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Saturday, May 7th, 2011
One of my very favorite-ever pictures of myself is this one, taken 8 years ago, when Sylvia was 3 and my parents were visiting -- I believe it was their first visit at our new house, the house we live in today. My dad took this picture of 3-year-old Sylvia on my shoulders, entranced by the dogwood blossom.Every year since then, the dogwood has produced fewer blossoms, fewer leaves; and this year it is well and truly dead. I spent some time this afternoon cutting off its limbs. For Sylvia's documentation of the process, look at our family album.
 Update -- a year later, it is down.
posted afternoon of May 7th, 2011: 1 response
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 A question I need to ask myself about The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind: What does it mean for me to say I like this book, to say that it has influenced my thinking?
I read a lot of novels and stories, and the notion of being influenced by a book I've read is a familiar one to me in the case of fiction -- it means the images from the story have become part of my intellectual currency, part of the landscape of imagery on which I live my internal life... Jaynes' book is clearly not a novel; in order to assimilate his imagery do I need to make the assertion that I believe his psychological theory to be true? That would be
a difficult assertion for me to make. I am not a historian or a neurologist -- while some of the historical and neurological evidence he lays out to back up his theory sounds convincing, some sounds strained, I don't ultimately have the background to judge it valid or not. I appreciate his literary analysis of The Iliad -- it greatly enriches my reading of the poem -- but have trouble accepting that as the basis for a historical theory of consciousness. So I am going to go with the much weaker assertion that Jaynes' model resonates with me: that it gives me a plausible means of understanding my own consciousness, one that matches up with the moments of inspiration which have been part of my experience.
And ultimately that is really what I'm looking for -- a way to understand inspiration. What I'm looking for is a way to write, and to write I need inspiration. The idea that the inspiration coming all-too-seldom to me is the pre-conscious voice of an internal God, and that the perspiration necessary to turn that voice into writing is the process of giving birth to consciousness, well... it works for me. YMMV. (And note, this blog post like most of my posts is almost completely inspiration-free -- a couple of wording choices may have the freshness of inspiration, but in general it is written self-consciously, a product of striving to get at the source of inspiration... That is for me a necessary part of the process.)
posted morning of May 7th, 2011: 2 responses
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Thursday, May 5th, 2011
I've been rereading Julian Jaynes' The Birth of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind -- a book which I read shortly before I started blogging about reading and which has pretty strongly influenced my ways of thinking -- and thinking there is a lot I want to write about it; but nothing is coming together yet when I sit down to write about it. Instead I want to quote a passage from another book, from William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, a passage which surprised me when I happened across it this afternoon. I was raised a Quaker but never really learned much about George Fox. I guess to the extent that I have any image of him, it is as an ethereal, meditative pacifist, a thoughtful, reflective man. Below the fold, James quotes a passage from Fox' journals which shows him in full-on bicameral, hallucinatory prophet mode. Check it out.
Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence.
If you ask for a concrete example, there can be no better one than is furnished by the person of George Fox. The Quaker religion which he founded is something which it is impossible to overpraise. In a day of shams, it was a religion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness, and a return to something more like the original gospel truth than men had ever known in England. So far as our Christian sects today are evolving into liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to the position which Fox and the early Quakers so long ago assumed. No one can pretend for a moment that in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox's mind was unsound. Everyone who confronted him personally, from Oliver Cromwell down to county magistrates and jailers, seems to have acknowledged his superior power. Yet from the point of view of his nervous constitution, Fox was a psychopath or détraqué of the deepest dye. His Journal abounds in entries of this sort: --
"As I was walking with several friends, I lifted up my head and saw three steeple-house spires, and they struck at my life. I asked them what place that was? They said, Lichfield. Immediately the word of the Lord came to me, that I must go thither. Being come to the house we were going to, I wished the friends to walk into the house, saying nothing to them of whither I was to go. As soon as they were gone I stept away, and went by my eye over hedge and ditch till I came within a mile of Lichfield where, in a great field, shepherds were keeping their sheep. Then was I commanded by the Lord to pull off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter: but the word of the Lord was like a fire in me. So I put off my shoes and left them with the shepherds; and the poor shepherds trembled, and were astonished. Then I walked on about a mile, and as soon as I was got within the city, the word of the Lord came to me again, saying: Cry, 'Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield!' So I went up and down the streets, crying with a loud voice, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! It being market day, I went into the market-place, and to and fro in the several parts of it, and made stands, crying as before, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! And no one laid hands on me. As I went thus crying through the streets, there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood. When I had declared what was upon me, and felt myself clear, I went out of the town in peace; and returning to the shepherds gave them some money, and took my shoes of them again. But the fire of the Lord was so on my feet, and all over me, that I did not matter to put on my shoes again, and was at a stand whether I should or no, till I felt freedom from the Lord so to do: then, after I had washed my feet, I put on my shoes again.
After this a deep consideration came upon me, for what reason I should be sent to cry against that city, and call it The bloody city! For though the parliament had the minister one while, and the king another, and much blood had been shed in the town during the wars between them, yet there was no more than had befallen many other places. But afterwards I came to understand, that in the Emperor Diocletian's time a thousand Christians were martyr'd in Lichfield. So I was to go, without my shoes, through the channel of their blood, and into the pool of their blood in the market-place, that I might raise up the memorial of the blood of those martyrs, which had been shed above a thousand years before, and lay cold in their streets. So the sense of this blood was upon me, and I obeyed the word of the Lord."
↻...done
posted evening of May 5th, 2011: 1 response
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Wednesday, May 4th, 2011
Alas! It looks like Sylvia and I are not going to make it in to the city to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams before the end of next week, when its run will be ending. I am hoping against hope that it gets a broader distribution, either now or at Oscars time -- how could something like this not get nominated? If not, well, I guess we'll watch it at home, without 3D... Julian Bell's review in the current NY Review of Books makes it sound unmissable.
posted evening of May 4th, 2011: Respond
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Tuesday, May third, 2011
The Cars have a new record out, Move Like This; and it is just marvelous. You can (for the time being) stream it free from their facebook page. Update: Seriously -- what a great record!
posted evening of May third, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, May first, 2011
Read what inspires passion in you; this is the only thing that will help you bear existence.-- Ernesto Sabato
Before the End
 Ernesto Sabato died yesterday in Buenos Aires, 99 years old. He lived a truly remarkable life and left behind three novels reputedly in the top echelon of 20th-Century literature, El túnel, Sobre héroes y tumbas, and Abbadón el exterminador -- I have not yet read them, I am going to make a top priority of correcting this lack.Sabato also leaves an important legacy in his directorship of CONADEP, the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared, committed to documenting the abuses of the junta.
posted morning of May first, 2011: 3 responses
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Saturday, April 30th, 2011
This is my grandfather's violin, which I've been playing (with significant interruptions) since I was 12 years old or thereabouts. Today I gave it away, to my daughter. A couple of thoughts --
- Wow, Sylvia is playing a full-size violin now! It seems like the transition from ¼-size did not take a very long time.
- I have really switched over pretty completely to the Stroh fiddle in the year or so I've had it. It feels like my native instrument now. I was playing this violin with Bob and Janis earlier today and noticing it felt a little foreign, the sound was not the Stroh sound which I have acclimated to.
I took the pickup off; if you're looking for a cheap Barcus Berry transducer to mount on your violin, give me a holler. It is nothing fancy but it served me well. Of the two stickers on the case, Sylvia will be keeping "Katze und Mädchen, ein komisches Paar" and getting rid of "Future Corpses of America" -- probably a wise decision. Need to get a better bow for Sylvia as I cannibalized the good bow for my Stroh fiddle.Sylvia was going through the stuff in the outer pocket of the case and found sheet music for "Old Joe's Hittin' the Jug", which I had forgotten I had, and the dvd of Elixirs and Remedies. (Which, nice, I'm watching now.)
posted evening of April 30th, 2011: 2 responses
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 So tomorrow is May Day, International Workers' Day; it is also the anniversary day of St. Walpurga's canonization, making this evening Walpurgisnight. Hope the occasion finds you dancing naked and setting fires.
(I did not know this: St. Walpurga lived in the Ⅷ C. ad and was an English missionary for the Roman church in central Europe, evangelizing to the pagans of the Frankish empire. She is credited as being the first female author in England and in Germany.)
posted morning of April 30th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, April 24th, 2011
 While we were in China, 20th Century Fox's Rio had its premiere worldwide. By happy coincidence, Michael's House, where we were staying in Beijing, is right around the corner from the China Film Art Research Center and its attached first-run theater; so Sylvia and I got to watch Rio dubbed into Chinese. (To be specific, dialog was dubbed into Chinese; song lyrics were left in English and subtitled.)
It was, well, a really good movie to watch in a language you don't understand. The plot and characterizations were broad enough, the motivations and emotions corny enough, that we had no trouble following the story by just watching the zany, pretty charming animation -- and I'm pretty sure I would just have found the dialog and the non-visual jokes annoying, that they would have hampered my enjoyment of the movie.* And watching it in a language you don't understand is way better than watching it with the sound turned off -- the clues you get from gibberish dialog about who is speaking and what their mood is, and the clues you get from the soundtrack about the direction of the movie, are important. (I wondered, and have no idea, whether the Brazilian characters were speaking Chinese with a stereotypical Portuguese accent.)
* (Sylvia enjoyed the movie in Chinese but wants to see it again in English. She will probably get more out of the jokes than I would.)
posted evening of April 24th, 2011: Respond
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A story idea (or, well, a character idea -- nothing happening in the story, yet) that developed in China as I interacted with vendors at the Shanghai textile market. I was not really there to buy anything, just keeping Ellen and Sylvia company in their hunt for silk... So the idea is, there's this character, a sexually/interpersonally-frustrated American businessman who spends time in China working for his company. Not really sure of the details of this, possibly I would model him on a British expatriate we met in Suzhou who had lived there for several years doing marketing for a British telecommunications firm. I think the character's name is Morris Babel, just because I was reading 100 Years of Solitude recently and thinking what a great character name that would be, and it seems to work for this character. Babel's business does not involve textiles but he develops the kink of hanging around the fabric and clothing markets having people sell to him -- the salespeople, who are generally attractive young women, make eye contact, greet him, ask him to look at their wares, and if he pauses to take a look, aggressively market the merchandise, pulling him in and connecting with him, or creating the appearance of a connection. Babel finds this addictive and returns daily to the markets, buying clothing and fabric and trinkets he does not have any use for in exchange for this experience of feeling wanted. It seemed to me at the market like this form of direct personal marketing was the primitive form of the advertising industry I have been exposed to all my life in America, probably (almost certainly) more effective on a per-exposure basis than mass media advertising but of course much less efficient in terms of money, since labor is involved in each exposure.
posted morning of April 24th, 2011: Respond
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