The Fascination of the Small

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The southern summer has settled in with a vengeance, spawning tornadoes that swept northward like latter-day Jeb Stuarts taking the war to the Yankees.  The thermometer puts up numbers of which students only dream, and you can soak a shirt walking out to get the mail.   All in all, it seemed a strange time to take my camera for a stroll.  But Christine has been gone for awhile, up in the Second City doing “Aunt Chris” duty, and I have succumbed to cabin fever.  So I made it a two-stop day.  First, I walked a short loop over by Lake Crabtree, then the “Investigator” path through the meadow and woods adjoining the North Carolina Museum of Art. 

The lake trail was peacefully deserted, save for a few other mad dogs and Englishmen jogging and biking the perimeter.  There is a calming silence to heat.  It would be oppressive indoors, but out here it seems a filter – nothing expends energy on unnecessary sound.  All that remains is important and worthy of our efforts to listen.  The smell of pine and honeysuckle steep together nicely in the quiet; trumpet vines and mimosas splash pink and scarlet among shade upon shade of green and brown. Several times I raised the camera to frame a shot, only to let it fall.  I began to realize that, today at least, simply pausing and watching would suffice.  More and more these days, when I take a photo it has a way of sinking into the voracious, multi-layered and cross-indexed “Pictures” file, never to be seen again.  Better to gaze, to breathe, and to listen.

Coming around a bend, I chanced upon a biker in full Lance Armstrong regalia; Area 51 styled helmet, spandex this and wicking that, all held together with Velcro and clever clips.  His stylish steed rested lightly against him as he fiddled with ear buds looping down to something small and digital.  I nodded, but he seemed oblivious to my awesome walking staff and raffish fedora.  A yard or two past him a flashy bluebird perched above a spectacular thicket of poison ivy draped with honeysuckle. I stopped and peeked through my viewfinder.  Damn near dropped the camera as a huge heron exploded from an eddy just behind her tiny blue buddy.  She screamed, and beat her way into the air.  I turned to see if Lance, too, had avoided a coronary, only to find him head down, staring intently at his digital doodad, thumbs flying.  It struck me that had we invented cellphones first, we would never have tamed fire – the saber-tooth tigers and cave bears would have been picking us off like jellybeans as we texted our way to extinction.

The path embracing the art museum was more populated, but still not crowded.  The large sculptures scattered across the landscape lay baking in the sun, pieces pulled from some gigantic kiln, cooling under Carolina blue.  Dogs, which had no doubt started the day straining the leash, now toiled up slight inclines, tongues panted to full extend.  Parents pushed, pulled and carried children among ponds and plantings perhaps a tad too obviously designed to tempt modern-day Monets.  Still, I caved, and took a couple of shots as background for a new set of images I am drawing.

I suppose it was the sleepy little ones being toted through the lush landscape that took me back to the first serialized fiction I can remember reading, Thorton Burgess’s Old Mother West Wind stories.  Burgess, a naturalist and author from Massachusetts, penned the tales over a stretch of almost 50 years, starting in 1910.  I first encountered Little Joe Otter, Spotty the Turtle, Billy Mink, Peter Cottontail, et al., in 1954, when I was still several months shy of my sixth birthday.  My father had taken a summer teaching position in California, and our rented home was not far from the local library.  My mother used books the way modern moms use DVD players, and so we read the summer away.

I am struck by the differences between then and now, between those stories and today’s.  The Mother West Wind tales made the small large – they created an entire world in a meadow or along a stretch of riverbank.  It is a characteristic shared with Kenneth Grahame’s British classic, Wind in the Willows, published in 1908, and Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, from 1926. These works all appear to have their roots in a close observation of nature writ small.  I envision Burgess, Grahame and Milne, children when the 19^th century turned 20, forced to go outside and play without things plastic or electric. They were, no doubt, initially bored.  But boredom, like necessity, often proves the mother of invention.  And they invented entire worlds in the gardens, meadows and streams that surrounded them – worlds that later flowed from their pens onto receptive pages, worlds they shared with me, waiting anxious and unknowing, across the decades. 

I wonder if, when even the youngest of children can touch the wide world through today’s magic screens, do we deny them the fascination of the small?  Do we ever allow them to become bored enough to track an ant across the garden?  To follow the flight of the bluebird? To imagine the throat that gives voice to thunder, or the world to which a rabbit hole allows entry? Have we become so averse to leaving our children alone with themselves that we impair their ability to discover who they are, and by what small thing they may be fascinated? And is the same true for you, and for me?

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Observing the Elephant, or, WiiinWim

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The fable of The Blind Men and the Elephant teaches an important to truth – to children.  As nimble fingers explore the pachyderm those tracing the side find a wall, a tusk becomes a spear, the trunk a snake; leg, tree; ear, fan; tail, rope – until the poor beast is totally and inaccurately deconstructed.  The implicit assertion is that could we but see the entire creature we would somehow “know” what it “is.”  And that is a valuable lesson for kids – “Get all the information before reaching a conclusion.” But seen from another perspective, the fable itself becomes an illusion.  No mere observation of the elephant would reveal the matriarchal social structure, the navigational nuances, or the communicative sophistication of the species that we are only now beginning to understand and appreciate.   So the story of the elephant and the blind men leads us into a WiiinWim situation.  Ah, no, again, not a typo – just another example of my love of acronyms.  WiiinWim stands for “What It Is, Is Not What It Means.”  And I am, again, talking about the universe – this time the optometrist’s universe.

The Optometrist’s Universe is a simplistic metaphor. An optometrist provides the lenses that allow us to read.  However, the ability to make the glasses is completely separate from the ability to read and comprehend whatever text is made legible by the lenses.  The most skilled uni-lingual American optometrist can peer through her finest lenses and still find French a mystery. Seeing the text is not the same as reading the words, and neither equates to understanding the sentence, let alone the paragraph or the book.  The same, I would posit, is true about astronomers and cosmologists and the universe: seeing is not directly correlated to understanding.  WiiinWim. 

This current musing drifts from my recent reading of The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, by Richard Panek.  The book simultaneously fascinated and embarrassed me.  The fascination comes from the fact some of the smartest cosmologists, astronomers, mathematicians, and scientists somehow overlooked 96% of the universe. Even more fascinating; how easy and understandable was the error.  The embarrassment stems from the fact that these were “family” to a certain extent – members of the academic family – and much of the error was compounded because they expended incredible amounts of energy fighting over “grants and glory.”  At times the whole process wasn’t so much a “chase for the truth” as it was an effort to “affirm my version of the truth.”

But I digress, as always.  What I found most troubling about the work was the “Blind Men and the Elephant-ness” of it.  Perhaps trapped by the metaphor of his title, The Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, Panek seems to assert that once we learn to “observe” and measure the other 96 percent of the universe we will have “seen the elephant,” and that vision will put to rest pesky questions regarding the meaning of existence, the nature of love, the existence of God, and all that jazz.  I must object.

Here is my concern: the technology that reveals the extent and structure of the universe, and the individuals who operate the equipment and analyze data, do not necessarily reflect the skill sets and knowledge bases best-suited to understanding the meaning of the universe.  Now, I certainly do not wish to reduce the astronomer's role to mere lens grinder or image-maker, no, the skill involved in the conception and creation of contemporary telescopes and other sensing devices is quite incredible.  To image the various guises of the universe we can see and to even contemplate the tools necessary to perceive the other 96% that we cannot see, is a manifestation of technical and scientific skill of the first magnitude.  The astronomer's labor is worthy of daily admiration, and occasional awe.

But while those exceptional efforts bring the text into focus, they do not automatically provide insight into the meaning of the text resolved by the device.  I’m not advancing the general semanticist's old saw and simply asserting that, "the word is not the thing."  As a matter of fact, I’ve come – well, maybe not 180 degrees from that – but certainly, 155, maybe 160.  I am far more comfortable with my own perspective, drawn from my writings on Chord Theory and Universal Resonance [drop me a note, I’ll send you the links]; that while the word it is certainly an inherent part of the thing, it is just as surely not the whole thing.  To discern the symbol is not synonymous with understanding the symbol.  Were that the case, Dan Brown would be a far less wealthy man today.

Let us explore another metaphor.  Let us consider Maxfield Parrish's Sunlite Valley from 1947.

 I choose it because it is not Rembrandt or Van Gogh.  It isn't even J.M.W. Turner or Thomas Cole. It is an unabashedly romantic landscape, which if painted today might be accused of some photoshopping - a little heavy on the saturation, a bit defuse on the sky - but I like it. It is sort of painting “comfort food.”  The point is this: you could take the physical elements used to construct the painting and put them in a room.  The tubes of paint, or perhaps the pigments and binders used to make the paint, the canvas, the brushes, the stretchers for the frame, the varnishes.  Throw in the wood for an easel. Maybe add some lights.  Everything. Dump it there, in the room.  Let all those elements stand for everything that makes up the universe or the multiverses or whatever.

When the astronomers and astrophysicists finally manage to define all of those elements for us, then they will have cataloged the materials in the room, they will have marked the paint in Parrish's studio.  When they isolate the forces that pull elemental particles into larger clusters and reveal the actions and reactions that suture up the galaxies and the unimaginably immense super strings of galaxies, then they will have discerned what holds the paint together, what allows it to cling to the brush and adhere to the canvas.  They may have even have glimpsed the nature of Maxfield's technique, his brushstrokes, and his preferences for hue and texture.  But unanswered still is the question of why the artist chose to paint that particular scene and for what purpose? What, if any, was the intelligence that stretched from conception to execution?

And that, of course, brings us back to WiiinWim - what it is, is not what it means.  If you have followed these posts for long you know that they stem from my own efforts to merge the physics with the philosophy.  And those efforts have led me to a number of assertions about "what it means."  I wait, with not much patience, to learn the nature of that 96% of the universe that remains cloaked.  I am curious to see if it seems to “confirm or deny” my guesses about “what it means.” If you have forgotten the nature of those guesses, you can download the long version The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart, [200 – 300 pages depending on font size] for free here:

http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/624/the-god-chord-string-theory-in-the-landscape-of-the-heart

But, in short, the work concludes with this thesis: Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm: these are not the only truths, but without them all others come undone.

It is an assertion regarding appropriate human attitude and behavior that is drawn from what physics reveals about the nature of reality. You see, the recurring theme is that each time the best and brightest observers of the universe assert the primacy of chaos and the eventual demise of existence - those lynchpins of nihilism - newer evidence, better data, and a broader view reveals transcendent harmony and order. I continue to scour the emerging literature from the LHC, Hubble, et. al.  To date, the dominant chord still echoes harmonics.  And in that echo sounds the human mandate: Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm.
 
The God Chord has been downloaded some 16,000 times, and is, I assume, also occasionally read :-)   So the foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm message is inching along through cyberspace. But my wife, Christine, requested a shorter version a couple of years ago, “You know, one regular people might actually enjoy reading.” 

Let me close with the 700 words that were the result of that request as they sum up my take on Wim "What it means":

Distillations: An Acknowledgement of Universal Resonance

by

RL Schrag

September, 2009

Being a tiny little book that attempts to present Universal Resonance, the worldview formerly know as Chord Theory in a more accessible form.

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Distillations

“Even small works can be beautiful if they point the way.”

Foster harmony, enable beauty, oppose harm: these are not the only truths, but without them all others come undone.

The object of this work is to distill universal resonance to its most parsimonious essence.  The guiding principles will be brevity and clarity, the objective, a work you can hold in the palm of your hand.
 

Universal Resonance

From the string theory of physics I accept the assertion that at the irreducible core of all things rests the string.  Unimaginably tiny, it vibrates.  Its existence mandates that the universe be defined by resonance; that we are made - as is every other thing in the universe, no matter how great or small - of music.

Existence, therefore, is best understood in terms of harmony and discord with no artificial distinction drawn between physics and metaphysics.

Universal resonance sees the division between physics and metaphysics as an intellectual artifice, a relic of wars between dueling arrogances:  Metaphysics asserts that truth is beyond measurement, while Physics fails to imagine the instruments equal to the task.

Universal resonance anticipates a world in which the unimaginable will become measurable, and the unbelievable is rationally explained.  It has happened so often in the past, it seems foolhardy to assert the contrary.

Foster Harmony

This guides all our behavior. It shapes what we do and what we should refrain from doing: We seek harmony.

Implicit in the exhortation to foster harmony is the realization that we cannot choose for others. The only chord you can tune is your own.

Harmony rarely frowns. She is not selfish, arrogant or disdainful.  Harmony could be rather tedious were she not so willing to laugh at herself.

Enable Beauty

This tenet mandates our active participation in making the world more beautiful. A broad conception of beauty is implied, one that transcends culture, market and current taste.

The route to beauty winds through throngs and past lonely places.  Where and how we choose to follow is unimportant.  That we do follow is imperative.
 

Oppose Harm

Harm is anything that compromises harmony and beauty. Sometimes active opposition, though seemingly discordant, is the necessary path to harmony. But, whenever possible, opposition should be graceful, gentle, even beautiful.

Remember, opposition forced into the public sphere usually indicates a failure to blunt harm in a more private and graceful manner.

The Self

The self is the symphony we compose with the choices of our life.  Inclined by biology, we take from our DNA the realization that we are utterly unique.  Each breath we draw, each hope we cherish, our fears, the thoughts we think, all trigger cascades of discernible physical reactions that strum the very strings of our self, creating and recreating us anew each moment.

Though buffeted by both choice and chance, we are the composers of our life’s symphony.  It is a role we are powerless to relinquish.

The Soul

The entity that most religions call the soul is recognized in universal resonance to be a physical reality; a cluster of those unimaginably tiny strings that uniquely encodes our deepest beliefs, feelings and insights. It is a minute morsel of matter whose size and resonance allows it, on the occasion of the demise of its current body, to migrate among the multiple dimensions demanded by the math of string theory, thereby actualizing immortality.

The Universe

Is the encompassing resonant harmonic entity of which we, as individuals, are and will always remain, a unique, sentient part.

The universe expands beyond the multi-verse of our theorizing, and yet is reflected in the infinitesimal perfection of the soul.

Our knowledge of the universe is evolutionary.  We are disabled by the belief that we can imagine the horizon of understanding.  Our belief in complexity blinds us to the insight suggested by simplicity.

Wisdom

We gain wisdom as we explore the three truths.  It is an exploration that is ambiguously poised between the private and the public.

We are unique entities suspended amidst unimaginable billions – unlike any other, yet in evolving concert with all.

Perhaps wisdom is best seen as unfolding harmony, comprised of works accomplished, commentaries on those works and the thoughtful anticipation of works yet to be.
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Travels in Alternia

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I am often unaware of making the trip.  But suddenly I am back again, standing in the kitchen, wondering what brought me here.  Other times I will be deeply engrossed in the trying task of finding exactly the right word to express a subtle perception hiding just around a bend in my mind, when the beep of a horn or a knock on the door returns me to my chair, disoriented, dislocated, disassociated.  I would be more concerned were this a phenomenon of recent inception, but I cannot remember a time when it was not part of my life: "Robby, are you listening to me?  Robby, I have asked you three times now to let the dog in.  I swear that boy .  .  .  ."

Still, it would be foolish to deny that moving into my seventh decade here on planet Earth has not focused my attention more closely on the phenomenon.  Can it really be creeping senility, dementia, or Alzheimer's if I have done it all my life?  And am I really doing it more often, or do advancing years simply make us paranoid about these flights of reflective fancy as "that boy" has somehow become "the old guy."

There was a family reunion in South Dakota last April.  My father, who will be 98 in June, could not make the trip.  But we took videos of recent conversations with him to the reunion via my tablet computer.  They were such a hit that we showed them to him when we returned to Chicago.  However, watching himself on the screen seemed more confusing than entertaining. It wasn't that he didn't grasp that we had taped the conversation, it just seemed, perhaps, irrelevant.  In that moment of his disorientation, I saw myself struggling to return to "everyday" when I had been "away."

I think that was when I first began to play - more consciously anyhow - with the question of what I have come to think of as "travels in Alternia." Is there, I wondered, another space/reality where we venture when we lose contact with everyday reality?  It must certainly be something considered by those whose loved ones get lost behind the tragic curtain of Alzheimer's; that hope that they are "somewhere else" and are "all right."  That is part of the conversation.  But is it merely a protective fancy to conjecture that senility in this realm of consciousness may not mandate universal senility?  More positively, can we posit an actual realm that is home to dreaming, and creativity - and my daily flights of walkabout?  "Well, perhaps," you say, "But another 'reality'"?  Stranger things are dreamt of.

We have learned only recently that 96% of the universe is made up of energy and matter that lies beyond our perceptual abilities and imaging technologies.  That which we can see - what we believed to constitute the entire universe, all of heaven and earth - is actually only 4% of what is "out there."  We have been the drunk in the old joke:

Late one night, a police officer happens upon an obviously inebriated gentleman on his hands and knees, creeping studiously about beneath a streetlight.

     "Sir, is there a problem?" enquires the officer.

     "Most certainly," replies the gentleman. "I have dropped my keys."

      The officer looks carefully around. There is obviously nothing on the ground.

     "Where did you drop them, sir?"

      The drunk gestures towards the dark shadows over his shoulder, "Back there."

     "Then why are you looking over here?"

     "The light is better here."

We look for explanations where they are most easily seen.  We have defined reality based on what falls within the glow of immediate lamplight. In doing so we seem to have missed 96% of the universe.  Perhaps we have made a similar error as we explore human consciousness.  Consider the notion of "cloaked consciousness."  [I think "dark matter" and "dark energy" are unfortunate choices to name the other 96% of the universe, the part that lies outside the comforting circle of our lamppost. Too much Darth Vader in those monikers.] I borrow "cloaked consciousness" from Rowling's world of Harry Potter.  Harry's invisibility cloak makes him invisible in one world, but in no way reduces the totality of his "presence in reality." "Cloaked consciousness" is how I conceive of the home to those experiences that leave no footprints here beneath the lamp, "cloaked consciousness" is the home to dreaming, and creativity and walkabout.  It is Alternia.

In Alternia, one lives unencumbered by the frailties of the awakened world. One leaps and creates and seeks truth differently. In Alternia one does not hear voices, it is not delusion. Rather one senses silent and affirming audiences who share your interest, and that interest propels you on.  Alternia remains invisible until we recreate its insights on this side of the curtain. Does that make one place illusion and another truth?  I doubt it.  But belief does not reality make.  How long did we point our telescopes into the heavens before the analysis of the data revealed that something - something huge - was missing?

I do not know where we may find acceptable evidence for Alternia.  But I do know that is isn't here, beneath the same old streetlight. Perhaps it is time we looked elsewhere.
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It's Not You, It's Me!

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It is an awkward situation.  A graduate student asks me to serve on their graduate committee, and I must refuse.  The refusal is awkward because the request is a compliment.  Something in your interaction had struck a chord with the student and they are asking you to become, at least, a semi-mentor.

My reasons for refusing - and I almost always do so - are complicated.  First, I am deeply immersed in undergraduate teaching, and find that quite rewarding. So, my reasons for saying no to graduate students are not always selfish reasons.  As a matter-of-fact the primary reason is usually in the student’s best interest: I simply do not possess the information necessary to the task.  The next reason, though, is selfish:  I have no interest in obtaining that missing information.  Both reasons deserve further explication.

Communication is a discipline in continual evolution.  I teach a course in communication technology, and on the first day of class I announce, “In this course, you will wake up everyday out of date; that is both inevitable and OK.”  It doesn’t take profound insight to grasp that concept.  “Tech Stuff changes, everyday.”  Best Buy is running a series of ads right now pushing their “BuyBack Policy.”  When your old gizmo gets outdated, they will buy it back so you can get the new one.

What is less obvious is that the intellectual underpinnings of the discipline are driven by those same winds of change.  The Economist reports that 64,000 PhDs were awarded in the US last year – a few thousand of those were in communication.  Here’s the tricky part.  To get a Ph.D. you are required to make an original contribution to the field, you are required to “change” the discipline somehow.  To continue to advance in your career you do research and publish – and again an important criterion is presenting something new, continuing the cycle of change.  This is, for the most part, a good thing.  I cannot think of an instance when it has been a good idea to draw a line in the sand of human curiosity and say: “Go no further!  This way be dragons!”  Were there such a line, graduate students and young faculty would be required to cross that line, to seek out the dragons and tame them in service to the discipline.  Change is mandatory.

Yet, there is a difference between intellectual curiosity and mandated change.  In my world that difference is more complex than it appears at first blush.  No one enters the academy without intellectual curiosity – it is a fundamental prerequisite.  I’m sure there are exceptions, just as there are probably linemen in the NFL who weigh less than 280 lbs., but they would be both uncommon and disadvantaged.  The curious come to the academy because they are accepted, understood and advantaged.  To a point.  Most often intellectual curiosity, the advancement of knowledge, and the evolution of the discipline go hand-in-hand.  I would go so far as to say that, as broad social variables, intellectual curiosity and the advancement of knowledge always go hand-in-hand, just as the laws of classical physics are always adequate to describe to world outside our window.

But when we observe intellectual curiosity on an individual level, it shows an increasingly common tendency to diverge from the prescribed course of mandated change.  Physics found quantum mechanics to describe this fascinating world that operates beneath the radar of ordinary reality. Perhaps we need a quantum mechanics of the mind, if you will, for the academy to recognize and benefit from the individualized curiosity that percolates, largely invisible, beneath the unified surface of discipline-mandated change.

And that is my next reason for saying no to graduate students.  My individualized curiosity has led me away from the “hot ticket items” of the discipline where graduate students must focus their efforts.  Hence, in my own mind, I become a bad choice to teach the novitiates this particular catechism.  The other reason, the fact that I no longer find the center of my discipline’s intellectual life interesting, requires a deeper dip into the quantum mechanics of the mind – both metaphorically and literally.

Change is both a physical and existential mandate.  To live is to change.  To steal a notion from Heraclitus, you cannot draw breath twice in the same universe.  First because you are different with every breath you take, molecules rush about, cells die and are born, electric impulses drive thoughts and movement.  We are constructed by change.  Secondly, the universe is in continuous flux around us.  Galaxies, solar systems, stars and planets shift as swiftly as the change within us.  The edge of the universe recedes with incomprehensible rapidity.  The only constant in existence is change.  I change, therefore I exist.  That being said, not all change is worthy of our consideration, and thankfully so, as we are often hard pressed to consider the change that is worthy of our attention.

So now let us consider change within an academic discipline.  There is a light side and a dark side.  On the dark side, the path of change is mandatory, even coerced.  This path is informed by my world’s harshest possible perspective: what you think in the academy is unimportant, all that matters is that your work is published and your research is funded.  If on this path, the canny graduate student or junior faculty member links his/her wagon to an established or a rising star, a publishing or grant getting machine, and hangs on for dear life.  Individual curiosity be damned, direct your attention to whatever game is currently in vogue, for that way lies tenure.

On the light side, the academy in its most flattering aspect, academic change occurs quite differently.  One assumes that there is a liked-minded cohort out there in the academy to encourage and support any intellectual bent.  The wise novitiates read whatever fascinates him or her, and eventually they find a caring sympathetic mentor who helps them answer the questions that most fascinate them within a department that welcomes them. Both extremes exist, but the norm lies somewhere in between.

While my first four or five years in the academy were spent in places more intellectually dark than light, my professional life has been spent largely in that middle ground; often encouraged, almost always tolerated.  It is therefore somewhat droll that during my “senior” years in the academy I find myself increasingly tepid as to the burning issues of the discipline.  Today’s young communication scholars are often focused on issues about which I simply cannot summon the energy to care.  So, does that mean I am no longer curious?  No, quite the contrary as a matter of fact.  I am far more curious than ever before.  But my intellectual path has pulled me off the roads being explored by my colleagues.  Let me share the basics with you.

Somewhere in the middle of my career I encountered – firmly in the middle of the discipline – narrative analysis.  This approach to the world asserts that human beings construct stories that both contain and manifest the beliefs, attitudes and values that, for us, define reality.  There’s a lot more to it than that – but that covers the main points.  I wrote and published about the various aspects of that perspective for a number of years.  But, like all academic tides, this one began to wane, and the change demanded by all those still unwritten Ph.D. dissertations swept on to new stories about the nature of reality in the discipline.  And that was fine by me.  By that time I was a full professor with tenure, able to withstand even those few bad years when the dark knights ruled my little corner of Camelot.

But I remained fascinated with the stories that we tell ourselves about the nature of truth and reality.  You see, I have lived my entire academic career outside the sciences, over in the worlds constructed by story.  In communication or philosophy or literature, there is no “proof” there is only “interpretation” and “belief.”  Throughout most of human history the great events and precious personal moments have centered on belief.  Wars are fought, empires rise and fall, lives are bound together and split asunder all on the basis of belief.  Where are the data that define love?  Show me the evidence for god.  There is none – yet the belief endures.  Fascinating.

The physicists on the other hand have been poking around for what they modestly called “the theory of everything.”  Thanks to some wonderful writers and editors who could translate theoretical physics for “mathaphobics” like me, I began to read about these “theories of everything” and was soon delightfully enthralled with string theory and super symmetry, black holes and branes.  I rambled there for a few years until I began to seriously build bridges between those two broad narratives: a world defined by belief and a universe revealed by data.  I wrote, and published on the internet, the book that defines my conception of how those two narratives come together: The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart.  The point of this essay is not to hawk that particular worldview.  Rather, it is to point out that there is no home in the academy for the work.  It is simply “not of interest” for formal physicists and communication scholars alike.  It lacks an intellectual lineage in both disciplines.  And that, of course, is the final reason I say no to graduate students.  They must focus within boundaries that bore me.

From a broader perspective, I am concerned that the academy has built an efficient knowledge creation engine with tracks too rigid to accommodate at least one natural extension of an intellectual life.  And when I say “one natural extension” I do not mean my personal intellectual wandering.  Rather, I mean “folks like me.”  I have met a cluster of them over the last few years, academics who view their lifelong disciplinary homes with ennui.  We seem to share a variety of characteristics.  We are usually in our late 50s through our 60s.  We are established in our careers. We seem not, or no longer, tied to administrative responsibilities.  And our curiosity has led us beyond the ordinary boundaries of our discipline.  And, most importantly, we are thinking about strange and interesting things.  It is in many ways a lovely life.  Yet, somehow sad in that we are often lonely among our colleagues.
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Mural Musing #5

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Finnish Ain’t No Language in Europe!

OK, I’m not really sure where that came from – other than looking at the mural this morning.  Tape had reappeared – see?  Over there:

I took a closer peek and was suddenly submerged in a world of déjà vu.  8 or 9 years ago I was working on this piece called “Beltline Boogie” that now hangs down here in the lower level den:

The image started life as an 8 x 10 inch pen and ink doodle done during a faculty meeting. I then scanned the drawing into Photoshop, where I added color and texture.  Eventually it became the 48-by-36 inch giclee that hangs on the wall.  Here is the issue.  When you work in Photoshop you can zoom in as close as you want – until you are working at a pixel by pixel level.  So you see those little tiny cars way in the background?  I could blow each one up to fill my 20 inch screen and work in teeny-tiny detail, like this:

Mind you this isn't the large car in the foreground, it is a slightly different, tiny, clone waaaay in the back. You can't really make it out here on the screen.  As it turned out, in this instance my obsession with detail was worthwhile.  This particular image ended up wrapping a city bus here in Raleigh as part of the "Art on The Move Project."  So one incarnation of Beltline Boogie ended up being 40 feet long!

Point is this – I would be embarrassed to tell you how many hours I spent working on the image.  Were it my "job", no problem – I could be labeled a “real go-getter,” a workaholic who always gave you his best effort.  I was, however, working on the image for the sheer pleasure of bringing to life the image inside my head.  When I would occasionally share my progress with someone, they would often inquire, “When will you finish?”  I had no answer. Every time I would open the image and zoom into that engulfing world – well, there was always something more to tweak.

Here is a quick glance at the current state of the image in Paul’s head that is springing to life on our walls:

Is that just unbelievably cool, or what? Were it not for the tape on the door handles you wouldn't see them at all.  We cannot wait for the first time a guest asks to use the restroom and we tell them to go out behind the trees! 

When will Paul "finish"?  I have no idea.  "Finnish ain't no language in Europe."  It is a moment that occurs in the mind of the artist, when the image on the canvas, screen or wall bears sufficient resemblance to the image inside the artist's head to be deemed "finished."  Judging by the tape in the  image that begins this post, I would guess that that moment will not occur today.  And we are more than willing to enable Paul's obsession for detail .  .  .  . 

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Mural Musing #4

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It has been while since I last attempted to recount for you the progress on the mural.  My excuse for neglecting the blog was initially a legitimate one – the holidays and all that.  Christmas here in Raleigh, then a delightful trip to Ocracoke Island to share New Year’s with dear friends and their family.  And I will cling to at least a portion of that prevarication.  But in truth, the larger issue is that I have been more than a little overwhelmed by it all.  Three seemingly unrelated narratives wind through my current reflections.  Let me share them with you and then try to explain how they are related.

First, is an iconic rural story about the farm boy whose favorite heifer finally gives birth to her first calf.  However, as is often the case in these situations, the little one is sickly, and the first-time mother less-than-adept.  Well, the lad bottle feeds the tike and takes to carrying the little critter around with him, so he can keep an eye on her.  She’s just a mite of a thing and he is strong.  And so it goes for weeks.  Come autumn, the neighbors are amazed to see the lad casually moving about the farm while carrying a strapping, yearling shorthorn cow across his shoulders.

Second is the story of a colleague of mine who is an excellent golfer.  I remember asking him if he had ever considered chasing the PGA star.  He admitted that he had, until he had chanced, while in college, to play a round with a classmate who actually went on to play rather successfully on the tour for a number of years after graduation.  During those few hours my colleague became painfully aware of the incredible gap between his best efforts and those of his friend, the future pro.

Finally, there is the well-known tale of Michelangelo and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor who occasionally did some painting.  Pope Julius II saw him as the painter best suited to adorn the ceiling of PJ’s home church.  Michelangelo got sucked in by the challenge and spent four years of his life, away from his beloved stone-cutting,  painting immortal images for this pushy guy with a pointed hat.

As I watch Paul work on the mural, each of those stories echoes in my head at various times.  The heifer story rings loudest when I remember the foyer wall of a couple weeks ago, featureless – your basic wall with a couple of distracting doors.  And then I think about the snakes of blue tape crawling over the lines traced upon the wall and Paul “killing the white” with a tan base:

Then incrementally blocks of color appear intersecting with streaks of increasing definition:

And more dabs appear, tying those streaks together until they became tree and branch, leaf and sky that spread like Spring across the wall:

And then, more recently, they slowly resolve as though being “focused” and viewed through an old, pre-digital SLR camera:

Seems like that wall was a little baby calf just yesterday, where is this awesome, full-grown critter coming from?

Obviously the golf story comes into play as I realize I do not have the slightest idea how he makes it happen.  I mean, I like to create my images, and I choose to believe that the pleasure they contribute moves beyond the immediate sphere of my own joy in creating them.  But this is a whole different level of “game.” How do the lines morph into branches?  How does flat become round?  That whole “crooked places straight and rough places plain” thing?  Paul explains patiently that the light is coming from the upper left so the dark values have to lie at the lower right of each branch, tree, or leaf, and then the lighter values round the object as you proceed to the upper left.  “Of course,” I think.  “And do you want fries with that?”  Still, I understand a bit more each day.

Finally, the Sistine Chapel story sometimes strikes a bit too close to home.  Last night as the four of us gathered again for dinner Paul did sigh and admit, “I wish I could get back to building my guitars.”  Despite the fact that we had all spent time discussing the possible perils to our friendship that lay in his undertaking the task, I still felt a bit like the pompous Pope who just wanted a cool ceiling.  This morning, however, we talked and he admitted that the pressure to get the mural "just right" came from within:

“I am cursed,” he admitted, “by knowing what I am capable of, and, once started, I cannot stop until I have achieved that.”

"Hmmm," mutters my evil twin.  "Step into my chapel, please, this will just take a minute .  .  .  ."
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Mural Musing #3

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Buckets and Brooms

It wasn’t what I was going for, but it wasn’t bad.  Paul looked at the wall for a bit, more quizzical than critical.  “That’s fine,” he said.  “That will work.”

An old joke is perhaps the best explanation of what I think he really meant:


Johnny’s dad was working out in the garage when his young son came in and loitered by the workbench long enough to catch his father’s attention.
 
“Something on your mind son?”
 
“Sorta.”
 
“Well, come on. You know we can talk about anything.”
 
“OK, Dad. Where did I come from?”
 
Dad took a deep breath. He had been expecting this question. Kids grew up so fast these days. But, he had even done some reading: Father to Son, Solid Parenting, and the article Tell it Like it Is in "GQ". “Well son, when a man and woman fall in love it is just natural that they often want to have children and so . . . . .” And after about 15 minutes he finished off with “. . . and 9 months later the baby comes out of the birth canal into the world. And that is where you came from.”
 
His son is staring at him, wide-eyed. “Wow! That is so much cooler than Tommy’s answer!”
 
“What was Tommy’s answer?” asked the puzzled dad.  

“Tommy said he came from New Jersey.”

There is, I came to learn over the next couple of days, such a thing as too much information in transferring small square information to big squares.  What really served Paul best were the reference points of trees, trunks and branches.  “I’m just gonna take a broom and a bucket and splash some paint up there. I just need to know what spots to miss,” he told me.

That is in line with the whole kumquat and avocado concept.  But the truth was he really did just need those major reference points. The details of leaves and underbrush, sky and cloud, were distractions at this point.  As one of my daughters’ favorite childhood books puts it, simple pictures are best.  That was actually good news because creating those detailed “paint-by-numbers” squares was incredibly time consuming.  I could understand why it took Michelangelo four years to do the Sistine Chapel.  Why, the amount of time he must have spent tearing masking tape alone must have been staggering. So I pulled back to simple pictures like these:

I mentioned in the last post that Paul and I bring different skill sets to the project.  To be quite truthful I could teach any of you to do what I have done – it is sheet metal work after all; exacting craftsmanship, but quite "learnable."  Paul’s skill set is also teachable – but only to a point.  Go to any craft fair or public “art show” and “painters” will present their wares, and yes, you can tell that that is a picture of a puppy with a pear – sort of.  Paul’s skill set is far beyond “skill”  -- “a gift,” would be a better descriptor.  That is not to say that it is not the result of years of hard work.  But, as I often have to point out to my students, I cannot evaluate you on the basis of how hard you worked.  That might have been germane in back in K through 12, but here, at the university, I can only evaluate you on the basis of what you produce with your effort.  No, it doesn’t seem fair that some folks seem to be able to produce great work with little effort, while others struggle mightily to achieve mediocrity.  It is not fair, but it is the way of life.  The secret is to discover those places in your own life where ability and desire intersect.

Such an intersection is unfolding in our foyer.  I have spent a goodly amount of time in Paul’s studio and workshop.  I have taken my classes there on occasion to listen to him talk about making pots, painting and building guitars.  But the amount of time I have actually watched him work is surprisingly limited.  It is a special experience.  As he approached today's tasks, I was first taken by his lack of movement.  He looked at my drawings on the wall for awhile.  He sipped the coffee, that was my job to prepare.  Then he got out his paints and brushes. And, despite my humming several bars of The Sorcerer's Apprentice,  neither brooms nor buckets made an appearance.  Instead, Paul took his original reference painting and propped it up beside the wall.  And then he stared at the wall.  Next he stared at the drawing.  One and then the other – like this:

Eventually he took off his hat and picked up the brush.  What has followed over the next few days was, in my mind, quite magical.  And we will go there in the next post.
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Art Show Orphans

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I went to the 41st Annual Carolina Designer Craftsmen’s Fine Craft and Design Show this weekend.  Ordinarily I go to the “Pre-opening” on the first day of the exhibition.  People sip free wine of indeterminate vintage and the air buzzes with a gently affected anticipation.  It is all quite festive. This year other obligations took precedence and I barely scurried in before closing on the last day.  I found it a strangely melancholy experience with a touch of the forlorn.  The unsold goods peer from the shelves like the unclaimed children of orphan trains.  Found wanting and unwanted, they preen with self-conscious bravado as craft roadies begin to circle the display floor with packing blankets and masking tape.

Some exhibitors still muster a bright smile, “If you have any questions, I’ll be glad to answer them.”  Others fold themselves into director’s chairs designed by some lesser student of Giacometti, legs dangling, their eyes tired and unfocused.  Their gaze shifts to the orphans perched upon the shelves or left lingering, garish, under glass.  Affection fights disappointment.  The leftovers will be gently wrapped and packed away to be defrosted for the next show, the next town, the next season.  But, oh, if only they had found a home, if only they had left the building in the hands of someone new for whom they were unique and truly lovable.

“We’ll be closing in thirty minutes.  Exhibitors should refrain from packing until then,” booms the man behind the curtain.  “We’d like to thank everyone for their help in making this year’s exhibition such a success.”

Despite those instructions to the contrary, booths begin a subtle deconstruction while their keepers avoid complicity by slipping on varying guises of inattentive nonchalance.  The concession stand windows rasp rudely down as, behind the scenes, rainbows of silk, ceramics and glass cascade into anonymous cardboard cartons. Countless hours of exacting, loving labor disappear into crumpled newsprint or are swaddled in bubble wrap, laid to rest and taped securely, rip and sigh.

The trip home must, it would seem, start in exhalations of blended relief and recrimination.  “Well, not bad I guess, given the economy and all. But, still .  .  .  .”  It seems an unforgiving way to make a living, hawking the products of your heart to throngs often ignorant of the incredible investment of energy, artistry and effort represented by each piece – as individual as a snowflake.  But then, I choose to imagine, they drive through a burst of Maxfield Parrish light that ignites the last of autumn’s finery and they think, “I could capture that, in glass, on canvas, in wood or in the kiln.  Hmm, maybe when I get home I’ll try to use .  .  .  .” 

More orphans in the making, thank goodness.
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An Inclination to Laughter

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When your father is in the second half of his 9th decade you can’t help but occasionally muse about what the world will be like when he is no longer in it.  Still my brother-in-law’s email about Dad’s escalating back pain, possibly from a fractured vertabra, was unsettling. We have since learned that there is no fracture, but a urinary tract infection. So antibiotics, pain meds and eventual physical therapy seem to be the order of the day.  Yet prior to that, the initial email phrase “In someone this old, a fracture could be the beginning of the end” was certainly cause for reflection.  One might ordinarily end that sentence with “concern” rather than “reflection,” but the choice is intentional.  “Cause for concern” brings a lot of conceptual baggage that does not necessarily apply in this instance.

I do not know if one can inherit an inclination to laughter, but it seems a common trait in the Schrag family.  I recall it particularly in my Uncle Paul who passed away a couple of years ago at 99, and in my Uncle Delbert who is still chuckling along through his 80s.  It is not frivolity; it is more being in tune with all that is humorous; an ability to laugh often and to give your full attention to that laughter.  I remember that inclination being more prevalent in my father as a younger man, when Mom was still alive.  It was more tempered than in Paul and Delbert, perhaps by the professorial need to be “right”, but it was there nonetheless.  I choose to believe I have inherited that inclination to laughter.

I have seen only the briefest of flashes of that inclination in my father these last few years.  Perhaps losing both a son and a wife leeched some of the laughter from his eyes.  And, recently, he has made no secret of the fact that he finds the process of growing old most distasteful.  His memories of himself as a younger man remain quite clear; he dislikes his own comparisons to the current edition.

My belief system, Chord Theory, or Universal Resonance as I currently conceive of it, releases us, at life’s end, as sentient entities free to explore the joyous intricacies of the universe.  Should I be “concerned” that my father might be approaching that new experience?  He has lived a long and rich and complex life, and he is most displeased with the reality of his current “everyday.”  He seems to live more from force of habit, than from any joyful anticipation of what the day might bring.  So, on closer reflection, my major “cause for concern” is a selfish one – I will miss him.  He has been a loving consistency in my life, for all my life. And yet even that selfish notion of “missing him” is more complicated than it seems at first blush.  I will miss the idea of having a father.  I will miss the concept of my father as a mentor.  I really have had no other.  But in truth, he has not played that role for more than a decade.  Like he himself, I will miss the man he was but is no longer.  His eventual, yet certain departure will transform the fabric of my existence.  I know I will find ways to honor that departure, but I’d rather put it off still longer.  And yes, in light of his own ennui, that is selfish - and I will own that selfishness.

Still, while I will do what I can to aid Margaret and William in their always excellent, and deeply appreciated, on-site care, I need to begin to make my peace with the idea of a “world without Dad.”  I find it comforting to begin that process with my firm belief that when he does leave us, Dad will once again be free to fully explore his hereditary inclination to laughter.
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Pen to Paper

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By most measures, I should be doing other things.  I have lectures to prepare, papers to grade.  I must pack for a trip only hours in the future.  So, naturally, I have taken my large leather-bound journal to the table, dimmed the lights, lit the candles and taken pen in hand.  An opera I do not quite recognize drifts softly from the next room, rain patters around outside in the darkness.

It was a strange vision that sent me here.  My wife has preceded me to Chicago, so I bumble about in an easy return to my unscheduled single days.  Yet, I had neglected my medication and so found myself in the kitchen, in pain, loading the dishwasher.  I retreated upstairs, put on the classical music channel, and lay down on the bed waiting for the pill to kick in.  It was simple to drift off into what I now think of as hyperconsciousness, a state poised between waking and sleep that has been my favorite haunt since childhood.

I am in a sleigh, or so it seems.  There are no creatures hitched before, but I glide through a snowy moonlit wood.  It is tranquil, quite soothing.  Apparently I steer by will as a subtle inclination guides the craft across a meadow, then back into more sheltered ways.  The barriers between experience and perception melt and I am where I am.  A comfortable completeness.

Gradually I become aware of the music and the drumming of the rain on the roof.  What we call consciousness intrudes, nudging me toward responsible activity.  I mount my usual protests that this voyage is far more important.  Coming downstairs to write seems a reasonable compromise.

I do not think it is entirely generational that I find these creamy sheets of handmade paper far more enticing than the cursor blinking at the first line of a newly opened document. Certainly there is the physical pleasure of forming the letters upon the page – the pen tracing an individuality totally beyond the ability of any “family of fonts.”  But it is more than that.  There is a feeling of permanence.  I, more than many, am aware of the incongruity of that assertion.  This book is fragile.  Fire or flood could undo it utterly.  It could be lost, discarded, rendered asunder in a dozen different ways.

Furthermore, I know that its digital incarnation will slip up into the cloud of the worldwide computer where web-bots and widgets, spiders and data miners will stuff its 1s and 0s into servers with no apparent masters; confined in seeming perpetuity.  Yet, the Internet conveys an accidental immortality – existence without intention.  Perhaps that is why I see the cursor’s welcome as more of a wink than a blink.  It knows.

But an honest pen to a new sheet of paper?  The possibilities overreach the universe.
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Distillations Part 6

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The Soul

The entity that most religions call the soul is recognized, in universal resonance, to be a physical reality; a cluster of those unimaginably tiny strings that uniquely encodes our deepest beliefs, feelings and insights. It is a minute morsel of matter whose size and resonance allows it, on the occasion of the demise of its current body, to migrate among the multiple dimensions demanded by the math of string theory, thereby actualizing immortality.

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The Early Multiverse

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RL Schrag 2009

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Distillations Part 5

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The Self

The self is the symphony we compose with the choices of our life.  Inclined by biology, we take from our DNA the realization that we are utterly unique.  Each breath we draw, each hope we cherish, our fears, the thoughts we think, all trigger cascades of discernible physical reactions that strum the very strings of our self, creating and recreating us anew each moment.

Though buffeted by both choice and chance, we are the composers of our life’s symphony.  It is a role we are powerless to relinquish.
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Self Portrait

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RL Schrag 2003

Distillations Part 4

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Oppose Harm

Harm is anything that compromises harmony and beauty. Sometimes active opposition, though seemingly discordant, is the necessary path to harmony. But, whenever possible, opposition should be graceful, gentle, even beautiful.

Remember, opposition forced into the public sphere usually indicates a failure to blunt harm in a more private and graceful manner.

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The Musician

RL Schrag 2001

Distillations Part 3

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Enable Beauty

This tenet mandates our active participation in making the world more beautiful. A broad conception of beauty is implied, one that transcends culture, market and current taste.

The route to beauty winds through throngs and past lonely places.  Where and how we choose to follow is unimportant.  That we do follow is imperative.

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Off Ocracoke, NC

RL Schrag 2003

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Distillations Part 2

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Foster Harmony

This guides all our behavior. It shapes what we do and what we should refrain from doing: We seek harmony.

Implicit in the exhortation to foster harmony is the realization that we cannot choose for others. The only chord you can tune is your own.

Harmony rarely frowns. She is not selfish, arrogant or disdainful. Harmony could be rather tedious were she not so willing to laugh at herself.

Distillations Part 1

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 Those of you who have been around for the past eight years know that The Wall grew out of notes that I would actually stick on "the wall" above my desk at home.  Those notes grew into the book The God Chord that some of you have had the persistence to read.  I thank you for that effort.


My wife Christine, coming from the marketing side of life, has often opined that if I really wanted peole to read the work, I should consider the reader staring at those 240 plus pages that meander through physics, philosophy, art, occasional comedy and unintended tragedy.  Jeez.  Everybody is an editor.  I have however taken her advice and distilled 246 pages down to 719 words.


I am still quite fond of the 246 pages, but I am going to share the 719 words here on this blog.  Not all at once, of course, but chapter by chapter:


Here is the first: