Schrag PPP: Sometimes the Delight is in the Details

 A problem I often encounter in my photo based drawings is that I select an image that will automatically commit me to hours and hours of hand drawing.  For example a lousy copy of this photo I took of the Doge’s cathedral behind the big St. Mark’s cathedral on the square back in 2018:

Not really a problem - except for two things. One, you are seeing it sideways but you can turn your phone or tablet right side up. If you are on a desktop- oops.  But the other issue is more important. The hard copy which is what you see here, is about 40 x 20 inches, which will require A LOT of designing and coloring in those blank spaces.

However, I have discovered that little steps are best. The image that you see here below sits at the lower right of the big image, actually cropped out of the larger image above. Anyhow, it is about the size of a credit card and took less than an hour to complete. So I can put both it and myself down for a nap without exhausting either of us!

Enjoy!

Messing Around in the Garage

Messing Around in the Garage

I was just watching the video Google and the World Brain via my old buddy, Curiosity Stream.  The video examines the contemporary implications of H.G. Welles' book, World Brain, a compilation of his essays and addresses from 1936 to 1938, published by Methuen Publishing in 1938.

Welles' book, and Curiosity Streams' take on it, both raise very interesting questions all of which center on the issues raised by the potential existence of an entity - human or AI - that actually is able to collect, index, continually update and distribute all of humanity’s extant information. For me the important variable is individually. If Google and/or other tech companies gather all the world’s information and allow access to that information at minimal cost (assuming that even at minimal cost, "access" generates necessary corporate profit) then simple possession of that information loses much of what was its traditional unique or inherent value. Instead value gets reconfigured or reconstructed by the ways in which individuals mold or structure that information so that it yields results that are pleasurable to humans. Obviously that “pleasure” can take myriad forms. Profit, power, etc., are those "pleasures" that have traditionally motivated individuals and cultures. The great sweep of those pleasures often also implies the power to implement, distribute, provide, them.  Historically, art has been shaped by political or religious power; presidents, chiefs, royalty, popes, cardinals, sultans, imams, lamas,  abhyasi, etc.  So the subject matter of much "art" was usually predetermined by the orthodoxy of the purse strings of the patron. 

However, in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries those purse strings led more or less directly to major companies, [From Ford, Westinghouse, General Electric, General Motors up through Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, etc.] whether their products were powered or produced by steam, internal combustion, or electricity. These new patrons often enjoy significant political support as well.  The concern expressed in "Google and the World Brain" is that access/control of all of the world's information would - assuming the continued concentration of that information in one or a few corporate hands - determine how said information could or would be used. It occurs to me that nothing could be further from the truth. 

Humanity's evolution - artistic, scientific, cultural - has always grown out of unique, individual applications of information driven by human curiosity. Capital, marketing, profit, those seeming impenetrable barriers to success, are in reality merely problems that can be overcome. What has actually foiled significant advances for humanity has been lack of access to information that allows the transformation of ideas into reality.  Information like what filament can burn in a lightbulb? what fuel can lift a rocket into orbit? how do you fit thousands of transistors on a single chip? When all humanity gains access to Welles’ "world brain" - a concept more recognizable today as the World Wide Web or some improved version of the Internet - what we can expect is an unprecedented explosion of those notions of artistic, scientific and cultural evolution.

Would that it would all be positive.  I read today of a couple of teens running a multimillion dollar NFT [Non-Fungible Tokens] art scam out of their version of the same kind of "garages" that originally gave us Apple and Microsoft. Equally prevalent are stories covering "cybercrime," "cyber warfare," "cyber attacks," etc. So what I am suggesting is NOT that access to the “world brain” would usher in some kind of digital panacea for the world's ills; that horse has left the barn.  Rather what does occur to me is that such access could usher in a potential shift in the locus of influence from the the traditional potentates of power - religious, political, corporate - to unaffiliated individuals. 

In the fascinating video, Tom Dowd and the Language of Music, iconic guitarist Les Paul [Lester William Polsfuss] talks about how, in his day - mid 1950s - the most creative new strains of music were coming from "kids in their bedrooms or garages messing around with guitars and computers." Paul's own messing "around with guitars and computers," with his equally talented wife, guitarist and vocalist, Mary Ford, led to the first examples of 8-track recording.  Which, in turn, led to more complex and layered sounds in the evolving genre of what is now broadly defined as rock. I find it fascinating and exciting to imagine what might result in all areas of art, culture and society from "kids in their bedrooms and garages messing around on their digital devices with access to 'the world brain.'"

Tears From Nowhere

There is a special place in each of us for music. Apparently neurologists have located a unique spot in the brain that intercepts music before it makes its way to the better known processing centers. Seemingly it sort of hijacks sound. I am still a bit fuzzy on the details, but am in full agreement without seeing the scans or reading the studies. Experience is usually a more powerful persuader than data. I think I have written about my older brother Jim before. He was five or six years my senior - never exactly sure. Anyhow, he loved music. Played the harmonica, sang in college choirs and musicals. My own unusual knowledge of 1950s rock-and-roll songs is a direct result of listening to his extensive collection of 45s. And that is an important piece of this post.

In his early 40s, again fuzzy here - it was the year NC State won the NCAA basketball championship, 1983? - Jim was at the end of his fight with glioblastoma - a horrible brain cancer they are just now making some small steps towards addressing.  I went up to see him.  Regular conversation was no longer possible, but his incredible wife Linda was still making that terrible time as tolerable as possible. But that is not the point of this post - music is. You see although Jim and I couldn’t converse in any meaningful way, we could sing. And we did. What is the line from the Janis Joplin song, Me and Bobby McGee,? “We sang every song that driver knew.” Over the course of a few days Jim and I sang up all those songs from that stack of 45s. And he never missed a lyric, never missed a word.

So there is a special place in us for music. Mind? Brain? Soul? I don’t really know where it is, but I was drawn into a further consideration of it this evening.  Music is all around me all the time, whether I am drawing or writing, reading, or driving, music is always there, unless those rare instances when some other form of audible media intrudes. OK.  So tonight I am doing my “pre-sleep, Reike meditation ritual” which naturally includes music from Pandora on my iPad.  I shift the playlists around according to my mood. Tonight I went with my “Thumbs Up” list which is a wildly eclectic playlist of all the songs I have ever clicked on as being a “thumbs up” song. Almost a thousand songs.

Having read recently that even very slight light in your sleeping environment is bad for you, I have returned to using a “sleep mask.”  Prevents Alzheimer’s or acid reflux or something.  So I’m listening to Thumbs Up, doing my meditation, and I reach up to adjust my sleep mask, and I am surprised to discover that tears are streaming down my face. Not just a little eye watering - real tears. I was taken aback because I wasn’t aware of being in any kind of “tearful state.” No tears of sadness, no tears of joy. Just these tears from nowhere.

Here is what I think is going on.  First, there is this human locus for music, that Jim and I had already explored all those years ago. Second, I had chosen all the songs on that playlist as being “thumb worthy.” I liked them. Third, I was in a mindful, meditative state. So that music slammed into my “music locus,” probably making it a bit nuts, so it reacted “normally” and turned on the waterworks. Mind you, it was a rather pleasant experience - far more akin to tears of joy and wonder than sadness. Which makes sense since I had chosen the songs and my taste in music runs far more to joy and wonder than sadness.

No surprise there, eh? Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty and all? 

 

Wall Archeology 2nd ed. February 2006

Most of these “2nd editions” are old favorites. My younger daughter pointed out that “Vegan in a Mason Jar” was one of hers. This is a second edition of a different flavor - I have no recollection of ever writing it. Hence it is somewhat akin to discovering an ancient ruin. And archeological questions spring to mind. Who were these people? How did they get here? What were their beliefs? And what are they talking about in this strange piece? Hence . . .

There is Sight, and Then There is Vision

 

I suppose there was a time when I could see the world clearly without my glasses.  But I have no recollection of it.  The world I recall has always been one in variable focus.  Without my glasses, anything from four to six inches from my eyes is in perfect focus; the near-sighted eye is a magnifying glass.  However, as objects recede from that tight little island of clarity, they become softer and softer until they disappear into the multicolored haze that defines my world writ large.

 

I had some fun with that visual reality yesterday at the symphony.  As I floated along on a delightful cloud of Mozart, I became intrigued with the shifting patterns created as the violin bows danced across the faces of the musicians.  I was fascinated by the geometric regularity that flashed as the strokes intersected with the interlacing panels that defined upstage.  Then for some reason - an itchy eye, a yawn, a dust mote, I don’t remember – I took off my glasses.  All lines vanished as the stage became a kaleidoscope of color, pattern, darkness, light and shadow.

 

I played with the effect a bit – discovering an interesting in-between phase that announced itself when I looked at the stage through the bifocal portion of my glasses.  It is a degree of clarity that lives somewhere between “glasses off” and “glasses on.”  I was also a touch surprised to discover that my manipulations had a significant effect on the auditory experience.  As visual focus softened the aural dimension increased in clarity and impact.  When the orchestra is cast in clear relief, you focus on the artistry and emotion of the performer – their precision and passion.  But when, sans ocular aids, the players fade into a hazy dance of motion, light and color, you become far more aware of subtleties in the score – themes, variations and harmonies dominate.  

 

I make no argument for one state over another.  All carry their own delights.  I was, however, struck anew by how much of the experience of a symphony is contributed by the audience member.  Mozart gets credit for the notes; the conductor guides the orchestra, and thus shares with every musician the intricacies of pace, interpretation and intonation.  Yet, ultimately, the music sounds inside our head.  And there, we are the virtuosi. 

Portable Ritual

You may be getting tired of hearing about Curiosity Stream, but it truly is a lovely application. Nature, art, science, history. Nuggets of just about wherever, whenever, and whatever you desire. Recently I have been using it as a portal to the past, mostly to times and places either neglected or forgotten in my travels and education. A couple of threads, the Monarchs of Asia - Brunei, ancient Japan, etc., ancient Mayan kingdoms, and some recent excavations in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings have got me thinking about the place of ritual - not only in those rather distant civilizations steeped in history and mystery - but also in those examples more common in my “Western Civ” classes: Greeks, Romans, Persians, Nubians, etc.

It struck me that “ritual” in virtually all of these examples consisted - at least in part - as seeking “permission to pray.”  Sort of like the nautical notion “permission to come aboard?” Ritual placed you in contact with, or in communication with, the deity whose support or favor you were seeking. The problem came, as is often the case with our consistently fallible species, from our belief that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Build a bigger cathedral, a more impressive mosque, a more beautiful temple, put a little more gold on your dome, memorize more prayers, say them more often to more deities, demonstrate why your faith is more faithful than other faiths, perhaps by wiping out those foolish other folks praying to strange deities. "Holy Wars" Crusades, etc., became all the rage. Or self-inflicted bloodshed. Just saw a piece on human sacrifice in a part of the ancient Mayan kingdom in what is now Columbia - sacrificed a dozen children and their accompanying llamas. If that is what you need to get the deity's attention I think I'll pass.

Now don’t get me wrong. Lurking behind the four tenets of Distilled Harmony is my firm belief that Harmony is the natural state of existence and it didn’t occur by accident. There is a Watchmaker behind this incredible watch we are living in, experiencing, newly discovering, and are still so very far from understanding. The four tenets are merely guideposts designed to keep us from straying too far from the path to the Watchmaker's Harmony. I admit I often lose sight of the path myself. Sort of a trees and forest kind of thing. Sometimes the trees are just so awesome!

But back to ritual. My Mother gave me a book she had enjoyed as a girl.  The Harvester by Gene Stratton-Porter.  Published in 1911. It is a novel, probably a "romance" if anything, but a very proper 1911 romance. Given that Stratton-Porter was a a naturalist and nature photographer it should not surprise us that she presents a very different take on ritual. One I am more comfortable with than those suggested by the rituals and sacrifices from palaces and holy cities, past and present.

As the title indicates, our protagonist, the Harvester, made his living cultivating "medicinal herbs" - 1911 remember. The book never references him attending any kind of formal religious ceremony - except when he finally marries his "Dream Girl" - remember, 1911 romance. But in explaining his views on life and the universe to her, he explains that whenever - in the midst of all his planting, harvesting, and feeding the little creatures of the woods - he encountered something of exceptional grace or beauty he would pause and say a quick two line prayer of thanks to whatever entity was responsible for its existence - ta da! Portable Ritual!

The exact words of the Harvester's prayer are unimportant - that way lies palaces, holy wars and human sacrifices. What is important is acknowledging the Harmony, grace and beauty of an existence yet a bit beyond our understanding, while still affirming our efforts to increase that understanding. My own Portable Ritual also differs from formal ritual in that I employ what I think of as "colloquial conversation." The notion is that "ritualized formal language" actually disrupts your dialogue with the universe. There becomes a "right way" to converse, failure to follow the right way leads again to palaces, holy wars, sacrifice, yadda, yadda, yadda.

So I do pause - as indicated by tenet number two, Enable Beauty, - when I encounter anything of exceptional beauty; rock, flower, song, sculpture, sunset or rise, face or form. I try to still myself, slow my breath and simply say, "Thanks! Beautiful. Excellent work!" And then I tuck my portable ritual back inside my heart and move on with life.

Schrag Wall: A Chintzy Heritage

I am watching a Curiosity Stream video on the history of the British Empire. While much of the empire was built on greed and violence, there are still some interesting, more peaceful, bits and pieces. One is the history of chintz, the fabric, as the narrator remarks, “you are used to seeing on your grandmother’s sofa.” However, as the owner of the small fabric studio in Bengal points out, that version of the fabric - machine printed - to which we can trace the etiology of the current word “chintzy” meaning cheap or kitsch, was the result of artisans creating fabric that would appeal to the taste of the newly arrived Brit traders.

However, if you move back to examples from the 16th and 17th centuries in Bengal, you discover wonderful hand-printed and hand-painted chintz fabric. The video then features an artisan carefully brushing color into very small spaces in the larger hand drawn design. “Very time-consuming, very labor intensive,” intones the narrator. “Been there, done that,” my inner voice responds. “And, yes, incredibly time consuming and labor intensive.”  You can see some neat examples if you do a search on "16th century asian chintz."

I can truthfully say I was totally ignorant of this ancient ancestor of my own style of “image making.” But I find the idea comforting. I don’t think one can ever do anything completely “new” or “unique” in the arts. New technologies allow us to enhance or reconfigure image, sound, form, and modes of presentation or creation. Different perhaps, but more that “reconfiguration” than something really “new.” Still, every once in awhile, we stumble across the more original ancestors of our own imaginings. I suppose one could be chagrined - “Damn, I thought I was here first!”  Far more in sync with the first tenet of Distilled Harmony - Foster Harmony - is “How cool is that! Someone has walked this path before me. I wonder what I can learn from them?”

 

OK, I Was Surprised

 It was, after all, the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. And the winner was Bob Dylan. You know, harmonica? Deviated septum kind of twang? Yeah, that Bob Dylan.  But I shouldn’t have been taken aback. All I really had to do was examine my own creative behavior. And, no, I don’t expect the phone to ring anytime soon:

Them: Is this Dr. Robert Schrag?

Me: Actually it is Schrag, "oug," rhymes with frog. But what can I do for you?

Them: This is the Nobel Prize Committee calling .  .  . 

Nah. Ain’t gonna happen.

What I mean about Dylan’s Nobel making more sense when I look at my own creative behavior is that I use the literature in songs as a partner in my image making. A number of you asked about how long it takes to create some of my images; Harlequin Bottles, for example. Well, I don’t run a clock on it, but I’m guessing that piece took a couple hundred hours, give or take.  So what is the rest of my mind doing while much of it is devoted to line, color, pattern, etc.? Part of it is listening to music. Two versions and by design.

Instrumental. This is essentially music without words - or music with words in a language I do not understand. I use this when I'm designing the the "cartoon." That is the black and white outline of the image that will later be filled in with color. I need all my concentration to be on the image form. Sometimes with an exceptionally tricky part, I will draw the design lightly in pencil and then go back over that part with a black marker when I am pleased with the design. So, really focused on the design. No room for words.

Vocal. Music with words. This comes in after the design is set and I am adding color. There is a sort of a split here. There are songs that I know so well that the words usually don't really register as words, rather just part of a gestalt that flows through the brain without catching on any particular synapse for further consideration. There are some exceptions to that "brain on auto" situation. For instance if something in my current "life lived" is somehow addressed in the words of the "brain on auto" song, the train may jump the tracks a little - "Hum. Interesting." But then usually back on auto again. And the focus jumps back to color composition.

And then there are songs that are purely poetry set to music. And this is where Dylan comes in. His Nobel Prize was awarded specifically for "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." This kind of poetic music finds its expression most comfortably in "folk music," or "country," "ballads" "blues" "western" or "traditional" "protest songs" some "early rock" - basically any music form where the emphasis is on the words - particularly storytelling music. It's not that the music becomes secondary - not at all. Interestingly much of the chatter on Beatles sites splits pretty evenly between musical issues - chords, progressions, etc., and debates over content. Usually Lennon and McCartney fighting over "granny songs" or heavier content.

But with Dylan, apologies in advance, the music is so simplistic that the focus inevitably comes down to the poetry. Dylan got the prize, but there are other musical poets out there whose history would have put them in the running for that particular version of the Nobel: Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and his kid Arlo, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, and Marty Robbins who could sing anything and drive NASCAR, and an occasional dose Hank Williams. Of course, I am showing my age and musical biases, and there will be the inevitable debates over who really wrote what, and who just became "the voice." But you get the idea. So once I am pretty clear as to which colors will dominate and where - generally - they will be going, I can draw while a big part of my brain listens to the poetry.

Hours and hours of poetry and hours and hours of color. Hey, retirement could be a lot worse!

Oppose Harm, 2nd ed

Oppose Harm

This tenet usually brings up the rear in my list of the tenets of Distilled Harmony. The simple reason for that is that if we are doing the first three right we prevent having to move on to Oppose Harm. Sadly, the current international scene with the Russian invasion of the Ukraine requires a more in-depth examination of the tenet.

The most ticklish aspect of this tenet is the definition of “harm.”  Like beauty, love, and truth, harm is a purely personal notion. One person's "harm" is another's "desired objective." So harm is inextricably linked our experience with the world. And in today’s world that “experience” is increasingly digital.  I was surprised, and I now realize foolishly so, to learn that a young Ukrainian woman trying to explain to her mother in Russia the horrors of her life in the midst of the Russian invasion, was met with her mother's unshakable conviction that the invasion of the Ukraine was necessary to "protect Russia from the neo-nazi threat from the extremists in the Ukraine." While the mother's perception strikes us as bizarre, it is based on the "reality" reflected on Russian media, and the mother - according to our media - has little or no access to any alternative point of view. So from the mother's point of view "harm" emanates from the Ukraine and Russia is doing what is necessary to oppose that harm.

Now, before we shake our heads sadly at the mother's distorted picture of "reality" we really must look here in our own backyard and the wildly varying perceptions of truth and harm relating to covid vaccinations. I have been following with surprise equal to the Russian mother/ Ukrainian daughter varying versions of truth and harm, our own variations of truth and harm regarding covid vaccinations. In the name of full disclosure I am a 73 year-old immunocompromised guy, fully vaccinated and boosted. Which puts me in a somewhat unique demographic category. The data I have been looking at rather arbitrarily divides populations into red and blue based on voting data from the Biden/Trump election. That particular division yields some rather obvious differences. Red people and places place little emphasis on vaccinations, masks, social distancing, school policies, etc. Blue people and places see vaccination and related policies as the best way to confront the pandemic. Red people and places have significantly higher rates of covid infection and related deaths than do blue places and people.

It is important to remember the phrase above "the data I have been looking at." And remember that truth is a personal construct. I do believe - probably because I am an optimist - that our nation is far more purple than red or blue. People with school age children, I'm guessing, are quite purple in their desire to see schools opening, as both red and blue media favor that point of view. But again let me draw your attention to the phrase "red and blue media." They are both out there and they paint pictures of our nation that can be as different as the "realities" being experienced by our Ukrainian/Russian mother/daughter thousands of miles away.

When we encountered the "who do you trust" issue in my media classes we used the following exercise. First we tried to isolate a particularly divisive issue prominent in the news. After eliminating the obvious reality that UNC got more and better coverage in the local media than did NC State, we would move on the issues of broader - hopefully national or even global concern. I would then require them track that story through a wide variety of local, national and international media. I gave them group of local, national and international media outlets identified as right wing, left wing, or neutral. I can share the list with you if you like, just drop me a note. To include it here would greatly expand this post which is already getting too long.

The point of the exercise was not to argue for the verity of one source or another, but rather to demonstrate that various media paint very different pictures of the world. We then followed up with values clarification exercise and I asked them - in a non-graded, anonymous exercise - to define which media mirrored most closely their own view of "reality." The objective of these exercises was not to pinpoint the source of "harm," but rather to demonstrate that truth and harm are often media constructions and before voicing or marching or whatever in opposition to a particular locus of harm, they would be well-advised to consider the source of the information that most, and best, informs their opposition. Then it becomes their - and our - responsibility to determine what form their opposition should take.

From Hero to Has Been

 Or the tragic tale of the ring-tailed lemur.

Folks around here keep asking themselves, “Just what the heck does Putin want in the Ukraine anyhow? Is he just another in a long line of Russian psychopaths? Reaching back to the Tsars? Rasputin? Stalin and the rest? Well, yes, that seems quite likely. However I think we may find deeper insight if we consider the ring-tailed lemurs of Madagascar. No, wait, wait. There is a connection here and one that is supported by other data from the animal kingdom.

First thing you need to realize is that ring-tailed lemur society is matriarchal. Rather obsessively so. Like all lemurs, the ring-tails live only on the large island of Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa. Socially they are organized into “troops” of 8 or 9 up to thirty individuals. There are both males and females in each troop but the troops are all dominated by very aggressive females who fight the dominant females of other troops to protect territory.  See where I going with this?  The guys do hang around during mating season and will fight among themselves for mating rights - hence the term “mating season.” But when the mating is done, that’s about it for the "male maters." The females run everything else, to the extent that if one troop loses territory to another, the females of the defeated troop pack their bags and head out. Leaving the males to follow along - or not. And the loser males can join the winning troop, who seem to figure, “What the heck, we only keep them around for the mating.”

While this matriarchal organizational structure seems particularly rigid among the ring-tailed lemurs it is far from unique among our animal kin.  Elk do it, bison do it, wolves do it, elephants do it, chamois way up in the alps do it. Point being, and here is where Putin comes in, that often the guys are just kept around for a bit of hunting, but primarily as sperm donors for the herd. And those mating rights are usually determined by who can beat up all the other dudes, or who by pawing the ground, hollering the loudest, and flexing, scares the other guys into thinking, “Wow, this guy could really kick my ass!” And they slink away. Or they don’t. “Oh, yeah? You want a piece of me? Well, bring it on!” And they proceed to bite and butt and kick, until one finally gets mating rights to any of the females who stuck around to see who won. But, and this is important, all the guys are now useless for the rest of the year until the next mating season rolls around. So they form “bachelor herds” and hang out for the rest of the year shoving each other around, telling off color jokes, and “marking their territory” without the benefit of porta-pottys.

Human males, being so much more evolved than our critter kin, looked around for something to fill all that down time between mating seasons and - surprise, surprise - the guys came up with war and professional sports. Come on - who came up with Super Bowl parties, and who jumps up and down while eating all the chips and swigging down imported beer?  So - even in lieu of the Super Bowl - it isn’t an unexpected lesson of history that many of our “great political leaders” got a significant leg up on power on the other bachelor herd option, the battlefield. 29 of 45 US Presidents are military veterans. And a bunch of international bad dudes in autocracies around the world seem to love strutting around in flashy military style uniforms. Equally unsurprising is the fact that Putin’s road to the Russian presidency ran through the infamous KGB.

So, here’s what I’m thinking. We’ve got to find a way to make better use of the bachelor herds. We have been trying war now ever since humanity made its way out of Africa. And what has that gotten us? Seemingly just more war. And, OK, admittedly I’m a guy. Somewhat traditionalist, straight old white guy in my early 70s. But I’m ready to suggest we take a page from the ring-tailed lemurs playbook. Let’s let the females do the fighting over territory. And us guys will just follow the ladies from troop to troop and see what’s cooking. Could well be the females will soon see the errors of history and come up with a better model.