Demystifying the Object

Demystifying the Object

I saw a particularly impactful video on Curiosity Stream tonight called Nefertiti: The Lonely Queen.  The three-part video explores the various complex issues surrounding the repatriation to the countries of origin or the original owners of thousands of artifacts housed in what I learned were called the encyclopedic museums of the world; The British Museum, The Louvre, in the US the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery. In other words, the major museums housing huge international collections gathered, one might say looted, in the heyday of globetrotting collectors in the 18 and 19 hundreds.

All three episodes are interesting and well worth watching, but I must confess that the first episode; Conflicts and Resolutions reported an incident so exceptional that it staggered my ability to give the rest of the series the attention it deserves. Not surprisingly, Nefertiti’s bust is a dominant character in the series, and a great amount of attention is paid to the security that surrounds the bust in her home, the Neues Museum in Berlin. That discussion is immediately followed by a segment with two artists who managed to evade all that security and, using a commercially available gaming platform concealed under an overcoat, create a high resolution, 3D replica of the bust which, with a high resolution 3D-printer, allowed them to create exact replicas of the bust of one of Egypt’s most famous rulers.  In true “artistic radical” style, the artists uploaded the code to the Internet so that now anyone willing to expend the technology and energy could have their own exact copy of the bust of Nefertiti.

I paused the video and sat back gazing at my own images on my studio wall. In order to share them with you here on The Wall, I have created high resolution versions of many of them.  Versions you can print out, mount, and hang in your studio, or wherever, creating versions no different from the images hanging across the room from me. 

So, naturally I thought “What is the difference between the original bust of Nefertiti and a digitized exact replica of the bust?” The queen herself might choose - time travel issues aside - to paraphrase a particularly germane lyric from Paul Simon, “‘The difference is all inside your head,’ she said to me. The answer is easy if you take it logically.  I’d like to help you in your struggle to see me. There must be 50 ways to see your lover.’”

It was late, and I am still dealing with a very graphic siege of insomnia - I actually dreamed I sang a song from South Pacific after finally falling asleep around 4:15. Naturally, I woke myself with that rendition. I share the incident simply to illustrate the current fragile nature of my internal thought processes, so you may understand how I jumped from consideration of the 3D recreation of Nefertiti’s bust to the idea of entire museums dedicated to exacting replicas of works of art that currently exist only as “one-offs” in widely spread “encyclopedic” museums available for viewing by only a tiny fragment of the world’s population.

Next I envisioned something like an artistic, global, “re-wilding” of the Great Plains. Bringing back the buffalo, but instead of millions of thundering quadrupeds, there would be thousands of museums with millions of paintings, etchings, photographs, sculptures, etc.

So, perhaps you will understand how I began to see a rather direct parallel to prohibition here in the states in from 1920 until 1933, and the current “decriminalization” of cannabis. In both cases the value of each commodity was directly related to one’s ability to possess it. Once the commodity was widely available and barriers to possession were removed, the value of the commodity took a nose dive. And the criminal world lost interest, turning it’s attention back to procuring and marketing commodities that were still illegal; like cocaine, heroin, and prostitution, or whose potential for profit, though often uncertain, was sufficient to attract the truly greedy, like bitcoins.

I was further struck by the notion that great art was/is valued, at least in part, by that same value-based dynamic. A variety of variables, collectively defined in a work’s provenance; who created it, when, from what materials, and, often most importantly, was the work unique? determine the “value” of a particular work. The more I thought about it the more it seemed to me that all those elements that defined a work’s provenance and value were usually not obvious in the work itself. They were of concern to, and even then often ferociously debated by and among “experts.” Our attention, however, is most often focused on the work itself.

Remember, the second tenet of Distilled Harmony is Enable Beauty, and that is where we most often focus: Is the work beautiful? Does it enchant? Does it make me feel good? Happy? The point is that if a work checks all those boxes it is suddenly irrelevant if the “object” is an “original” created a dozen, or a thousand, several thousand, or a million years ago. Our digitally perfect bust of Nefertiti brings us as much pleasure as the original.

That is not to say that physical verisimilitude is the only variable informing the pleasure an artwork brings. Sometimes a work encourages one to experiment with an artist’s particular style or approach to creativity. That is often the case with me when looking at Jackson Pollock’s work. How? Why? And so I will close by sharing with you one of my homages to Pollock’s work. Let me quickly point out that the intent is to imitate, not recreate an "original Pollock." 

Gallery Proposal: Artists of a Certain Age [ACA]

I suppose it has something to do with my having turned 74 last week, but that would be too obvious. Perhaps a better explanation would be that I have grown tired of stumbling across titles such as “Best Young Artists Under 30” or under 40, or 15, or something equally as foolish. 

They all remind of my students’ occasional declaration that something “had to be so” since they had believed it “all their life!” A span of something between 18 or 28 years. An interesting perspective of “all one’s life”. But there were moments of rational exception. I once knew, between marriages, a young woman about half my age, more lover than friend as it's turned out, who actually wrote, and had published by a well-known house, her “coming of age novel.” Being a bit smitten, obviously I was biased, but it was well done. Still not to put too fine a point on it, here was “a coming of age novel,” penned by an exceptionally bright young woman who really hadn’t finished that stage of her life yet. “Best Young Artists Under 30,” has that same sort of not-quite-finished taste to it. “Better set the timer, for another decade hon,  and we’ll take another peek.”

I mean come on now, Bob Dylan had to wait until he was 75 before he received the Nobel Prize for literature.  I don’t know if they were running a list of “Best Young Writers under 30” back in 1971, but Bob didn’t win. Sometimes you have to wait for the good stuff to roll around. Bob did. The point is that some galleries, influencers, and “taste-makers” of various stripes might better serve the art world by setting the timer for another decade and then returning to take a less hurried look.

But I’m drifting again. The point is that many artists, from many genres, don’t really begin to produce their “best” work until later in their lives. Consider the notion that one needs to live a significant part of a life before one is really ready to make a meaningful artistic comment upon that life.  I spent more than 50 years as a performer, artist, creator, author, researcher and educator of varying ability before I began to produce, and continue to produce on occasion, what I would begin to consider “some of my best work.” I had to reach “a certain age” before presuming to make meaningful comment on what had gone before.

So I would like to propose, either as a stand-alone space, or as a contained unit within a larger entity, a juried gallery called “Artists of a Certain Age,” which would feature just such “long view works” produced by Artists of a Certain Age - let’s use the traditional retirement age of 65+ until something better comes along. The works would be available for acquisition as either traditional “hang on the wall” works, free-standing sculptural pieces, non-fungible tokens, or whatever meets current market styles and taste.

Obviously ACA would eventually seek to acquire works from a wide range of artists from a wide variety of “ACAers”.  But I would like to propose a selection of my own works as a possible representative core of offerings - having a plethora of options to choose from. I will include copies here in this proposal some of my self-selected “best works” mostly from my last active years as a Professor Emeritus in the Communication Department at NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.  

I will wrap up the proposal with a copy of my last “formal” resume from my academic career for those who may comforted by that more traditional structure.

It is important to emphasize that this is, as the title of the post indicates, a proposal. It is one I hope finds its way to reality. Hence, if you have friends, entrepreneurs, gallery owners, or other acquaintances who might be interested in making ACA a reality, this would be the time to contact them and encourage their participation.  Obviously, if you yourself are an ACA, pre-publication submissions are encouraged. [I know, I know, as mentioned above it is a slippery concept. Some entities mandate "certain age" for retirement purposes - 65, 72. Others which should, like the Supreme Court and most universities, allow one to stumble along well into one's dotage. I'm going to put this on the back-burner until things become "more real." But when in doubt - submit.]

ACA Representative Gallery

The news, no doubt unintentionally, offered a delightful place to start providing some examples. On February 27, 2020 then President Trump when asked about this new affliction Covid-19, declared, “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle - it will disappear.”  Medical reality notwithstanding, I chose to use this mythologizing of Covid as an opportunity to imagine what a range of “Miraculous Covid Critters” might look like.  These are free-hand 19x14” pen and marker “imaginings.”

Miraculous Covid Critters

This is how I envisioned the entity that started the whole thing. A flighty little critter. 18x16 inches. Hand drawn and colored.

These images, also 18x16 hand done, are how I imaged the little infectious critters running around inside us. I never did get around to images of the vaccines.

Pen and Marker works.  These works are again free-hand. Like the “Miraculous Covid Critters,” they were created by drawing “cartoons” of the images which were then “filled-in” with a variety of markers. These images were just for fun. Stimulated I guess by the free-form critters above. The Harlequin Bottles measures 3x4 feet. Got a little carried away there.

Harlequin Bottle

But that excess didn’t really deter me. This next work, Giant Iris was a bit of a transition piece - half free form and half manipulated photos. 36x39 inches.

Manipulated Photos. All these works started life as digital photos. Often taken while traveling. Originally I chose them as photographs - selected for what I considered their photographic quality and composition.  But then they started to surprise me. I’m not quite sure why I opened the images in Photoshop, but I did. And I discovered, as you have if you wandered down that path, that there are images within images within images.  And you can erase pieces of them.  I remember being stunned to learn, back in some art history class, that all those gleaming white marble statues - the David, Venus de Milo, etc. - had all once been brightly paint.  Discovering Photoshop’s ability to turn color photos into black and white images begging to be painted was no less staggering.  So using  that application I “erased” various portions of the image. I then created designs for those newly vacated spaces which were again “filled-in” with a variety of paints and markers. I realize the capabilities of various graphics applications currently far outstrip my imagination, but I am currently content.

I’m not sure that the gondoliers would make of what I did with their Gondolas on the Grand Canal, but I had fun! 36x12 inches.

I’m not positive where in Venice this is. I’ll check. OK, 24x36 inches. “To the right when you cross that big bridge.” Is about as good as we can do right now.

And then much of the silliness is mandated by artistic by the mood of the artist.

Here are a few random examples:

And of course, literally dozens more I am leaving out, although I do want to note that the Iris image right above is somewhat unique. It started as a photo that was “erased and painted” and the “rephotoshoped” that allowed me to use Photoshop’s clarity to create that very sharp-edged image.

The Resume

A somewhat artificial but traditional barrier that often stands between an artist and an audience is the resume - a paper that seeks to answer the question "What have you done for me lately?" The longer you remain in an occupation the more creative and strained the work becomes. I was going to include one of my last such compositions here as illustrative of the genre. However as that would necessitate shifting applications which has the potential to destroy everything else here, I will send in a separate message.

Dreams Without Regrets

They are interesting phenomena — these dreams without regrets.  A brief example from today’s nap dream. Remember dreams are incredibly fluid in terms of the “real world” that surrounds them. OK, in today’s dream I had been charged with making sure that - hmm, the name escapes me at the moment. She was a miniature dachshund that my first wife and I  had sort of inherited from her owner. Her name will come to me.  I want to call her Gretel, but that may well be just “nationality breed association.” (No, wait! Wait! Her name was Nigel! Thank you, 4 AM memory goddess!) Anyhow, I had been instructed by my current wife’s stepdaughter to keep the puppy from eating something - maybe a plate of cookies?

An interesting point was that my current wife’s stepdaughter had not been made aware of these instructions. Partially, perhaps, because the stepdaughter and wife number one had never actually met in “real life.” Interesting how folks who never met in “real life” have no trouble interacting with each other in “dream world,” - completely unbothered by those “unreal - real” conflicts. 

Anyhow, the Nigel ate the forbidden fruit, or the forbidden sandwiches, or the forbidden whatever, while I was napping. But neither the current stepdaughter nor the previous wife held the other responsible, in the dream, for Nigel’s behavior, nor, strangely, did my somnolent culpability come up. Then I woke up.

There is a message in here somewhere. Perhaps related to my long-standing assertion about snoring - that being that one cannot be held responsible for what one does while asleep. Perhaps the corollary is that dreaming is a “blameless state.” Related, somehow, to the notion of “brother, you can’t go to jail for what you are thinking.” Or, by extension, “Shut up and let the dog eat the cookies.” After all it’s just a dream, right?

Interesting however, is the fact that folks who never met in “real life” have no trouble interacting in “dream world.” Anyhow, Nigel ate the dream-based cookies, apparently with great enjoyment. And, also interestingly, nobody cared. The dog ate the cookies. Yes. That is so. Nobody said “Bad dog!” Nobody expressed disappointment that I had failed to prevent the great cookie consumption. As a matter of fact, the cookies disappeared without so much as wrinkling the ephemeral fabric of the dream. And perhaps that is the lesson of dreaming:

The world of dreaming is, well, perhaps not so much value-free, as it is blameless. It is a world where “you can’t go to jail for what you’re dreaming.” You cannot be held accountable for your dream. The dream can still touch you. It can still make you laugh or cry. But you are the dreamer, not the dream. In our waking judicial system, truth is the ultimate defense. While sleeping, it is the various decrees of the dream state.

Druids Over the Top

 Druids Over the Top

Sometimes I like to browse through images I made a few decades ago to see if a “do over” would result in something new and interesting. The original “Druids” image is a BW image from about 20 years ago. There are several versions of it floating around on various hard drives, clouds, drop boxes, etc.  The new colored version still reflects my inability to draw faces 🤪.

Old version.

New version

The Power of Silence: A Cautionary Tale

I read today that Meta/Facebook’s new generation of VR headsets will be able to read your facial expressions, purportedly to allow your avatar to more realistically portray emotions in whatever virtual world you have chosen to experience. Let me put aside for a moment the fact that I feel that this kind of information gathering is at least “a step too far,” if not a couple of marathons too far, and simply look at it as simply another digital information gathering device for which we are the entity being probed for information. 

Much of this information we provide voluntarily to make our lives easier. Our contacts list eliminates the need to dial - strange archaic term - our phone. We simply say “Call Joe.”  In turn our “find my” app locates our digital devices, and those of our friends and hence, usually their location. Our smartwatch monitors our breathing, temperature, and, for couples seeking to start a family their ovulation calendar. Our mattress reacts to our sleeping behavior, adjusting position and temperature to enhance REM sleep. Our smart fridge tells us when the milk has spoiled. MyChart lets us know when we are running low on meds, the pharmacy automatically reorders the meds and then either mails them to us or sends us an reminder to come pick them up, which prompts us to hop into the car where the gps will guide us to the drug store, turn on our favorite music channel, and ask us if we would like it to read us any email we have received.

I found this post in this morning’s email: “Imagine riding an Apple e-bike while your Apple AR glasses share turn-by-turn navigation, your Apple Watch provides biofeedback, the bike itself tracks information on output, speed and air quality — and maybe the coffee shop up ahead sends a discount coupon to entice you to stop by.”

Whether this is heaven or hell or somewhere in between is a matter of personal preference. My concern at the moment is my realization that we are often, waking or sleeping, attending or ignoring, consciously or subconsciously, in a state of constant communication.  And we have come to, what, expect it? Want it? Can’t live without it? I don’t know. We have all heard of the dreaded FOMO - aka Fear of Missing Out. At an extreme level we have all been irritated by it - friends who sit down at lunch and immediately put their phone on the table. Jeez.

But the intent of this post is to explore the opposite of all this frenetic communication: the sounds of silence. I read today - New Scientist, I believe - how folks are paying for some time in isolation chambers. They claim to emerge refreshed, calmer, less stressed, less depressed. That’s really kind of neat. Had me looking around for my noise canceling headphones, until I realized that I usually used them to listen to music or nature sounds, storms, even trains. Not quite silence. So I kept drawing and listening to the podcast about silence. Strange, eh?

Anyhow, it was awhile until I was struck by another, even stranger idea: the weaponization of silence.  Bear with me here.  We live, for the most part anyhow, in a two closely related auditory worlds. There is the world of ambient sound, environmental sound.  This is everything that creeps into our ears, from the gentle rush of the AC or heat whooshing on, the dishwasher whirring, lawnmowers and leaf blowers intruding, traffic, all that ambient sound. We “hear” it but are largely unaware of it until the curtain of sound is disrupted - the microwave, dryer, dishwasher, email, or whatever dings, or beeps, or chimes. And we attend.  I have seen a commercial - I think for a HVAC system. The video pans through a home, regular middle-class house, dog asleep, no movement, no audio. Then the audio fades in: ”This is the sound of the yadda yadda home heating system.” The implication is that there is no sound and that is unique. Reminds me of another spot where a harried Mom escapes from a, what, playground maybe? Anyhow, she slips into the front seat of her rather plush auto and shuts the door, closes her eyes and sighs. Both spots acknowledge the intrusive nature of ambient sound and present an option to catch some silence.

More interesting to me is the second acoustic world in which we exist: the acoustic world we voluntarily create. I am perhaps more attuned to this world because I rarely - indeed if ever - step out of it. It is a soundscape made possible by technology. I am writing this on my iPad as the clock leaves midnight in the rear view mirror - and Pandora plays a gentle spa music track in the background.  When I decide to stop writing I will leave Pandora on activate some similar track, meditative, spa-ish, instrumental stuff and then will overdub that with a NatureScapes track of wind or rain or a stream or crickets or whatever - which I will leave on all night. So, yes, I am sound dependent. It isn’t that I am silence averse, I just see no reason to seek it.  Although writing this post has convinced me to give it a whirl. But, I am wandering off course here a bit. I wanted to be talking about the weaponization of silence.

There is an interesting parallel notion in the acoustic world we create. There is a communicative aspect component to it. We seek sound based input that confirms, aids, or enhances our life. Reminders from our smartphone, watch, or whatever, keeps us “on task,” music that we enjoy passes time pleasurably, videos entertain us, while actual phone calls, voicemails, posted images, text messages, and video chats keep us connected to the important people in our lives. And it is this last cluster of communicative interactions that can be weaponized. Let me explain.

There was a time when a person might live their entire life in the village where they were born. An "adventure" might be defined by hiking a mile or two down a dirt track to the next village over. Maybe to trade excess produce, maybe to seek a spouse. This lack of mobility was transformed as transportation and communication options evolved. Living in the 21st century those twin evolutions have resulted in the somewhat uncomfortable reality that we often live at significant distance from those we hold most dear.  Hence the digital communication tools mentioned above become increasing vital in initiating and maintaining relationships. All kinds of relationships.

The covid pandemic drove significant segments portions of the population "home." Business, school, shopping, all found themselves becoming internet activities. As such, they became more vulnerable to unique, often unwelcome, interruptions as hackers and scammers took advantage of their ability to hide their nefarious activity behind their internet anonymity and keyboards. Both businesses and software applications have taken steps to insure our privacy when communicating via those digital avenues. And significant protective progress has been made in those reciprocal initiatives. But that is not the weaponization arena that concerns me - it is in interpersonal communication.

Let me provide an unintentional example of which I found myself a part. We have dear friends both of whom just celebrated their 90th birthdays. They still live in Raleigh, NC which is where our friendship was initially nurtured with shared dinners. He is an accomplished artist and luthier, still turning out commissioned paintings and repairing damaged string instruments for local colleges and orchestras. He is, however, and not terribly surprising, completely computer illiterate. She continues to take care of the house to the best of her ability, which has become increasingly compromised by swiftly failing sight. This also curtails another of her favorite activities - surfing the internet. She has gradually increased the font size and magnification on her screen. But now the situation is such that most relevant content gets shoved beyond the margins of her screen and so out of sight. Actual phone conversations are also difficult. He has memory and hearing issues that make following a conversation difficult and we have learned that she - because of similar issues - used lip-reading to a far greater extent than we had previously realized. A strategy severely compromised in phone-based conversations. As a result our interactions with them have, sadly, decreased markedly. So meaningful interactions are possible only when we make one of our own increasingly rare trips back to Raleigh. And on those instances when we appear at their door we are inevitably greeted with wails of "We thought you were dead ! We thought you didn't love us anymore!" Hence much time must be spent with assurances of our continuing affection.

Now, it is important to remember that all this is the result of unintended communication glitches among folks who really wanted to remain "in touch." That is not the case in what I refer to as the weaponization of silence.

I have relatively recently become aware of something called "ghosting." It is far from the cuddly notion of Casper the friendly ghost or the Halloween decorations of the season. For those of you who are, as I was, unfamiliar with this phenomenon let me provide a brief description. First we need to realize that often the internet is a primary mode of communication between intimate couples. A situation significantly accentuated by the recent, and somewhat continuing, covid pandemic, and the resultant disruption of traditional avenues of communication with a loved one. Provides a whole new spin on "Romeo, Romeo wherefore art thou Romeo?" "Ghosting" is a modern, high tech version of a lovers quarrel. In "ghosting" one person in the couple feels they have been slighted. It is not always evident who "started it," but as the song says "somebody done somebody wrong." And the aggrieved party breaks off communication with the "wrong doer." And often it is the technology aspect of the quarrel that weaponizes this type of interaction. In the BI - "Before Internet" - days it was not terribly difficult to find a route to your lover's side and hopefully repair the rift in a face-to-face interaction. But pandemic mandated lockdowns, or the reality of long-distance relationships decrees that "ghosting" takes place is the digital domain. In digitized "ghosting" s/he who is doing the "ghosting" breaks off all digital contact with the "other."

In old mysteries or police procedural movies, where one of our protagonists is in prison, ghosting was accomplished by tossing the protagonist into "solitary confinement." No contact with the outside world. Ghosting is a digital, personal version of solitary confinement. The ghoster, or in this case, jailor, alienates the prisoner from any digital contact between the prisoner and the jailor. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Easiest, but still irritating to the jailor, is to simply ignore any attempts at communication from s/he who is being ghosted. More complicated, but perhaps more effective in the long run, is to block the prisoner's email and other contact information from the jailor's communication applications. This not only keeps the prisoner in his/her specific cell, but spares the jailor from any future reminders of his/her existence.

If you find this weaponization strategy repugnant - as do I - it may be because it stands in direct opposition the the first and primary tenet of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony. Obviously, it is impossible to foster harmony with someone whose existence you are essentially denying. If we explore the tenet of foster harmony more closely we soon discover that it is conceptually linked to another related idea: forgiveness.

The current scope of human callousness, reflected in the "news stories" in our morning emails and TV news shows, does tempt one to see the concept of forgiveness as, if not a fantasy, then at least a sadly futile undertaking. How does one forgive a nation, a government, a multinational corporation, whose behaviors are harming the physical integrity of the planet and endangering if not actually terminating the lives of millions of inhabitants - human and non- human but potentially sentient entities? Perhaps by reducing our focus. By attempting to doing more to forgive on a smaller scale, on a one-to-one scale. Most, if not all, "somebody done somebody wrong" fights are a matter of perception. Both sides see themselves as the wronged party - and are loath to give up that argumentative "high ground" by admitting to fault, seeing that as a step too far.

Forgiving is compromise. It stems from the consideration that perhaps one's life was better with the other in it. As Willie Nelson sang: "Love is hard to find. Love of any kind." Forgiving opens the door to the possibility of loving. The mechanics of forgiving can be complicated and are unique to each relationship. But there is one element that is common to every act of potential forgiveness - communication. 

Forgiveness cannot occur in a "ghosted" environment. Back in 1987, President Reagan, standing by the wall that had divided East and West Germany for decades said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" To world's amazement Gorbachev did just that, and friends, families, and lovers streamed across the newly-opened divide into each other's arms. Ghosters should ask themselves, "Is what separates me from this formerly precious person more intractable than the wall which divided an entire nation?" 

 Tear down your walls.

Seeking Sunset Shades of Harmony

I know when it is time to stop drawing when I can no longer decide which color belongs where. That is an indication that my logical mind is attempting to impose its will on my artistic inclination. It means I am beginning to think that certain colors "belong" together while others do not. I am letting myself, either consciously or unconsciously, get sucked into the fallacy of the color wheel, you know that pie-shaped wheel of primary colors that shows the relationship among colors, which go together and which don’t. I call it the fallacy of the color wheel not so much because it is wrong, but because it is limited. It implies artificial boundaries, aesthetic divisions. I much prefer the implications of a sunset.

Next time you see a really fine sunset, one that just takes your breath away, stop and stare a bit. Think about the colors. Are any of them “wrong?”  Do any of them “not go together?” See what I mean? The sunset tells us that all colors go together. All colors can be woven together in a pleasing harmonious construction. The same is true of people.

Ah, caught you a little by surprise there, right? But a "sunset perception of humanity" is really what lies at the center of our old friend Distilled Harmony - most particularly in the notion mandated by the first and primary tenet - foster harmony. These days I suppose I am drawn to a need to take a closer look at Harmony by its seeming decline in the world around us. Particularly this morning where I encountered a news post about 6 people being shot down on a greenway in Raleigh, NC, where I spent 40 odd years of my working life. The shooter was himself 16 years old. 

That is exceptionally upsetting , yet each morning’s news of the latest shenanigans of the Putins, the Trumps, the Xi Jinpings and the other anti-democratic, authoritarian “would be dictators” currently strutting across the world stage is more than sufficient to curdle your cornflakes. I find it incredibly depressing that, seemingly, significant numbers of individuals, both here at home and increasingly around the globe, are rallying to these Ill-conceived, morally bankrupt philosophies. But more than simply depressing, I find that “the world is too much with me.” 50 years ago I would have been - and was - out on the streets marching, protesting, getting in peoples’ faces. Power to the people and all that. Nowadays it’s more like “stop the world, I want to get off.”

It is, I suppose because I am older, maybe a bit wiser, and certainly more cynical, that I find I do not fit comfortably in any “political group.”  The Trump-led rising fascism of the alt-right here at home is repugnant, and the all encompassing social brief of the populist left seems at times to strain credulity. So finding myself “groupless,” it is not strange that I find myself strongly inclined to re-dedicate myself to a purely personal implementation of the first tenet of Distilled Harmony - foster harmony. But as the title of this post indicates, and my brief foray into sunsets and color wheels also implies, a personal approach to fostering harmony is not quite as simple as it might appear at first blush.

The primary problem is that fostering harmony is an exercise in persuasion. The challenge is to convince people that treating people humanely and gently is a better way to live than bullying, berating, or beating them into some questionable semblance of an appearance of agreement. Right, but how do you accomplish this persuasive task?  Before retiring I observed that a significant number of our majors were beginning to specialize in public relations - which is one of the current academic pigeonholes for folks seeking a career centered on persuading audiences, clients, customers, publics, etc., to feel favorably about the product, company, or person who is paying their salary. It was, at least back then, primarily a corporate path. Big companies had PR departments, often called something else, like Community Relations, or Public Outreach. Advertising departments usually lived somewhere in these corporate niches, because, obviously the sole purpose of advertising is to persuade us to think positively enough about a person, product or philosophy to open our wallets to acquire or support said person, product or philosophy.

Anyhow I didn’t think that the best route for me to foster harmony lay in any of those directions. First of all it would seem to imply getting a job.  No. Been there, done that, albeit in one of the most “boss free,” “do your own thing” environments around - the increasingly endangered professional environment of a university campus. Still, shudder, no. No job. So, ha, ha, I laugh at your idea of some PR-ish job. And even if one were to become staggering successful in the corporate world, that is no guarantee that you could, or would, persuade people to live a more gentle, harmonious life. Need I say Elon Musk? Mark Zuckerberg? Jeff Bezos? Bill and Melinda Gates are delightful exceptions - but sad that they seem to be outliers. 

I probably cannot leave a discussion of this world of public persuasion without mentioning the latest - to me anyhow - critters in the corral - influencers. As I understand them, “influencers” are individuals who have created a large enough public persona that influences folks to behave like, believe like, and most often shop like the influencer, emulating their purchases, appearance, style, etc.  Ah, brave new world that has such people in it! They thrive most obviously in digital space, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, etc.  An internet search revealed that I know none of the current top influencers - with the possible exception of actors and athletes hawking various versions of cryptocurrency or sub-sandwiches.  So seeking to join their ranks in my personal attempt to increase global Harmony, would seem an ill-fated sojourn.

So, what’s a guy to do? Here’s an idea: Get small. Think inside the box. I have noticed, and written about here on the Wall, an interesting notion seemingly shared by an overwhelming number of faiths and philosophies. The notion is varyingly expressed; the phrases vary, some long, complex and flowery, some wrapped in supplications, some poised as commandments, some as the inescapable results of scientific examinations and the resultant algorithm, some irrefutable logical conclusions, but all these many flavors of assertions all point in one direction - a desire for a peaceful harmonic world; a world free from fear and want, a world in which humanity lives in concert with one and other and with the natural world.

Right. So how do we get there? Again, get small. Think inside the box. My ethical upbringing springs from Judeo-Christian roots so I first encountered this “shared interesting notion” thus: “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” Attributed to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, but found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible. However, I have found similar versions in the writings of virtually every faith and philosophy I have had the pleasure of reading; Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Quakers, Hinduism, and all the versions and divisions thereof have their own versions of that simple truth: Treat others as you would like to be treated - gently, compassionately, with respect and tolerance.

But I still come up against a problem. Who are these “others?” Apparently that is not a simple question. Human history is fraught with examples of armies - philosophically pure or religiously devout - bent upon the destruction of other armies apparently less philosophically pure or religiously devout.  As a species, we seem to have an unfortunate inclination to be rather restrictive in our designation of the “others” with whom we wish to include in our reciprocal harmonious “doing unto.” Far too often the “others” are pretty well restricted to us - others who look, think, and believe like us. An old Pogo cartoon condensed that subtle bias beautifully: “We have met the enemy and they are us!” and sadly, from Alice in Wonderland - "Off with their heads!"

How do we avoid this unfortunate inclination towards self-deception and mutual destruction? Again, get small. Think inside the box. Look out your window. Get in your car - or better - hop on a bus, or a streetcar, tram, trolley. I don’t really care what you call it. Go grocery shopping. Walk past a park, a playground. Go have a burger at a fast food joint. Get a pizza, eat in, don’t take out. Visit a part of town where you just don’t feel comfortable. Look around. These are the others. These are the folks we need to “do unto as we would have them do.” 

How do we accomplish that? I find myself less drawn to public harangues and chanting. My knees aren’t much good for marching anymore. These days I’m more drawn to the idea of personally striving for new harmonic norms in our everyday lives. Adopt polite behavior, kind behavior, responsible behavior, tolerant behavior. Let the harried parent with three kids in the giant SUV have the parking place close to the door. At restaurants, be nice to the service people. On the road merge gently - a behavior much in need of encouragement here on the freeways of Chicagoland. Smile. Recycle. Sweat the little stuff. You know what I mean. We know how we want to be treated - so we really do know how to treat others. Sow harmony in little varied bits of harmonious behavior with the actual people with whom you share your neighborhood and your life. Who knows we might just discover that those little bits could one day flower into a lovely sunset of harmony.

In Lieu of Hibernation

It was Wednesday evening, so I trundled the trash cans out to the curb, and for the first time in more than a year thought, “Brrrr. It’s cold!” Well, not really cold. I had taught for 2 years at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, located, for those of you unfamiliar with that state, about 110 miles north of Madison and 2 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Come winter - which could arrive in early September - you plugged your car into a block heater to keep the oil from freezing, for crying out loud!  So, not that kind of cold, but different enough from what we had been having to qualify as “cold.”

And considering the geographical variable is important. More than a few of my friends have viewed our move from North Carolina to the suburbs of Chicago with disbelief. “Chicago? You’ll freeze to death!”  One replies with art, theater, restaurants - which unfortunately Covid has somewhat curtailed. But let’s stick to weather for the nonce. We are not taking jobs in Chicago - we are retiring. Snow and ice and cold are certainly problematic if you must for some reason leave the fireside. However, if, on the other hand, you are a kind of climatic tourist, toasting your tootsies in front of the fire as the wind and snow goes wurthering around the house, the word that comes to mind is “cozy.”

So I scurried back inside, nursing the flicker of “cozy,” gave Vido, the large and very cozy black lab stretched out on the living room floor a quick rub - he thumped his tail approvingly - and settled back onto the couch. Maybe it was that quick little unexpected “burr” that drew my attention to an article - National Geographic? Curiosity Stream? Not sure which, but the general theme was how various critters were dealing with the approach of winter.  And as is often the case with my iPad browsing I began to skip around. 

First, I perused a video about the black bear population on Vancouver Island - there are quite a lot of them. And the amount of salmon they consume in preparation for their winter hibernation. The phrase “mass quantities” springs to mind from somewhere. Beldar? Perhaps?  The same can be said of the nuts and berries stashed away by all manner of furry critters; squirrels, mice, rabbits, moles and voles, which themselves became entrées for the pre-hibernation feasts of bigger critters.  There was even an article about how bears regulate their insulin to maintain slumber throughout winter. Which got me thinking, why not? If bears do it, bees do it, squirrels up there in the trees do it, why shouldn’t we do it? Let’s do it - let’s hibernate! OK. Getting a little punchy. But really, with CRISPR, and tech barons flirting with cryogenically induced immortality, would some version of human hibernation be such a big deal?

Now, in the name of full disclosure, I must admit that sleeping ranks up there among my favorite activities  - along with dozing, napping, dreaming, etc. So advocating human hibernation fits right in there with one of my wife’s favorite mantras: “anything worth doing is worth overdoing.” But hibernation is not as simple as it might seem at first blush. There are some concerns. First, a number of “hibernators” actually give birth while hibernating. Being male, this would not be an issue for me, but considering my other nocturnal visits to the BR, there is cause for concern. This concern remains despite knowing that bears themselves do take some “hibernation walk-abouts” during the winter. Second, housing. Caves seem fine for furry critters and bats, ponds for amphibious hibernators, eaves for our feathered friends; but I fear we have moved beyond the archaic shared hearths of our progenitors. We seem to have grown overly dependent upon beds that move and shift, warm and cool us, driven by data gleaned from our smartphones, intelligent watches, and brain-reading ear buds. Whoa! I am quickly talking myself out of human hibernation. Maybe, I need to turn away from AI hibernation and pay more attention to “the inner world” of hibernation.

There the attraction remains. When my daughters were young, they were both charter members of BSA (bad sleepers anonymous) and needed help drifting off to sleep. So I would often read to them. However on occasion they - particularly the younger - would request “a story out of your head, Daddy!” And so Mouse Tales was born. Mouse Tales came to be what I called “adventures in lullaby.”  I would tell stories of Papa Mouse, Mama Mouse, Sister Mouse and Brother Mouse who seemed to always be seeking shelter at night as a winter storm was blowing in.  They would scamper up a pine tree, discover a "cosy" abandoned woodpecker hole, filled with warm, soft pine needles.  They would snuggle down into the pine needles, and listen to the wind as the tree swayed gently back and forth and back and forth and back and forth . . . with me repeating the “back and forth” refrain gradually more slowly and quietly until I was able to slide out of the room without one of them popping up to inquire “Then what happened, Daddy?” You get the idea.

I have retained significant aspects of this ritual as I seek to ease myself to sleep. Those of you who are curious about the solitary nature of this ritual have apparently not moved through another of life’s common evolutionary stages: “The Who is Snoring Ritual.” This along with the “God, It’s Freezing in Here Ritual ” partner to the “God I’m Sweating to Death Ritual” or the “l Can’t Sleep Without White Noise Ritual” all of which go a long way to explaining why couples in affluent cultures have separate bedrooms. So bear with me as I share my “could be the seed of human hibernation ritual.”

I target 10 pm as the starting point. I toddle downstairs to my studio cum gallery cum bedroom, a nice finished lower floor, which does unfortunately lack a bathroom, but is acoustically isolated from the rest of the house. Hey, you have to make some trade-offs!  At 10:00 I fire up the iPad, turn on Curiosity Stream, and choose my video. Tonight I am engrossed in a series of Secret Society episodes - The Masons and Knights Templar. That takes about an hour. Sometimes, I’ll opt for a double-feature, but that will run me right up to midnight and endangers my reading hour.

My reading hour is usually dedicated to serialized fiction - mysteries most often. The reading hour also triggers audio elements. Again, iPad centered which allows me to blend classical music with NatureScapes Holographic Audio - rain, wind, water, cicadas, storms, whatever, that forms the background for my reading. OK, so we are now coming up on midnight which is meditation time. And here I do another bit of blending- a Reiki meditation session often backed by a folk music channel from, oh, early 1960s, to maybe mid-70s.  That takes me off toward the tiny hours and I drift off to sleep. Unless, god forbid, somewhere along the line I stumble across an idea that I want to share with you. Then I fire up Evernote and start to write. If I can hold myself to just sketching the main ideas, 2 AM is a reasonable target. But, if I really get into it, just beating sunrise is a more likely goal.

So, really not hibernation at all. More like aestivation - a state of being awake, active. And how terribly, terribly strange is that: throwing myself into a state of aestivation in the pursuit of human hibernation. I am doing something very wrong. Oh? What? Just a shade after midnight. Time to meditate. Maybe Eva Cassidy Songbird, or Live at Blues Alley. I’ll let you know. Night, night.

 

Schrag Wall: Special Guest Post

 Blue by Daniel Coyle.

Dan was born on one side of a duplex in mid-November, 1948, Springfield, Ohio. That, historians will note, occurred a mere handful of days after I myself was was born on the other side of the very same duplex. Obviously I am that handful of days older and hence wiser than our featured guest author. That is not his fault. I would point with greater suspicion to the fact that his Ph.D in English was awarded by The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, just down the road from my academic home for forty some years, Noth Carolina State University. If you would like the long and winding story of the bizarre parallels that have followed our lives since those blustery days in November seventy odd years ago, drop me a note and I will be glad to share.

None of those events, however, explain to my satisfaction how he became the excellent writer he is. So your time will be far better spent following this link to his essay: Blue

https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/

Cheers,

The Editor

Beyond the Sunset

There is an iconic scene in American cinema.

It is an ending.

The lovers, having bested

The various trials and tribulations

Which did confront them

Join hands and ride,

On horseback, buckboard

Steamship, auto or other conveyance

Off into the sunset.

Hopeful music swells, fade to black.

Run credits, leaving us -

Me anyhow, wondering,

What do they find 

Beyond the sunset?

I have had, to this point anyhow,

A rather wonderful life.

It has not been without

Bumps in the road.

But in all honesty

There have been amazingly few,

Knock on wood, fingers crossed,

Things I wanted desperately

Which did not come to pass.

That is not to say there

Are no scars upon my heart.

Sometimes life’s goals slipped away.

A mother and older brother

Both of whom died too soon.

Other people

Whom I dearly loved,

Chose to leave my life.

But slowly optimism pours

It’s forgetful, healing balm into the

Craquelure on the canvas

Of my life.

It was, I believe, Japanese potters

Who would intentionally leave

A minor flaw in their exquisite work

Because perfection was the sole

Provenance of the gods.

Not that I have ever

Flirted with perfection,

But it is nice to have the

Temptation of its attainment removed.

There is, however, one correction,

And it is an important one,

Which must be made

To a widely held belief regarding

The nature of existence

Beyond the sunset.

As we consider

Our final jog down the road

Into the sunset, and finally beyond,

We must realize that

It is a solitary path.

We will not be meeting

Together in that sweet by and by.

The circle will be broken.

In part because, like funerals, and

“In The Sweet  By and By”

hymn from 1868,

And the far more recent notion

Of the Carter family’s “Unbroken Circle”

Were both constructions of and for the living,

From which many

Derive considerable comfort.

Yet to hold those who have moved

Beyond the sunset

To this world’s comforter

Is both selfish, and frankly,

Totally untenable.

I recently learned of an

Acquaintance who,

Knowing of their own imminent

Demise, informed their family

Of a “former friend” who was

To be barred from their funeral.

Consider the complexities that

Such attitudes could foster

Were we all to eventually

Gather at the river in some

Version of a sweet by and by.

The thought of the seating chart

Alone could cause one to

Break out in hives.

But seriously, it seems

Far more feasible that

The other side of the sunset

Awakens us to a brand

New beginning.

What we might tote along

In the saddlebags from

This life

Is not the somewhere,

Or the somethings

Or even the someones

That we loved

On this side of the sunset

But rather an increased

Ability, learned in this existence,

To better love life itself.

The Image Within

I have always been fascinated by the image behind that which is obvious. I realize memory is a slippery realm, not simply in what one recalls, but also in how one’s recollection of a particular moment, place, or event can differ from the recollections of others who lived that same moment. But thankfully having lived my earliest years in those more innocent times before Facebook or Tinybeans or whatever life-recording-devices are currently in vogue, I can “remember without significant fear of contradiction” as there are only two people here on the Wall who lived those moments with me, my big sister Margaret, and my younger, by a mere handful of days, brother-by-another-mother Dan. An excellent writer whose work I will be sharing with you soon.

Anyhow, the point is that my earliest recollection of my fascination with “the image within” comes from church.  That is actually rather strange despite the fact that Dad actually was a bona fide, card carrying minister before moving over to the even stranger world of the academy, and Mom also had some type of  graduate degree in religion, which Margaret will remind me of once this post goes up. You see “the image within” I encountered as a child of single digits - meaning younger than ten, maybe 6 or 7 - had nothing to do with the orthodoxy of the rather vanilla Protestant church we would attend occasionally in Springfield, Ohio. It had to do with pencils.

You may have had a similar childhood event.  It had to do with passing the collection plate.  The various sections of the congregation would be flanked by a couple of church people who would pass a plate down one row into which your parents would put a little envelope containing their “offering.” When the plate reached the end of the row the other “collector” would take the plate and start it back down the next row. I don’t remember if it went front-to-back or vis versa. I do have a foggy recollection of all the collectors standing in front of the church. Don’t really recall, and that is not important. Remember, what was important was the pencils.

You see, on the back of each pew there was this kind of “collection construction device.” It was a wooden rectangle, like you would, a few years later and - remember this is early 1950s - if you were a boy, you might make in “shop.” There was a slot in the middle that held the little donation envelopes into which your parents slipped some money, and at either end were two holes in which there were golf pencils. Obviously no one was playing golf in church, but you know, those little three inch long pencils. I never knew what the adults wrote with those pencils - I assume some sort of data, name, amount, probably too early for PIN numbers, but you get the idea. Again, unimportant. What was important was what I did with the pencils. And like any single digit aged kid in a boring situation I used the pencils to confront my boredom.

These were also the days when you would get a program for the service - you know read this now, then sing that. Nice folded white paper. A different one each week. I soon came to amuse myself by treating the spaces between the words as a kind of maze, so I would draw lines that would run top-to-bottom and side-to-side on the program. Only rule, aside from not touching any words, was you couldn’t cross a line you had already drawn. After awhile I would begin to see patterns in the lines - you know like you see scenes and faces if you lie on your back and stare up at the clouds. So I would fill in eyes and hands arms legs etc. Just sort of liberating “the image within.”

It was a strategy that the educational system continued to unintentionally enabled for the next couple of decades. Central to that process was again made possible by the absence of digital technology. We lived in a pen and paper world. Three-ring notebooks of various designs were de rigueur in high school. Could have exacerbated some back problems for high school males who, in order to affirm a “steady relationship,” would tote their girlfriend’s books and binder from class to class to locker, etc., etc. All those binders held lots of paper upon which one could doodle while pretending to "take notes."

College lost the whole “carry your books to school” routine but often further enabled the “faux note taking doodling” scam. Longer lectures, sometimes linked to larger classes allowed for more complex doodles - with the expanding pen and pencil market, multicolored doodles became an option. Fast forward several years. Once I completed my PhD and became the guy on the other side of the desk my relationship with “the image within” shifted. For the most part it was a delightful change. I was able to teach course in photography, tv production, as well as write about related issues all the while while doing photography and creating images that those photos inspired. Now, sneaking into my first five or six years of retirement, I continue to do much the same - but without the classroom and the self-imposed obligation to stay current with technology, e.g. Apple held their big yearly “reveal” yesterday, and other than seeing picture of a “watch” that looks like a small SUV,  I don’t know and don’t care what was revealed. These days my self-imposed guideline is that I try to keep at least one image and one Wall mini-essay underway at all times. Some times one gets ahead of the other.

But as I look back over this post I have spotted an important omission - the importance of the blank page. Probably 70 to 80% of all my images skip the photography phase entirely and spring directly from a doodle on a blank page. I was reminded of this reality just this afternoon. I had finished Big Iris yesterday and was browsing through some old images - I mean really old images, like circa 2000 - when I was struck by how many of them were black and white doodles. There was, and still is, an interesting restriction on my drawings. I cannot do realistic representations of human forms and faces. I just don’t have that skill set. You may have noticed that in my discussion of how “the image within” evolved nowhere do the words “lesson” or “art school” appear. Good reason for that. I, too, never appeared in either of those contexts. My scribbling has always been from within as well. Strangely this inability doesn't follow me into the 3D world. I have no problem sculpting realistic faces and forms. Go figure.

Well, I suppose it is time to stop blathering and share the latest image with you. I call it Big Iris. Big because it is perhaps the largest image in the “from photographs” series. It is 30 x 43 inches, which may prove to be problematic as it exceeds the dry mounting capabilities of my local Michaels. Harlequin Bottles, which I shared previously may have more ink on it, but the design is less complex. Anyhow, Iris is in the name because the image started life as picture I took of an iris while out on my walk. I hope you enjoy it.

Here is the main image:

And here is a detail of the side portion.

And another detail.

Thoughts on the Novel Brilliance of Brilliant Serial Novelists

Full Disclosure: For the last 30 years or so of my classroom teaching career I always opted for evening 3-hour blocks. A couple of advantages. First, I could screen long chunks of content - video or film for class discussions. Or I could actually do a 3-hour lecture. Really. Some of you remember - well maybe not the specific content, but the three hours! There was a mid-point break, but still 3 hours of content! I tell you this because this post got really long. You might want to schedule a mid-point break.  OK, here we go.

Given that writing first burst upon humanity some 5 or 6 thousand years ago, primarily to keep track of who bought what from whom, and how much anything was worth, the novel is a relatively new form of literature. The Tale of Genji, written by Marusaki Shikibu, the Japanese woman who wrote it about a thousand years ago, is often cited as the author of the world’s first novel.  It took the English speaking world a while to catch up, possibly with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, circa 1719.

Be that as it may, the novel has always been my favorite form of literature, but then second on my list is poetry - strange stuff like The Mountain Whippoorwill or How Hillbilly Jim Won the Great Fiddlers Prize, and The Ballad of William Sycamore both by Stephen Vincent Benet. His name might not spring quickly to mind, but he did win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry; John Brown’s Body, 1928. Anyhow,  my own literature choices are, dare I say it, novel. But, let’s get back to the novel as literary form. There is a DNA connection to novels in my family. I believe it is a direct line from my mother who had a great stash of novels from the early 1900s in a big green bookcase in the basement.  She shared them with her three children turning us all into readers of varying intensity. My older brother Jim went through a period of “dog stories,” Lad, a Dog and other tail-waggers by Albert Payson Terhune.  But, Jim soon moved on to think deeper thoughts.

My sister Margaret and I, however, were more deeply afflicted, well, perhaps, addicted is a more truthful description. To this day we read more novels than can be reasonably expected from two otherwise normal adults in their 7th decade. And again, full disclosure, this obsession did not raise its head as a manifestation of retirement. No, we have done it all our lives. But in our defense I need to point out that reading novels at the dinner table was normal, almost expected, behavior as we were growing up.

Recently I have been thinking about the more unique aspect of our novel addiction, which, I should admit before going any further, has been fully passed on to my older daughter, Andrea, who, as I type this, texted me about a new set of novels, The Lady Sherlock Series by Sherry Thomas, that has caught her eye.  So it is no surprise that I am talking about serialized fiction, same author, same characters, etc. evolving in their “real world,” albeit an imaginary one. I devoted an entire post, what, two years ago? to this unique sub-genre. If I can run down the link I will post it at the end of this post.

But there is serialized fiction, good serialized fiction, and truly wonderful serialized fiction. I thought I might share some thoughts on same with you. Back in dusty days of junior high school, thoughtful English teachers would occasionally ask us the “monkeys and Shakespeare” question: “If you locked a few hundred monkeys - who could type - in a room with hundreds of typewriters, [remember this is very pre-word processors] would they ever create a Shakespearean sonnet?” The correct answer, of course, was no, and the prof would then launch into the canned lecture on the awesomeness of the human mind. No argument there. But what never really got touched upon was, to me at least, the obvious correlation between results from  the monkey typing pool and early versions of serialized fiction. Should the monkeys manage to come up with a series of novels, they might well come up with something like the serialized novels from the late 1800s or early 1900s. The fact that those end products  were at best, mediocre, did not prevent Margaret and I from wading in that particular, rather stagnant pond.

In those unenlightened days, Margaret inherited the “girl’s series” The Polly Pendleton Series, by Dorothy Whitehill. This series first published by Barse & Hopkins on January 1st 1916, eventually expanded to 13 additional novels, centered on Polly Pendleton, “a resourceful, wide-awake American girl who goes to boarding school on the Hudson River some miles from New York. By her pluck and resourcefulness, she soon makes a place for herself and this she holds right through the course.”

I got the “boy version.” The Rover Boys Series for Young Americans, was a popular juvenile series written by Arthur M. Winfield, a pseudonym for Edward Stratemeyer. Thirty titles were published between 1899 and 1926 and the books remained in print for years afterward. The Rover Boys was one of the many series produced by Stratemeyer Syndicate, a publishing entity whose contracted ghostwriters eventually delivered more 1400 titles for “young Americans.” The Rover Boys dealt with the adventures of a band of brothers away at a military boarding school.  Dorothy Whitehill seems to have written the entire Polly series on her own, with a personal list of 36 authored works. 

Point is both Margaret and I were hooked on serial fiction at an early age, and Margaret must take responsibility for passing Polly down to my older daughter, Andrea. Polly now lives with Andrea, while The Rover Boys are safely boxed away with the other treasures of my youth.  I do need to point out that neither series, certainly not The Rover Boys, could be published nowadays. The self-appointed censors who would lock Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn away from innocent young eyes would suffer massive coronaries when perusing TRB! I’ll have to check with Margaret and Andrea about Polly’s enlightened perspective or lack thereof.

But that is not the point. The point is that both series were utterly predictable. In the mid-1850s a German dramatist named Gustav Frietag came up with a model for the “well-made play,” sometimes called Frietag’s Pyramid.  The structure is quite simple: introduction, rising action, climax, and demouement - which combines any falling action leading to a final resolution. Early serial novels used the model - most clearly evidenced in contemporary half-hour comedies, Friends, etc. The introduction would introduce, or reintroduce the major characters - our protagonists - would live their normal lives until some sort of conflict arose, usually instigated by some misunderstanding with the antagonists. The protagonists (our heroes or heroines) would struggle with the antagonists (aka the bad guys) besting them at the climax, and this final step is important, affecting a resolution that returns the world to something very similar to the world that existed at the beginning of the drama.

The model quickly moved beyond literature and plays to early movies that would show up in “new stories” of Batman, Superman, The Lone Ranger, etc., all of which were early examples of the “content” or “product” mentality that dominates todays screens and bookstore shelves. The works are formulaic, repetitive, predictable. Heavy sigh. I find myself truly torn between my love of excellent writing, and the dirty secret that I love series, book after book, after book. What’s a guy to do?

First, I find myself worrying that the “series genre” seems tailor made for AI. Train them on the plethora of series that have been written since Polly and The Rover Boys and turn them loose. Thankfully there are still some touch points that I think, I hope, I believe will always separate AI  serial fiction from fiction that springs from human genius. Yes, a Turing Test for serialized fiction.  I don’t know if one exists, but here are some thoughts on what should be addressed were we to create one.

First, the “read aloud” test.  Truthfully, I did not fully understand why everyone considered Shakespeare such a big deal until, as a young actor I had to perform him.  Or as the Bard himself bids Hamlet inform us, “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.” and, as our director required, “make sense, so that even your physics major roommate will understand what you mean.” It is true that reading aloud - while making sense - reveals the magic of  truly great writing. Give it a try. You need not jump right into Shakespeare. Try Jane Austin, or even A. A. Milne whose Winnie the Pooh transports those seemingly simple tales to a truly rarified realm.

Secondly, and it really should be first as it is the most important, the mark of genius in serial novels is the ability to surprise, but surprise within the logic of the narrative. The protagonist is not magically transformed into a robot, an alien, or a psychopath who begins to behave in ways totally contrary to their established identity. That is just the easy way out. Our AI Serial Production Studio would see that coming a mile away. No, the genius would, and does, surprise us in a way that is genuinely - well, surprising. It occurs, and we stop. Back up. Make sure we read it right. And sit back and process. And yes, that makes sense. We just never thought of it.

And perhaps this is, if not the central core of genius in creativity, it is certainly one of them. The ability to surprise within a context where we are not expecting to be surprised. We are certain to encounter virtuosity in any creative endeavor. We sink comfortably into the narrative, the music, the image, reveling in the excellence of the execution of the form, when suddenly the artist steps outside the expected - they surprise us. That is the hallmark of genius. And the hallmark of genius in serial fiction is that they do it again and again. It is one of the main reasons we are drawn to the form. We want to see how they do it. It is why we will go back and read the whole series over again, just to experience the surprise over and over again. Yes, guilty.

Here, at the end of this post, and yes, I promise that if this isn’t the actual end of the post, you can see it from here - you may just have to squint a bit. Anyhow, here is where I should do the “for example” conclusion.  What series do I feel reflect “genius in serial fiction.”  Well, to sort of cop out, this is a very subjective exercise. If you agree with the central premise you should create your own list.  I should point out that these are "genius series." I do still wade around in pure entertainment works - like Spenser and the Stone Barrington series. They are sort of the M&Ms of serial fiction. But since it is pretty easy to jut skip five or ten pages since you know that this is the "mandatory recap" or the "obligatory semi-steamy flirtation scene," I must admit it is obvious that the AI Series Production Studio probably could whip these out pretty easily. But here goes the genius list, mostly, simply, in the order they occur to me.

1. The Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. Several reasons beyond its ability to surprise, Rowling has managed to create a series that appeals to an audience ranging from young readers to young-at-heart adults. Also, the amount, and complexity of the “fan fiction” generated by the series is truly exceptional.  For example, I wonder why Harry acknowledged Draco Malfoy waiting on the train platform for the Hogwarts Express at the very end of the Harry Potter series. This question has undoubtedly been addressed many times in the aforementioned fan fiction.
2. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. While I will confess to skipping over some of the long bits of poetry, particularly the Elvish pieces, I have read the entire series several times, enchanted by the complex interactions of good and evil, courage and affection. The theme of cultures learning from the narratives of their ancestors is another that intrigued me.
3. Dune by Frank Herbert et. al. I was “surprised,” and not necessarily in a good way, to encounter a shelf of maybe a dozen different "Dune" volumes during a recent visit to a bookstore. The series, I’m afraid fell victim to its own success. Here I refer to the first three novels, Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune.  The others I view with some suspicion.
4. The Pendergast Series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. "The books are about the story of FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast." This is the rather sketchy online description for a series of almost 21 neatly written novels. They sort of blend Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil , Double Indemnity and Sherlock Holmes.

No doubt others will occur to me as soon as I post this already-too-long piece. At this point I should really defer to my sister who actually keeps a spread sheet of the series she has read and to whom I turn for "surprise" suggestions to feed our habit.

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Here is a related post to which I referred earlier. I don't think this is exactly the one I had in mind, but it is close. I will keep looking.

http://schragwall.blogspot.com/2020/01/to-binge-or-not-to-binge.html