CONfronting a CONtemporary iCON - or, CON CON CON

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This not an easy piece to write as it requires me to chide both a favorite TV program and an “artist” I have never met. But the fourth tenet of Distilled Harmony [www.distilledharmony.com] is Oppose Harm, and to paraphrase the Duke, “sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do."

I must admit that I had never heard of Marina Abramovic until CBS Sunday Morning’s gushing story by Serena Altschul about Abramovic that aired November 30th, 2014. Obviously my error as the story began by informing me that Art Review magazine had dubbed Abramovic #5 on its list of "the hundred most powerful people in the contemporary art world." As the story unfolded it became clear why the adjective “powerful” was employed instead of oh, say, talented or creative or meaningful or .  .  .  .  

Abramovic is a performance artist who seems to do pretty traditional stuff as far as CONtemporary performance art is concerned.  She hurts herself in a variety of ways. She puts people into a large empty space, blindfolds them and puts noise canceling headphones on them and has them walk around bumping into walls and each other. Stuff like that. In her defense I could not find references to any works that were gratuitously violent to others or panderingly erotic or scatological. She is perhaps best know for a “performance” called “The Artist is Present” in which she sat on a chair in a display space at MoMA. There was a table in front of her and another chair across the table from her. She would sit silently in her chair and museum guests, I assume paying guests, would sit in the other chair and - also silently - gaze into her eyes.

It has always seemed to me that there are - to grossly oversimplify - two kinds of artists in the world. They are, perhaps, united in a powerful need to create. Making a living as an artist - any kind of artist, visual, musical, dance, literature, etc., - is so difficult that few people stick with it unless truly driven to create. But underneath that large umbrella I have always felt a dichotomy between artists who create primarily to communicate with others, art for an audience; and those who create as a kind of personal therapy. That second category includes those whose art makes them feel better. An audience is only necessary as a tool for, or a witness to, their personal therapy.  “The Artist is Present” seems a to fit clearly in the “art as personal therapy” school. What can be more affirming than having 750,000 people pay for the privilege of coming and sitting across the table from you? You don’t talk to them. You do nothing. You can see in them whatever you choose, while they focus on you. Talk about the ultimate ego rush. Memememememememememe! They shift and move on like a speed dating partner, but you remain constant. It is always about memememememememe!

But, in a way, that is OK. It obviously makes Abramovic feel good. My own doodles make me feel good. If they make others smile - all the better. Art has to live under a pretty big tent. Anyone who feels that they can understand all ART, writ large, is going to find themselves in need of serious therapy. There is just too much being said in too many different ways for any one human being to take it all in, let alone come to grips with what each artist is trying to say. I get that. Live and let live. But then Abramovic went too far:

"The worst childhood you have, the better artist you become, because you have things to work with," she said.

What an utter crock. Sounds like a would-be gangsta rapper trying to establish some kind of street cred: "My neighborhood was so tough that smoking crack was considered a form of rehab." Please.  Perhaps Abramovic draws her creative energy from an abusive childhood. That would explain the dominant “self-therapy” strain in her work. But to generalize her personal journey to the rest of the world “The worst childhood you have, the better artist you become,” is incredibly arrogant, and potentially dangerous.  Want your child to discover his or her true artistic potential? Smack them about a bit. Be withdrawn. Be cold. It may seem cruel now, but they will thank you for it when they - like Abramovic - have a sprawling, bucolic estate in upstate New York where they can retreat, hug their favorite tree with the nice lady from Sunday Morning, do yoga with Lady Gaga and recharge their batteries.

I mean really. I try to rein in my inclination to assert that in most CONtemporary art the accent is on the first syllable. But just when I think I’m finding some harmony there, someone like Abramovic comes along playing the long CON. This is an artist who seems utterly unfamiliar with the notion of Enable Beauty.

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Restlessness

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Restless

Considering the fact that the little hand 

(If we still had clocks with hands)

Has now nudged past three,

And the rosy-fingered dawn is probably

Stuck somewhere out over the Mediterranean,

That seems to capture it.

I am content with the understanding

I have come to with the Universe.

Foster Harmony.

Enable Beauty.

Distill Complexity.

Oppose Harm.

Got it. I'm trying.

But the itch I cannot scratch is the one

That moves that agreement forward.

Being no longer willing, or perhaps likely,

To wait the decades necessary 

To observe success or confirm failure;

The task of instilling curiosity 

In students who could be my grandchildren

Has lost its allure.

So, in lieu of my life’s work - what?

Currently I take my greatest pleasure

From drawing fanciful abstractions

While listening to whatever musical genre

Captures my inclination of the moment.

But the serious rules governing mature society

Create long noses down which

Such endeavors are observed.

Yet around me those same pinched nostrils

Attend with “all due respect” to “goals and plans”

Both “long term” and “interim”

That have time and time again

“Turned slowly unto dust.”

I have grown tired,

Not simply of feeling dusty,

But also of pretending

That it is important to be thus.

So again, in lieu of my life’s work - what?

At the moment just restlessness.

Still, I take some degree of comfort

In having snared this particular bit of lightening 

In its appropriate bottle.

Perhaps with it thus suspended

I will discover ways to bend it to

A more harmonic path.

Fiddlesticks 2

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Minding Mindfulness - or Ignore This Post

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Perhaps the most common complaint I hear voiced against contemporary culture it is that it is so hard to ignore. And yes, I meant to end the sentence there. It is so hard to ignore just about everything. Our phones “push” messages to us. Colleagues can compell us to consider events by placing an “invite” on our “e-calendars.” Our computers encourage us to “submit a review” of that book we thought we were reading all by ourselves. It is all just so hard to ignore.  It is hardly surprising then, that we seem to be actively seeking better ways to do just that - ignore, to quiet the rush of life in the 21st century, to find a peaceful place in the midst of our pushy, “technologized” existence.  Let me offer the following ritual - part of which I have shared before - and which does, ha, ha, require - or can benefit from - some technology.

You need to begin by thinking about some peaceful place you would like to find. This is important because  part of the ritual asks you to create that scene in your mind in some detail. So it is helpful if it is a real place, but it need not be. Sometimes I enjoy crafting rather detailed mental animations that have nothing to do with reality. But they seem somehow to be more difficult to maintain.  Either way your “scene" does need to be a place that manifests the tranquility you desire.

My usual scene is the front porch of the house in which I was mostly raised, back in Springfield, Ohio. The specific details are largely irrelevant because you build the scene in your head. For example, I don’t really think the floor of the porch was really painted barn red, but for some reason I make it so.  It was a modest concrete slab - open in the winter, but screened in during the summer months, and the summer months were the magic months. There was a wicker table with  lamp. The lamp cast a golden haze, floating out into the summer night. Bits would break off and flutter past the sheltering evergreens on the backs of obliging fireflies. Murmurs of indistinct conversations rustled on the night breezes. When a sultry summer storm swept past, it was my deck upon a stormy sea - I have written to you about it before:

The porch

Of the house

Where I was mostly raised

Is rather small.

Drive-bys, real and virtual

Confirm this fact.

Yet in my memory

It was quite large.

A world apart

Screened by shrubbery.

At night in particular,

It was a magic place

Bathed in the warm glow

Of those yellow "bug lights"

Now largely gone,

Replaced with harsh

Fluorescent spirals,

Sacrificed, like smoke-tinged autumn,

To keep the planet safe

And sterile.

But in memory

The porch floated serene

On their golden halo.

Serene and apart as rain

Drummed down all round.

I believe,

But cannot be certain,

That it is the porch

Of my current meditation

Backed by a gentle track

Called "Soft Forest Rain:"

I stand on guard,

A lad of maybe six,

Dressed in imaginative pajamas.

The particulars shift.

But always armed with

The proverbial new broom.

Cantankerous colleagues

Divisive kin

Old Regrets

Long-departed

Lovers and antagonists

Charge up the front steps

Like animated tennis balls

Demanding satisfaction.

"Get off! Get off my porch!"

I command,

And swing my mighty broom.

My aim is true

And the invading irritants

Carom back down the stairs,

Now a roaring cascade,

And are swept out

Along the sidewalk

To the street

To the gutters, and away.

Their carping accusations

Fade and blend

With the chirping of crickets

Leaving me alone,

Safe once more with the drumming

Of the rain.

And building such a scene is your first step. The “mind-clearing” step. The important part is that you create a mental environment where you can swing your mighty broom, or tennis racket, or golf club, cricket bat, or Hogwarts wand - whatever.  My guess is that it is best to draw the inspiration for this environment from a real-world place in which you felt truly and deeply safe and happy. Life being what it is, it may now only exist in memory. Lucky for us memory lives right next door to meditation and the two chat regularly over the backyard fence.

So lie down - or sit I suppose, my back much prefers lying down - and build the “broom swinging environment” in your head. My choice is to do this phase to music - noise canceling headphones if you are in an “auditorially challenged” environment: someone near and dear to you is snoring, someone far less dear is watching mindless TV or listening to what they choose to call music. Got the scene?  OK.  Now you begin to swat the irritants. But remember this is not WWE Raw, the intention is not to mindlessly pummel your opponent - Foster Harmony, remember? Rather the intent is to gracefully launch the irritant off into another universe where their discord may meet a harmonic counterpoint.

An important objective in this phase is to create a gentle dance in your head where your mighty broom doesn’t so much strike your irritant, as sweep them away as mentioned above. You create a mental dance that becomes graceful, gentle, calming, soporific. And falling asleep is a perfectly acceptable option. But I would encourage you to explore another choice - mental painting. Move into the Enable Beauty phase. You now create the animation that accompanies the music. The utterly wonderful thing about painting in your head is that you never have to actually have to draw, there is no learning curve, no software to master - simply thinking creates the painting. For me this animation usually takes one of two forms - one is the creation of a very complex Disney/Pixar/Norman Rockwell/Andrew Wyeth world. That one I can pretty much guarantee is going to stay dancing around in my head.

The other actually makes its way out into the real world. The tennis balls become blobs of color and their trajectories become clean black lines on a crisp white sheet of paper - and the image lingers long enough to be reborn on paper.  It is not that the exact image that skipped across the synapses comes to life when I sit down to draw. Rather the Sharpie - black, ultra fine - begins to dance across the paper. No real notion of where it is going, it just traces the trajectories that present themselves. This also happens to music. Most often I fill the whole page without lifting the point from the paper, but if I do - no big deal. The next step is to let boxes grow within boxes, or triangles within triangles - or appear wherever they seem to choose.

The result is a black and white template begging for color. And I, of course, oblige by pulling out the whole collection of colored Sharpies - to my knowledge second only to my sister Margaret’s. Yes, maybe there is something genetic going on. You may also be interested to learn that the relationship between any individual Sharpie’s cap and the color that flows from the tip borders on the arbitrary - even two Sharpies with the same color top! That is not necessarily a bad thing as it actually increases your available palette. But you need to know that going in.  But I digress, again. Anyhow, certain colors volunteer to participate and I help them fill in the spaces they prefer.  Knowing when to stop is the hardest part. I will tell you how to do that when I discover it myself.

I call the images that grow out of this process Fiddlesticks. There is no “meaning.” The objective is to elicit a smile. Here is the first one:

Fiddlesticks then led to a more studied application of the same processes. Those images I call Monograms - largely because that is what they are.  Here is mine.

Sometimes people ask “How long does it take you to do one of these?”  To which I reply “Get off my porch!"

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Topping Off Harmony

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Ansel Adams called the Monterey Peninsula a "Place, with a capital P." He felt that the peninsula's intersection of sea and sky and cliff conjured a mystical world, powerful, almost magic. He'll hear no contradictions from me. And part of the magic is how Adams's photographs capture the Place so brilliantly that they merge with, augment, maybe even replace, our own less focused, memories of that enchanted stretch of coastline.

I spent a couple of hours today wandering around the J A Ralston Arboretum here in Raleigh. As a place it may not warrant the peninsula's capital P, yet a number of characteristics argue for it being a place best defined by something other than lower case.  I haven't spent much time here in the last few years.  Oh, we have had some faculty retreats in the Education Building, but after spending several hours doing "business meeting behavior" the inclination to remain longer in the neighborhood fades. Today's meander reminded me that I need to return more often to this "place with a greater than lower case p," for it is the kind of place that Fosters Harmony.

Fostering Harmony is to a great extend modeling, demonstrating harmonious options in thought and behavior. In this way, demonstrated Harmony flows from ones own Harmony, an internal emotional storehouse from which one draws, and from there, out into the world in which we live. But you cannot go to the well of Harmony over and over again without depleting, to some extent, the supply. At least I cannot. People like Nelson Mandela seem to somehow possess an inexhaustible supply of personal Harmony, that enables them to make endless withdrawals while existing in horrible conditions.  Most of us deplete our personal harmonic reserves far more swiftly; a realization that brings me back to a consideration of the value of places like my arboretum, "places" with something other than a lower case p.

The arboretum certainly cannot claim the breath-taking beauty of Monterey, but then few places in the world can.  A fairer comparison can be found with the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. and the Morton Arboretum outside Chicago. I have visited both many times over the years, and they both boast more acres and a broader variety of plants than our local version.  They also possess, in my mind, a fatal flaw - people.  Lots and lots of people. Many of the young and unsupervised variety, barely beyond ankle-biters.  Harmony serves as a shield against the inevitable friction that is generated when urban assumptions confront agrarian environments, but only with conscious effort.

On the other hand, I spent most of my time at the JA strolling in pleasant solitude, recalling earlier visits that never failed to replenish my inner stores of Harmony. I remembered anew that I used to come here to grade papers, back when they were actually papers, handed to me in manageable clusters of 20 or 30.  I used to bring books, again made of actual paper, here and read them on benches secluded in bowers of extraordinary leaves and flowers. I would read, and doze, and write.

Today, as I stroll and gaze, I realize that Fall has found its way again to the South, and the arboretum reflects the changes.  The deep greens and multi-hued blooms of summer have largely given way to cross-stitched hedges of straw-colored stalks still interrupted by an iris or late blooming rose; blooms that seem to have distilled the hues of an entire bush or bed into one last, outrageous, burst of color. Squirrels troll the leafy understory, plowing in search of the varied seed pods that will add spice to the leavings of winter's well-intentioned visitors who will ignore the signs and scatter nuts and popcorn along the pathways.

I rest my walking stick against an arbor and take a seat on a rustic bench whose plaque informs me that it was donated by a son in loving memory of his parents. I say a silent thanks to all three as I turn my face into the late afternoon sun, close my eyes, and let the ambient Harmony top off my own Winter stores.

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The Sky is Falling . . .

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First let me say that I realize that in every age the old folks have sat around muttering "The sky is falling. Damn kids, the sky is falling."  "Haul the fire inside the cave? Damn kids, the sky is falling." "Ride around in a wagon with no horse? Damn kids, the sky is falling!" "Elected Tricity? Damn kids, the sky is falling!" The Bomb! TSIF! Pollution! TSIF! Mary Lou Gewanna! TSIF! Global warming! TSIF! And yet somehow the human race has always muddled through. I must, however, call your attention to these large blue chunks that have been crashing to the ground in my world recently, and assert that there is actual cause for alarm.

I suppose I could trace it back to losing my cellphone.  I know, I know, we ALL lose our cellphones. At least once, if not several times, a day.  But this time it stayed lost. After a week of covert and overt searching, which included rifling the pockets of pants that have not fit for years, I declared the phone well and truly lost and set about replacing it. Rather than opting for the latest and greatest model that priced out somewhere north of 300 bucks, I opted for the $49.50 "replacement from b-stock.” Read: old phones that the young and monied had traded in, in exchange for the latest and greatest. The company rehabs the old phones and sends them out to guys like me. Well, after an exchange of maybe ten emails and a couple of "FAQ Letters From the Community," the phone now works, but all my saved contacts have been scattered out onto the solar wind, and are currently drifting past Uranus, or maybe mine.

About the same time that this was all going on my MacBook Pro began behaving strangely.  It had obviously channeled Hal from 2001: "I'm sorry, Robert. I'm afraid I can't do that" became its favorite saying, as it gleefully spun its multi-colored MacBall of Shame. Twice in as many days it flashed the dreaded Gray Screen of Death.  The problem is that when my computer dies, several hundred university students go without class. Despite their giddy feelings, I consider that a bad thing.  Hence, I took my Mac upstairs to the tech guys.  They huddled about and spoke geek speak in hushed tones. “Tomorrow," they concluded, and I went away.

The next day I was greeted with confident smiles. "All is well!" I was told, and I took my machine and left, comforted.  A couple of days later I was putting a PowerPoint presentation together for a video for my online class. "Print" I told my machine.

"I'm sorry, Robert. I'm afraid I can't do that." And the MacBall of Shame spun round and round.  

A quick drive into campus. Upstairs to the guru geeks. "Mutter, mutter. Aha! That's the problem!"  “Tonight,” they declared.  Again, I went away but not quite as comforted.  Later that night, after having been assured it was a "wicked fast machine," I took it home.  It was wicked fast. I finished the PowerPoint. "Save," I told my machine.

"I'm sorry, Robert. I'm afraid I can't do that." And the MacBall of Shame spun round and round.

I could go on, but it would only make me weep. Instead, I will ask you to play a little mind game that I play with my students. No tech required, not even a pencil and paper.  Think of the number of times your technology has told you in the last, oh, two days "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't do that." Email glitches, GPS runs you into a dead end, print fails, Netflix dies, batteries crash, anything. Think of that number.  Now multiply it by 214,942,000 - the 75 % of the US population, which the census bureau says is how many of us own a computer. (OK, I lied about "no tech." Pull the calculator up on your phone, tablet, or computer.)  Divide the number you get by 2, the number of days we considered, and the number you see on the screen is a very low estimate of the number of times, everyday, our various machines told us, as a nation, "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't do that."

Yet, we rush to make ourselves, our banking, our entertainment, our music, our art, our social interactions, our healthcare, our cars, our entire existence increasingly dependent upon this capricious web of screens and wires and machines. TSIF! TSIF! TSIF!

This is where I am supposed to say something comforting. Where I assert that the engineers will get it right, that governments will enact policies and mandate fail-safes that will address these big blue and cloud-marked chunks over which I continually stumble. This is where I should opine that Google or Apple or Facebook certainly will create an all-purpose “patch."

I would like to, but,

"I'm sorry, my friends. I'm afraid I can't do that."

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Calling the Genealogy

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If you do an Internet search on the phrase "call and response" most of the information returned is either musical or theological.  In jazz or gospel music one musician will offer - or call out - a dominant phrase and another will embellish the composition with a response. Call and response. In a religious setting the leader will call out a key phrase and the congregation will answer back as the liturgy demands. Call and response. The definition is accurate, but limiting.

I am more comfortable with the idea of "assertion and affirmation." One voice asserts something to be so, and other voices affirm - and usually expand upon - the assertion.  But both call and response and assertion and affirmation go beyond a logical construction.  The history of the form - whatever we chose to call it - has a lot to do with community and identity.

The same Internet search will return a lot of hits that deal with the African, or African-American, roots of call and response, both in music and theology. Slave chants to both pace and break the monotony of hard labor; religious chorusing to maintain faith and define a community of hope.  Again, accurate but limiting. I would guess that scholars of any specific group could provide us with examples of "assertion and affirmation" in their community of interest.  From the days when human beings first cast their lot upon the waves, sea shanties or “chanties” - in addition to making hard, dangerous, and frightening work a little lighter - bound the often culturally disparate community of maritime laborers together. 

From Roman legions to boot camps around the modern world, soldiers drill, march to, and are unified by, the rhythmic, semi-sung "assertion and affirmation" chants of their compatriots.  I am unaware, other than in communities of silence, of religious services in which responsive readings play no part.  Rather, "reading responsively" seems central to assertions of faith and community throughout the world. Fans of athletic teams will "call and respond" with team colors to urge their favorites on to victory.  Here at NC State that means "Red!" pause, pause, "White!" So however we name it, from communities both sacred and profane "Call and Response" or "Assertion and Affirmation" seems, if not universal, then at least far-flung.

And what, you may well ask, does that have to do with the family reunion/farm auction I attended a few weeks ago in South Dakota? Excellent question.

If Distilled Harmony can make any claim to being a Theory of Everything, a claim I do make when lights are low and things are warm and comfortable, the tenets need to bring meaning to the events of each passing day. The "assertion" of the validity of a tenet needs to be followed by the "affirmation" of a "for instance." In this particular "for instance" the tenets of Foster Harmony and Distill Complexity brought me face-to-face with an unusually version of "call and response" or "assertion and affirmation."  Let me set the stage.

My Schrag grandparents were married on November 23, 1905. Over the next several decades they, farmed, preached, taught school and raised nine children out on the demanding, but fertile, plains surrounding the little hamlet of Freeman, South Dakota. Those children, in turn, produced some 20 + children of their own.  That is my generation.  We refer to our parent's generation as the First Generation.  We are "the cousins." My father's death this past year, at age 100, reduced the surviving number of the First Generation to three, scattered, west coast, and Dakota with the youngest sharing time between New York City and West Lafayette, Indiana.

Well, it happened that one of "the cousins" had chosen the last week in July to auction off the family farm.  Her husband had passed away and her children were living down the road in the wicked city of Sioux Falls.  She figured, “Why should they have all the fun?” and made arrangements sell the farm and follow. Simultaneously the wife of one of the First Generation - who had also been born and raised in the Freeman area - was being honored, along with her deceased sisters. A bench dedicated the Singing Waltner Sisters was to be installed in a local park.  So she - my Aunt Stella, her husband, my Uncle Delbert - one of the surviving three of the First Generation - and a couple of their children (more of "the cousins") were heading for Dakota.  My New York/sometimes Indiana Uncle Calvin - another of the First Generation - decided if his two surviving brothers were going to be in Dakota, it would be silly for him not to be there too. So he and his daughter Heather - the youngest of "the cousins", and her daughter Jennifer, (a "cousin" once removed?) also headed west to Freeman. With all this going on a couple of "the cousins" declared this an ideal time for a family reunion - and so it came to pass. I decided this was not an event I could miss and bought a plane ticket to Sioux Falls and nabbed a Priceline car rental.  If you are now hopelessly lost, that is good, because that is exactly the point. 

Back to the events. The formal "reunion" was a dinner held in a large room in the restaurant out by the golf course. There must have been 40 or so of us there. The room had hard, flat walls; the same for the floor and ceiling. Mine is a family that talks a lot - and loudly.  It was then that I noticed that the entire  "First Generation" - and I believe that includes spouses - was sporting dual hearing aids.  They could probably hear what was going on.  I suspect some in my generation - myself included - were faking it. But I caught enough to grasp the dominant theme: who are you and how do you fit into this patchwork of Schrags?

The days leading up to the auction centered on getting Rita's [the cousin auctioning the farm] place ready for that event.  If you have never been to one, it is my understanding that even an ordinary farm auction defies description for urbanites.  Everything gets sold - from a huge combine to a paper of pins. The auctioneer holds up the item - "I've got a Winchester 9422 rifle here. Wonderfully maintained.  Who'll give me 75 dollars? Good. 100? .  .  . "  And so it goes until everything is sold, the Lookie-Lous have left and the dust has settled.  That's an ordinary auction, and this was to be no ordinary one. Somehow Rudy, the recently deceased husband of cousin Rita, had managed to acquire 14 tractors ranging from an ancient "What is that? A Farmall?" to late model John Deeres and International Harvesters with glass enclosed cabs, air-conditioning and stereos. It was an oft repeated theme that Rudy apparently applied to vehicles, tools, headgear, and five-gallon plastic jugs - if one is good, a few dozen must be better. There were to be "two rings," meaning that two sets of auctioneers would circle the site selling simultaneously.  Tough for the buyer if two items you had your eye on went up at the same time!

Getting ready for the sale entailed an incredible amount of work, much of which had been going on for days, if not weeks.  When west coast cousin John and I arrived on the scene we were given tasks requiring a specialized skill set - cleaning tractor windows. Having missed a couple of small, barely visible windows, the next day I was promoted to Gator driver.   Various sale items would be loaded onto the back of a John Deere Gator [think large golf cart with a small flatbed on the back] and local "cousin-in-law" Jim and I would drive it to where we were instructed. There others, with knowledge of the "big plan," would move the objects to where the auctioneers could get to them.  I searched in vain through cousin Rudy's vast collection of baseball caps for one declaring "Gators R Us" 

The day of the auction I awoke to drizzle and puddles in the parking lot of the Freeman Country Inn.  "They promised sun!" I muttered to myself as I jumped into my rental, grabbed a "morning sandwich" at the neighboring Subway, and headed for Rita's place. Visions of soaked lampshades and dry goods danced in my brain.  Fortunately, the mist blew over, cooling the day and letting the auction begin as scheduled. I truly cannot describe it.  I wandered around like a kid at his first county fair.  I may attempt a further description at another time, but that isn't the point here. The point was the unfolding theater.  My father was a sociologist. He taught me that eavesdropping is a perfectly legitimate research tool.  I used it extensively during the auction. The dialogue was intriguing:

Cousin Dean, brother to cousin Rita reported that "it was a good sale." 

A grizzled local informed his companion: "I think that was Art's tractor. Ran good up until the 70s." Art was a name often repeated.  I think he was either Rudy's father or Grandfather.

One of the First Generation called to a seeming age mate whom I did not recognize : "Well, hi there young fellow! I haven't seen you since [somebody's] 65th anniversary. How are you holding up?"

And then one of the guys who had been around the last couple of days and seemed privy to the big plan came up to me as I stood chatting with my 50+ west coast cousin John. "So," he asked me, "How do you fit in here? Is this your son?" Naturally, I addressed cousin John as "son" for the rest of the weekend.

Gradually I came to recognize a "assertion and affirmation" or "call and response" pattern that manifested at least two tenets of Distilled Harmony - Foster Harmony and Distill Complexity.  It is a phenomenon I have now come to think of as "calling the genealogy."  In truth, the phenomenon has always been a part of my visits to South Dakota.  Years ago I would simply identify myself as "Chummy's son." Chummy was my father's boyhood nickname, and that would usually suffice to define my place in the community.  I would "assert" my place as Chummy's son, and most often the "affirmation," "Oh, Reverend Schrag's boy, Chummy!" would complete the "call and response" the complexity of genealogy was quickly distilled, my place in it made clear, and my harmonious place in the community would be acknowledged.

But time, as it does with all things, has changed the dynamic of the ritual.  The "First Generation" now numbers three.  Only one of whom stills resides in this special place.  All but four of the 20+ "cousins" have departed. A few are within driving distance, but, for most, a pilgrimage "to Dakota" means full days in the air, rental cars, and the lobby of The Freeman Country Inn.

So the calling of the genealogy for a distributed clan takes on a complexity and a subtle urgency absent in the years when dozens of "the called" thronged, at previous gatherings, among all manner of kin. I suppose calling the genealogy always gets accentuated when the "out-of-towners" appear, but I was struck by how much energy went into articulating the various relationships during this gathering: so-and-so married so-and-so's son, and he was Uncle so-and-so's nephew on his mother's side. The "begats" poured out like an Old Testament homily, but rarely did we learn what these people did or had done for a living.  Unlike the urban environment in which I have lived most of my life  where  "So what do you do?" often follows an introduction; here relationship trumped occupation.  The questions here are "Who are your people?  How do you belong?"

While driving back to The Freeman Country Inn, I noticed a farmer out baling hay.  The tractor pulled the bailer across the field, scooping the hay that lay about in seemingly disorganized rows into the maw of the machine.  Then he turned and, before starting a new row, dropped a huge cylinder of neatly wrapped hay down at the edge of the field.  As the farmer and his growling machinery clanked away down the field, I pulled over to the side of the road, curious for a closer look.  

I had seen these large round bales before, but wanted to renew the acquaintance.  The bale was wrapped in a fine mesh - some hi-tech fabric I suppose.  And I was struck by the thought that that was what the genealogy was - a fabric that bound us together into a form that we could recognize.  We had spread out across the country, no longer united by geography, community, religion or occupation. But when we gathered together and performed the ritual of call and response, when we answered the questions "Who are your people? How do you belong?" we found ourselves gathered into a form that we recognized - we recognized a family.

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Distilled Harmony Foreword - Dedicated to my Daughters

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When they lie there in their cribs, 

It seems as though you can look  

Right into their hearts.

That you will always understand them

And they you.

In truth you will always be on

Different trajectories arching through 

Unique experiences in life.

You will remain decades apart, 

Seeing existence through varied lenses.

This is a time capsule I launch, 

On its arch across space-time.

In the hope that it will, 

When needed - intersect with theirs

Creating moments of understanding,

Providing shelter from the storm,

And surprising them with love.

My father's death was a strange surprise.  It wasn't one of those "He was so young, we never saw it coming" situations. It was quite the opposite as a matter of fact.  He was 100 years old.  He had always been in the world - as certain as taxes and, well, death.  My mother and older brother were examples of "normal strange." Jim, too young, Mom sudden and unexpected.  As a result I have grown used to "imagining them on my shoulder." I ask them the questions we all ask of our departed role models "What would you do in this situation?" "What did you believe?"  

I make my best guesses as to their responses. But they are only guesses.  We rarely have those "deep" discussions when we can actually get answers - and then the chance is gone.

Dad was the illusion of an exception.  100 seemed normal. He was always there, and for decades he would provide, if not answers, then at least input or opinions.  However, during the last few years of his life, when a good day for Dad was defined by clear memories of events long past and simple recognition, I realized I had already lost the chance to ask Dad "What would you do in this situation? What do you believe about this part of life?"  The opportunities for mutually meaningful conversation had slipped away, lost between the more surface joviality of birthdays and Christmases, lost between the time-and-energy pressure of jobs and children, lost in the gap between his maturity and mine. 

I'm not sure exactly why or when I decided to try to reclaim those losses by reflecting on both what I believe about existence and how those beliefs influence what I have done and what I will do. And then, to use those reflective insights as the foundations of these media recitations.  

By looking back through my writings and drawings, the introspection seems to have surfaced around the turn of the millennium. That moment's import on the Gregorian Calendar is probably of less significance than that point in the RobertSchragian calendar - I had turned 50 in 1999.  And strange things happen when you suspect that more of your life lies in the rear view window than awaits beyond the windshield.

In our youth obsessed culture, the inclination to try to scramble back into life in the rearview window is well-represented in fact and fiction. More valuable, I have come to believe, is seeking an understanding of what unifies the full 360 degrees of our life; realizing that those rearview, windshield, out the side-windows, distinctions are illusions.  It is all one existence. We just tend to look out the windows one at a time.

When I cruised past 50, it was as if I somehow levitated above the vehicle - and there I was suspended in the center of my existence - limitless horizons in all directions.  It was staggering. On the one hand it was exhilarating - everything gained new potential, a new freedom to zoom off in any direction. On the other hand it would be an agoraphobic's nightmare, hidden threats lurking around every corner.  Reconciling those extremes, to reveal the underlying existential unity of a life, is the challenge and the true exhilaration of "life outside the vehicle."

It was not long after beginning that exploration of life outside the vehicle, that I came to realize that "some kind of Harmony" was central to my personal existence.  Most everything I have written, or drawn, since that realization reflects my attempts to understand and articulate that Harmony.  Distilled Harmony – this series of recitations - is, in my mind, the best, clearest exploration of this worldview to date.  I hope it allows my daughters to better understand me. If others benefit as well, that is truly wonderful! 

So enjoy. . .

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The Pursuit of Knowledge as a Measure of Cultural Maturity, or "Why is No One Out There Talking to Us?"

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As I sit here at my desk I am surrounded by five screens.  The World Cup match between Argentina and the Netherlands is unfolding silently on my iPad while my laptop powers two screens, one holds Evernote where I am composing this essay, the other a Chrome window set to look for cheap car rental rates for a trip later this month, and to scan for any incoming emails. To my left sits my Wacom Cintiq panel where I am working on some new drawings. My cellphone rests somewhere around here - I'll find it if it rings. Pandora plays piano solos in the background - I'm not sure where it is coming from. This is my environment, one that I have come to accept as normal, but in which I am still not entirely comfortable.  

I grew up in an era in which acquiring information and advancing knowledge required significant real-time effort. Whether you labored in a university or a corporate research and development laboratory, you wandered the stacks of the library. You paged through journal articles. You conducted research by interacting with subjects or samples that were often in the same room or lab. You applied critical models or coded data, ran tests and examined results.  Then you looked for patterns and insights that allowed you to broach defensible conclusions or generate new hypotheses. Gathering information and advancing knowledge was hard work, and behind it always lurked the often unspoken assumption that the pursuit of knowledge was, in itself, an honorable goal.

Now more information than I could ever hope to acquire on my own shimmers across these screens that surround me. If I pose any hypothesis in the form of a question and enter it into Google Scholar or more specialized search engines available online through the university library, links to hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of studies will flash onto my screen providing - if not answers - then seemingly countless rabbit holes into which I can stumble and while away an afternoon, a week, or a career. In short, the pursuit of knowledge has become largely automated, as much programming as reflection. Where once we could dip a tentative toe in a particular pool, today we stand on the banks of rivers at flood stage, deciding whether or not to leap in. The sheer volume of information seems to demand levels of specialization undreamed of in my undergraduate days. The Mediaeval notion of a Renaissance man who could aim realistically at learning the sum of human knowledge is more fanciful than our wildest science fiction.

It is certainly a "brave new world." But, as always, the dynamic between knowledge and culture can be intense and unexpected.  The accumulation of new knowledge, by definition, mandates change. And change is, as often as not, uncomfortable, even frightening. And society - particularly those who benefit most from current norms - reacts poorly to change or information that falls somehow afoul of the current notion of truth. Historical negative responses to new or unexpected information have run the gamut from burning witches to burning books. And it would be nice to think it was all in the past. The streams of information flowing across my screen assert that is not the case.

A variety of news sources reveal that fundamentalists of every faith would have us turn the clock of human knowledge back several thousand years; stuffing, for example, the miraculous reality of evolution into the pleasant, fictional poetry of Genesis, or another of the myriad creation myths from our colorful and blended heritage.  As I write this a militaristic fundamentalist Sunni Islamic group known as ISIS - The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is, apparently, attempting to recreate an historically and theologically pure Sunni entity in the Middle East - one that would perpetuate Sharia law, including the subservient place of women, supposedly demanded by centuries-old assumptions drawn from interpretations of the Quo-ran. Here in the rural South some Pentecostal believers still handle poisonous snakes because in one translation of the Bible it says "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." I do not mean to single out Islam and Christianity, they come to mind as they get the most attention in that media flow here on my screens. Choose the extreme sliver of any religious or political organization and you are likely to find an affection for the past and an unwillingness to embrace any new knowledge that conflicts with time-honored old myths that have fossilized into truth.

As fundamentalism gains influence in the American political landscape - perhaps most obvious with the Republican Party, the traditional conservative standard bearer in American politics being attacked as "not conservative enough" or "Republican in Name Only" aka "RINOS" - opportunistic politicians seek to curry favor with this increasingly vocal and well-funded, anti-intellectual portion of the electorate.  One result, at least publicly and in policy, is a growing distrust of new knowledge or education in general. This creates real problems in America's intellectual community - those who still believe that the pursuit of knowledge is, in itself, an honorable goal.

You see, in America, traditionally financial support for intellectual endeavors springs primarily from three sources; from its public tax supported institutions; from private institutions endowed by a wealthy elite class, or by multinational corporations purchasing research that will result in new products for expanding markets.  That is a model that seems to be gaining traction internationally, leading to a series of global conflicts between fundamentalist movements of a variety of stripes who oppose education and new knowledge for religious or political reasons, and multinational corporate entities or state-run economies that seek to direct human intellectual activities down paths that advantage their financial or political objectives. Neither side fights fair - allowing for the moment that the notion of a "fair fight" need not always be an oxymoron.

OK. Now shift gears for a moment.  Since the beginning of human society we have stared into the heavens wondering is we are alone.  In the last century or so we have peered further and further into the nooks and crannies of the universe, discovering galaxies, stars, and planets seemingly without number - there is even good evidence that our universe may be only one of many.  The notion that we are alone becomes absurd.  A more interesting question then becomes "Why is no one out there talking to us?"

Think about it for a moment. As a species we are remarkably clever. Our radio-telescopes listen to the murmur of the universe, our probes are poised to pierce the heliosphere. We are unwinding the mysteries of the genome. We talk boldly of coming to understand the brain, to poke at the edges of immortality.  So we should ask again "Why is no one out there talking to us?"  We can assume the existence of entities far more clever than we.  Civilizations that span planets and galaxies. There are just too many galaxies for homo sapiens to define the apex of sentient existence. It is more likely that the smarter kids in the class have been watching us for a long time. But it is equally likely that we will never be allowed to sit at their table in the lunchroom until we advance beyond our current adolescent fixations over power and politics, until we stop our schoolyard brawling and behave like adults.

And there is only one path to that admirable goal. We need to acknowledge the depth of our ignorance. We need to learn more, we need to study more, we need to become smarter. We need to realize that a truly healthy culture is one that seeks knowledge with the same ferocious intensity that, as a species, we currently seem only able to bring to the conduct of war.  Maybe then the smart kids will be willing to talk to us.

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The Look of Love - Or Something Else

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The eyes, we are told, are windows to the soul.  Hence, a long gaze into the eyes of any other might be quite revealing - could we but overcome the embarrassment.  It is an activity fraught with social implications and, at least in Western culture, restricted almost exclusively to lovers.  Yet, there are other acceptable recipients of long and seeking gazes; among them are babies, pets, portraits and, of course, the mirror.

The object of every gaze is discovery.  Lovers seek the reassurance of reciprocated affection, a promise that what one feels for the other, is likewise mirrored in their lover's eyes. In babies we project as much as we observe. We feel we glance, in those guileless orbs, the memory of past generations; the correction of bygone errors and the promise of futures full of joy and wonder. In the eyes of our pets we glimpse wise and sentient beings, untouched by human frailties, who love us unconditionally. And why not? What's not to love?

Portraits and mirrors move us into a more mysterious realm.  I admit to being fascinated by portraits. The often denigrated aboriginal belief that a camera could steal your soul may not be as naive as we portray it. I am not asserting that a photo or a painting steals something from a subject, but rather that an exceptional representation fashions a harmonic connection with the entity portrayed. I will also admit to being an unabashed fan of the photographer Yosuf Karsh. You may think you are unfamiliar with his work - but you are not.  Click over to www.karsh.org and you will realize that you know him well. Look at Einstein, Humphrey Bogart, Castro, Hemingway and Mother Teresa. Not only do you know Karsh's work, but his portraits play a large part in our perception of the people he photographed. Yosuf Karsh is to the human face what Ansel Adams is to Yellowstone, what Georgia O'Keeffe is to New Mexico. We look into the eyes of a Karsh portrait and see, not a soul stolen, but a soul reflected.

And the idea of a soul reflected leads us, naturally, to a consideration of mirrors. Despite the recent boom in skin care products for men, the make-up session before a mirror remains primarily a feminine occupation. It appears, at first blush, an acceptable lingering manifestation of the patriarchy. On closer examination I would assert it is much more.  Having been an undergraduate theater major, I have had a more than passing acquaintance with "the man in the mirror."  At 19 I rarely played a character my own age.  Freshman year I played Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Sir in the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd.  Both characters were men in late middle age, one beaten, the other bombastic. Neither bore any resemblance to a fresh-faced kid from central Ohio.

We were expected to do our own make-up; and occasionally - depending on what theater class we were taking at the time - we were graded on our ability to transform our faces into a believable representation of our character.  And so began my personal travels into the looking glass. For hours I would stare into the eyes of the face before me, looking for the person it was supposed to be.  A shadow here, a wrinkle there, the inevitable blush of dissipation, a sag of age, and gradually Willy or Sir would appear. But I was rarely "finished." Having, as always, chosen the chair furthest from the door, I would remain - staring at the person I had become. Looking for the history behind the visage until it was time to walk him out onto the stage.

Now, of course, I wonder if this is what women do everyday. Beginning with what is there in the mirror, then artfully creating the idealized person they wish to present to the world - or perhaps crafting the face that the world they have chosen demands of them. 

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Oppose Harm

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The admonition to Oppose Harm seems, at first blush, to be embarrassingly simplistic.  A decade ago it would have triggered a "Well, duh!" from anyone a few years either side of 20.  Today an "eye roll," that must eventually do real damage to the optic nerve, would not be a surprising reaction. Yet it is an "obvious" tenet to which we give more lip service than actual support.  Bullying remains a social cancer in America's schools.  Globally, entire cohorts defined by race or gender, belief or sexual orientation, are singled out for state-sponsored bullying, imprisonment or worse.

It is far from being an "eye-rolling, no big deal." If we don't commit to Opposing Harm, bullies will run the world. Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and Idi Amin are but four of history's many bullies who came to terrorize and murder millions because, as cultures, nations and individuals, we failed to Oppose Harm. So, we should go kick some "bully butt!" Send in the drones, right?

Well, certainly sometimes; but not always. When you stop and think about it for a moment - or even longer - the charge to Oppose Harm is really not that simple.  Rather, on further consideration, Oppose Harm swiftly reveals itself to be half of the most complex dynamic within Distilled Harmony.

Remember, the first - and preeminent - tenet of Distilled Harmony is Foster Harmony.  When Distilled Harmony requires us to both Foster Harmony and Oppose Harm there seems an obvious tension, an unavoidable discord. Opposition is, by definition, discordant and hence cannot Foster Harmony.  No argument. But, when a single situation pits Foster Harmony against Oppose Harm, the objective is to find the harmonic resolution resulting in the greater good.

Defining a "greater good" is always a daunting task, but we can approach it more successfully if we, as the tenet Distill Complexity suggests, avoid getting mired in fruitless complexities.  Albert Einstein asserted that seemingly complex truths about the universe could be distilled to concise explanations because "God does not play dice" with the universe.  Einstein was also a pacifist who would have whole-heartedly supported Isaac Asimov's assertion in Foundation, that "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

But Einstein was no ordinary pacifist; he was a radical pacifist who was also the most famous man of his era. His public statements drew immediate and worldwide attention; and those statements made it clear that he believed that there was no legitimate justification for war; that the only way to put an end to war was to refuse to participate in warfare in any way. To express Einstein's belief system in Distilled Harmony terms, Foster Harmony, with its inclination to pacifism, clearly trumped the warfare common in extreme examples of Oppose Harm.

Einstein, however, shared the world stage with a man quickly growing as infamous as Einstein was famous: Adolf Hitler. The swiftly evolving technology of modern warfare allowed Hitler to spread a wave of pathological murder and hatred across Europe and Northern Africa with unparalleled speed. And as it struck at Einstein's own family and colleagues, Einstein's moral fulcrum shifted.

Einstein, who also said "make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" realized that radical pacifism's plain tautology of "war is always bad" over-simplified life in the real world. Hitler became the mandatory exception to Einstein's radical pacifism, and it became necessary - in Einstein's mind - to violently Oppose this unique Harm. So Einstein, much to the chagrin of the radical pacifism movement, withdrew his universal opposition to war and fled to America where his indirect participation in America's war plans hastened Hitler's fall.  In Distilled Harmony terms, the need to Oppose the Harm of Hitler's virulent pathologies trumped the compromise seemingly advocated in Foster Harmony's support of radical pacifism.

And that dynamic points out an important concept in the natural tension between Foster Harmony and Oppose Harm.  Foster Harmony does advocate fair and compassionate compromise. It does not, as a complete understanding of Oppose Harm reveals, advocate acquiescence to bullies.

Therein lies a balancing act of some sophistication.  You see, a common error is that in our righteous opposition to the harm perpetrated by bullies, we become bullies ourselves, taking arms against the "bad guys."  I am always mystified when I read about wars in which I would think it would be hard to identify the enemy.  Given the lack of uniforms among the civilians, I wonder how during "the Irish troubles" the combatants were able to distinguish a Catholic from a Protestant? On the smoke-filled battlefields of our Civil War, how, at a crucial moment, did you tell a Yank from Johnny Reb? In Vietnam, if there were no uniformed regulars around, how did the locals tell friend from foe?

Those who fought in those conflicts would probably be amazed at my naiveté.  But the point is this - the difference between the bully and the bullied is often simply power, pure naked power. And when that power shifts, often the bullied swiftly seize upon the roll of bully. The desire to carry "opposition" to your adversary to account for previous "harm" overwhelms the mandate to Foster Harmony.

And therein lies the most challenging aspect of this tension between Foster Harmony and Oppose Harm. Robert Burns wrote - translated to the contemporary vernacular - "Would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us."  We often wonder, from a personal, social or political perspective, how others can so misunderstand us.  I didn't say that!  I didn't mean that! That isn't me!

The tenets of Distilled Harmony don’t require us to accept the negative attributes heaped upon us by aggrieved others.   Certainly, as Americans, where each election seems - if you believe the media - to pit The Devil against Evil Incarnate, we realize that perceptions can be easily manipulated and distorted.  But a first step in the first tenet - Foster Harmony - is to try to "see ourselves as others see us," and in turn to re-examine how we have come to see the other. Such an examination may well reveal a path to Fostering Harmony that allows us to avoid this ticklish business of Opposing Harm.
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Distill Complexity

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Faith is a funny thing.  We often think of it in the context of religious belief.  As a matter of fact, the words faith and religion are often used interchangeably - he was of the Christian faith, she was of the Islamic faith, those of the Jewish faith observe Yom Kippur, and so on.  But that really is a kind of semantic theft.  More broadly speaking, faith refers to our confidence or trust in something or someone.  It can be fairly prosaic: She had complete faith in her dog's ability to find the way home. He had complete faith that his battered old Chevy would make it through the winter.

So in the context of our ordinary lives, our "faith" is our belief about the way in which the world works.  And it is our faith in that belief that, ideally, shapes our own behavior.  Sometimes that is an organized religion, sometimes it is a series of scientific laws, sometimes it is a personalized combination of religion and science, philosophy and politics.  Faith - belief and experience - governs our everyday lives.  We behave in ways that experience has taught us will obtain the results we desire; we have faith in those beliefs.

But Faith - writ large – stretches beyond our daily scrambles and challenges here on the third rock orbiting a minor star in a very ordinary galaxy.  Faith writ large is our understanding of the universe, of our place in it and how we should behave in accordance with that understanding. It is similar to, but far greater than lower case faith.

I place my Faith in something I have called by various names over the last couple of decades, Chord Theory, Universal Resonance, and now Distilled Harmony.  But while the name has shifted, the core theory doesn't change as much as it evolves.  It began with the three main tenets of Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, and Oppose Harm.  But I was always been bothered with a feeling that something was missing.  It was as if I was walking around a four-cornered gazebo. It looked quite solid, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was a column missing; that some swift Escher-like stage hand kept shifting the back pillar to the front, so three pillars took on the appearance of four.

I spent more than a little time thinking about the missing pillar. It seemed fond of teasing me awake in the little hours of the morning - 2, 3 and 4. Like a familiar face to which you just cannot connect a name. Almost there .  .  .   and then it finally came to me in the form of the tenet we are currently discussing - Distill Complexity.

Funny isn't it, piling all those words up before a phrase that essentially says, "simplify."  I knew for quite some time that the missing tenet was somewhere in that general “simplify” ballpark.  But I was always afraid of seeming to condone  simplicity, of conflating simplified with simple-minded.  

But, then came that night - or that very early morning when Distill Complexity popped into my mind.  It felt very, very right.  Distillation, as all good tipplers realize, concentrates the essence of that which is being distilled.  But the concept reaches far beyond the brewery.  A good outline precedes a moving speech or a brilliant novel.  A symphony winds around a simple melodic theme. E=mc2.  At the heart of every mind-blowing complexity lies an essential simple core.

Consider Picasso.  You stand in front of some of his late work, particularly his line art, and one is tempted to say "I could do that."  And, in a way, maybe so. But when you look at his very early works – works that can easily be mistaken for the Dutch masters - we suddenly realize that the path to Picasso's line art was far more complex than would be our attempt to create a "Picasso-like" line.  His line is distillation, ours, more likely, imitation.

I recently offered a toast at my younger daughter's wedding rehearsal dinner that dealt with Distill Complexity.  Part of it bears repeating here:

I said:

"Despite the seemingly unchanged lake outside, the world has changed a great deal since your older sister and her husband held center stage here just four years ago.  The good news is that much of what I said in my less-than-brief remarks to them is now available on the Distilled Harmony website [distilledharmony.com], where you can watch me say it over and over and over.

But lest you think you are going to escape totally unscathed, I must point out that I have added an additional "rule to live by" since I played the professor for them.  The new rule is "Distill Complexity," and I wanted to share a couple of ideas about that notion with you.

It is, you will not be surprised to hear me say, all Mark Zuckerburg's fault, a nice Jewish boy gone terribly astray.  It was Facebook™, after all, that gave us the notion of relationships that are "complicated."  Relationships are really not terribly complicated.  If we distill that particular complexity we often discover that when folks describe their relationship as “complicated”, they actually mean "it's scary."  You two are about make the simple but scary declaration that the other is to be the center of your life - mutually donning a pair of "I'm with stupid" T-shirts.  Another bizarre manifestation of how scary our culture finds this ritual of pair-bonding.

Distill Complexity asserts that we counter the scary notion of a "complicated relationship" with the old KISS design principle - Keep It Simple Stupid!  As you move forward in your life together, life will get complicated.  Career decisions, current data say you'll face quite a few. Families? Nuclear?  Extended? Children? Yes? No? Homegrown? Store bought? Dogs? Cats? Health challenges, etc. Yes, life will get complicated.  Life may even get scary.  But your relationship need not get complicated and scary if you remember KISS and keep it simple. 

And the simple reality should be that whenever life tosses complexity at you, remember what you will declare tomorrow - that the two of you are as complicated as it gets.  No job, no career, no family, no fame, trumps the simple declaration that whatever is best for each of you must be that which is best for both of you.  And as the great philosopher F.  Gump once said "That's all I'm going to say about that."

Poor kids, I know. But how often do they have to sit quietly and listen to you?

The charge then of this tenet is to reduce that which appears complex to its purest essence. Come to know the skeleton that supports the exterior.  When I tackled the task of sculpting busts of my daughters, my sculpting mentor would not allow me to simply take a big hunk of clay and try to carve away everything that didn't look like my daughters. Rather he insisted that I first create the skull beneath the face, define the more simple planes and curves that guide the complexity of muscle, skin and hair that would eventually look like my daughters.  

Distill Complexity requires us to do the same with life.  The three other tenets ask us to Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty and Oppose Harm. Distill Complexity says reduce those tasks to the skeletal - seek the more simple planes and curves of life upon which rest the seeming complexities of existence.  Avoid moaning that it is all so complicated and Distill Complexity – just KISS.

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Enable Beauty

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This tenet is difficult to define simply because Beauty is such a subjective concept.  "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" goes the old saying.  And the discussion becomes even more complicated because any consideration of Beauty gets tangled up with the larger idea of “art,” a discipline which seems to maintain, at least in the minds of some "artists," a fascination with the "ugly" the "grotesque" - the "unbeautiful."  Consider Picasso's Guernica, Migrant Mother by Dorthea Lange, or any of the host of Pulitzer Prize winning photos from the strangely named "theaters of war" around the world.  Art? Certainly.  Beauty? Just as certainly not. 

It is important to remember that the tenets of Distilled Harmony are mutually re-enforcing. So in Distilled Harmony any definition of Beauty must support the other tenets - Foster Harmony, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.  Those other tenets allow, even require us to turn away from the arcane posturing necessary to find artistry in the grotesque and pursue a less tortured view of Beauty.

Looking through the eyes of Foster Harmony, I was first inclined to define Beauty as that which induces a harmonic kind of lethargy.  Your breathing slows, your blood pressure drops, you settle into a calm, peaceful reverie.  But I soon realized that Beauty could have quite the opposite effect.  Beauty is equally prone to energize us.  Our pulse races, we feel compelled to move, to dance, to sing!  What is this Beauty that seems to call forth such wildly varying responses?

The tenet Distill Complexity urges us to seek the least complicated explanation of such seeming disparity. Or as Einstein put it, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." And there is, thankfully, a simple thing that unites both the ecstasy and the tranquility that beauty inspires: Beauty is that which makes us smile.

Simple? Certainly.  Simplistic? Far from it.  Mind you, I do not mean the sardonic, self-satisfied, superior smirk that has come to pass for a smile in contemporary sophisticated culture.  Rather, I mean an open, spontaneous, and joyful smile.  The pure smile of a delighted toddler, of a lover who is loved in return, of a parent watching a child sleep.  When any stimulus - a scene, a painting, a sculpture, a dance, a song, an object, a poem, a sentence, anything - draws such a smile from us, we are in the presence of Beauty as Distilled Harmony would have us understand it.

So we have defined second half the Enable Beauty tenet - Beauty.  Let us now turn our attention to the other: Enable.

There are three broad avenues through which we can Enable Beauty: create, collect and experience.

"Create" is self-explanatory.  We all at least dabble in creative activities, painting, poetry, the piano.  You know your favorite. Often these explorations fell by the wayside when we encountered intimidating "real artists" whose efforts exceeded our own.  And we, often nudged by well-meaning teachers and parents, soon relegated our creative efforts to the closet or under the bed and set about the serious business of getting a "real job," of making a living, of raising a family, of living a life.  Enable Beauty says haul them out again, create - not to ape the "experts" but for the sheer joy of creating.  We often forget that making beauty serves not only the observer, the audience, but the creator as well. Part of Enabling Beauty is the smile inherent in the act of creation.  Who knows, the day may well come when we create something to share, something that will bring a smile to another face, but often our own creative smile will suffice.

"Collect" speaks to the idea of living amidst Beauty.  Making our homes, our offices, our cubicles, yards and porches places that launch a smile. Here we often think too small, limiting ourselves to prints and posters, to a playlist on Spotify or Pandora.  We think that "art collecting" is for the 1% who can drop 30 million for a Van Gogh, 100K for a signed Ansel Adams print. We think opera and the symphony are for “old” people.  These biases allow “volume” to become an aesthetic variable in our music. They make IKEA and poster shops our interior decorators.  That kind of thinking limits our opportunities for smiles.

"Collect" says start now to surround yourself with the sounds and objects that make you smile, whatever now is for you. It matters not whether you are 15 or 85 or anywhere in between.  Remember, Van Gogh never sold a painting during his lifetime.  Hence it stands to reason that works from artists who will be the "old masters" of the next century are for sale at art fairs right now for 50 bucks. OK, maybe 150.00 - and that's a lot of pizza, but the return on your investment may be smiles for a lifetime.  For those of you further into your lives, consider that new car you are thinking about.  Can you peel a few grand off that purchase for that awesome piece of sculpture you saw at the gallery downtown?  

For all of us, we often eat at the same table everyday - do you want to buy the one on sale at IKEA or maybe aim for something with a little more kick.  Some inlay work? A little book matched mahogany?  Remember you eat there everyday!  Which would you chose for your daily companion, a smile or a shrug?

"Collect" is about living amidst smiles, collect what you love and never throw it away. Expose yourself to old museums and new galleries, symphonies and street corner musicians, sidewalk painters and boardwalk dancers.  As I said, collect what you love and never throw it away. Being a slave to a passing fashion is still being a slave.

"Collect" also asks that we listen to sounds that are unfamiliar to us.  Classical music doesn't just mean Mozart, who, when he was the “new band in town,” was accused of putting "too many notes" in his music.  Classical music, more purely speaking, means music with staying power - music that will be making people smile fifty, a hundred, two hundred years from now. Who would have thought when the "mop heads" played The Ed Sullivan Show in February more than a half century ago, that one day The London Symphony Orchestra would play their music and the baby-faced one would become Sir Paul? As you reach out and sample the music around you, you certainly will not like everything you listen to, but you should listen to as much as you can, so you will know what puts a smile on your face. Those selections become the soundtrack of your life pairing beauty for your eyes with smiles for your ears.

"Experience" is also an invitation to the smorgasbord of life.  Theaters, 14-screen cinemas, concert halls, museums, hi-def Smart TVs and surround sound systems all announce their intention to "entertain" us - perhaps to bring us into the presence of smile inducing Beauty.  Sometimes they succeed, and we should certainly allow them to try.  But it is important to remember that the artifacts that we encounter in those venues began life as someone's personal experience, someone's observation about existence that was translated into a form that sent that moment out into the world for us to share.  And some of those efforts become beautiful, some of those efforts bring us smiles.  Two points from that observation:

          First point - while we may never see our name in lights, or "make a living" by spinning our glimpses of Beauty out for others to see, part of experiencing Beauty is creating benchmarks of memory.  We may not be able to capture perfectly, in words or on canvas, in stone or with notes the moment we first fell in love, or saw the sea, or watched fireflies lighting up a meadow. But we enrich our lives if we acknowledge those moments and mark them for a smile - in a poem, or a sketch, or a bit of prose, and keep it somewhere special.   

        That notion of "somewhere special" has become more important in the 21st century.  Time was, in the distant past, that the joy of representation was limited. The paintings on cave walls, monuments in the desert; these were the provinces of the powerful.  Their moments of significance, their smiles were noted. Ours would not have been. Today we are faced with a strangely inverted reality.  350 million pictures are uploaded to Facebook™ everyday, another 60 million on Instagram™, and there are hundreds of other sites with similar numbers. 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube™ every hour. The danger, of course, is that the treasured gets overwhelmed by the trivial, Beauty is brushed aside by rivers of the banal.  Here, for certain, is a complexity that still crys out for distillation. Hopefully wiser minds than mine will provide such a distillation and it will prove to be a smile worth waiting for.

        The second, and final point: As I have already said, the Beauty that others create and share with us begins as an experience in a life.  And while it is delightful that others share those creations with us, it is even more important that we be aware of the Beauty woven throughout our existence, in life as we experience it everyday.  In the rain and wind, sun and flowers, in the sights and sounds that surround us, in the smiling faces that in turn bring smiles to our own. And Beauty is that aspect of life depicted. So in your own way, in your own life; somehow, everyday find a way to make some smiles. Enable Beauty. 
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Foster Harmony

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Foster Harmony

Of the four major tenets of Distilled Harmony, Foster Harmony is first because it has to be first. It has to be first because it speaks most directly to Distilled Harmony’s primary obligation to seek and live in resonance with the harmony of the universe. And, as we explored in the previous discussion, the harmony of the universe goes back to the string, the smallest, most elemental entity in the universe; an infinitesimal vibrating string that underlies the symphony that is existence.  It is our joy, our challenge, to craft a life that resonates with that symphony.

But, as we all know, you cannot achieve harmony with one note.  I remember back in grade school when we had "music," a piece of the elementary curriculum that seems to be being driven out by the mistaken belief that music brings nothing to our current obsession with math and science.  But let's leave that issue for another time.  When we had "music" - which was mostly singing - we would all be relieved when, at the top of the page in our song book, we would see: "To be sung in unison."  Unison meant we all sang the same notes. There was safety in unison because you could sort of sneak into each note and slide up or down the scale depending upon what you heard around you. Don't get me wrong, unison can be beautiful, especially when stripped down to the purity of one lovely voice singing a beautiful melody.  Think opera. Think an aria.  Think of that one voice stretching beyond what should be humanly possible. So, yes, there can be beauty in unison, just not harmony.

And then there is Enya.  It is easy to put Enya into a musical pigeon hole:  Irish roots with her family in the group Clannad, a beautiful voice, sometimes almost too beautiful, too pure.  But what makes Enya unique is not her voice or her family history. Rather, she is unique in the way in which she makes her music. While she works with a producer and lyricist, everything that you hear on an Enya recording, the vocals, the instruments, the percussion, it is all done, created, sung, played by Enya herself. Track layered over track over track.  She says that the song Angeles, on her album Shepherd Moons has about 500 layered vocal tracks. Plus all the instrumental tracks. In this guise, Enya is harmony, the far more complex, intertwined vision that is created when note after note after note weave their way into chords that become increasingly rich and varied.  

That is what the tenet Foster Harmony asks us to do with our lives. It asks that we bend every aspect of our lives, each note of each moment of each day into a rich and varied composition that echoes, and adds to, the overarching harmony of existence.  

Each tenet of Distilled Harmony carries a behavioral component – a “thou shalt” or “shalt not” implied by the tenet.  The third tenet of Distilled Harmony is Distill Complexity. That tenet exhorts us to create a parsimonious, a precise, a clear path to understanding and creating a life in harmony with the universe. In keeping with that notion, as I discuss each of the tenets, I will try to provide a concise behavioral directive or objective that lies at the core of each one.  

For Foster Harmony the behavioral directive is: be gentle, be nice.

It sounds simple, but is, in reality, often very difficult.  As a species, we seem inclined to act in ways that are anything but gentle and nice. The path of human history has been - from the dusty days of prehistory to this morning’s headlines - a bloody one.  I'm not sure where we find an explanation; perhaps it lies in our mostly carnivorous past, or in our hyper-competitive present.  Still somewhere, particularly for the male of the species, and certainly for the corporation or the nation state, to be gentle or to be nice has become synonymous with being weak.  

The truth, of course, is quite the opposite.  Nowadays it takes little strength or courage to push a button that ends lives thousands of miles away. But sitting down with someone who finds you loathsome and finding, with them, a path to mutual harmony - that requires strength and resourcefulness - and practice.

To foster harmony in our interactions with others, we need to understand the nature of our own chord, the center of our own being.  And that starts with our DNA.  Even if we drifted off to sleep in biology, we have all watched enough NCIS or CSI episodes to know that our DNA resides in every cell in our body, and so it follows that our DNA is repeated billions of times throughout our body. What we often fail to think about, is the fact that our DNA - at its most basic level - rests on billions more tiny vibrating strings.  So that we are, literally, made of music - a chord that is ourselves, making us a walking talking symphony.  That seems incredibly complex and totally beyond our control. Are we merely the accidental, yet predetermined, result of our DNA?

No, not at all.  Our DNA is like the first note of the first bar of the first track that Enya lays down when creating a new composition.  As we live our lives, we too lay down countless tracks; tracks that tune and refine who we are. So while our DNA declares us to be utterly unique, an N of one in all the universe, it does not mandate the nature of the final composition.  Recent epigenetic research confirms that we reconstruct our DNA with our every thought and action. And while much research is yet to be done in this area, with the exception of severe genetic defects, it seems that our DNA is simply the physical score upon which we inscribe our chord - as I said, Enya's first note. And then, after that first note, that is where free will and personal choice come to the fore.

Foster Harmony asks us to make particular types of choices -  harmonic ones.

You have no doubt met what I call the Eeyore people - named after the donkey in AA Milne's timeless Winnie the Pooh.  Consider this iconic interaction:

“Good morning, Eeyore," said Pooh.

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning, which I doubt," said he.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."

"Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.

"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.” 

Eeyore people don't merely see the glass of existence as half empty.  Rather, they refuse to acknowledge that there even is a glass.  For the Eeyores of the world, life is an atonal soup, "without form, and void" to steal a line from Genesis.  Foster Harmony says "Do not be that donkey, do not be that person."  Be instead the person who advocates for, and reflects in your own behavior, the harmony of existence.  It would be, of course, callow and naive to attempt to see all of life's challenges as containing, somewhere, a hidden overflowing mug of gaiety. But it is equally erroneous to see monsters under every bed, a plot behind each new workplace initiative, a nefarious agenda driving all personal interactions. 

Do not be that person. Be gentle. Be nice. Foster Harmony.

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