic. It is hard to have a political democracy and such a level of economic inequality. (But to be clear, the tax raise on the rich is purely symbolic, a cup of money in an ocean of debt. Symbolism though, has its value here.)

This is pretty much what the Tea Party and the Occupy movements are protesting. Lawrence Lessig said that the mistake these movements made was letting themselves be co-opted by the political parties, because those parties are both vitiated with advocacy for privilege. At the beginning, the Tea Party said it was not allied with any party, but the media made sure that was suppressed until partisanship tainted the point the Tea Party was making: we are spending more than we have.

And then there is the exacerbation of the current system: the rich can afford advocates, and those advocates install themselves as counselors and advisors and politicians. And politics is money. So the balance gets further tilted to the advantage of the rich, and of large corporate entities. (Obama’s principal issue in Congress was campaign finance law, which he eschewed as he went off to raise close to a billion bucks. He is doing it again right now. So much for principle.)

The media is all for the tax the millionaire slogans. And, of course, Brian Williams and crew, as a particularly annoying example, are enormously wealthy. But it makes them look good…until you look at their own behavior:

Chelsea Clinton is now at NBC News, playing journalist. NBC is giving her a feel-good role; so it doesn’t seem they have hired someone on the basis of wealth and fame and connections. That’s democracy at NBC, with Brian Williams, Rockstar NewsReader @Rock Center.

Noblesse oblige — the responsibilities of inherited privilege — does not exist as a value for the wealthy anymore. Anonymously given good works have morphed into high visibility public work for charities and photo-ops — more publicity than substance. That is, the very same advantages given to the very very wealthy in the tax codes, is also installed in the popular culture.

Walter Russell Mead:

… the increasing sense that this country is run by a hereditary celebrity class is one of the most corrosive and dangerous forces eating away at our common life.

It is a sorry picture: self-anointed journalist mandarins, bringing us self-replicating privilege rather than rewarding ability or having any discernible set of objective standards; in some cases, joining the very movement they are charged with covering.

My own take: tax the millionaires. Japan, at least at one time, was at a salary comparative of about a 3X ratio of CEO to factory worker. America needs to move toward a psychologically balanced approach to wealth, without destroying incentive. The millionaire on Newshour seemed to indicate such balance would cause no decline in motivation.

But there should be more: inherited wealth should be taxed substantially. Obama, and this organization of rich “folk,” should say, most honorably, my money does not go to my children. My money goes to an organization helping children. Isn’t that what Warren Buffet is doing in his stated intention about the dispensation of his wealth? Wouldn’t that get Americans out of the starting gate at least on the same racetrack? Didn’t Bill Gates state such an intention himself?

…and don’t forget campaign finance laws to keep the system about more than money.

Charlie Rose’s wonderful lunges at understanding Shakespeare and Hamlet was so provocative it had me noting things to myself:

I had often thought of Hamlet as a representation of a stepson’s possibly delusional, murderous rage – but the rage of a child, not an adult.

Hamlet is about being human because it confronts the dilemma of being human; our deep emotions and sense of right, our sense of unfairness and frustration at the conventions of society; Hamlet is about emotion choking action rather than generating it.

Hamlet can be thought an argument against revenge: about the futility of revenge, as the target seldom suffers as much as the enraged.

Although there was much tortured effort at understanding why Shakespeare persists with an almost biblical weight, his work, like the Bible itself, would only persist if the language and insight were of equal density.

The performances that were intercut revealed clearly that there is no barrier between the brilliance of the writing and the audience — the route of true art; this despite the compactness and arcane nature of the language; it still connects.

What was woefully left out – the English stain of anti-Semitism in Merchant of Venice, a clear marker that Shakespeare too was deeply flawed.

The best commentators were Greenblatt and Harold Bloom. Those who deal with the mechanics of the theater can never get it right, and don’t have the insight.

Of the performances:
Captain Picard and Richard Burton seemed Jon Lovitz Great Thespians – drawing attention to acting rather than character.

Olivier and Branagh clearly the best, most brilliant of actors. Astonishing in the revelatory power of their performances.

Rose’s brilliant question: Is Hamlet a sympathetic character?

Shakespeare evokes a truth academic scrutiny alone cannot parse; the meaningless question, asked of his plays, of life, and by Charlie Rose: What does it mean? It means, Shakespeare wisely answers, that there are no pat answers; that the human estate is ambiguous and can be noble.

Someone at metafilter was looking for the long loping rhythms of the 19th century in contemporary writing. There was accord that there is no one who writes like that anymore. Probably true.

One commenter noted an essay by William James, to show the style at its masterly peak.

But the subject of the essay is what most interested me: that of bling, reputation, and the evidence of one’s own eyes. This is an issue that keeps recurring to me as I look at the “expert” classes and their pronunciamentos as dribbled by the media. If you haven’t figured out that the process of gaining a reputation is filled with holes by the time you are nineteen you might never. But some people are predisposed to confusing the uniform with the wearer, the degree with the intelligence, the rhetoric for the character.

This essay by James, besides its beautiful winding prose and brilliant intelligence, makes a point about such badge seekers and their lapdogs. Things have not changed much from the 1903 essay to contemporary times. Maybe it is just that Americans tend to seek consensus, as Tocqueville noted, so degrees are a quick and easy way to rate, without thinking, or testing your own judgment.

An overqualified candidate rejected by a college solely for lack of a Ph.D. Or rather, first accepted, and then rejected when the horror of his three letter nakedness was revealed.

William James and colleagues wrote to the college which rejected the candidate:

… informing his new President that this signified nothing as to his merits, that he was of ultra-Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest men with whom we had ever had to deal.

But the truth was stated more coarsely by the other institution:

To our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality per se of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that the three magical letters were the thing seriously required. The College had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor’s title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without a tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of. We wrote again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little anyhow as to one’s ability to teach literature; we sent separate letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate’s powers, for indeed they were great…

The scholars at Harvard prevailed and the candidate was accepted.

James notes:

America is thus a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?

The pop culture is really the commercial culture. It is business by other means. But because talented and clever people get involved you periodically get really good results — work that surpasses the defaults and becomes something special.

That is true of Gin Wigmore. Wigmore is from New Zealand but lives in Australia, which, from what I can tell, is California without the pretensions. You tend to form mental maps of places to which you’ve never been.

So how did we hear of Gin Wigmore? Searching for who sang the song in the Lowe’s commercial. The TV version of that commercial, with the dancers morphing into old age, is beautifully directed and choreographed and edited. And then they choose a great song, beautifully rendered.

Wigmore’s father died of cancer when she was sixteen and she wrote the song Hallelujah to tell her family she had finally accepted the loss of her beloved dad.

Here are Gin Wigmore’s heartfelt lyrics for Hallelujah:

Take your last step towards heaven and its glow
Take your last breath of sunlight, don’t let it go
Take your last look to remember, so that you know

I wont let you fade from no mind
I wont let you fade from no minds
I wont let you fade from no minds

Hallelujah for these eyes to see your painted life
Hallelujah for the touch of skin to skin with mine
Hallelujah for this mind that keeps our souls combined
Hallelujah for this life that let me be your child

Have your mind, have your strength to stay alive
Keep your eyes open with mine

You followed the road for the angels and you left me behind
A face without words can last a lifetime but it’s never the same
So, don’t say goodbyes that last forever just for a while
Because I’ll be by to see you some day soon

Hallelujah for these eyes to see your painted life
Hallelujah for the touch now of skin to skin with mine
Hallelujah for this mind that keeps our souls combined
Hallelujah for this life that let me be your child

Hallelujah, to be a part of your life
To see inside of all your smiles
You’re a traffic light of fire
You’re a man who I believe will never die

© Lyrics And Music Composed By Gin Wigmore

A new book on the iBookstore:

Old Peculiar Tales

This is a book of eleven speculative tales of fantasy. Image rich, created as a “picturebook”.

I used a new App called Book Creator for the iPad to construct this book. There have been no dedicated tools for creating fixed position books, and, out of the blue, a wonderful developer in England, Dan Amos, has done what billion dollar corporations could not. Picturebooks are books that look like formatted books; like a PDF, rather than flowing web pages. An excellent format for image heavy eBooks, but mind-numbing to create from scratch by code.

Dan uses a very simple, transparent interface — he had set out to make this App useful for kids — but it turns out to be fully capable for professional production as well. In the latter case a bit of knowledge about CSS would help for tweaks, but in most cases, you can get along with just the tools offered by Book Creator.

Book Creator is fun. You open the app and you immediately figure it out.

You create the book in the app. Instead of following a meandering path to get the eBook into iBooks, you simply tap a menu choice and BC constructs the ePub and places it in iBooks. You can edit without the usual hassle of creating on the desktop, transferring to iTunes and syncing — a tremendous time saver. Dan is currently working to enable audiobook capability and later videos.

I once taught in an after school center with the charge of introducing printmaking. You should have seen the pure delight expressed by children when they see a print of their drawing appear. It made you smile. Some kids would laugh out loud or even shriek. I can imagine whole classes filled with delighted children at seeing their creations appear in iBooks using Book Creator.

At first it was a surprise to see the solution BC offers; one expects a desktop application to create these picturebooks. It makes so much more sense to have the app on your iPad.

At the App store: Book Creator

Dan’s site, redjumper.net

The enormous response to the death of Steve Jobs is remarkable. For a public figure, a man who ran a corporation, to have entered the emotional life of so many is an affirmation of Jobs beyond his industry. People are grateful for the tools he made. For the enjoyment and possibility those tools have brought. The tools he made, or made possible, have opened so many possibilities for me in my work.

He was more identified with his multi-billion dollar corporation than people who run small businesses who have their name on the door. He didn’t push himself forward to gain fame; he was up front making presentations because he loved the products he was so involved in creating. He never felt a salesman — always an enthusiast who shared his audience’s pleasure. He had an aesthetic response to objects and tools. He was proud of what he did.

His signature quote: He didn’t give people what they wanted, he gave them what they didn’t know they wanted. That quality of breaking the mold and believing you can accomplish your self-set task is an essential of true creativity.

It also seems likely that the outpouring of sadness over the death of Steve Jobs has to do with his personality and the times. His body frail, but his spirit vigorous, even at the end; he had an optimism and belief in the future. A vibrant, creative individual at a time where there seem no leaders, no easy answers.